a one-foot-high, unfinished-wood, round table, another keleem and a couple more megacushions—he crossed now-bare feet at the ankles. “Women of Aliyah’s caliber can wreak untold havoc. But she must have her hard life to thank for her ability to rein in her lethal potential. Her family’s indulgence was so misguided that it almost destroyed her body and mind. After struggling to overcome the damage they did, she must have learned control, not to mention compassion for others. That makes Kamal one lucky wretch.”
His eyes challenged her to find a credible answer to his evaluation.
Instead, she held her hand down to him.
His gaze moved to it but he did not take it.
Not willing to accept a hand up from her? Guess she’d pushed her luck again, this time right into his comfort zone.
Hand prickling with the letdown, she withdrew it—only for it to be snagged in a vise of sheer power: his warm, beautiful, tough hand.
A thousand sensations coursed through her. Tears prickled behind her eyes at the exquisiteness of each.
Earlier, he’d had to touch her. This was his first voluntary touch, an answer to her request to let her closer. An acceptance she’d only dreamed of having. Every impulse strained to pull that hand that had been bruised in her defense to her lips, to worship every knuckle and callus.
A gasp escaped from her throat, as without tugging on her, just by tightening his grip, he was on his feet, towering over her. He was so close—his heat and scent flooded her, his aura cloaked her. For a haywire series of heartbeats she thought he’d…
He only stood there, looking down at their joined hands.
Then he raised them along with that delightful eyebrow. “Where do you want me now?”
Anywhere. Everywhere. As long as you’re in my life.
Good thing she wasn’t that candid. Not yet. No need to scare the poor man this early on.
Showing him where she wanted him for now, she led him back to the fireplace. Once he was seated again, she ran to the kitchen and brought him a mug of hot hibiscus tea, which he accepted with a direct gaze that she now knew meant he found no point in resisting anymore and would let her run her coddling routine with no more objections. If he’d had hair for her to ruffle, she would have ventured to do so.
She settled for a teasing smile as she sat beside him. “I’ve heard of being damned by faint praise, but you damn by the fervent variety. You included me when you mentioned women of a certain ‘caliber,’ right? And analyzing why Aliyah didn’t become a weapon of mass destruction was your roundabout way of telling me that because I was spoiled rotten, I remain deadly?”
He raised his mug to her in salutation of her accuracy. “If the roundabout way offends you, my apologies.”
Her head pitched back on a laugh. His wit, what he let her see of it, tickled her. What would it be like fully unleashed?
“Apologies will only be accepted if you stop burning calories skirting issues. It’s all I’ll ever ask of you, to be truthful with me. Always. I will never be anything but that with you.”
It was a long moment before he raised his eyes from the steaming depths of his drink. “If you think you can handle it.”
“Oh, you have no idea what I can handle.” She gave him a quirked eyebrow. “I hope you can take it as well as dish it out?”
“What do you think?” Those black lasers he had for eyes told her exactly what to think. “But I attempted a watered-down approach for my own sake. I hear your species subsists on a steady diet of fawning and flattery, and I wasn’t up to saving you again if an injection of the truth sent you into anaphylactic shock.”
At her hoot of delight, he continued watching her over the rim of his mug, taking more tranquil sips.
Wiping away tears, she rose to her knees, facing him. “Sir, you misjudge my species. Understandable, since it’s undocumented with me as its only member. The fluke female Aal Shalaan. Of which you know nothing, according to you. I guess all knowledge is on my side. I bet you never noticed I existed before tonight.”
A bolt of black lightning arced from his eyes.
Did that mean he had noticed her? When? How hadn’t she noticed, when she’d been analyzing his every nuance, scavenging for any sign of interest or attention?
She let out a choppy exhalation. “So you noticed me? And still think I was indulged? What on earth did you observe in my family’s treatment of me that could have been mistaken for indulgence? You thought my mother keeping me practically on a leash was that? Or my father making any excuse he could think of to escape giving me five minutes of his time? Or both using me as a pawn in their maneuvers with everyone else or a weapon in their own ongoing war?”
He frowned. She hadn’t seen him do that when he’d been about to kill her attackers; then, she had only seen that scarily empty expression.
But now she felt something emanating from him, far deadlier than the rage he’d exuded earlier tonight.
Wow. Was this in response to her account of how her parents had treated her? She hadn’t meant to sound bitter, but in reality, she’d “watered things down.” Not that she’d thought to appeal to his sympathy. Whatever she’d suffered at her parents’ self-serving hands had been nothing compared to what he’d suffered.
Needing to lighten the mood, she infused her voice with extra lightness. “Or maybe you believed I was indulged because my legions of cousins didn’t rough me up like they did each other? That had nothing to do with my being female, just being the youngest.”
As if consenting to play along, his lips twisted. “I didn’t see those who succeeded you to that position being spared, since these were disappointingly male. You can’t deny the Aal Shalaans’ situation goes against everything our region believes in. Instead of valuing males above females for offspring, having nothing but sons made the Aal Shalaan males a dime a dozen, and a female a treasure. Your aunt Bahiyah was that for decades. Then came you.”
Her hairs stood on end at the way he said those words. It got worse when he leaned closer, and she was hit with another wave of his vigor and virility.
He only placed his empty mug on the floor between them. “It’s the one thing that made your family tolerate your Hydra of a mother. That she managed the miracle of giving the Aal Shalaans a female child.”
She grimaced. “Hydra, huh? Ouch.” Then she laughed. “But, yeah, apt description. Though in anything else, you must be talking about an alternate universe. In this one, I never noticed any tolerance toward my mother. Not that I blame anyone for that. My mother, as you so bluntly noted, is intolerable. I also never had any evidence that I was such a big deal to the family for achieving the feat of being born female. In fact, I mostly experienced the opposite. Being the lone estrogen bubble floating in an ocean of testosterone was no fun.”
A contemplative look greeted her words. “I expect it must have had its drawbacks.”
Her laugh was mirthless this time. “For my first decade I couldn’t understand that I wasn’t a boy, then I wouldn’t accept I wasn’t, tried my best to be one, so I’d fit in. My mother
