a constant barrage of viciousness that had almost destroyed its supposedly indestructible form. Those punches and roundhouse kicks could bring down a wall. A single one would have killed anything living. It made her realize he’d actually held back when he’d dealt with her attackers.
It was as if he was venting surplus anger, tearing the bag apart as he hadn’t a chance to do to them. Or was he imagining striking out at those who’d given him his ghastly scar?
Ya Ullah—that scar.
Continuing on a path of mutilation from his neck, it widened as it ran down his back. At his waist it snaked around to his front, as if to shackle his body, slithered up over his abdomen to his chest in a passage of livid disfiguration. Where it ended, its very tip, sharp and jagged, seemed to plunge beneath his skin to skewer into his heart.
It certainly felt as if it had plunged into hers. What he must have suffered!
B’Ellahi—how and when had this happened to him? And more important, what had it done to him? How deeply had that scar sunk into his psyche, into his soul?
It sank talons of anguish into hers.
Yet as she neared, fascination began to replace the anguish that gripped her insides. He was moving so fast, she hadn’t been able to make out what that darkness staining his skin around the scar was. She’d at first thought it was charred flesh, making her almost want to retch. But now she realized what it was.
A tattoo. Weaving around the scar as if to ward off its advance, stop it from spreading its damage.
Then she was close enough to fathom its complex configuration, to realize what the shapes enveloping the scar were. An ingenious pattern made of the symbol of the noble house he belonged to, a distant branch of her maternal family, of which he was the last surviving member.
She stood for what felt like hours, mesmerized, watching that powerhouse display of heart-wrenching rage and mind-numbing might. His skin, flawless apart from the scar that marred it and that he’d so boldly outlined, glowed as if real flames fueled his fury. Sweat accentuated the polish and definition of every formidable muscle, spraying crystalline droplets with each swing. His every line and move was sheer poetry of power and perfection.
What kind of training and drive fueled this level of expertise and endurance? He didn’t even seem to be breathing hard. Or seem to show that he’d ever slow down or stop.
Suddenly, he did, his arms falling to his sides. Fists clenched, he remained rock-still, feet planted apart, primed for reeruption into full-blown aggression, staring at his handiwork, every muscle bunched on the precarious control that momentarily contained the demon driving him to such excesses.
She’d never seen anything so absolutely magnificent.
Even unaware of her presence, lost to his inner struggle, his aura flooded her. It felt mystical, limitless. A knight with might enough to bear mythical burdens, determination enough to forge legends. She had no doubt she was looking at the only man who could restore Azmahar to its now-distant glory. He might have lived as an orphan and an outcast, but he was born to be a king.
He’d always been king of her heart.
And she couldn’t bear witnessing his turmoil. He’d suffered enough. She’d give anything so he wouldn’t suffer ever again.
“Rashid.”
At her tremulous whisper, he swung around, his face a mask of surprise, his slanting eyes widening, the flames beneath his skin blazing brighter.
“Laylah…”
It was the first time he’d ever said her name. Just her name.
Hearing it in that incomparable voice of his, darkness and magic made audible, shot liquid fire from her heart to flood her limbs. Her feet almost tangled around each other as she approached him. The field of agitation enveloping them tightened, choking her as she stopped before him.
Surprise deserted his face, harshness replacing it, hardening its hewn angles. “Don’t you know curiosity always backfires, princess? Now you have to live with this sight polluting your mind’s eye forever.”
Her gaze darted to where his exercise pants hung precariously low on his muscled hips. She forced it back up to his drenched face. “Your all-out revenge on the punching bag?”
Those obsidian flames lashed out from his eyes again. “Are you pretending that this—” he made a sweeping gesture to his tattooed scar “—doesn’t horrify you? I thought you had enough courage and candor to spare me the damned political correctness. Everyone struggles to pretend my scar doesn’t exist, when it’s all anyone can see anymore, and they’re torn between cringing, curiosity and the unreasoning worry that it will somehow infect them. But to a perfect woman used to perfection in everything, especially in men, I know it must revolt you, princess.”
“Rev—?” That zapped any languidness his nearness provoked. “Now listen here, Sheikh Rashid. I’ve put up with your misconceptions, since I realized you know nothing about me, and I was willing to educate you. But this is where I won’t try to convince you. This is where I’ll tell you.” She grabbed his arms, stood on tiptoes, to make up for the disadvantage of being dwarfed by him and his sweatshirt, to inject her posture with authority. “You have always defined perfection to me.”
His eyes shot wider, as if she’d punched him in the gut.
Shocked? How much more shocked would he be when she touched him where his flesh had been sundered and sealed along that terrible rift?
Her hand trembled as it fulfilled her overwhelming need.
It stopped midway, caught in the iron vise of his hand.
Raising her eyes, she found his face gripped with a ferociousness that would have scared off anyone else.
It only made touching him a necessity. Her heart felt it would stop if she didn’t.
Her other hand rose, met with the same fate, made her almost whimper. “Please, Rashid. Let me touch you.”
“Why? Even if I believed your wild claim, my alleged perfection is a thing of the past, from before I was almost torn apart and so sloppily put back together. So don’t you dare placate or pity me. I don’t take kindly to either offense.”
This needed taking care of, once and for all.
Hands gripped in his, she forced her lips to quiver into a smile. “Fine. Just remember, I tried to spare you. You now have only yourself to blame when I give you my uncensored opinion.”
His hands convulsed around hers before he let them go. Then, face empty of expression, he stepped back.
Her heart twisted. It was as if he needed to hear it from a safe distance. He believed her true opinion would hurt.
She bridged the distance he’d put between them, taking his hands, insisting on keeping him in place. “When you were younger and softer and in one pristine piece, you more than defined perfection for me. You filled my ‘mind’s eye’ with your impossible example and made anyone else fade into nothing.” She clung to his hands harder when he again attempted to jerk them away. “But that scar, what you’ve been through to have it, only to come out stronger—how you wear
