To Tempt a Sheikh (Pride of Zohayd 2)

“Ready for what?” She heard her bleeding whisper, wondered how she could still talk.

“To take you home.”

She stared up at him, the void emanating from him engulfing her. Then she found herself rising, as if a closer look would make her see inside him, decipher the truth.

She saw nothing. Only the abyss of uncaring he’d professed to feel for her.

And it all crashed down on her, the full weight of his betrayal, of his heartless exploitation. It crushed her.

But she realized one thing. Even hurt beyond expression or endurance, injured beyond healing, she couldn’t retaliate in kind. She wouldn’t. This was the one thing her informant hadn’t taken into consideration in his quest to destroy the Aal Shalaans.

Harres had systematically destroyed her, for his duty, his family. But even had she wanted to exact revenge on him, she wouldn’t destroy the royal family and the whole kingdom along with him. And she didn’t want to avenge herself. She just wanted to curl up and die, far away from this land where she’d lost her heart and her faith in anything forever.

One thing was left in her wreckage. “What about Todd?”

“The procedures of his release are ongoing as we speak.”

She saw the truth of this at least in his eyes. Or maybe she imagined it as she’d imagined everything between them so far.

And she gave him what he’d ruined her for. “The conspiracy’s mastermind is Yusuf Aal Waaked, prince of Ossaylan.”

His eyes flared. But she’d lost the ability to read them. She’d never had it. And she no longer cared. She just wanted out of his orbit. Wanted to go somewhere far to perish in peace.

“I know,” he finally said in the same expressionless voice.

He did? How?

One thing explained everything. He’d monitored her phone call and got his coveted information the moment she had.

So the master secret-service man had adjusted his plan on the fly every second since they’d met, according to her reactions and based on an unerring reading of her character. She’d fallen in step with his every undetectable nudge. His masterstroke had been that last bit of reverse psychology. While indirectly stressing the danger Zohayd was in, he’d forbidden her to reinstate contact with her informant, knowing the first thing she’d do was just that. As the coup de grâce, he’d secured Todd’s release. It clearly had required no effort or sacrifice on his part, had been insurance to make sure she would do anything for him.

Now her purpose to him was over. He couldn’t wait to get rid of her.

It made sense. Far more sense than this all-powerful prince falling in love with her, so totally.

With this last shard of rationalization tearing into her heart, it was like a dampener dissolved and every memory of the past twenty days bombarded her, rewritten in the macabre new perspective.

Agony mushroomed to unmanageable levels, humiliation inundating her. She felt she’d suffocate, shatter.

She lashed out with all her disillusion and devastation. “So you know. But you can’t say I didn’t give you something in return for my brother’s freedom and redemption. Now that I have them, I can’t wait to leave this godforsaken land.”

There was no mistaking what slammed into his eyes now. Shock.

Of course. He must have thought she’d simper and fawn and beg for him to keep her on any degrading terms he wished to impose. As he’d reassured his brother, he was an old hand at using and discarding women. He must have fully expected the dumping to be one-sided.

Before he could say anything, Amjad stuck his head around the door. “What’s taking you so long?”

Harres tore his stunned eyes from hers, turned them to his brother. He still said nothing.

Then he shook his head, as if trying to credit what she’d said. She could only imagine how she’d sounded, looked as she’d said it. If a fraction of what was stampeding inside her had been apparent, he must be flabbergasted at the seemingly out-of-the-blue change that had seized her.

He stood aside, staring at her with eyes crowded with so many things it made her sick trying to fathom them. She gave up, on everything, preceded him out of the room.

Amjad was leaning on the wall outside the door in an immaculate sports jacket, his arms folded over his chest.

As she passed him, his eyes gleamed ruthlessly. “Give my…regards to your brother. He’s to be congratulated for having a sister like you.”

She stared at him, felt the urge to ask for an explanation. It fizzled out as it formed.

Feeling ice spreading from her center outward, she turned away, let Harres steer her outside the palace.

He sat beside her in his limo, the eerie silence that had replaced their animated conversations, his feigned interest and indulgence, deepening her freeze.

They arrived at the private airport they’d landed in only hours ago. What a difference that time had made.

He rushed out of the limo before it came to a full stop. He materialized on her side in seconds, handed her out of the limo, led her to the sleek silver Boeing 737 purring like a giant alien bird on the pristine tarmac.

His movements were measured, his hold the epitome of composure. The vibes emanating from him were the opposite.

At the stairs he turned to her. But though the move was controlled, his eyes were anything but, storming with emotions barely held in check. His voice sounded even more agitated. “What was that back at the palace?”

It couldn’t be just his displeasure at her rewriting his expected dumping scene, could it?

Stop it. She must stop casting anything she felt from him through the prism of nobility and sincerity. She’d heard the truth with her own ears. What was she waiting for? To have it said to her face?

She wouldn’t survive that. End this. Now.

She shrugged, started to turn away, to run away.

His hand snagged hers. But it was the confusion and hurt she thought she saw eclipsing the twin suns of his eyes that stopped her, captured her. “You’re saying it was all for your brother? To manipulate me into setting him free?”

How could he still sound so genuine? How could she still be so pathetic that she wanted to believe him, melt into his arms, to answer her walking orders with proclamations of undying love?

Ghabeyah. Stupid. That was what her informant had called her.

No. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of seeing her weep for him. She was so far beneath him, so disadvantaged, in every way, but especially in the depth of her involvement. She could only try to leave him on equal ground in at least that.