Conveniently His Princess

My treasure.

All her nerves unraveled. She plummeted.

Her plunge came to a jarring, if firm and secure, end.

He’d caught her. Easy, as he’d said. As if he’d snatched her from a three-foot drop. And she was staring up into those vivid, luminescent eyes that now filled her existence.

Without one more word, he swept her along through the manicured grounds and out of her father’s estate.

She reeled. Not from the drop, but from her first contact with him. His flesh pressed to hers, his warmth enveloping her, his strength cocooning her. Being in his arms, even if in this context, was like…like…going home.

Even if the feeling was imaginary, she’d savor it. He was here, for whatever reason, and their…closeness wasn’t over.

Not yet.

She let go, let him take her wherever he would.

*

Aram brooded at Kanza as she walked one step ahead.

He could barely let her be this far away. He’d clutched her all the way out of her father’s estate, almost unable to let her go to put her into the car. As if by agreement, they hadn’t said anything during the drive. But it hadn’t been the companionable silence they’d perfected. By the time they’d arrived, he’d expended his decimated willpower so he wouldn’t roar, demanding she tell him what was wrong.

She turned every few steps, as if to check if he was maintaining the same distance. Her glances felt like the sustenance that would save him from starvation. But they didn’t soothe him as they’d always done. There was something in them that sent his senses haywire. Something…wary.

He couldn’t bear to interpret this. Any interpretation was just too mutilating. And could be dead wrong anyway. So he wouldn’t even try.

She stopped at the railings of the upper-floor terrace, turning to him. “Don’t tell me you bought this villa in your half hour in Zohayd before popping up beneath my window.”

He barely caught back a groan of relief. Her voice. Her teasing. God, he needed them.

“Why? Do you think I’m not crazy enough to do it?”

Her smile resembled her usual ones. But not quite. “Excellent point. Since you’re crazier, you might have also bought the sea and desert in a ten-mile radius.”

A laugh caught in his throat, broke against the spastic barrier of tension. “It’s Shaheen’s. Now tell me what the hell you’re doing here. And why you left without telling me.”

Her eyes got even more enormous. “I did tell you.”

He threw his arms wide in frustration. “How was I supposed to know you meant Zohayd when you said home?”

“Uh…is this a new crisis? What else could I have meant?”

“Your old New York apartment, of course. The one you said felt like home, the one I got you back the lease for. I thought you were finally ready to move there again.”

“That’s why you thought it fantastic when I said I was going home,” she said, as if to herself. “You thought it was about time I was down the street from you.”

/> He gaped at her. “Are you nuts? You thought I would actually think it fantastic for you to come out here and leave me alone in New York? Contrary to popular belief, I’m not that evolved. I might support your doing something that doesn’t involve me if it makes you happy, even accept that it could take you away from me—for a little while—but be okay, let alone ecstatic about it? No way.”

Her eyes kept widening with his every word. At his last bark, her smile flashed back to its unbridled vivacity.

“Thanks for letting me know the extent of your evolution. Now quit snarling at me. I have a big enough headache being saddled with making decisions for more than you now, in not only one but two weddings.”

It felt as if a missile had hit him.

No. She couldn’t be talking about a wedding already. He couldn’t allow it. He wouldn’t. He’d…

Two weddings?