Читать книгу The Sheikh's Claim - Оливия Гейтс - Страница 8

Twenty-seven months ago

“So you managed to get away with murder this time.”

Jalal Aal Shalaan frowned at the words he’d spoken aloud.

He was standing at the door of an opulent sitting room in one of the most breathtaking manors in the Hamptons, where he’d been received for years as an esteemed guest. He’d thought he’d never set foot in here again because of the woman who stood with her back to him. The woman who was now lady of the manor.

Lujayn Morgan. His ex-lover.

She’d been picking up letters from an antique marble table when his words had hit her. After a start, she’d frozen midmotion.

His own body was tense all over, too. His fists and jaw were clenched, his every muscle bunched, buzzing.

B’haggej’ jaheem—by hell, why had he said that?

He hadn’t intended to show her any hostility. Or any emotions at all—he’d thought he’d had none left. He’d come here for one reason. To see her without the lust that had blinded him for the four-year duration of their affair. He was here for closure, something she’d robbed him of when she’d stormed out of his life, giving him no chance to defend himself, to negotiate, leaving him wrestling with shock then rage and groping for explanations.

But he’d thought the resolution he was seeking was strictly intellectual. He’d thought he’d properly recovered during the two years since she’d walked out on him, working through his feelings until nothing remained but cold curiosity and mental aversion.

So he’d been deluding himself. What he’d felt for her, though it had reversed in nature, had remained as fierce.

He’d always presented the world with a devil-may-care facade. It was partly his nature and partly defensive. Having Sondoss, the notorious queen of Zohayd for a mother, and Haidar, the enigma who’d tormented him since childhood for a twin, made defenses necessary. They were the only ones who had ever managed to crack his control. Then had come Lujayn.

He was still vulnerable to the mere sight of her. And she hadn’t even faced him yet.

Then she did.

Air deserted his lungs, heartbeats started to thunder.

Her beauty had always been mesmerizing. Her Middle Eastern and Irish genes conspired to create the personification of the best of both worlds. By the time she’d left him, brand names were starting to compete to have her willowy grace showcase their products, and makeup lines wanted that unforgettable face with those one-of-a-kind eyes to smolder at consumers out of their glossy ads.

But throughout their affair, she’d shed weight continuously. It had alarmed then angered him that her obsession with getting ahead in her career had blinded her to how she was harming herself to achieve a perfection she already possessed.

But the gaunt woman she’d been at the end of their affair had disappeared. In her place was the epitome of health and femininity with swells and dips that not even her severe black suit could tame, and had everything male in him roaring to life.

Marriage had been very good to her. Marriage to a man he’d once considered a good friend. A man who’d died less than two years after the wedding. A man whom he’d just more or less accused her of killing.

She inclined her head as she straightened, the movement emphasizing the elegance of her swan neck, the perfection of her raven chignon-wrapped head.

Her cool tranquility was a superb act, but her shock registered in something beyond her acting abilities. The pupils of uncanny irises, as silvery as the meaning of her name did that thing that had enthralled him when she was agitated or aroused, expanding and shrinking, giving the illusion that her eyes where emitting bursts of light.

The need to look closer into those eyes propelled him forward. Then words he hadn’t known he’d been thinking, taunts that segued from his opening salvo, spilled from his lips.

“Not that I’m surprised. You’ve managed to fool the most suspicious and shrewd people I know, including myself. It shouldn’t come as any surprise that not even New York’s Finest were a match for your cunning.”

“What are you doing here?”

Her voice jolted through him. Once a caress of crimson passion, it had filled with dark echoes, deepening its effect.

She shook her head as if exasperated with the inanity of her own question. “Scratch that. How did you get in here?”

He stopped two feet away, though every cell was screaming for him to keep going until he’d pressed his every inch to hers. Like when they’d been lovers. When she’d always met him more than halfway, impetuous, tempestuous …

Cursing inwardly, he shoved his hands in his pockets in feigned nonchalance. “Your housekeeper let me in.”

She shook her head again, as if finding his answer ridiculous. Then her eyes widened with harsh accusation. “You intimidated her!”

Something twisted in his gut. In the past, she’d made him believe she thought he walked on water. Now the first thing that occurred to her was that he’d done something reprehensible. Worse, criminal.

But why would that upset him? He’d long accepted that her early adoration had been an act. One she hadn’t been able to maintain once she’d suspected it wouldn’t fulfill her purpose. Though he should marvel that it had taken over two years before she’d begun to slip, for instances of discord to accumulate.

He’d still refused to see that for what it was, pure manipulation. Instead, had assigned it all to the stress of her competitive job and the provocation of the dominant personality he became with her. He’d thought friction had only fueled their already incendiary relationship, had reveled in it to the point of instigating it on occasion. He’d misguided himself so thoroughly, that final explosive confrontation had utterly shocked him.

But after two years of dissecting the past, he now saw it clearly. He’d dismissed all evidence of the truth to maintain the illusion because he couldn’t live without her passion. Or so he’d thought. He had. Hadn’t he?

She now pulled herself to her full statuesque height, six feet in her two-inch heels, her pose confrontational. “You might have scared Zahyah, but you must have forgotten all about me if you thought your arm-twisting tactics would work. You can walk out as you walked in, under your own power, or I’m calling security. Or better still, the police.”

He flicked away her threat, his blood heating with the challenge and ardor she’d always ignited in him with a glance, a word. “What would you tell them? That your housekeeper let me in without consulting you and left you alone with me in an empty mansion?” Any other time he would have recommended the housekeeper be sternly chastised for such a breach of protocol and security. For now he was only glad she’d acted as she had. “On questioning, she’d swear there’d been no intimidation of any sort. As one of your mother’s former colleagues, it was only natural for Zahyah to let me in.”

“You mean because as my mother’s former colleague, Zahyah was one of your mother’s servants, too?”

He stiffened at the mention of his mother. The knowledge of her conspiracy to depose his father, King Atef, and remove his half brothers from succession to the throne of Zohayd was a skewer constantly turning inside him.

But Lujayn knew nothing of the conspiracy. No one but he and his siblings and father did. They’d been keeping it a secret at all costs until they resolved it. And resolution would come only when they discovered where his mother had hidden the Pride of Zohayd jewels. It was a backward and infuriating situation, one dictated by legend and now enforced by law—possession of the jewels conferred the right to rule Zohayd. Instead of calling for whoever had stolen them to be punished, Zohayd’s people would decree that his father and his heirs, who had “lost” them, were unworthy of the throne. The belief that the jewels “sought” to be possessed by whoever deserved to rule the kingdom was unshakable.

But even when threatened with life imprisonment, his mother wouldn’t confess to their location. All she’d told him and Haidar was that she would continue to destroy their father and brothers from her prison, that when the throne became Haidar’s, with him as his crown prince, they would thank her.

He shook away the gnawing of ongoing frustration, leveling his gaze at the current cause of it. “I mean that Zahyah, as an Azmaharian who spent years in the royal palace of Zohayd—”

“As a virtual slave to your mother—as was mine.”

The knot in his gut grew tighter as yet another of his mother’s crimes sank its shame into him.

Ever since the exposure of Sondoss’s conspiracy, they’d been realizing the full extent of her transgressions. Slave might be an exaggeration, but from recent findings, it had become evident she’d mistreated her servants. Lujayn’s mother, as her “lady-in-waiting,” seemed to have borne the brunt of her ruthless caprice. But Badreyah had left his mother’s service as soon as Lujayn had left him. Seemed she could afford to when Lujayn had married Patrick McDermott.

That was probably one reason Lujayn had married him. Not that it made him any less bitter about it. She should have told him if she’d known Badreyah had been suffering at his mother’s hands. He should have been the one she’d gone to for help.

He answered her cold fury with his own. “Whatever views Zahyah holds of my mother, she evidently still considers me her prince. She welcomed me in accordingly.”

“Don’t tell me you think people really buy this Prince of Two Kingdoms crap.”

Her sneer had blood surging to his head. As half-Azmaharian half-Zohaydan princes, he and Haidar had been dubbed that. He couldn’t speak for Haidar, but he’d always felt like a prince of neither kingdom. In Zohayd he was cut off from succession for being of impure stock. In Azmahar … well, he could count the reasons that no one there should consider him their prince.

The grandiose slogan that had been plastered over them from birth had always felt—as she’d pithily put it—like crap.

But then their mother decided to make it a reality. She was out to mangle and reform the region in order to do so.

He exhaled. “Whatever I am or am not, Zahyah welcomed me, and so did your guards before her. I’ve been welcomed here enough times that they didn’t think twice of continuing the practice.”

“You conned them using a defunct relationship with Patrick—”

“Who’s no longer with us, thanks to you.” He cut her off, the bile of pent-up anger welling again. “But you didn’t prepare for developments as I thought you would. You didn’t make allowance for my reappearance, didn’t revoke my standing invitation.”

“Like I would a vampire’s, huh? Though one would be preferable to you since you’re a soul sucker. And you’re harder to banish. But I’ll rectify that oversight right now.”

He caught her arm as she strode past, felt awareness fork in his body. He gritted his teeth against the response, kept his breathing shallow so her scent—that of jasmine-scented twilights and pleasure-drenched nights—didn’t trigger full-blown arousal.

“Don’t bother. This delightful visit won’t be repeated.”

She jerked her arm free of his loose grasp. “It won’t even start. You have some nerve coming here, after what you’ve done.”

She was referring to his business clashes with Patrick, which had resulted in major losses to them both. More damage she’d caused.

He misunderstood her on purpose. “I’m not the one who dumped you and married one of your best friends, only to turn her against you.”

“You give Patrick too little credit if you think I influenced his decision to cut all business ties with you.”

“You’d influence the devil himself. And we both know Patrick had too much angel in him. He was the perfect prey for the black widow you turned out to be.”

Her eyes swept him from head to toe in disdain. “Listen, Jalal, cut the cloak-and-dagger melodrama. If you traveled across the world just to accuse me of overdosing my husband, you accomplished that with your opening statement. Don’t be redundant as well as unfeeling and overbearing. You can now go back to your sand-infested, backward region to wallow in your unearned power.”

Heat splashed in his chest. Not because her views insulted him, but because she had them at all. Disappointment only intensified his reaction to her, sent blood roaring to his loins.

His lips twisted with grim humor. “You were always a spitfire, yet you never spoke this brazenly to me.”

“You just never bothered to listen. Not that that was a privilege you reserved for me. Your Exalted Highness didn’t consider anyone worth listening to. But you’re partially right. I was once guilty of embellishing my attitude and opinion of you. I’m not the person I was anymore.”

“You’re exactly the person you always were. But now that you’re an heiress to an empire worth billions, you believe you have the luxury of showing me your true face and the clout to take me on.”

Her eyes grew ridiculing. “That’s not why I don’t have to suppress my abhorrence of you and all you stand for anymore. But since I’m not inclined to explain my reasons, thanks for coming.”

Thanks?

“I’ve been seething for two years that I didn’t let it all out when I last saw you. Thanks for giving me the chance to get it off my chest. Now, since you’ve done what you’ve come to do, and indulged your evidently long-repressed desire to call me names—”

“But that’s not what I’ve come to do.” Before she could lob back something caustic, and without willing himself to, he dragged her to him, slamming her against his now burning body. “And that’s certainly not the desire I’ve long repressed.”

A hot sound of protest escaped her. He bent, caught it in his lips. He snatched in air laden with her breath, let it storm through him, uprooting the restraints he’d long placed on his senses. He let the feel of her invade his control, tear it away. Her taste eddied in his system, hurtling him back to their nights of delirium.

“No matter what you hate about me, you always loved this.” He poured the words into her open-from-shock mouth, his lips gliding over her plump ones, pushing them farther apart, unable to wait to plunge inside her warmth and welcome. “You craved it. My touch, my hunger, my pleasures. Whatever else was pretense, this was real. Still is.”

“It isn’t …” Her words caught in her throat as soon as her lips moved against his. They trembled before they clung to his flesh.

It had always been like this. One touch had been all it took to ignite them, to start the chain reaction to the mindlessness and ecstasy of their overriding need for each other.

“Yes, Lujayn. It still is. This all-consuming need that ignites between us and only the other can satisfy.”

Her breath hitched as it mingled with his, tumbled from her on a ragged moan of arousal, as his tongue sought her concession. She gave it in a blatant seeking of her own, delighting him in her taste, her response. But at the first rub of slick flesh on flesh, a jolt of pleasure electrified both their bodies, made her start, try to escape the deepening intimacy. The move only had her teeth grazing his lips, tearing a groan from his depths, igniting her response again, her body involuntarily arching into his, their lips fusing again, sending his senses roaring for more.

He walked her back to the nearest wall, pressed against her lushness, imprinted her silent demand with his. “Tell me you have lain at night like I have, burning to have me again, take your fill of me. Tell me you have been going insane like I have. Tell me that you remembered all that we shared the moment I showed up, that even as your lips antagonized me, all you really wanted was for me to fill you, ride you, assuage the ache that maddens you.”

He raised his head, looked down at her to get her confirmation. He got it.

She still wanted him. She’d never stopped.

It showed in the burning desire and dismay in her eyes. Whatever she’d been telling herself since she’d left him, her explosive response to him had forced her to face facts.

Holding her eyes, still seeking her affirmation, he scooped her into his arms. She clung to him, gave him more proof of her consent.

His heart almost uprooted itself in his chest with relief and urgency as he almost ran with her filling his arms, her eagerness tugging him deeper into mindlessness. It was only when he lowered her onto a king-size bed that he realized that his feet had propelled him to the master suite.

He came down half on top of her, stopped her roaming hands, stretched her arms above her head, capturing her wrists in one hand. The other slid down her face, her neck, skimmed over her breasts. Then, holding her gaze clouded with feverish desire, he leaned in, capturing her lips at the same moment he snapped open her jacket.

She gasped and turned her head as if suddenly shy, making his kisses trail over the hot velvet of her cheek. At the first suckle of his lips on her earlobe, she arched up, bringing her luxurious breasts rubbing against his chest, shuddering hard at the electrifying contact, intensifying it.

He rose to let her expression guide him to his next action. She stared up at him, her eyes emitting those hypnotic bursts, her breath choppy, her nipples pushing through her bra and blouse.

Satisfaction spread at the explicitness of her response, heightened as a gasp of disappointment escaped her when he sat up. His smile placated her as he shrugged away his jacket. Then, analyzing every iota of expression in her eyes’ eloquent depths, he slowly, so slowly, unbuttoned his shirt.

His deliberateness gave her time and opportunity to take action if she didn’t want this to go further. Gave him the luxury of studying her as she watched him expose his body to her. The body she’d worshipped for four years, laid her indelible brand over every inch. He reveled in each of her nuances as hunger and memories flooded her eyes, igniting them, swelling her lips, staining her cheeks.

“Isn’t this what you’ve been burning for?” Her nod was drugged, her eyes glazing over as silent confession strummed her voluptuous body, shook her lips. He brought her hands pressing against his flesh, one over his thundering heart, the other over his abdomen, which quivered with need. When her volition took over, he invited her to go lower, groaned long and deep as she shaped him, cupped him, in trembling greed.

He hissed his torment, encouraging her, his mind unraveling with the sheer power and pleasure of her longed-for touch, and that of her desire. “Feel me, Lujayn. Take what you’ve always wanted. Enjoy me, revel in me. Devour me with your hunger like you used to, ya’yooni’l feddeyah.”

A jolt racked her at hearing him call her one of his favorite endearments for her, my silver eyes. Their intoxicated cast deepened until they were the color of twilight in Zohayd. Snatched breaths escaped her lips as she explored him with intensifying boldness, each ending on a fractured moan. His intention to draw this out until she begged for him dwindled with each siren sound. But it was when she squeezed her eyes shut and agonized enjoyment gripped her face as she roamed him, that it vanished.

On a growled oath, he removed her hands from his rock-hard flesh. Before he moved over her, she jerked, as if coming out of a trance and scrambled up. “Jalal, we have to stop…. ”

He went still. “Tell me why.”

She squeezed her eyes again. “Patrick …”

He caught her head in both hands, made her open her eyes. “Is dead. And you and I are not. But we’re not alive, either. Tell me you’ve been able to truly live … without this…. ” He took her lips again as he moved his hard length over her until her tension dissolved, into seeking surrender, her body straining against his. He tore away his lips from hers to rise above her on extended arms. “Tell me you have known any real pleasure or satisfaction since me. Say you don’t crave me as much as I crave you and I will go.”

The truth blared in her eyes, but she still said, “Craving is not everything…. ”

“It’s enough.” He dug his fingers into her prim chignon, setting her raven silk free, burying his face in its luxury. “It’s what we have, what we need, what we can’t fight.”

She pulled up his head by his hair. “It won’t change a thing.”

She held his focus. She was setting terms for this encounter. That it would only be physical? Or that it would be a one-off?

He refused to concede. “It will. It will stop this need from gnawing us hollow. Now admit it. You’ve been dying to have me again as I’ve been dying to have you. You’ll give me everything as you always did, let me give you everything you’ve always begged for, everything we’ve always had together.”

After a long moment, she nodded. Then with sooty lashes lowered to hide her expression, she dragged his mouth back to hers.

He growled his relief inside her as her tongue tangled with his, dueling, demanding, allowing him all the licenses he needed, taking her pleasure from him as she always did, her fervor and boldness intensifying his, her hunger and warmth and taste flowing in his lifeblood.

One hand harnessed her by her hair’s tether as one of hers did him by his as he undid her blouse and skirt, swept them off her velvet flesh. Her other hand trembled at his zipper as he snapped open her bra, spilling her breasts. He swallowed her cry of relief, of spiking arousal, as he settled his aching flesh on top of hers, rubbing against her until she begged.

“Do everything to me, Jalal. Fill me, ride me now, now.’’

He rose to tear her panties off her hips, probe her satiny folds. His fingers slid in her flowing need, until she undulated against him in a frenzy. When he couldn’t stand one more heartbeat outside her heat and yearning, she clamped her thighs around his back, writhing in the grips of the same fever to merge. Then he plunged inside her.

She screamed with the shock of his invasion. She was as impossibly tight as ever, their fit still almost unmanageable, their pleasure excruciating. She arched, smashing herself against him with the mindless need for his domination. Overwhelmed with feeling, his girth gripped inside the molten pleasure that was her essence, he groaned her name and withdrew, only to plunge again, then again, forging deeper with every penetration. His escalations rocked her beneath him, wringing sharper cries from her depths. She met his thrusts, strengthening them, her demands for him to give it all to her tearing away any restraint he’d still clung to.

Their coupling was primal, savage. They groped and bit and thrust in ever-roughening abandon, nothing existing but the need to soothe the pangs that had long maddened them, to burn in a conflagration of release.

The first clench of her orgasm hit him like a sledgehammer. Her core clamped around his shaft with such force, he tore his lips from hers to roar at the unendurable spike in pleasure. Then she heaved beneath him, her intimate flesh tightening around his erection, singeing him with the rush of her satisfaction, wrenching his own from the depth of his loins. His body felt as if it was detonating with the force of his own climax as he released inside her, feeling he was pouring his life force into her.

Ecstasy finally relinquished its merciless grip and her strangled cries died into whimpers as aftershocks sparked and lurched through both of them.

He sank on top of her, oblivious to anything but her body cushioning him, her chaotic heartbeats echoing his as their systems struggled to recover from the exertion of their explosive lovemaking.

He might have slept. Or passed out. For a minute. Or an hour. All he knew was that he was coming back with a start into a body that was leaden with an excess of fulfillment. Then a move beneath him had him jerking up. Lujayn. He must have crushed her.

He groaned, then louder with the ache of separation, as he uncoupled from her with great regret. He bent to kiss her, but she scooted away from his touch. His heart clenched as she swayed up and sat at the edge of the bed, long hair tumbled, her body still and stiff.

He was reaching a caressing hand to her again when she turned her face and the look in her eyes halted the gesture of tenderness in midmotion. And that was before she spoke.

“I hate you, Jalal. When I’ve never hated anyone. So consider this the validation or the goodbye or whatever sex you think I owed you. It’s never happening again.”

She got up like an automaton. In seconds she disappeared inside the bathroom.

He stared at the closed door, heart booming, mind churning.

One thing that had been erased had been resurrected. His confidence in his ownership of her body. If he went after her now, he’d have her begging for him again. But her antipathy seemed to be real. He had no idea what he had done to earn it. But whatever she thought he had done might change everything. It might explain why she’d left him.

It was almost an hour before she exited the bathroom glowing, remote and dressed. He’d also dressed. He knew their mindless interlude should not be repeated. Not until he knew what was going on.

He stood there as she stopped before him, eyes devoid of expression. “I’m sorry I said I hate you. It’s not true.”

His heart unfurled from the tight knot it had become, the broken pieces mending. Something warm fluttered inside it as he moved closer.

Her next words froze it solid, shot it down like a bullet would a bird in flight.

“It’s worse than that. I hate myself when I’m with you. I hate what I do, what I think, what I feel. What I am. Patrick taught me that I’m better than that—that I don’t have to ever feel this way again. I was certain I’d never do this. But you’re like an incurable disease. One exposure, and I relapse. There’s only one way I’ll stop being reinfected. I won’t let you come near me again. If you try, I’ll make you regret it.”

The lash of her antipathy sliced open the dam of his accumulated, if briefly forgotten, bitterness.

He moved away from her, as if to escape the searing disappointment, heard himself taunting, “You mean more than I already regret coming here and exposing myself to your virulence again? Not possible. So save your threats and theatrics, Lujayn. It will be a snowy day in my ‘backward region’ before I come near you again.”

He didn’t only regret coming after her—he despised his stupidity for being unable to hate her, even now, for succumbing to his weakness, taking her right in her marital bed, then not being the one who came to his senses first, or at all.

At the door he turned, and the look on her face had his heartache boiling over. It wasn’t just over, she didn’t only hate him now—she always had.

It had been an illusion, a sham.

More harshness spilled from his lips, the only shield he found so the icy shards of her rejection wouldn’t hack his heart to pieces all over again. “Thanks, by the way. You gave me exactly what I came for. The certainty that you’re not worth another thought. Now I can delete you from my memory.”

He walked away then, the relief that this retaliation had provided already evaporating, despondence seeping in its place, settling into his recesses. For it was another lie. No matter that he now knew nothing they’d shared had been real, he knew the memory of her would never relinquish its hold over him….