Royal Families Vs. Historicals

Trella had been very heartfelt in her plea for Angelique to do something for herself for a change.

I’ve held you back too long, Trella had insisted, then added with a sly look, Besides, I’m curious about Henri and Cinnia. See what you can find out.

Angelique had laughed at that, but if Trella had a setback, she would never forgive herself.

Deep down, however, she was anxious to see Kasim again. It was a foreign state of mind for her. After Trella’s experience, she’d spent her adolescence wary of boys and sex. When she finally started to date, she had been hard-pressed to find men who measured up to the standards her father and brothers had set. When her suitors had fallen off because her life was too restrictive, or proved to be social climbers or other opportunists, she’d been annoyed and disappointed, but never truly hurt.

She had never been taken with any man. None had engaged her feelings very deeply and she had never, ever, allowed a man to come between her and her family.

In some ways, she was terrified of the influence Kasim was having on her. He fascinated her and thus had power over her. He was confident and secure in himself, almost brutally honest, but that lack of subterfuge was as seductive as the rest of him.

And oh, did he seduce! From a physical standpoint, she was completely infatuated. Her blood raced as she silently willed the driver into London after the family jet landed at the private airfield.

She hadn’t given Trella many details about her evening with Kasim, but her sister had said with a sensual lift of her own hair, I know you slept with him. Don’t deny it. I’m kind of jealous, actually. In a good way. It makes me realize what I’m missing.

That had made Angelique very self-conscious, but she knew Trella was interpreting her body language. They had the same expressions and mannerisms so even though Angelique could disguise her thoughts and feelings from many, her sister would read the indolent stretch or the warmed cheek and soft gaze of pleasant memory without effort.

Trella didn’t tease her for it, and when Angelique studied Trella, she saw nothing but determination in her sister at being left alone this evening.

Kasim had been right about Angelique suffering survivor’s guilt. She wondered if it was the reason she had given up so easily on her previous relationships. Being happy when her sister had been struggling had always felt incredibly disloyal.

She still felt disloyal, haring off to London to be with a man, but it was only one night, she told herself. Kasim hadn’t promised anything else and neither had she for that matter, even though she felt a yearning for more.

Not that she’d defined exactly what “more” would be. The artist in her appreciated that whatever they had was too new and special for close examination. Deconstruction could kill it. Sometimes you had to go with instinct, then determine after the fact what you had.

Was this instinct? Or greed and selfishness? Or old-fashioned blindness to obvious facts?

Exactly the type of scrutiny she had to avoid, she thought with a stifled sigh.

Whatever it was, it drew her inexorably. Her pulse was racing over a single text from Kasim, promising to meet her at her brother’s flat within the hour.

It was actually the family flat. Knowing Henri was in New York, Angelique assumed Cinnia was staying in her own flat, but texted her as a courtesy, mentioning that she was in town and asking if Cinnia wanted to get together for a meal.

Cinnia’s reply came through as Angelique was letting herself in. It was a simple regret that she was staying with her mother and was sorry she had missed the chance to visit.

Angelique put her bag in the room she and Trella used, checked that there was a decent bottle of wine in the fridge and moved restlessly into the lounge, wondering if she and Kasim were going out for dinner and if so, where? What should she wear?

Paparazzi. Ugh, she thought with another sigh, but for once she wasn’t filled with as much dread as usual. She would have hated to have her night with Kasim reduced by the online trolls to a one-night stand, sullied and mocked, even though she’d gone to his room last night convinced it would be only that.

Having this affair extend into a second night made it feel—Well, it still felt so rare and precious she wanted to guard it jealously, but she was so thrilled to see him again, she was willing to pay the price.

“Oh, no,” she murmured, jerked from introspection as she caught sight of the coffee table.

A courier envelope had been torn open and the contents spilled out. It was at least a hundred thousand euros in jewelry, probably more. It looked like the contents of Ali Baba’s cave, glittering and sparkling innocently against the glass tabletop.

Angelique sat down hard on the sofa, chest tight. She thought about texting Trella, but Henri was the most private of all of them. He would kill her if he knew she had seen this. She couldn’t share it like tawdry gossip, not even with Trella.

But what had gone wrong?

Henri was adamant in his decision never to marry, but he and Cinnia had seemed so good together. Angelique would have bet real money that Cinnia genuinely loved him. How had those tender feelings become something as harsh as throwing his gifts back in his face?

It was a cool, disturbing reminder that relationships fell into one of two categories: those with a future and those that ended. Her heart chilled, starkly confronted with the kind she had with Kasim.

There wouldn’t be a moment of callous rejection between them, though. Not like this. She and Kasim were never going to spend two years together the way Henri had with Cinnia.

Upset for Henri and Cinnia—and disturbed on her own behalf—she pushed the jewelry into the envelope, but the artist in her was drawn to examine the tennis bracelet. She’d never taken a proper look at it. It was a string of alternating pink and white diamonds, one Cinnia had always seemed to be wearing. Angelique was really shocked she’d given it up, especially now that she saw how exquisite it really was. The craftsmanship in the setting was extraordinary. She searched it for an insignia that might tell her where it had come from.

When the door opened behind her, she stood with surprise, expecting Maurice, but it was Kasim. She had told Maurice to expect him, but had thought she’d have to ring him through the main doors downstairs before he would appear up here.

“How did you get in the building?” she asked as she moved to meet him, flushing uncontrollably with instant pleasure.

His mouth tilted with a hint of smugness, as if he read her infatuation and knew how slowly the minutes had passed for her before seeing him again. It was disconcerting, making her feel defenseless and obvious, but she still found herself crossing toward him, tugged by an invisible lasso around her middle.

He waited for the door to shut before he hooked his arm around her and kissed her.

It was proprietary and given how fleeting this affair was likely to be, she should be keeping better control over herself, but her heart soared. She quickly melted into him, instantly transported to the languorous memories of last night and anticipation for more of the same incredible pleasure he’d delivered.

“You missed me,” he said when he drew back.

“You didn’t miss me?” She tried to sound blasé, tried to pull away, but she was hyperaware of how needy that sounded. How completely easy she was being.

His hand slid to her tailbone and pressed her hips into his enough that she felt how he was reacting to her. “I’ve been thinking about you,” he allowed.

Fluttery joy invaded her abdomen and she tried not to reveal how quickly and thoroughly he’d bowled her over.

“Good to know,” she said lightly. “But I am genuinely curious how you got into the building. It’s supposed to be locked down for residents only.”

“It is. I was given the codes when I bought my flat this morning. Shall we go look at it?” He finally released her and stepped toward the door with a low wave for her to accompany him.

“You—you bought a unit in this building this morning?” She had grown up with wealth, but they only owned a flat here because her father had bought it during the design stage, just before his death. The address was obscenely exclusive with a wait list a mile long of international dignitaries and techno-billionaires trying to get in.

Perhaps she had underestimated how wealthy and powerful Kasim was. The cost to jump queue must have been exorbitant.

“It’s a good investment. My mother likes London,” he said with a shrug. “She’ll use it if I don’t. Mostly I thought you’d appreciate the privacy. By some miracle, there is nothing online about us. I thought we’d celebrate our lack of infamy by staying in and extending our lucky streak. I’ve ordered dinner to be delivered in a couple of hours.”

“We could have stayed here!” she pointed out.

He offered a pained frown. “I do not steal into a girl’s bedroom at her parents’ home.”

No, he dropped a few million pounds on a suite he was only using for one night. For her.

She urged herself not to let that mean too much.

“Shall I change?” She was still wearing her travel clothes, a dark blue jersey skirt with a pale yellow top, both her own design. They were quietly feminine, breezy yet classic and a tiny bit waifish.

“You look beautiful.” He skimmed his gaze down and back. “And whatever you wear is only for the elevator.”

“You’re not even going to pretend you’re inviting me to look at etchings?” She planted her hands on her hips, only realizing as she did that she was still holding Cinnia’s bracelet. Shoot. She was instantly self-conscious on her brother’s behalf. “Um. I just have to put this down and grab my phone.”

“What is it?” Kasim asked, catching at her wrist as the snaking sparkle caught his attention.

She opened her hand. “Something Henri bought for Cinnia,” she prevaricated.

Her brother’s long-term relationship was well documented in the press, but she wasn’t going to be the one to start the rumors about its demise.

“I want to ask him where he got it because the work is outstanding. Look at the detail here. You can tell each of these claws has been crimped individually to create this effect all the way along. I’m in awe at how painstaking that would be. Have you ever seen anything like it?”

Kasim’s nostrils flared as he picked up the bracelet and gave it a thorough study, his expression pulling into a tension that bordered on agony. As if suddenly realizing how hard he was staring, and that she was watching him, he quickly straightened his features and handed her the bracelet.

“No,” he answered belatedly and rather abruptly. “Let’s go.”

Her heart did a little thump. The mood had definitely shifted. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

She was hurt that he would lie so blatantly to her, but moved across to tuck the bracelet into the envelope and picked up her phone.

The silence in the elevator was not precisely thick, but it was significant.

Kasim’s cheeks were hollow, his mouth flat.

Maurice was with them, so Angelique kept her own counsel. Her guard went through Kasim’s new flat ahead of them, even though Kasim’s team had been here all day, ensuring it was not only clean and secure, but furnished and well stocked.

The layout was similar to her family’s suite with a lounge opening onto a balcony overlooking the Thames. She imagined the door next to the wet bar led to the kitchen, as it did in their own. Down the hall would be the bedrooms and baths.

This one smelled faintly of paint and was filled with contemporary furniture and a handful of decent art pieces. His decorator was competent, if unimaginative, having fallen back on the latest issue of Colors of the Year for lack of inspiration.

The moment Maurice left them alone, Kasim drew her into his arms again and kissed her quite passionately. Almost aggressively, questing for a response. It was as if he was trying to propel them into the mindless state they’d experienced last night in Paris.

It was breathlessly exciting, yet made her feel… She wasn’t sure and, as her blood began to heat, started not to care.

“Do I not even get a chance to explore the place myself?” she gasped when his mouth traveled to the side of her neck. Arousal suffused her, but she had the sense she was being used as much as desired. It scraped her insides raw.

“If you like,” he said, straightening and not looking pleased.

“Have you even seen it?” she asked, trying to recover and stung by the distance she sensed between them.

“I’m more interested in this.” His lashes cut downward as he slid his gaze to her toes and came back to her lips.

His ravenous gaze made her skin tighten, but her heart squeezed at the same time. She knew he was sublimating something.

“Kasim.” She cupped his jaw. “What has upset you?”

“I’m not upset.” He pulled away from her touch and moved to the bar. “Children get upset. Do you want wine?”

He was speaking shortly. Irritably. Like he was upset, she thought drily.

“Something about the bracelet bothered you. Did you recognize it?” She was intuitive that way. She just was. “You can tell me what it was, or I can make up stories of my own to explain your reaction.”

“I’ve never seen it,” he said flatly, setting out two wineglasses. “But the workmanship reminded me of Jamal’s. He designed jewelry.”

He wound the screw into the cork with a little squeaking noise and pulled it out with a pop, movements jerky, facial muscles still tense.

“My father hated it. He took it as a reflection against his own masculinity. An insult. He was ashamed to have a son who was…artistic,” he pronounced with disdain. “My mother used that to her advantage.”

“What do you mean?”

He poured, steadying the bottoms of each glass with two fingers as he did.

“Jamal is—was Fatina’s son. My father’s second wife. My mother…”

He set aside the bottle. For a moment he was a man on the verge of exploding, wrapped tightly, but packed to the eyebrows with dynamite, fuse burning in his eyes.

“Children should not be used as weapons, but my mother loved to find fault with him. To his face, to my father, in public. However she could humiliate him and Fatina, she did it. In sly ways, though. Small little stabs. Death by a thousand cuts,” he said grimly.

“That’s horrible.”

“It was. And my father was determined to turn him into something he could be proud of. That was his way of countering my mother’s attacks, by telling Jamal he was to blame for her criticisms. If he only changed, we would all have peace. I’m furious every time I’m reminded of how it was for him.”

“You couldn’t make your father see reason?”

He snorted. “This?” He lifted his glass and touched it to the rim of hers. “I don’t care one way or another for alcohol, but it is completely outlawed in Zhamair. It’s not a religious restriction. We have as many citizens who are Christian or Jewish as we do Muslims in our country, but my father’s word is rule. My father is a dictator in the way that political scientists define one.”

“But you do what you want when you’re away,” she noted with a glance at his Western clothes. “Couldn’t your brother have done that? I’m sorry, I know it’s very easy to say that he should leave his country and turn his back on his father. It’s not something anyone would do without deep struggle, but…”

“No,” Kasim agreed in a hard, grim voice. “It’s not. Especially since it meant leaving his mother and the rest of his siblings. Fatina has four younger children, as well. And he felt my father’s rejection very deeply. He wanted desperately to earn his respect. It was an impossible situation for him.”

“That’s so awful.” Her heart ached for not just his brother, but for Kasim. No wonder he wanted to take the reins from a man who possessed no hint of compassion or empathy. No wonder he had fought so hard for Hasna to have a love marriage.

“How did he die?” she asked softly, then clutched where the pang in her chest had intensified. She could see the anguish still fresh in Kasim’s face. “It wasn’t suicide, was it?”

Kasim didn’t speak, only stared into his wine for a long moment. His fingernails were so white where he clutched the stem of his glass, she though he would snap the crystal. His gaze came up and she thought he looked about to say something.

In the next second, he shut down, mouth flattening into a sealed line before he finally said in a neutral, almost practiced, voice, “It was a car crash. We were in Morocco on business. He was out on his own along a stretch of road near the ocean. He wasn’t reckless by nature, but he was under a lot of pressure from my father to give up the jewelry design, work with me full-time and marry suitably.”

His expression was filled with perturbed memories.

“The car went through the guardrail into the rocks below. Calling my father with the news was hard, but facing Fatina and Hasna, and my younger brothers and sisters…”

The torment in his expression was too much to bear. So much guilt, but how could he have prevented it? It was just a terrible accident. He shouldn’t blame himself.

She set aside her glass and came around the bar to slide her arms around his waist. “I’m sorry.”

“Why? You had nothing to do with it.” He continued to hold his glass, his other arm hanging at his side, stiff and unresponsive to her embrace. He looked down his nose at her.

“I shouldn’t have forced you to revisit his loss.”

She felt the flinch go through him. He sipped, stony as a column of marble that didn’t give under the lean of her weight, only supported her with cold, indifferent strength. “The bracelet did that.”

“And you wanted me to help you think of nicer things.” She traced her fingertips up the line of his spine through the back of his shirt, trying to reach him through physical contact since he seemed to have shut her out emotionally. “Now I will. If you like.”

“What about your great explore?” He didn’t bend at all.

“I’ve seen a flat just like this one. But this…” She brought her hands around to climb his chest and brush his suit jacket open, nudging it to fall back off his shoulders. “This territory is still new to me.”

She was trying to be bold, to find the affinity they had shared in Paris, but was highly unsure when he failed to respond. Self-doubt, her great nemesis, twisted through her.

“I plan to be very thorough in my mapping of it,” she said, voice wavering as she became convinced he was about to reject her.

“You’re liable to see nothing but this ceiling for the next hour,” he warned, setting aside his glass and clasping her hips in heavy hands.

“Maybe that’s all you’ll see,” she said with a tremble of relief. “Did you think of that?”

* * *

Kasim had almost told her the truth about Jamal. It was a stunning break in his normal vigilance against any woman’s intrusion into his inner world.

Idly caressing from the back of her thigh over the curve of her buttock to the hollow in the small of her back, he wondered how this smooth golden skin had come to get so far under his own in such a short amount of time.

He didn’t regard women as a Western indulgence he allowed himself when he traveled, but he did treat his sexual relationships much as he did his business ones. Some were brief transactions, some longer term, but they were exchanges and trades, always agreements with clear parameters. Paramours didn’t cause him to rearrange his life and they rarely stimulated more than his libido.

This one, however… He had made a ridiculously large transfer this morning so he could protect their privacy, mindful of her request last night to keep the world from cheapening their association.

Why? What did he care if their association was known or in what context? He would eagerly show her off. The idea of staking a public claim held a great deal of pleasure for him, in fact.

He very carefully blocked the vision of any other man thumbing into the small dimples at the top of each of her firm, round cheeks, then he lightly traced the line that separated them, fingertips claiming Angelique’s backside along with the rest of her, sweeping the back of her thigh and taking possession of her calf.

He had grown up watching his father deal with the fallout of indulging unfettered lust. Every person was susceptible to being attracted to the wrong person—or rather, an inconvenient person in relation to the life they led. Giving in to that desire was the root of whatever problems arose.

Kasim had always regarded himself as superior to his father and brother. He was capable of rising above the temptations that foretold complications.

Was he kidding himself, believing this thing with Angelique was a trouble-free dalliance that could end tomorrow morning with a light kiss and a “pleasant knowing you”?

An uncomfortable bolt of rejection shot through him, not just resisting the idea of walking away, but outright refusing to countenance it. His reaction was so visceral, his hand closed in a small squeeze where it rested above the back of her knee. He was literally holding on to her and he’d only thought about the inevitable parting that awaited them.

It was a sobering confrontation with his inner animal, the one he had always been so sure he governed without effort.

“I’m awake,” she murmured on a contented sigh, as if she took his grip to be a test of her level of consciousness.

She turned her head so she could blink dreamy eyes at him while keeping her face mostly buried in her folded arms and the fall of her magnificent hair. “Just thinking. Do you want to meet me in Berlin next weekend? I have a thing.”

He had places to be, people to rise above.

“I thought we were staying out of the spotlight.”

Her sleepy smile slowly warmed to something vulnerable yet elated. It made his heart swerve and swell.

“I was really asking if you wanted to see me again after tonight.” The tone in her voice caused a pleasant-painful vibration through him.

He looked at where his hand was still firm on the back of her thigh. “I fear for our lives at the rate we’re going, but I was going to ask you to stay the weekend. I have to escort my mother and sister back to Zhamair on Sunday, but I will arrange to take them back late.” He would also cancel his lunch arrangements for tomorrow with his foreign secretary and the British counterpart.

“I wasn’t planning to spend the weekend,” she said, last night’s troubled light coming into her eye. Her sister again.

“No?” He tensed and felt her hamstring flex against his light grip.

Guilt and longing fought for dominance in her gaze. She released a soft moan of struggle and gave a taut stretch beneath his touch.

“I will if I can arrange it.” Her tone echoed with something like defeat.

He began to pet her again, blood tingling as he fondled her with more purpose. He wasn’t used to a woman resisting him. It made him restless for her capitulation. Not something forced. No, he needed her to give herself up to him.

Rolling her over, he began to kiss her, running his mouth to all the places that made her arch and moan under him, impressing on her the benefit of belonging to him. As he felt the tension in her, the clasp of nearing climax, he kissed his way back up the center of her torso.

“Tell me what you want.”

“You know,” she sobbed, moving against his hand, but he followed her undulations, keeping his penetration shallow and light.

“You want this?” he very slowly and gently deepened his caress, deliberately holding her on the plane of acute pleasure she occupied, not letting her tumble into orgasm. “Or this?”

He rolled atop her and loved the saw of her breath as she gasped in a sensual agony. Holding himself in a tight fist, fighting back from his own approaching peak, he rubbed his aching tip against her slick folds, nudging at her with promise.