he’d come to Azmahar, wished his bodyguards were around. He’d ordered Khaleel to keep them away, to Khaleel’s anxious chagrin, not wanting them around to witness his encounters with Roxanne. Without them running interference for him, it took him longer to extricate himself from the throngs. It was an endless ten minutes before he was on his way back to his hotel.
He couldn’t go to his new house. His fantasies of continuing the night there with Roxanne were so vivid, they might cause him permanent damage if he went alone.
But … maybe he didn’t have to go alone.
Fully hard again with anticipation, he dialed her number.
His call was rejected. By the third time, he got the message. The insanity had lifted and her unclouded mind was screaming at her—and probably at him—in outrage for what the gross indiscretion he’d dragged her into might have cost her. She might even think it had cost her everything. She hadn’t looked back, hadn’t seen who’d walked in on them.
He parked in the first off-road shoulder, texted her. It was only Rashid.
It was after he’d resumed driving that it hit him.
Only Rashid? What was wrong with him?
She must now be going ballistic, thinking she’d exposed herself as terminally ditzy and in his power to the man whose opinion mattered more than the rest of the kingdom combined.
Swearing at himself, he parked again, texted again. It’s purely on me in Rashid’s opinion. He thinks you’re good. Very good. His words. Absolutely no harm done.
Hoping this was enough to alleviate her anxiety, he resumed his drive. He would give her time to go home, then show up at her door.
No, he couldn’t. He never repeated himself.
He needed a new strategy. He’d been going about his pursuit all wrong. He’d been too impatient, too hungry, hadn’t been listening to her properly. He now realized the only reason she’d been resisting him was her dread of compromising her position.
In the past, she’d initially held him off to protect her mother’s and her own reputation in Azmahar’s conservative society. He’d gone to great lengths to arrange for their relationship to remain a secret to free her from that fear. Of course, that had served his purposes, too.
But she was now more serious than ever about her image. So if he stopped his impulsive incursions, assured her of privacy and secrecy, he’d bet she’d beat him to that bed. Just as she had in those months of stolen passion.
Rashid, damn it, had been right about this, too. He couldn’t compromise her. For every reason there was.
He needed to locate some restraint. And he’d thought he had nothing but. Seemed that was only because there’d been no temptations.
But seeing this matured Roxanne, discovering this new ability to talk to her, the even more intense sexual affinity … now, that was temptation.
It was merciful he posed as overwhelming a temptation to her.
Now to make it safe for her to give in to it, to him, fully.
Absolutely no harm done.
Roxanne stared at Haidar’s text message for what must have been the thousandth time in the past week.
There’d been dozens more since. But this was the one she kept scrolling back to. And every time she read it, she wished he were in front of her. So she could break his jaw.
She’d been burning with mortification since that day. She’d seriously considered running out of the royal palace and out of Azmahar. She’d been certain her job had been ruined, that she’d be the laughingstock of the kingdom within hours. Maybe the world, if her viral video prediction to Haidar came to pass.
Haidar had played her like the merciless pro that he was. Softening her with one unexpected reaction after another before slamming her with that sob story, the glimpse into the vulnerability she hadn’t believed existed. As his coup de grâce, he’d trained stirred and shaken eyes on her, and she’d melted in his arms. Literally. Anyone could have walked in on them and seen her wrapped around him and in the throes of orgasm.
Rashid Aal Munsoori had.
And Haidar had dared to say absolutely no harm done!
It didn’t matter that he had been trying to reassure her that the incident wouldn’t cost her her reputation and position. It didn’t matter that she had seen Rashid twice since then, and he’d treated her with utmost respect and decorum, without a trace of knowing in his eyes. It didn’t matter that there did seem to be no harm done whatsoever.
She still wanted to do Haidar some serious harm.
He’d probably encourage her to. And love every second.
Well, she’d get the chance to oblige him in an hour’s time.
She was heading to his house. His turf. And on his terms.
He had managed to make it an official summons, too.
But at least she was one of many. A whole delegation had been summoned to said turf to discuss what she regretfully admitted were relevant and pressing matters.
He had been laying much-needed groundwork in the past week, dealing with so much. And to her surprise, he was working, if indirectly, with both Rashid and Jalal to manage the oil spill. The three of them, each with his specific powers and strategies, and with their considerable connections, had surrounded the problem from all sides and were well on the way to resolving it.
She’d joked to her team this morning that the plan to save Azmahar should have three kings playing musical thrones.
He’d summoned the five men that he referred to as his “cabinet” to discuss some of the other serious economic and diplomatic problems. She was to act as analytical statistician of the meeting with Sheikh Al-Qadi. Her job, really.
Not that that made her feel any less … violent toward Haidar. In fact, it inflamed her more that he was having her walk into his lair under a pretext to which she could have no valid objection.
She exhaled, cursed the heavy, liquid throb of arousal that was her perpetual state now. That he managed to keep her in it by remote control was the height of injustice.
Why couldn’t she feel this way about someone … human?
Resigned that he had her hormonal number, she turned her eyes to the scenery rushing by the window of the limo he’d insisted on sending her.
Suddenly, the terrain changed, from flat desert to a stunning system of dunes that undulated down to an incredible stretch of red-gold shore. It curved into a bay ending in an arm of land that almost touched an oasis of an island. Between the dunes and the shore lay an estate spread with palm and olive trees. Nestled in its heart was a house.
As the car descended on a winding path from the main road, the house came into clearer and clearer detail. It was … amazing. As pliant as a tent that would billow in the warm, dry winds. As fluid as a ship that would sail down the pier that extended from its enfolding terrace, sail away into the sea. It
