Seducing His Princess (Married by Royal Decree 3)
“Yeah, because he told me your husband was lying in hospital battling the grim reaper.”
Carmen blanched, the very idea of that evidently making her sick to her stomach. “He what?”
“Exactly what I said to him when he revealed that it was only a ruse to get me here.”
“Ya Ullah!” Aliyah groaned, looking mortified. “I’ll brain him for you. If you haven’t already.”
“I only let him live for you and the kids,” Jala mumbled.
Aliyah hugged her, contrite on her husband’s behalf. “I’m so sorry. He’s a colossal pain but...” She sighed, eyes becoming dreamy. “I let him live because he’s so utterly irresistible.”
Jala knew exactly what she meant. She was caught, again, in the web of such an inexorable force. Just not happily so.
“You’re talking to the world’s second foremost expert on Kamal, regrettably my so-called twin and now horrifically my king, too. I am thinking of surrendering my Judarian nationality so I’d deprive him of wielding that kind of power over me.”
“As if anyone can make you do anything you don’t want.” Carmen’s scoff was certainty itself.
Farooq’s wife had once told Jala she thought her the strongest, most courageous and independent person she knew. If only Carmen knew that there was someone who’d always made Jala do whatever he wanted. Was still making her do it....
“Listen, we know you must be dying for an early night, so we won’t keep you.” Carmen linked her arm in Jala’s. “Let’s open everything, and we’ll see what suits you, what you need changed and what we forgot.”
Aliyah followed them. “When Kamal said we should leave you alone all day, since you had a big day yesterday, I had no idea how big it was. No thanks to him. Giving you the scare, then the surprise of your life in succession.”
“He told you, huh?” Jala huffed. “What am I saying? I think he tells you stuff before he tells it to himself.”
Aliyah’s exquisite face lit up with that expression of a woman secure in her power over her man, of his total love, which she reciprocated to her last breath. “He does think aloud with me. But not this time. I was told after the fact.”
“After he settled the pact to sign me over in marriage to the future king of Jareer, you mean? To stop a war that old goat king of Saraya wouldn’t think twice about instigating?”
Aliyah whooped. “Kamal calls him ‘old goat,’ too. You two really are twins!”
Carmen chuckled. “We heard you met said future king of Jareer last night. With how things are between Judar and Saraya, we never had the pleasure, but we’ve been hearing all sorts of things about him...like he’s materialized right out of Arabian Nights. I’ve even heard women here make blasphemous comments about him—that he’s even more impressive than our men.”
Even loving her brothers as she did, Jala had to agree. Regretfully. She didn’t know if it was better or worse to get more confirmation that he affected all women the same way.
Suddenly she jumped.
Carmen started. “What is it?”
Groaning, Jala got her phone out of her pocket. “Just my phone. It never vibrated that hard.” Or she had surplus electricity coursing through her system. “Just a sec.”
She cast a look at the number as she answered. A blocked one. Probably one of her colleagues that the service provider here was unable to show on caller ID due to the international number.
“I am here.”
She lurched harder this time. Mohab.
Here? Where? In her wing? Outside in the sitting room...?
“In the palace.”
Oh.
“Are you in your quarters?”
She snatched a look at Carmen and Aliyah, who’d turned their backs, giving her privacy. “Yes.”
“Where is it?”
“Why?”
“I plan on visiting you.”
“And I plan on not receiving you.”
“Zain. Turn on your laptop.”
“Huh?”
“I’ll have to improvise. Making love to you across cyberspace isn’t ideal, but it might be a good idea to keep my distance until I take the edge off...the first few times.”
Her knees almost buckled. “Why don’t you go ahead on your own? Cyberspace is full of...material you can help yourself to.”
She saw Carmen’s back stiffen. It was imperceptible, but she’d heard her. And no doubt understood.
And that royal bastard continued to pour more dark magic into her inflamed brain. “I’m very fastidious about the...material...I help myself to. I have a specific movie that I have...helped myself to, times beyond count. I’ve long memorized every frame, had remastered it for better image and sound quality so I can help myself to it...into infinity.”
A movie. Of her. As he’d massaged her, pampered her, owned her every inch, brought her to ecstasy over and over again before he’d mounted her and thrust her to oblivion.
It had been one of her deepest scars, knowing that she’d trusted him so much she’d allowed this, that he had that evidence of her stupidity and self-destructiveness, a weapon to wield against her to serve his purposes.
“I would do anything for new material.” His voice dropped an octave into the darkest reaches of temptation. “Anything, Jala.” He let out a ragged breath that all but fried her synapses. “Turn on your laptop and we’ll proceed.”
She ground her teeth, refusing to press her legs together. He wasn’t doing this to her, and over the phone, too, with her sisters-in-law feet away. “So I turn my laptop on and you magically see me from yours?”
“You keep forgetting who I am.”
“You can tap into my computer?” she snapped.
“Of course. But I don’t need to now. I just need to know your chat login. Which I do. Now hurry. The longer you make me wait, the longer before I’m appeased. I’m already half out of my mind with keeping my hands off you last night.”
“You did no such thing!”
Her exclamation made both Aliyah and Carmen fidget. They must now be formulating a very good idea of what was going on.
Ya Ullah...she hated him!
“You know I did.” He did that thing again with his voice that strummed the chords in the core of her being. “You know what I do with my hands when I don’t keep them off you. But I kept something on. Your clothes. I almost had a heart attack needing to peel them off you. Take them off for me now, Jala. I want to see you now, want to imagine my hands on you. Show me yourself, ya jameelati.”