overruled me. You’re almost undetectable, but I’ve had enough time and proximity to decipher your methods.”
So she’d caught on.
Either he’d underestimated her astuteness...or he couldn’t keep a cool enough head around her to maintain the seamless subterfuge he normally employed in his professional life.
Coming clean wasn’t an option, though. He couldn’t let her know why he’d originally approached her, or how he’d kept Najeeb away, or why. He couldn’t risk that she might suspect the genuineness of his current involvement. They already had too much working against their relationship to introduce internal strife. The feud that had long raged between their families was enough of an obstacle on its own. He had to deny any culpability. There was just too much at stake.
“Why would I want to stop you from seeing Najeeb?”
She glared up at him, then turned and walked out.
Unable to believe she’d turned her back on him, he watched her, that fist of foreboding squeezing his insides again.
Mohab finished dressing, then followed her into her bedroom. His mind churning, he approached her where she stood across the room in jeans and a T-shirt, raven hair starting to dry into a waterfall of gloss, looking heartbreakingly perfect.
“I’m sorry I got carried away in there,” he started. “I didn’t think you’d mind...didn’t think at all. I’ve never been so frightened in my life, and I overreacted....”
“I could have said stop. I didn’t. So let’s drop it.”
“Let’s not. If you’re angry with me, don’t just freeze me out.” He stopped before her, ran a finger down her velvet cheek. “I beg your forgiveness, ya habibati, if you felt I was disregarding your choices. I didn’t mean to, and I—”
“Don’t.” Her interruption was exasperated this time. “It doesn’t matter. I actually think it’s a good opportunity to finally tell you what I’ve been putting off for too long.”
“Tell me what?”
“That I wasn’t in any condition to make a rational decision when I accepted your marriage proposal.”
His heart faltered. “What do you mean?”
“I was experiencing a postsex high for the first time, which was heightened by the fact that I was already indebted to you for saving my life during the hostage crisis. So when you hit me with your proposal, I found myself saying yes. I’ve tried to take it back ever since, but you wouldn’t let me.”
“You did no such thing.” Denial rasped out of him. He shook his head, as if to snap out of the nightmare. “Is this why you kept putting off telling anyone about us? Not because you were afraid our families’ feud would impact our relationship, but because you were having second thoughts?”
“I’m not just having second thoughts. I’m certain I don’t want to get married.”
That was it? A case of commitment phobia? That was something he could deal with.
He drew a breath of relief into his tight chest. “I can understand your wariness. You struggled for your independence. You might think you’d lose it with marriage. But I’ll never encroach on your freedoms....” At her baleful glance, he insisted, “Whatever my transgressions, they were unintended. Guide me in navigating your comfort zones and I’ll always abide by them. If I pushed you into a commitment too soon, I’ll wait until you’re ready.”
“I’ll never be ready to marry you.”
He stared at her, beyond shocked, the ferocity of her rejection an ax cleaving into his heart.
Just yesterday, he’d thought everything was perfect between them. And she’d had all this resentment seething inside her? How had he been so oblivious?
This led him to the only possible explanation. A dreadful one. “Have you received a better offer?”
At his rough whisper, she turned away again. He wanted to pounce on her, to roar that she couldn’t do this to him, to them. He remained paralyzed, sick electricity arcing in his clenched fists, jumbling his heart’s rhythm.
He forced more mutilating deductions from numb lips. “Since this is coming right after you visited Najeeb, I assume he finally popped the question.”
She bent to pick up her laptop, as if she’d already dismissed him from her life. Heartache morphed into fury, all his early, long-forgotten suspicions about the nature of her relationship with Najeeb crashed into his mind.
“That’s why you wheedled into his life, isn’t it? But then he left, and you thought he wouldn’t come through, and you were...what? Keeping me as plan B in case he didn’t propose? And now you got the offer you were after all along, the one where you become a future queen, and I’m suddenly redundant?”
She turned the eyes of a total stranger to him. “I’d hoped we could part on civil terms.”
“Civil?” His growl sounded like a wounded beast’s. “You expect me to stand aside and let you marry my cousin?”
“I expect you to know you have no say in what I do.”
And he went mad with pain and rage. “You can’t just toss me aside and hook up with him. In fact, you can forget it. Najeeb will withdraw his offer as soon as I tell him how I made you...ineligible to be his princess. Regularly, hard and long, for five months. That I even took you after you said yes to him.”
Her eyes filled with something he’d never dreamed he’d see in them. Loathing. “And I expected you to take my decision like a gentleman. But I’m glad you showed me how vicious and dishonorable you can be when you’re thwarted. Now I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I was right to end this.”
His blood congealed as she turned away. “You really think you can end it...just like that?”
Hearing his butchered growl, she turned at the door. “Yes. And I hope you won’t make it uglier than it has already become.”
His feet dragged under the weight of his heart as he approached her. “B’Ellahi...you loved me.... You said so.... I felt it.”
“Whatever I said, whatever you think you felt, it’s over. I never want to see you again.”
He caught her, the feel of her intensifying his desperation. “You might think you mean it now, but you’re mine, Jala. And no matter how long it takes, I swear to you, I will reclaim you. I will make you beg to be mine again.”
“I was never yours. If you think you have a claim on me, I will repay you for saving my life one day. But not with my life.”
His fingers sank into her shoulders, as if it would stop her from vanishing. “I don’t care who Najeeb is. I’ll destroy him before I let him have you. I’ll destroy anyone who comes near you.”
The disdain in her eyes rose. Everything he said sent her another step beyond retrieval.
“So now I know why you’re called Al Moddammer.” The Destroyer. The label he’d earned when he’d decimated conspiracies
