“I’ll play your aggravating game on one condition.”
“Let you go?” Her glare said that didn’t deserve the oxygen it would take to say yes. He sighed deeper. “I doubt anything you say can be worth not holding you like this.”
A growl rolled in her gut. “I would have preferred to end this with your dignity and appendages intact, but at this point, I’m not against screaming bloody murder to get rid of you. The royal guard won’t care who you are. By the time I pull them off you, you’ll have more than a creaking knee and neck.”
The smile playing across his cruelly sensuous lips became a full-fledged grin, as if she’d just made him a delightful promise. “I had this discussion with your brother a few days ago, about who’d win in such a confrontation—his royal guard or me with my hands tied behind my back.”
And the worst part? She could believe the odds would be in his favor. Damn him.
“But since I can’t risk your brother’s current goodwill if I damage his soldiers, I’ll pass on a demonstration.”
He released her, oh, so slowly, and she felt nerves spooling inside every inch that separated from him. Even withdrawing his touch was as exquisite as bestowing it.
Ya Ullah...why was she so afflicted? Why was he the only man who’d ever accessed her controls and so...uncontrollably? How was her mental and emotional aversion so divorced from her sensual response? Why was it so absolute?
And he knew exactly what he was doing to her; he was playing her responses like a virtuoso. A ruthless expert in manipulating the female body and psyche.
Najeeb had told her Mohab had played many women before her. As, no doubt, he had countless others after her. Probably during. Not ones like the inexperienced and already infatuated young woman she’d been, but cunning, jaded women who’d seen and done it all, even hardened criminals and spies. Yet he’d still taken them in with his overwhelming sexuality and perfectly simulated charm and chivalry. She hadn’t had a chance.
A new wave of mortification poured strength into her limbs as she pushed away from him. He didn’t help her this time, forcing her to dip with all her weight into his unyielding power for support. The way he threw his head back against the back of the couch, his rumble of enjoyment as her fingers sank into his muscles, the way his heavy lids lowered, turning his eyes to burning slits as he watched her struggle up, assailed her with the memory of all the times he’d looked and sounded like that as she’d ridden him to oblivion....
Severing contact, she thought she’d managed to escape his compulsion when he ensnared her again.
Holding her head in the cradle of his hands, striking her immobile with his very gentleness, he exhaled softly. “Just one more.”
Then he took her lips in a kiss that all but extracted her soul.
She took it all, helpless to do anything but let him invade her with pleasure, her body singing in delight, weeping with need. After a series of conquering plunges, he slowed to clinging plucks that had her almost keeling over him again. He finally relinquished her lips with a last groan of regret.
Feeling her legs had turned to jelly, she barely reached the facing armchair before collapsing on it.
“I hope you’ve had your fun.”
At her rasp, his eyes simmered like some supernatural beast’s. “You know I didn’t. You know exactly how I have fun. Hard, protracted, borderline-fatal-with-pleasure fun.”
She managed not to shudder. Yeah. She knew. Every cell in her body seemed to know nothing else. They’d had mega doses of “fun” in the five months they’d been intimate. Whenever she’d thought it couldn’t get better, it had, like a force picking up momentum. Familiarity had only kept shifting the addiction to higher gears. It had been so intense, had felt so pure, it had been a devastating blow when she’d learned the truth.
Exhaling the remembered misery, she made her decision. Letting your enemy find out how much you knew wasn’t wise, but maybe getting it all out would help purge it—and him—from her system once and for all.
“Let’s start with when Najeeb left New York. Or shall we say when you set up the emergencies he’d been called back to Saraya to handle, with his father allegedly sick and unable to deal with them.”
His eyes lost that languid sensuality, but there was no other sign of response.
She went on. “For months everything seemed to thwart him, and he grew suspicious, decided to go to the source of all info—his mother. After making him swear he’d never confront his father, Queen Safaa admitted that King Hassan believed Najeeb would end up marrying me, a daughter of the hated Aal Masoods, and it would cost him his position as his heir, as Saraya’s tribes wouldn’t abide the introduction of Aal Masood blood into the royal family. He even feared the Aal Ghaanems might lose the throne altogether to an uprising.”
Mohab still had no reaction. But then again, why should he react? He already knew all this.
She exhaled. “To stop this calamity, King Hassan had one hope of breaking up our relationship. You. The kingdom’s most lethal secret weapon. I was a homeland security threat of the highest order after all. As someone who was raised to despise the Aal Masoods, the idea that your crown prince might sully your line with the blood of your hated enemies was probably as unthinkable to you.
“Najeeb’s mother related how you shared your king’s opinion of me—the then-minor princess who flaunted her region’s values and disgraced her brothers by living a degenerate life in the West. You agreed that I was manipulating the honorable Najeeb, using our shared ordeal to ride him to the status of a future queen. When the king authorized you to get rid of me, he knew how you’d do it. The same way you rid the kingdom of every black widow who tried to compromise the royal family or the integrity of the kingdom.”
His gaze remained unchanged, betraying nothing.
Figured. He’d betrayed nothing through their five-month relationship. Not one action or glance or word had given her a clue that it had all been an act. The reverse had been true. Everything from him had been fierce, consistent, unequivocal, had felt more real than anything she’d ever experienced. Discovering the truth had hit so out of the blue, it had crushed her.
Her world had warped, every emotion and passion she’d felt for him becoming shame, humiliation.
She went on, emptying her voice of any remembered anguish. “You seduced me only to make me ineligible for Najeeb, then asked me to marry you to perfect your act, no doubt to drop me like a used napkin the moment you were sure your crown prince was safe.”