Jasmine sank her fingernails into the back of his neck. She forgot that she was goading a panther. To her surprise, her panther didn’t seem to mind her claws. He smiled down at her, a dangerous, tempting smile.
“I would like to feel those claws on my back, Mina,” he whispered. “When you are in your place—flat on your back, under me—then I will.”
“In my place?” Jasmine jerked out of his hold. When he continued to loom over her, his body crowding her against the door, she pushed at his chest. Masculine heat seared her through the fine fabric. “Move, you…you male!”
“No, Mina.” He put one hand against her cheek and turned her toward him. “I will no longer follow your commands like a dog on a leash. From this day forth, you will follow mine.”
He held her in place as his lips descended over hers. He needn’t have bothered. Jasmine was transfixed by the raw pain she’d glimpsed on his face, before his shields had risen. She’d done this to her panther. It was, she acknowledged, his right to demand restitution.
Two
Tariq couldn’t fight the driving, primitive urge to taste Mina, to claim her in this small way. Not even the knowledge that she was feeling overwhelmed and trapped could halt him. He tried to be gentle in his possession, but he hungered too much to stop. Then small, feminine hands clutched at his nape, holding him to her, inciting him. The painful craving he’d leashed for years battered at his control, pleading for freedom. He wanted to gorge on Mina. To feast on Mina.
Not now, he decided.
When he took her, he wanted hours, days, weeks in which to linger over her. But that long-suppressed craving had to be fed something, or it would shatter the bonds he’d imposed in order to keep from being eaten alive. Anger threatened to flame at the edge of his consciousness as he crushed her soft lips under his. He’d kill any man who’d dared to touch her. He would never forgive her if she’d allowed a single caress.
Mina was his.
And this time, he wouldn’t let her forget.
In his arms, she shivered, and the simmering need inside him threatened to take complete command. He stroked his tongue across the seam of her lips. She opened at once. The taste of her was an elixir, a drug he’d starved for for years. His feelings for her were as wild and chaotic as a desert storm. How dare she leave him? How dare she take four years to return? When she gasped for breath, he breathed into her mouth, feeding her even as he took from her.
“No one else has touched you.” He found some peace in that. Not much, but enough to rein in the beast.
“And,” Jasmine responded in shocked surprise, “no one else has touched you.”
He smiled that predator’s smile. “I’m very hungry, Mina.”
Jasmine felt her body begin to react as it always had to Tariq’s dark sensuality. “Hungry?”
“Very.” He was stroking her neck with his thumb in an absent fashion, feeling the vibration as she spoke.
“I need time.” She was unprepared for the reality of the man he’d become. Dark. Beautiful. Magnificent. Angry.
He raised his eyes from his perusal of her throat. “No. I am no longer willing to indulge you.”
She had no response to that flat statement. Four years ago, Tariq had delighted in letting her have her way. She’d never had to fight this warrior. Back then, he’d been careful with her innocence, but when he’d touched her, Jasmine hadn’t felt like an outcast. She’d felt cherished. Today, she didn’t feel that beautiful but fragile emotion. Tariq wasn’t acting like a lover, but rather a conqueror with his prize. The true depth of what she’d lost was only now becoming clear.
He moved and set her free, but remained on her side of the car, one arm slung negligently over the back of her seat. “So, you have been studying fashion design.”
“Yes.”
“You wish to be a famous designer?” He threw her a look full of male amusement.
Jasmine bristled. Though used to her family mocking her dreams, she’d never expected it from Tariq. “Why is that funny?” She aimed a scowl at his savagely masculine features.
He chuckled. “Sheathe your claws, Mina. I simply cannot see you designing those ridiculous things on the catwalks. Your dresses wouldn’t be see-through, hmm, displaying to the world treasures that should only be viewed by one man?”
She blushed at his heated gaze, ridiculously pleased that he wasn’t laughing at her.
“Tell me,” he commanded.
“I want to design feminine things.” Her dream was real to her, no matter what anyone said, but until this moment, no one’s opinion had truly mattered. “These days, the male designers seem to have an incredibly macabre idea of the female form. Their models are flat boards with not a curve in sight.”
“Ah.” It was a wholly male sound.
She looked up, suspicious. “Ah, what?”
Tariq spread one possessive hand over her abdomen. She gasped. “You’re full of curves, Mina.”
“I never pretended to be a sylph.”
His warm breath close to her ear startled her. “You misunderstand. I’m delighted by your curves. They’ll cushion me perfectly.”
Biting hurt turned to red-hot embarrassment and shocking desire. Blinded by longing, she barely finished her explanation. “I want to design pretty things for real women.”
Tariq regarded her with a contemplative expression. “You’ll be permitted to continue this.”
“I’ll be permitted to continue my work?”
“You will need something to do when I’m not with you.”
She gave a frustrated little scream and shifted until her back was plastered against the door, making it possible for her to glower up at him. “You have no right to permit me to do anything!” She poked him in the chest with her index finger.
He captured her hand. “On the contrary, I have every right.” The sudden chill in his voice stopped her.
“You are now my possession. I own you. That means I have the right to do with you as I please.” This time there was no hint of humor in his expression, not even the shadow of the man she’d once known. “You would do well not to provoke me. I have no intention of being cruel, but neither will you find me a fool for your charms a second time.”
When, after a frozen moment, he released her and moved back to the opposite side of the car, she gathered the shreds of her composure around her and turned to the window. Had she done this? she asked herself. Had she with her cowardice so totally destroyed the beauty of what had once been between them? She wanted to cry at the loss, but something in her, the same something that had urged her to come to him when she’d heard of his parents’ deaths, refused to surrender.
Unbidden, she remembered the way he’d held her so protectively in his arms when
