SEDUCING HIS PRINCESS (7 page)

If she’d cared about her looks, Jala would have suffered serious insecurity in the presence of those three visions. As it was, she was delighted her brothers had found women who were as beautiful on the outside as they were on the inside and who adored them. It was always such a pleasure to see them. Even though their relationship consisted mostly of video chatting, since the three couples seldom left Judar due to their growing families and responsibilities.

“We did knock.” Carmen grinned at her apologetically as she beckoned the four women who accompanied her and Aliyah, no doubt their ladies-in-waiting. All were laden with packages. “We assumed you weren’t here when you didn’t answer, and thought to leave you the stuff with a note.”

“We brought you everything we could think of to see what you need and what fits,” Aliyah explained.

Carmen smiled at the women who’d piled the “stuff” in the sitting area, then gestured for them to leave. “Kamal said you need everything since you left New York without packing a thing.”

“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.
”

Ya Ullah—
even now, he had her spontaneously combusting from a distance. Her body was readying itself, the clothes he’d asked her to remove were suddenly suffocating shackles, abrading aching flesh.

“I have company.”

“Get rid of them.” His command was terse, tense, uncompromising.

“I can’t,” she choked, smiling wanly at the two ladies who’d finished unpacking and were fidgeting, not knowing what to do. “I’m hanging up now.”

“Do that, and I’ll come over.”

“You don’t know where I am!”

“I can pinpoint your location via GPS. I was only asking as a courtesy, so you’d volunteer it willingly.”

“What do you think I can do now, huh?”

“Would you have done what I asked had you been alone?”

Carmen strode by her to usher in the ladies, who brought in more packages, looking relieved to stop pretending to be talking to Aliyah and not hearing everything Jala said.

Jala cast her a brittle smile, trying to sound neutral as she almost choked on her answer. “I would have considered it.”

“Liar.” This was crooned in the darkest, deepest tone he’d ever hit her with. “You would have made a protracted feast of tormenting me.”

That
coming from the master of torment. Oh, the irony.

“
Zain.
If you can’t open your laptop, we’ll use the phone. I’ll show you myself, instead.”

Her legs gave out. She groped for the nearest chair, gesturing weakly at the ladies that she was okay, hoping they’d just leave. They didn’t. They continued to work until she almost screamed she wanted to be alone to deal with this nerve-racking man without having them witness her being seduced out of her mind by him.

Mohab droned on until she felt her brain sizzling. “Remember how you used to revel in exposing me? Taking each shred of clothes off me with fingers that shook with urgency, with teeth that chattered with arousal?”

“Mohab...”

As soon as his name moaned out of her, begging mercy, she could almost see Aliyah’s and Carmen’s ears pricking up. Now they knew for sure who’d been tormenting her all this time.

“But I’ll leave you to your visitors on one condition.”

“What?” she croaked.

“The moment they’re gone, you’ll come to me.”

* * *

To their credit, after Mohab released her from his long-distance torture, Aliyah and Carmen behaved as if they’d heard nothing as they concluded their business, which it turned out they
had
needed to stay to conclude. Before they disappeared, she thought she saw them exchanging furtive smiles.

Yeah. They were probably putting two and two together. And coming up with a thousand.

She took her time, showering, drying her hair, dressing in fresh clothes. Then she headed to the wing Mohab had been given. Aliyah had backhandedly provided its location.

At his door, she knocked, then stood back.

The door opened almost instantaneously. Across the threshold, there he was, looking fall-to-your-knees gorgeous—
Mohab.

In a black-on-black suit and shirt, his skin simmered and his eyes glowed in the soft ambient light. Only the top section of his hair was held back now; the rest flowed like thick sheets of silk to sigh over his collar.

A wave of fierce hunger rolled over her. She bore its impact without any outward sign, looking up at him across the threshold. He only stepped aside. Knowing there’d be eyes documenting her entry into his chambers, she walked inside.

The wing looked much like the one she occupied, but it smelled different. His scent had already permeated the place. It coated her lungs, tingled on her tongue. His unique brand of virility and vigor, of scorching desert sun and flaying wind, of ruthless terrain and cleansing rain. Of cold-blooded termination and boiling-over passion.

His appreciation sizzled over her as his eyes swept her white-cotton-clad body, sensuality playing on his sculpted lips, humming from him like electricity from a high-voltage cable.

She bore the brunt of his silent, sensual onslaught, then, in utmost tranquillity and premeditation, she swung her arm and socked him in the jaw.

Six

P
ain exploded in Jala’s hand.

She’d thrown punches before, but nothing had ever hurt that bad. Figured. Mortal beings’ jaws weren’t made of some indestructible amalgam like
Arabian Nights
refugee here.

She might have broken her hand. And wrist. And elbow.

But she wouldn’t obey the need to shake the agony out and howl. The unmovable bastard hadn’t even rocked under what she’d thought a very good punch. Only his smile had vanished, his expression becoming that of a predator who’d just encountered an unexpected opponent, exhilarated by the discovery, raring for an all-out tumble.

Then, oh, so slowly, he raised his hand and rubbed his jaw, softly scratching against his beard. It sent a frisson of stimulation through her, as if those fingers had scraped against her most sensitive spots. She managed not to shudder.

“Was that so hard?”

Huh? What?

“Giving me that first voluntary touch.” He rubbed his jaw again, this time moving it from side to side, as if making sure everything was still slotted in place and functioning. “Not bad at all, as first voluntary touches go.”

Wishing she could generate heat vision, she glared at him. “If only you’d told me you expected a first voluntary
punch,
I would have obliged you much faster.”

His grin turned into a wince and back to a grin. “Good thing I’m sporting a beard. I would have had a hard time explaining the bruise. That
was
a perfect jab. Or should I say, sucker punch?”

“
Please.
You saw it coming a light-year away. You could have blocked it if you wanted.”

“If you think I saw anything but you glowing like a golden goddess in that torture device of a dress, you give me too much credit. You reduce me to my basic beast and the most simpleminded and oblivious of men.”

Why was he
doing
this? Reengaging his seduction program? Was there something he still needed from her? Was he making sure she was hot enough for the required malleability?

“At least believe that if I’d seen this punch coming, I would have ducked so you wouldn’t hurt your hand.”

“Oh, sure. You care about the hand that just socked you.”

“I care about nothing
but
your every bone and pore and inch. All I want is to show you how much...I care. But wait...”

He suddenly turned and strode away, disappeared into the kitchenette. In moments, he came back with a bag of ice. Stopping before her, he took her hand, ran gentle fingers over the knuckles that throbbed with a dull ache, his eyebrows knotting as he examined the forming bruise. Placing the ice on her knuckles, he gritted his teeth, as if her gasp hurt him.

“Next time, use a heavy, blunt object.”

A shudder rattled through her, at his dark mutter more than at the icy numbing. She’d known she’d pay the price for her recklessness in pain and limited mobility for a while. But she’d thought it a small price for venting her frustration in the one way she hadn’t tried yet. Physically.

She only felt worse now—stupid on top of out-of-control and futile. And his solicitude had turned the tables on her. She’d known he wouldn’t retaliate, but she’d hoped it would surprise him into baring his fangs, or at least dropping his mask. He’d done that once, that night six years ago.

She’d always conjured those moments when he’d snarled at her like a wounded beast, when unstoppable longing for him had almost snuffed her will to go on. But even then, he’d exposed her to the full range of his faces. Passionate, anxious, shocked, angry, possessive, bewildered and betrayed. Thinking none of those had been real had only made her unable to trust her judgment again. Just as she couldn’t now.

Carefully removing the ice, he lifted her hand to his lips. Holding her eyes as if he wanted her to let him into her soul, he feathered each knuckle with a kiss that was tender, almost reverent. And something in the center of her being buckled.

For him to be kissing the hand that had just inflicted an act of aggression and affront on him was too much. Unsteadily, she withdrew her hand.

He exhaled, flexed his hand as if it hurt, too, before it went up to the side of his neck.

Then he suddenly grinned at her. “What do you know...you fixed my neck!”

The spontaneity of his grin, the ease, the
warmth,
how real this all felt—her longing for the man she’d once loved with every fiber of her being—suddenly overwhelmed her. The yearning that had writhed inside her like a burning serpent lurched so hard that her nails dug into her good hand’s palm until they almost broke her skin.

“Okay. You achieved your purpose, made sure my sisters-in-law heard the kind of conversation you forced on me....”

His hand rose in protest. “How could I have known they were with you?”

“Because you apparently keep me under surveillance every second I’m awake, maybe even when I’m asleep.”

“I told you I didn’t know where you were.”

“Even if I believe this, I told you I had company. In fact, having anyone else present would have been even more damaging. But you established what you wanted. That our relationship goes far beyond last night, and its past nature is also implicit if you could talk to me with such... audacity.”

“How could they have known I was being...audacious?”

“Because your phone seduction session made my responses clear to anyone who knows anything about sexual innuendo. So—you’ve established my ‘impurity’ and your role in it. Now, even if I want to back down, it will be at the cost of disgracing my family, now that my ‘shame’ is out. While you will keep the high moral ground, even if you’re the once defiler of my honor, since you’re here now doing the honorable thing.”

He coughed an incredulous laugh. “Where are you getting all this? If you believe your sisters-in-law suspect anything, and it disturbs you, I’ll take care of it. I started my ‘phone seduction’ before I knew you weren’t alone, and I didn’t continue it because of any of the motives you assign me. You’re crediting me with a premeditation I already told you I’m incapable of around you.”

Feeling her head would burst with frustration, she began to turn away when a cabled arm slipped around her waist, clasping her to his formidable length. “I was up all night, Jala, every inch of me
roaring
for you. I let you go last night because I thought I must give you some breathing room. But my resolutions vanished the moment I got here. All I could think was that you were near, and all I planned was having you, and this time not letting you walk away. As you did last night. As you did six years ago.”

She pushed out of his arms. “You can stop doing this.”

“I can’t. I can never stop wanting you.”

“I mean it, Mohab. Stop it. I already told you I’m going through with this charade. Now drop the seduction act.”

The arms reaching for her stopped in midmotion, dropping to his sides. “What reason do you assign me for acting this time, if, according to you, I’ve already fulfilled my purpose?”

She shrugged, shoulders knotted, throat closing. “I never know anything where you’re concerned.”

“Didn’t you say you know everything about my motivations and methods?” He shook his head. “Does this mean you didn’t believe anything I said last night?”

She didn’t know anymore. The dejection in his eyes, the intensity she felt from him, all added to the verdict of her senses. Even if she couldn’t trust those, she couldn’t disregard her observations.

His reaction to her punch had been seamless. If he’d been acting, he would have been resenting it—and her. It would have manifested in even momentary fury, in an instinctive spark of retaliation, before he curbed it. He’d only been astonished, and the instant hue of his surprise had been acceptance, indulgence, even elation. As if he’d meant it when he’d said he’d take anything from her, as if he welcomed any punishment she inflicted if it would vent her anger toward him.

She
could
be seeing what she wanted to see all over again, but she...

All her hairs stood on end. Something had slithered in the background, at ground level....

Her tension deflated on a squeaked exclamation. “A cat!”

She blinked at the magnificent creature. A robust white Turkish Angora, clearly just woken up from a sound catnap with the way it stopped to stretch and arch. Then it slunk toward them, languidly weaving its way around furniture.

“I wonder whose it is!” She turned incredulous eyes to Mohab. “Did you know it was here?”

Her eyes almost popped at the change that came over Mohab’s expression as he looked at the cat. It was the tender delight she’d only seen on people’s faces when they beheld their babies.

“I should hope so, since she’s mine. Or should I say, I’m hers?” He bent as the cat approached him, tail straight up and trembling in the cat-tail-language equivalent of “I’m crazy about you,” before rearing up on her hind legs like a baby asking to be picked up. Mohab obliged at once, scooping her up, cradling her expertly against his massive chest...and getting white fur all over his pristine black clothes.

Purring so loudly the sound vibrated in Jala’s ears, the cat surrendered to Mohab’s pampering as he cooed to her. “Who’s awake? Who’s had a good nap?”

She gaped at the incongruent scene. Mohab, that lethal juggernaut, all but melting over a cat.

Mohab had a cat.

As the knowledge hit bottom in her mind, another movement made her snap her gaze to the same direction where Whitey had come from, only to find more felines advancing.

He had
cats.
Four
of them.

Or maybe there were more still napping in there. At this point, she would believe just about anything.

One of the cats, a miniature glossy-black panther, broke into a lope and threw himself at Mohab’s feet. Then, butting his head against Mohab’s legs, he made him widen his stance so he could weave between them in excited figure eights. The other two cats, a tabby Scottish Fold and a Russian Blue, soon joined in, purring the place down.

Mohab looked over at her when he had two cats in his arms, his expression that of a proud dad.

The tightness in her throat grew thorns. “Is this your...pride?”

“They are my pride and joy. They’re my family.”

The word
family
penetrated her heart, a shard that had never stopped driving deep.

He’d once told her his life story. He was an only child and, like her, both his parents were dead. But he hadn’t lost them to illness or to heartbreak. He’d lost them—twelve years ago, now—in a terrorist attack. One meant for him.

Whenever she remembered that she’d used that knowledge to take a stab at him, she still choked with shame. It hadn’t mattered that she’d been mad with agony—it had still been unforgivable. Some things should never be used as a weapon, no matter what. Should never be used at all. It had been dishonorable of her to use such an intimate and painful injury against him.

It never ceased to torment her that she owed him that much. Her life, and an apology for that cruel transgression. But since she’d thought she’d never settle those debts with him, she’d added them to her forward payment to the world.

But he’d invoked her debt last night. Then there’d been everything else. And just when she thought she was confused enough about him, she discovered he had cats!

She found herself asking, “You travel with them?”

He bent down, gently letting both cats jump lithely from his embrace. “People travel with their kids, don’t they?”

The way he said that tightened her throat more. “You never told me you liked cats. Or that you had any.”

Straightening, he approached her with a stealthy grace, like a huge version of the felines, his eyes radiating this new warmth that seeped to her core. “I didn’t then. I’ve always loved cats, all animals for that matter, but my lifestyle made me unable to adopt any. In my previous post, I had no control over my schedule. After I resigned—and after I settled a...personal project that took me all over the world five years ago—I set up my own business. Then I got my beauties, here—all rescue kitties, each with a story of her or his own.” Suddenly his expression changed, as if something disturbing had just occurred to him. “You don’t like cats?”

Her heart thudded at the alarm in his eyes. “I’m
crazy
about them. I had three cats when I lived in Judar, but I lost them all before I left. I fostered only in the States, since my globe-trotting lifestyle wouldn’t accommodate a cat. Unlike you, I don’t have my own private jet to haul them along with me.”

His smile broke out again. “Let’s test this claim, shall we? My darlings are cat-lover detectors. We’ll let them scan you, but be advised...their verdict is final and incontestable.”

He might be joking, but she was anxious they might snub her. Why, she didn’t know. She was doing her best to alienate him, so why did she wish to appeal to his “kids”?

She swallowed the contrary lump of nervousness. “How will you know they approve of me?”

“How do cats show approval?”

“Each cat has his or her own way of showing it.”

“Exactly.” He flashed her a sizzling smile as he prowled to the sitting area, took off his jacket, dropped it to the ground and let his cats walk over it. “I should have changed into something light colored as soon as I let them out of the carriers. Only Rigel goes with this outfit.”

His shoulders seemed to widen as he slowly started to unbutton his black shirt. Her heart stuttered. He was stripping.

She could swear the silk slithered off his skin with an aching sigh, as if it hated to separate from his flesh. She knew just how it felt, remembered how her hands used to ache for the time when they could glide all over him.

As his formidable back was exposed, symmetry and perfection made into a symphony of muscle and sinew, her salivary glands gushed. She was literally drooling over him.

At the damask burgundy couch in the center of the sitting area he turned to her, giving her a full frontal assault.

He was even more magnificent than she remembered. His chest had broadened, his abdomen had become more defined, every bulge and slope harder, packing more power, every line chiseled by endless stamina and determination. Her breasts swelled, reliving nights of abandon writhing beneath that chest, her stomach clenched with the memory of that ridged abdomen bearing down on her, working her into a frenzy. Her core throbbed with the moist heat that had been simmering since he’d walked into that stateroom.