finally flickered in Roxanne’s mind.
Not an actual thought. Just … Wow.
Wow. Over and over.
She didn’t know how long it took the loop of wows to fade, to allow their translation to filter through her gray matter.
So this was what eight years had made of Haidar Aal Shalaan.
Most men looked better in their thirties than they did in their twenties. Damn them. A good percentage improved still in their forties, and even fifties. The loss of the smoothness of youth seemed to define their maleness, infuse them with character.
In Haidar’s case, she’d thought there had been no room for improvement. At twenty-six he’d seemed to have already realized his potential for perfection.
But … wow. Had photographic evidence and her projections ever been misleading! He’d matured from the epitome of gorgeousness into force-of-nature-level manifestation of masculinity. Her imagination short-circuited trying to project what he’d look like, feel like, in another decade. Or three.
His body had bulked up with a distillation of symmetry and strength. His face had been carved with lines of untrammeled power and ruthlessness. He’d become a god of virility and sensuality, hewn from the essence of both. As harsh as the desert’s terrain, as menacing as its nights. And as brutally, searingly, freezingly magnificent.
Whatever softness had once gentled his beauty, warmed the frost she’d always suspected formed his core, had been obliterated.
“Well, Roxanne?” He cocked that perfectly formed head, sending the blue-black silk that rained to his as-dark collar sifting to one side. She would have shivered had her body been capable of even involuntary reactions. She could actually hear the sighing caress of thick, polished layers against as-soft material. Mockery tugged at his lips, enhanced the slant in his eyes. He could see, feel her reaction. Of course. He was triggering it at will. “I’ve had bets about which of us found a replacement faster.”
“Why bet on a sure thing? I had to settle in back home, reenroll in university before I started recruiting. That took time. All you had to do was order a stand-in—or rather a lie-in—from your waiting list that same day.”
His eyebrows shot up.
If he was surprised, it wasn’t any more than she was.
Where had all that come from?
Seemed she had more resentment bottled up than she’d known. And his appearance had shaken out all the steam. Good to depressurize and get it over with.
“Touché.” He inclined his head, his eyes filling with lethal humor. “I was in error. The subject of the bets shouldn’t have been how long until you found replacements, but how many you found. I was just being faithful in quoting your parting words when I said a stud or three. But from … intimate knowledge of the magnitude of your … needs, I would bet you’ve gone through at least thirty.”
Her first instinct was to take off his head with one slashing rejoinder. She swallowed the impulse, felt it scald her insides.
No matter how she hated his guts and his nerve in showing up on her doorstep, damn his incomparable eyes, he was important. Vital even. To Azmahar. To the whole damn mess. His influence was far-reaching, in the region and the world. And he had the right mix of genes in the bargain.
And then, she wasn’t just a woman who was indignant to find an ex-lover at her door unannounced, but also one of the main agents in smoothing out this crisis. Whether he became king or not, he could be—should be—a major component in the solution she would formulate. She should rein in further retorts, drag out the professional she prided herself had tamed her innate wildness and steer this confrontation away from petty one-upmanship.
Then she opened her mouth. “By the rate you were going through women when I was around, you must be in the vicinity of three hundred.” Before she could give herself a mental kick, the bedevilment in his smile rose, prodded her on instead. “What? I missed a zero? Is it closer to three thousand?”
He threw his head back and laughed.
Her heart constricted on what felt like a burning coal. The sound, the sight, was so merry, so magnificent, so—so … missed, even if she didn’t remember him laughing like this …
“You mean ‘regularly available’ … um, what is the feminine counterpart for stud? Nymph? Siren?” He leveled his gaze back at her, dark, rich, intoxicating laughter still revving deep in his expansive chest. “But that number would pose a logistical dilemma. Even the biggest harem would overflow with that many nubile bodies. Or did you mean three thousand in sequence?”
She glared at him. “I’m sure you can handle either a concurrent or a sequential scenario.”
He let out another laugh. “I knew I should have approached you for endorsements. But I also have to burst your bubble. Whatever tales you heard of my … exploits were wildly exaggerated. I had to prioritize, after all, and other lusts took precedence. Success, power, money. The drive to acquire and sustain those doesn’t mix well with deflating one’s libido in a steady supply of feminine arms. And then, time is not only all of the above, it is finite. You know how time-consuming women can be.”
Her lips twisted, with derision, with the twinge that still gripped her heart. “I don’t. I’m still playing for the same team.”
His eyes turned pseudo-amazed. “You never even … went on loan? I would have thought someone with your … needs wouldn’t mind widening her horizons where the pursuit of pleasure was concerned.”
“Why? Have you? Widened your horizons?”
He let out another bark of distressingly virile amusement. “How can I, when I’m a caveman who’s unable to develop beyond my programming? The only thing I managed was to take your advice—purged myself of any trace of ‘creepy territorial crap.’”
She reciprocated his razzing, sweeping his six-foot-five frame with disdain. By the time she came back to his eyes, she was kicking herself. It didn’t do a woman’s heart or hormones any good, getting a load of how his sculpted perfection filled, pushed, strained against his black-on-black clothes. Inviting touch, inciting madness …
She gritted her teeth against the moist heat spreading in her core. “And that must be the legendary eidetic memory some of you Aal Shalaans are said to possess. As if you need more blessings.”
He slid an imperturbable glance down the foot between them. “If you feel we’ve received more than our fair share, you can take up your grievance with the fates.” A sarcastic huff accompanied a head shake. “But if you think perfect recall is a blessing, you have evidently never been plagued by anything like it. True blessing lies in the ability to forget.”
Her heart squeezed with something that confused her. Regret? Sympathy? Empathy?
No. That would indicate she was responding to something he felt. And everyone knew that the ability to feel was not among his abilities or vulnerabilities.
She narrowed her eyes, more exasperated with the chink in her resolve than with him. “Come to think of it, it must be terrible to have an infallible memory. There must be so much you would have preferred to forget,
