reached the bed he’d bought just for her, huge and firm and covered in sheets a darker shade of her eyes. He hadn’t thought she’d be here this soon. Someone out there must believe he deserved something fantastic for a change.
Laying her down, he descended on top of her, groaning at the feel of her cushioning him, the only flesh he’d ever felt a part of his own. His lips sought hers. She turned her face away.
He trailed his lips down her face, neck, down to the swell of her breasts. “Do you know how many nights I lay awake, craving to feel you like this? Hearing your moans, your sighs and cries, the memory of your body enfolding mine echoing in my cells until I felt they’d burst?”
Her answer was tight-lipped. “How many? Two?”
A spasm twisted inside his chest. “More like two thousand.”
“And did you feel that way on those nights, before or after you had sex with another woman? Or three?”
He rose on both arms, frowned down at her. “We’re not going there. What we did or didn’t do in the past eight years isn’t relevant. We’re going to enjoy each other now, as we are today.” His lips spread again at the sight of her beneath him, ripe and trying not to arch into him. “And from today onward, I am all for any kind of game you want to indulge in.”
She pushed at him. “The only game I want to try is hide-and-seek, where you hide, and I don’t seek you ever again.”
His frown returned. “You’re … angry?”
Her eyes spat emerald daggers at him. “Give the man a medal.”
“I thought it was part of this sensual game you started. You were always all for those, too.”
“Are you high on something? Like insensitivity and arrogance?”
He rolled to his side and watched in confusion as she scrambled away from him. “But I apologized and promised our liaison will never compromise you again.”
She rounded on him as she rose from the bed. “And as a first step in assuring this, you had your driver leave me with you in an empty house. The news will be all over Azmahar by now.”
“I flew Haleem in from Zohayd. He’s fully Zohaydan and wouldn’t reveal anything about you at gunpoint. It’s why I insisted you come alone. I told my visitors I had informed you they had to leave, so you ‘wouldn’t bother coming.’”
She tore her gaze away, looked around the spacious room as if noticing it for the first time. He tensed as he waited for her reaction. He’d spent most of last week preparing it.
It was he who felt rewarded. A wave of pleasure washed over him as she stood bathed in the gold-tinged lights he’d carefully installed to showcase her, framed by the color scheme of fire and emerald he’d meant to reflect hers. Gauzy curtains billowed at the balcony doors behind her like swirls of magic, and her hair stirred in the evening sea breeze like tongues of dark flame.
His fiery goddess in all her glory. At least, in her still exasperatingly clothed one. Soon he’d have all that voluptuousness displayed for his pleasure, his worship.
Thankfully, the sensual ambience he’d tailored for her had an as-clear effect on her.
She was more flushed, less steady as she turned to him. “You put a lot of thought and effort into this, didn’t you?”
If only she knew how much. Even he was still smarting from parting with that much cash. “Anything to help you relinquish your worries and inhibitions. And after what you just did to me while still suffering from both, I don’t know if I’ll survive when you let them go completely.”
Her face hardened. “This new discretion is for yourself.”
He exhaled, perplexed by her continued resistance. “It is also for me, since I get to have you. But—”
She cut him off. “You recognized you were being a self-defeating idiot. I bet it took seeing Rashid to make you realize that, and that the throne isn’t in your pocket no matter what scandals you cause. You have to clean up your act if you’re to have a prayer against him. Now you’ll play the committed, conservative contender and shove me back into the dirty-secret slot.”
He found himself on his feet, facing her across the bed, memories unraveling with a sick charge along his every nerve.
“What’s this? Anyone would think it’s you who have a grievance against me, that I’m the one who walked out on you. May I remind you that you are the one who left when I outraged your sense of independence, sinned in believing I was more than an ‘exotic fling’ to you? And are you pretending that keeping our relationship secret wasn’t exactly what you wanted, then and now? I’m giving you what you always wanted. No demands on my side, no obligations on yours, only no-consequences indulgence. What more do you want?”
Why? How?
She’d long known that he felt nothing for her. So why and how did getting confirmation of that tear her apart all over again?
He came around the bed, raven hair raining down his forehead, the shirt she’d torn hanging open to reveal the magnificent sculpture of his torso, which she’d barely had a chance to worship.
He stopped less than a foot away, bearing down on her with his overwhelming beauty and rising exasperation. “What kind of game are you playing now? What’s with the indignant act? According to you, we had only a sexual liaison, and you ended it. Now that it would be feasible and pleasurable for both of us to resurrect it, why are you behaving as if I once betrayed you? As if I’m degrading you and trying to take advantage of you?”
“Because you did. And you are.”
He stared at her as if she’d grown a third eye.
And everything she’d spent years holding back came flooding out.
“Being honest about how you’ll take what you want and give nothing in return doesn’t make you honorable. And it sure as hell doesn’t make you the wronged party here. It only makes you an unfeeling bastard who cares only about getting what you want, who would use anyone in the most horrible way for your own purposes, even the trivial one of telling someone ‘I told you so.’”
Every word fell on him with the visible effect of a slap. “B’ haggej’ jaheem, what the hell are you talking about?”
And she shouted, “I’m talking about your bet.”
He stumbled back, his face going slack with shock, reactions rioting across his eyes.
Then he finally rasped, “You know.”
It was a statement. An admission. At last.
She’d thought it would bring her relief. It didn’t.
Feeling hers eyes tearing, she tore her gaze away, looked feverishly around for her sandals.
She shoved her feet into them, tried to regain her shaky balance. “Thank you for not insulting me more by pretending you don’t know what I’m talking about.”
“You heard me and Jalal that
