To Tempt a Sheikh (Pride of Zohayd 2)

So she called him. For six hours straight. His phone was turned off.

Going crazy with frustration, she went back to work. Might as well do something with all this energy that others would benefit from.

She headed to the doctors’ room, running on auto. But as she approached, she felt…something.

She shook her head. Stop daydreaming, T.J. What would that “something” be doing here?

She squared her shoulders, readying herself for the storm of interrogation over her sudden month-long leave of absence when she’d never missed a day of work.

The…premonition expanded with every step. The pull became irresistible. She knew she’d feel like the stupidest person in the galaxy in seconds when it turned out to be all in her mind, but she didn’t care. She ran.

She burst into the room.

And there he was.

Harres.

She hadn’t been imagining it. She had felt him.

Which meant she had an infallible sense where he was concerned.

Which meant she might have the man she loved back after all.

He’d been leaning against the table that acted as the doctors’ meeting/dining/sleeping surface, pushing his tailored jacket out of the way to dip his hands deep into the pockets of molded-on-him pants, his feet crossed in deceptive relaxation at the ankles.

He’d always looked incredible. But here, among mundane surroundings and everyday people, he looked unequivocally godly. The potency of the ancient pride and the birthright of power emanating from him swept over her.

He waited until she entered and got a load of him dominating the place, being gaped at by all present, before he pushed to his feet, oh, so slowly, his eyes lashing out solar flares.

She imagined herself breaking into a sprint, charging him, pushing him flat on that table and losing her mind all over him. A mind that flooded with images and sensations, of tearing his clothes off as his magical hands rid her of hers, before raising her as she straddled him, then lowering her on his…

She swayed with the power of the fantasy. She felt as if he was transmitting it directly into her brain, generating it, sharing it.

But it was his eyes that snared her in a chokehold. A tiger’s. Crackling with scorching…rage? Pain? Both?

One thing was unmistakable. Searing challenge.

He straightened fully, cocked his head at her. “You called?”

“Saw my missed calls, huh?” She turned to her colleagues, who were watching her and Harres like they would their favorite soap. She wouldn’t be surprised if someone ran out for popcorn. She twisted her lips at their audacious interest, poked sarcasm at all present, starting with herself. “I accumulated over two hundred. Must be why Prince Harres found a transatlantic visit to be the only suitable way to see what the hell was so pressing.”

Taking her cue, showing her that he was embarrassment-proof, he walked up to her with seeming indolence. When he was within arm’s length, he lashed out like a cobra, caught her to him, his gaze snaring hers in a fiercer grip.

“So, Dr. T. J. Burke…are you congratulating yourself how I, who could always smell the slightest trace of fraud, ate up your lies and am still back for more?”

She stood in his grip, her heart quivering with unfurling hope. “I never lied. In fact, like you once said, I can’t lie. Just ask those guys.” Grunts of corroboration issued from everyone around who’d been singed by her inability to hide the truth of her feelings. Suddenly, the pain she’d experienced yesterday welled up inside her. And she pinched him, in the sensitive underside of both arms. Hard. “But you lie like a bird can fly.”

His frown cracked on a twitch of surprise at her unexpected action, at its sting, on a jerk of humor at her rhyme, before resuming full force. “I never, ever lied to you. And if you never did to me, as I would have staked my life on till yesterday, why did you say what you said? Or did you really think you needed to seduce me to get me to help Todd? If you did, didn’t you know I would have helped the very devil to make you happy? That you didn’t need to say you felt anything for me, because it’s enough for me that I feel everything for you?”

His words washed over her in healing waves, wiping away all the pain and doubt in swell after swell.

Then she remembered Todd’s staggering confession, and her heart compressed. Harres had probably done a host of illegal things to get him off the hook. All for her.

She soothed the flesh she’d abused, her heart brimming with sorrow and remorse. “I was just lashing out in shock and misery.”

“Why?” He had the look of a man who was watching his sanity ebbing before his eyes.

She pinched him again, harder this time, dragging a growl from his depths, a mixture of pain and aggravation and arousal. “Because I heard you. Saying you don’t care if I live or die. So you were lying, to someone. That’s why I called you. To ask you who you were lying to, and why.” She pushed out of his arms, stuck her fists in her waist. “So?”

Harres felt the mountain that had been crushing him since yesterday lifting. This explained everything.

She’d heard him.

“Ya Ullah. It’s a wonder you didn’t kill me and ask questions later.” He laughed, with all the discharge of his confusion and agony. “So, the reason I said those things—which, by the way, made me so sick that I haven’t been able to put a thing in my mouth since—is I got a phone call, someone telling me they know who you are, what you mean to me, and if I don’t back off, they’ll harm you. I had to say you meant nothing to me, to make you invalid as a target.

“After I said what I did to my extortionist, I had to keep playing it cool with you since I knew we had traitors in the palace, and your room was probably bugged. I would have explained things to you the moment we were outside monitoring range, but you hit me with that delightful surprise about never feeling anything for me. I couldn’t believe it, but you seemed so distant, so different, until I began to lose my mind thinking it might be true. I wouldn’t have let you go if Amjad hadn’t called at that moment. As it was I sent a dozen men as your security detail just in case.”

“So that explains all those GQ specimens suddenly hanging around outside my house. Way to go picking guys only I in my condition couldn’t see for the elite secret-service agents they are.” A smile, sheepish and adoring, trembled on her lips, still echoing pain. He wanted to devour them, soothe away the remainder of her agitation. She bit them, making him feel her teeth had sunk into his own flesh. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am for…Todd. I should have suspected something, but I guess I am too stupid when it comes to him.”