The Life She Left Behind

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She put her hands on his face, his stubble rough beneath her palms. Leaning in, she pressed her lips to his. They were hot and hard, immobile. Her stomach tightened, a fierce rush of need flowing through her, the kind of need she hadn’t felt since the last time Taj had held her in his arms.

He didn’t move and she angled her head, sliding her tongue against the seam of his lips. That was when he moved, like a man breaking free from chains. He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her to him, deepening the kiss, his tongue moving against hers.

She could feel his heart beneath her hands, raging hard, out of control. Every bit as out of control as she felt.

He took a step and she took a step back, then he took another and she followed. He released her for a moment to shut the door hard behind him, the sound jarring her back to reality.

“What are you doing?”

“You started it, Angel, shouldn’t you have the answer?” he asked.

“I don’t…” Her pulse thundered in her head and she tried to form a coherent sentence. She had meant to show him she had command now. That she wasn’t so easily manipulated. But all of those intentions had been knocked right out of her the moment their lips had touched.

She couldn’t prove a point, not while she was so utterly lost in sensation.

He took a step toward her, his expression changing, softening. He put his hand on her cheek. “You are real. You must be.”

“I…of course I am.”

“You never said goodbye to me when you left.”

“I was angry at you.”

The corners of his lips turned down. When he made that face, it was easy to imagine him as a sulky, spoiled child. Nothing about that should be endearing, and yet, she found it was. “I surmised as much. I never did find out why.”

“You don’t know?”

He shook his head. “I assumed perhaps you had found a better prospect, and yet here you are, a nanny, so I’m certain now that isn’t the case.”

She laughed. “I did find a better prospect. Independence. Life beyond being your accessory. When I found out my father was promising you my hand in order to cement the merger I…I couldn’t stay. I’m not a thing, Taj, and I refused to be traded like I was.”

“Angelina…”

“Is this the part where you tell me I misunderstood? That you weren’t really going to do it? That you had other motives?” She’d wondered over the years. Wondered if she’d been too quick to run. If she should have stayed and talked to him.

Waiting for the words now was tantamount to torture.

“No. I’m not going to say that. Because I was using you to get the merger. Though, I confess I thought you were complicit in the arrangement.”

Only because she’d imagined she’d meant something to him. That when he’d kissed her, there had been feeling in it.

“I wasn’t.”

“And now what, Angelina? Do I leave you here? Do we never see each other again?”

The idea of Taj turning and walking away, the thought of never seeing him again, made her heart ache. More than that, it reminded her of the ache that had existed since she’d lost him the first time.

He was the man she’d never been able to forget. The one demon from her past left unexorcised. What would it take? What would it take to rid her body of her desire for him? To squeeze those deeply held feelings from her heart? To erase him from her mind.

Her body burned from the kiss. Her heart burned from looking at him.

She hated it. She hated how much he controlled her. Whether he was standing in front of her, or in another country entirely, the man held too much power. It had to end.

He turned away, and her stomach jolted. Leaving, separation, that wouldn’t work. It wasn’t enough. She knew it. And she was desperate. Desperate to make it go away. Her desire for him was beneath her skin, in her blood.

There was only one way she could think of to bleed herself of it, to pour it out of her.

“Don’t go,” she said.

He stopped, his shoulders going ridged. “What?”

It wasn’t too late to go back. To stop herself from touching him. From confirming what she was certain he suspected. But she didn’t want to. She had run from him, from her feelings, her heartbreak, all those years ago. But she hadn’t escaped it. It had clung to her, wrapped itself around her heart like a clinging vine.

Distance hadn’t killed it. But he was here now. Maybe if she could have him, just once, she could draw a line through that part of her life and call it done.

She took a deep breath, ignoring the trembling in her fingers as she reached out to put her hand on his shoulder. “Stay. Stay with me tonight.”

Chapter Three

Taj’s original theory, the one in which Angelina was a mirage, was starting to seem likely again. She had felt real beneath his hands, beneath his lips. Her unsteady fingers felt real on his back, but the words she’d just spoken made it all seem like a fantasy.

He turned to face her, his heart raging, his blood hot. “What did you say?”

She bit one of her lips, swollen from his earlier attention. “Stay. I want you to stay.”

“And count stars?” he asked, his tone sardonic, his stomach tight with the memory.

She snorted a breath and shook her head, her strawberry colored ponytail swinging with the motion. “No. I’m not a girl who thinks she’s in love anymore. I’m a woman. I got everything I could ask for from my relationship with you. Heartbreak. Betrayal. And yet I never got the one thing that might have made it all worth it.”

“You want sex,” he said, going for direct. Because if direct didn’t frighten her, then he wouldn’t question her bold proposition.

Her chin tilted up a fraction, her expression hard. “Yes.”

“Sweet, romantic, Angelina who wanted to wait until our wedding night? Who told me just now she ran because she did not want any sort of arranged marriage?” His words were harsher than he intended, much harsher. But he could hardly breathe. His chest was tight, his muscles so tense they were shaking.

He had been waiting for this moment, for her, for what seemed like an eternity. And she was here now, wanting him. He was afraid that if he moved she would vanish into smoke.

“I might have been those things at one time but I’ve grown up. A lot,” she said, her tone hard. Sad. “And I understand that we can’t have everything we want in life. But I can have something I want. I can have you.”

“You want me?” He needed to hear her say it, and that need was a weakness he didn’t want to stop and examine.

“If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have asked you to stay.”

“Why now?”

“You aren’t the only one here capable of capitalizing on an opportunity,” she said.

He stopped then and looked at her more closely. She had been so young when he’d first met her. And while three years hadn’t changed much in terms of physical age, she was different now. Gone was that magical glitter in her green eyes, that sweet and easy smile. She looked tired. She looked hard.

She looked like a woman who had seen too much, rather than one just starting out into the world.

Had he caused that? Or had something happened to her after she’d left Texas? He didn’t like to think it had been either of those things.

Back then he had been doing just what she’d said: capitalizing on an opportunity. But he had liked her. He had treated her well. He’d certainly never meant to hurt her.

He had paid, though; he had paid dividends since she’d walked out of his life. In ways he could not begin to explain.

Just one of the many things affected had been his sex drive. He’d had no desire for a woman, for sex at all, since she’d left. And now that she was here, that had changed. It had changed drastically.

Desire didn’t feel like he remembered. Had it always made him feel like he was standing on the edge of a cliff? Had it always stolen his breath and made his body tremble? He didn’t think it had. But it was now. He felt perilously close to losing his balance. To losing himself.

“Then that is what I am to you,” he said, “an opportunity?”

“An opportunity was all I was to you, sugar.” She’d called him that back in Texas. It had sounded sweet then. An endearment. Silly but it had done something to him. Now it seemed more of an insult.

“I am not interested in banter, or arguments,” he said. “If you want me, come here and show me.”

It was not his way to have a woman make the first move. It never had been. But he had to give the power to Angelina now, mostly because he stood powerless before her. What had happened in the space of the past half hour?

Taj Ahmad, Sheikh of Rahat, ruler of many, transfixed, controlled, by a woman.

But the revelation didn’t bring the power to prevent it. He had no strength to stop what was unfolding. And no desire to stop it, either.

She took a step toward him, her eyes darkening, the emotion in them unknowable to him. And for once, he was grateful to be ignorant of something.

“This time,” she said, “you have to kiss me.”

If he did, he would be the one laying down his hand. The one giving in. He did not give in. It wasn’t in him.

At the moment, his body seemed to disagree. Because he was moving to her. And then he took her in his arms. He relished the feeling for a moment, the sensation of having her breasts pressed against his chest, of her softness. Her strength.

It was little wonder no woman had managed to appeal to him since Angelina. She was like no other woman, and his desire for her had remained piqued but unsatisfied since he’d met her.

He needed satisfaction. He needed to have her. In his arms. In his bed, or her bed, so that he could move on.

Resisting wasn’t an option. It wasn’t a possibility.

He was lost, in her kiss, her touch. He pushed his hand beneath her shirt and felt her smooth, creamy skin. He pulled his hand away, as though he’d been burned. He felt like he had been. Down to his soul. He couldn’t explain it. Didn’t want to.

Not when she was arching against him, whispering words of encouragement, her hands moving over his back.

He looked at her face and saw her eyes, closed tight, as though she was afraid to open them.

“Look at me,” he growled. Her eyes opened wide. “I would have you know who you’re with.”

She looked confused. Dazed. “How could you be anyone else?”

With a groan, he claimed her lips again, walking her back to the opulent bed that was in the corner. He laid her down on the soft duvet, and peeled her shirt over her head, revealing snow-white breasts barely covered by a thin web of a lace that was trying to pass for a bra.

His hand shook as he traced the line of the bra with his fingertip. Had a woman ever made him shake before? He did not think so.

For a moment, he feared it would it be over too quickly. A fear he had never experienced in his life. But three years without sex was a long time. And now that he was breaking his fast, it was with the object of his fantasies.

She worked at removing his clothes, while she divested him of his. When his skin finally met hers, he exhaled a breath. One he thought he might have been holding since she walked out of his life.

It was like everything fit. Finally.

He lavished attention on her strawberry tipped breasts, her sighs of pleasure and the feel of her arching against him almost more than he could handle. He gritted his teeth and tried to call on all of his focus. Focus, single-mindedness, he was renowned for those things. Trained up to be a leader, a man with the power to rule a nation.

And yet, with her, he found he did not have the control of a king. He barely had the control of a teenage boy faced with a naked woman for the first time.

She parted her thighs and he settled between them. He paused for a moment and looked down at her face. Her eyes were on him, open, as he had commanded. She put her hands on his face and stroked him lightly. A shudder moved through him, and he realized that he was not the one in control.

Not in the least.

“Please,” she whispered against his lips.

He pressed against the entrance of her body, easing in slowly. Her face tensed, a small sound of pain, deep in her throat, stopping him short.

She shook her head. “It’s okay.” She slid her hands down to his buttocks and urged him on.

Being inside her, fully inside her, was more than he had fantasized about. It went beyond any experience, real or imagined.

She moved against him, meeting his thrusts, pressing kisses to his neck, pushing him higher, faster. But he needed to ensure that she found her pleasure. He had to. Somehow that directive pierced through the fog of his arousal.

He wrapped his fingers around her thigh and draped his over hers, opening her to him. Then he placed his other hand at her breast, teasing her nipple, drawing it tighter. A short sound of pleasure escaped her lips and he continued on, teasing her, tormenting her. Teasing and tormenting himself.

Then she froze beneath him, arching into him, her internal muscles tightening around him as she embraced her orgasm.

He released his control, his blood roaring in his ears as he ran toward the wave that had been ebbing toward him from the moment he set eyes on Angelina in the ballroom. It overwhelmed him, swallowing him, his mind blank as he emptied himself into her body, his limbs shaking, his heart raging.

Afterward he lay with her. Replete. More so than he had ever been in his life.