Buch lesen: «Seducing His Princess»

Prologue

Six years ago...

A fist of foreboding squeezed Mohab Aal Ghaanem’s heart.

Najeeb was back. And Jala had gone to see him.

Although he had contrived to keep her from seeing Najeeb for months now as part of his original mission to keep them apart, when Najeeb had returned in spite of all his machinations, there’d been nothing further Mohab could do. Nothing but demand Jala not see Najeeb.

And what reason could he have given for asking her not to see his cousin and crown prince? That he was jealous?

She would have been shocked by the notion. At best, this would have made her think he didn’t trust her, or that he wasn’t the progressive man she thought him to be. Personal freedom and boundaries were very touchy subjects with her, and she had serious issues with the “repressive male dinosaurs” prevalent in their culture.

At worst, she might have suspected that he had other motives for wanting to prevent that meeting with her “best friend,” motives that went beyond simple possessiveness. As he did.

So he’d stood back and watched her leave for that dreaded yet inevitable rendezvous. And she hadn’t returned.

Not that she’d said she would. Having an early business meeting the next day close to her house in Long Beach, it made sense for her to spend the night at her home. He wished he could have waited for her there, but though she’d given him keys, the gesture had been only as a token of trust. She’d been adamant about not making their relationship public knowledge before she was ready to do so. He was probably working himself up for nothing but...

B’Ellahi... What was he thinking? It was for nothing. Jala had agreed to marry him. She was his, body and heart. He’d been her first, and he’d always be her only. He should have stopped worrying about how their relationship had started long ago, shouldn’t have tried to keep Najeeb away once his...purpose had been achieved—even if the way it had been had taken him by surprise. He’d already been attracted to Jala, but he surely hadn’t imagined when he’d first approached her that he’d fall for her that hard, that totally.

Emptying his lungs, he strode away from the window. He could barely make out anything from sixty floors up anyway.

Though he was sure he would have seen her.

Since he’d first laid eyes on her, she’d been the only one he ever truly saw, even when others should have been in his focus. As on the day of the hostage crisis, when he’d been sent to save Najeeb and had saved Jala, too.

Najeeb. Again. Everything always came back to him.

Mohab had kept his cousin away from New York, away from Jala, for as long as possible. Any more contrivances would have made Najeeb suspect he was being manipulated. And since there were only a handful of people who had enough power to keep the crown prince of Saraya jumping—his father, King Hassan, his brothers and Mohab himself—Najeeb would have eventually drawn the proper conclusions.

By elimination, only Mohab, as the kingdom’s top secret-service agent, had the skills and resources to invade Najeeb’s privacy, to rearrange his plans, to nudge him wherever he wanted. The next step would have been finding out why.

So Mohab had been forced to let his cousin come back. To let Jala go to him. At nine o’clock this morning. That had been eleven hours ago.

What could be taking her so long?

Kaffa. Enough. Why not just call her instead of having a full-blown obsessive episode?

So he did. And it went straight to voice mail. Time and again.

When another hour passed and she hadn’t called back, he tore out of his penthouse, numb with dread.

By the time he arrived at her house his nerves had snapped, one at a time. What if she was lying unconscious or unable to reach her phone? What if she’d been mugged...or worse? She was so beautiful, and he’d seen how men looked at her. What if someone had followed her home?

He barged inside and was hit at once with the certainty. She was there. Her presence permeated the place.

He ran upstairs, homing in on her. As he approached her bedroom, he heard sounds. To his distraught ears, they sounded like distress. Coming from the bathroom.

He tore inside. And there she was. In the shower cubicle. Facing the door. She saw him as soon as he saw her.

At his explosive entry, she lurched, her steam-obscured face contorting, her lips parting. He assumed she’d gasped or even cried out. He could hear nothing now above the cacophony of his own turmoil and the spray of water. All he knew was that she was here. She was safe.

And he was tearing off his clothes, his only need to prove to himself both facts.

Then he was inside the cubicle, dragging her into his arms, groaning as he felt her warm resilience slamming against his aching flesh, her cry shuddering through him as he drove trembling hands into her soaked tresses, his feverish gaze roaming her water-streaked face. That face, that body, that essence, had taken control of his fantasies from the instant he’d seen her, from the very moment he’d claimed her. And she’d claimed him right back. Throughout these past five months, with each caress, with each passion-filled encounter, he found himself craving her more and more. His hunger for her knew no bounds.

“Mohab...”

He swallowed her gasp, drove his tongue inside her fragrant, delicious depths and she started squirming, building his fire higher. He needed to be inside her, possessing her, pleasuring her. Reassuring himself she was whole and all his.

His hand glided between her smooth thighs, sought her core. His fingers slid between her slick folds, and his head almost burst with the sledgehammer of arousal. Knowing she would love his urgency, that the edge of discomfort his ferocity would cause would amplify her pleasure, he cupped her perfect buttocks and opened her silky thighs around his hips. Capturing her lips again and again in ravaging kisses, he sought her entrance, flexed then sheathed himself in her molten tightness in one long, forceful thrust.

The sharpness of her cry, a testament to the intensity of her enjoyment, heightened his frenzy, her hot gust of passion expanding in his own lungs. Then he withdrew and pistoned back, needing to merge with her, dissolve in her, knowing it would send her berserk. It was unraveling him, too—acute sensations layering with every plunge, ratcheting with each withdrawal. The carnal groans torn from their depths rode him higher and higher. He felt his climax hurtling from his very essence, felt her shuddering uncontrollably, heard the sound of her tortured squeals telling him she’d explode in ecstasy if he gave her the cadence and force she needed.

Unable to prolong this torment a second more, he gave it to her, his full force behind his jackhammering thrusts, until she convulsed in his arms and her shrieks of pleasure snapped his own tension. He all but felt himself detonate in a violent release, the most intense he’d ever felt, his seed burning through his length, jetting into her depths to mingle with her own gushing climax.

At last, the severity of sensations leveled, leaving him so satiated, so depleted, he could barely stand. She collapsed in his arms as she always did. Taking her down to the floor, he soothed her, and she surrendered to his ministrations, letting him fondle and suckle her, pour wonder and worship all over her.

Then he carried her out of the shower and dried them both off. As he bent to take her to bed, she pushed out of his arms, unsteadily waddling away to fetch her bathrobe.

He winced. How insensitive could he be? He’d scared her witless bursting in here, made her limp with satiation for hours and could only think of continuing their intimacies?

He put on his pants as she turned to him, wrapped in the stark white bathrobe, her golden flesh glowing in contrast. The need to ravish her again almost overpowered him.

“What was that all about?”

He saw the hardness in her eyes before he heard it in her tone. Something he’d never been exposed to before.

Suddenly wary, he shrugged. “Wasn’t it self-evident?”

“Not to me. What brought you here in the first place?”

Disturbed by her coldness, especially after the inferno they’d just shared, he told her what he could. At the tail end of his account, he released a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. “And then I found you in there and all I could think was that you’re safe. And I was, as always, starving for you.” He tried a coaxing smile. “Finding you already unwrapped was most opportune.”

“So you thought it was okay to barge in here and just have your way with me?”

The harsh accusation hit him between the eyes. She’d never been angry with him before. And to be so for the first time today, of all days, jarred him.

He found his own voice hardening. “You loved every second. You came so hard you blew my brains out.”

She shrugged, not contesting that truth, those molten-gold eyes growing harder. “The point is, you disregarded my choice. Your overriding tactics have become a pattern.”

“What ‘overriding tactics’?”

“All your manipulation, ending with trying to keep me from seeing Najeeb. You think I’m so oblivious I didn’t notice? Oh, I noticed, all right...every time you nudged and cajoled. Every time you artfully overruled me. You’re almost undetectable, but I’ve had enough time and proximity to decipher your methods.”

So she’d caught on.

Either he’d underestimated her astuteness...or he couldn’t keep a cool enough head around her to maintain the seamless subterfuge he normally employed in his professional life.

Coming clean wasn’t an option, though. He couldn’t let her know why he’d originally approached her, or how he’d kept Najeeb away, or why. He couldn’t risk that she might suspect the genuineness of his current involvement. They already had too much working against their relationship to introduce internal strife. The feud that had long raged between their families was enough of an obstacle on its own. He had to deny any culpability. There was just too much at stake.

“Why would I want to stop you from seeing Najeeb?”

She glared up at him, then turned and walked out.

Unable to believe she’d turned her back on him, he watched her, that fist of foreboding squeezing his insides again.

Mohab finished dressing, then followed her into her bedroom. His mind churning, he approached her where she stood across the room in jeans and a T-shirt, raven hair starting to dry into a waterfall of gloss, looking heartbreakingly perfect.

“I’m sorry I got carried away in there,” he started. “I didn’t think you’d mind...didn’t think at all. I’ve never been so frightened in my life, and I overreacted....”

“I could have said stop. I didn’t. So let’s drop it.”

“Let’s not. If you’re angry with me, don’t just freeze me out.” He stopped before her, ran a finger down her velvet cheek. “I beg your forgiveness, ya habibati, if you felt I was disregarding your choices. I didn’t mean to, and I—”

“Don’t.” Her interruption was exasperated this time. “It doesn’t matter. I actually think it’s a good opportunity to finally tell you what I’ve been putting off for too long.”

“Tell me what?”

“That I wasn’t in any condition to make a rational decision when I accepted your marriage proposal.”

His heart faltered. “What do you mean?”

“I was experiencing a postsex high for the first time, which was heightened by the fact that I was already indebted to you for saving my life during the hostage crisis. So when you hit me with your proposal, I found myself saying yes. I’ve tried to take it back ever since, but you wouldn’t let me.”

“You did no such thing.” Denial rasped out of him. He shook his head, as if to snap out of the nightmare. “Is this why you kept putting off telling anyone about us? Not because you were afraid our families’ feud would impact our relationship, but because you were having second thoughts?”

“I’m not just having second thoughts. I’m certain I don’t want to get married.”

That was it? A case of commitment phobia? That was something he could deal with.

He drew a breath of relief into his tight chest. “I can understand your wariness. You struggled for your independence. You might think you’d lose it with marriage. But I’ll never encroach on your freedoms....” At her baleful glance, he insisted, “Whatever my transgressions, they were unintended. Guide me in navigating your comfort zones and I’ll always abide by them. If I pushed you into a commitment too soon, I’ll wait until you’re ready.”

“I’ll never be ready to marry you.”

He stared at her, beyond shocked, the ferocity of her rejection an ax cleaving into his heart.

Just yesterday, he’d thought everything was perfect between them. And she’d had all this resentment seething inside her? How had he been so oblivious?

This led him to the only possible explanation. A dreadful one. “Have you received a better offer?”

At his rough whisper, she turned away again. He wanted to pounce on her, to roar that she couldn’t do this to him, to them. He remained paralyzed, sick electricity arcing in his clenched fists, jumbling his heart’s rhythm.

He forced more mutilating deductions from numb lips. “Since this is coming right after you visited Najeeb, I assume he finally popped the question.”

She bent to pick up her laptop, as if she’d already dismissed him from her life. Heartache morphed into fury, all his early, long-forgotten suspicions about the nature of her relationship with Najeeb crashed into his mind.

“That’s why you wheedled into his life, isn’t it? But then he left, and you thought he wouldn’t come through, and you were...what? Keeping me as plan B in case he didn’t propose? And now you got the offer you were after all along, the one where you become a future queen, and I’m suddenly redundant?”

She turned the eyes of a total stranger to him. “I’d hoped we could part on civil terms.”

“Civil?” His growl sounded like a wounded beast’s. “You expect me to stand aside and let you marry my cousin?”

“I expect you to know you have no say in what I do.”

And he went mad with pain and rage. “You can’t just toss me aside and hook up with him. In fact, you can forget it. Najeeb will withdraw his offer as soon as I tell him how I made you...ineligible to be his princess. Regularly, hard and long, for five months. That I even took you after you said yes to him.”

Her eyes filled with something he’d never dreamed he’d see in them. Loathing. “And I expected you to take my decision like a gentleman. But I’m glad you showed me how vicious and dishonorable you can be when you’re thwarted. Now I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I was right to end this.”

His blood congealed as she turned away. “You really think you can end it...just like that?”

Hearing his butchered growl, she turned at the door. “Yes. And I hope you won’t make it uglier than it has already become.”

His feet dragged under the weight of his heart as he approached her. “B’Ellahi...you loved me.... You said so.... I felt it.”

“Whatever I said, whatever you think you felt, it’s over. I never want to see you again.”

He caught her, the feel of her intensifying his desperation. “You might think you mean it now, but you’re mine, Jala. And no matter how long it takes, I swear to you, I will reclaim you. I will make you beg to be mine again.”

“I was never yours. If you think you have a claim on me, I will repay you for saving my life one day. But not with my life.”

His fingers sank into her shoulders, as if it would stop her from vanishing. “I don’t care who Najeeb is. I’ll destroy him before I let him have you. I’ll destroy anyone who comes near you.”

The disdain in her eyes rose. Everything he said sent her another step beyond retrieval.

“So now I know why you’re called Al Moddammer.” The Destroyer. The label he’d earned when he’d decimated conspiracies and terrorist organizations. “You annihilate anyone who becomes an obstacle to your objectives. Not to mention anyone who comes close to you.”

His heart seized painfully. He’d never thought she’d ever use that knowledge against him. What else had he been wrong about?

Her disgust as she severed his convulsive grip told him this was it. It was over. Worse still, it might never have been real. Everything they’d shared, everything he’d thought they’d meant to each other might have all been in his mind.

Before she receded out of his life, she murmured, “Find yourself someone else who might have a death wish. Because I don’t.”