Dangerous Pleasure (9 page)

Sniffling quietly she wiped at the tears and tried to stem them. If she stayed here, then they were going to end up saying things that couldn’t be taken back.

She didn’t want that. She didn’t want to lose her brother. That left only one other option. To leave his house, at least until they could learn to agree to disagree where Abram was concerned.

It had been almost two weeks since Khalid’s security team had practically kidnapped her and brought her to the mansion.

Today, she had lost her job. Her savings wasn’t nearly enough to keep her rent and utilities going, along with her car payment, for more than a few months. She would have to find a job, and there was no doubt she would have to ask her parents for money or borrow from her trust fund. A fund she had wanted to save for a time when she really needed it.

Getting another job wasn’t going to be easy. The advertising firm she had worked for had already informed her that there would be no reference forthcoming.

Her entire life had been changed because of this and on top of it, she was losing Khalid because she couldn’t get his brother out of her mind, or out of her fantasies.

She shared no blood with Abram. He was no relation her. He was the man that made her heart beat faster, made her womb clench violently, and her pussy throb in need.

She wasn’t a virgin, despite Khalid and Marty’s obvious beliefs. She’d had a few lovers, two to be exact, in her attempts to forget the one man that fascinated her as nothing or no one ever had.

And to be with the man she wanted more than anyone, she was going to lose the brother she had always idolized, despite his autocratic attitude.

That knowledge had her heart clenching in pain again as fresh tears fell from her eyes before she could wipe them away.

“Paige?” A soft knock at the door followed Marty’s gentle voice.

A second later the bathroom door opened and the other woman stepped inside. Paige quickly wiped at her tears.

“Oh, Paige.” Sympathy filled Marty’s voice as Paige hurriedly dampened a washcloth with cold water to wash her face. “He didn’t mean to hurt you like this.” She sighed.

“I’m fine.” Raspy, tear-roughened, her voice sounded like hell. “Go to your party, Marty, and take your fiancé with you. Hopefully, if he’s out of my face for a while, I can find a way to remember the brother he used to be, rather than the bastard he’s becoming.”

“He’s so worried, Paige,” Marty whispered. “He’s pacing the floors day and night trying to keep you safe and worrying that Abram won’t return. He’s not a man that’s able to sit back and allow those he loves to fight the battle Abram is fighting, alone. But he can’t join him, he can’t protect you if he isn’t here, and he’s terrified Azir will go after your mother as well. He has to stay while Abram is in danger, and sometimes he feels as though he’s fighting ghosts in trying to protect you.”

“Do you think I’m not aware of the stress he’s under?” Her breathing hitched as the tears threatened again. “Just take him to the damned party, Marty. I’ll be okay if I can just get away from him for a while.”

Just long enough to call a cab and go home for a few hours.

She needed her home for just a little while. The comfort of her surroundings, the soothing warmth of her fireplace.

It was an electric fireplace, but still, it was hers. It was warm, and it looked close enough to the real thing. Like her vibrator. It did the job, even if it did lack the qualities or the warmth of the real thing.

She needed it. She needed to get out of here for just a little while.

“Once he thinks about it, he’ll realize what he’s doing,” Marty promised. “You know how he is. He gets overprotective and ends up pissing us off. But he still loves us. He’d still die for us, Paige, and knowing he’s hurting you is killing him. He just doesn’t know how to fix it.”

“I know this,” she cried out in frustration. “Just give me a little while, Marty. I’m trying to adjust. I swear I am.”

Marty breathed out heavily. Paige turned away and held the cold washcloth to her face.

“All right then,” she said slowly. A second later Paige heard the door close behind her.

Marty had left, and there hadn’t even been an accepting hug before she departed. God, that sucked. She could have used a hug today.

Paige shook her head before turning back and tossing the cloth in the sink. Maybe it was just time to accept that she wasn’t the woman or the adult that those she loved really wanted.

Her mother was upset that she was working, her father was disappointed that she refused to head the charities his companies oversaw. Her brother disagreed with the men she wanted as lovers, and the lovers were pissed because she wanted to be independent and still live with them.

It was a no-win situation.

Maybe it was time to stop silently begging them to accept her. She needed to find a way to live and stop hurting like this. Khalid had threatened to either disown his brother, or her. Either one would simply break her heart.

Moving back to the bedroom she changed out of her comfortable sweats and T-shirt and pulled on a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt. Warm socks, sneakers. As she tied the leather running shoes the lights of the limo lit up the darkness outside her bedroom window.

Khalid and Marty were going to their party. They were leaving, and they were leaving her alone. Just as she had asked.

Picking up her cell phone she called a cab, then grabbed her purse and made her way quietly downstairs to wait on the transportation, and hopefully to keep anyone else from turning it away.

She didn’t have to wait long. The intercom from the front gate pinged at the wall next to the door. Stepping to it, Paige accepted the summons.

“A Plus Cabs,” the voice on the other end announced.

“Come on up to the house.” Paige pressed the security lock and before the cab was passing through the open gates Daniel Conover was walking into the foyer from the back wing of the house.

“You can follow me, or you can wait for me to return, your choice,” she informed him as he leaned against the wall opposite her, his dark blond head tilting to the side as he regarded her curiously.

“You know I can’t allow you to leave,” he stated.

“But you will,” she told him. “Otherwise, I’ll call the authorities next. I’ll have you charged with kidnapping and imprisonment.”

She wasn’t serious and she had a feeling he suspected it. But he wasn’t certain, and that was what mattered.

“I’ll be right behind you,” he finally sighed. He flexed his broad shoulders beneath the cotton shirt he wore and straightened from the wall. He looped his thumbs in the back pockets of his well-worn, just-snug-enough jeans and gave her a curious little smile. “You’re as stubborn as your brother, you know.”

“So everyone says,” she sniffed. “Funny, he always seems to come out the winner though.”

Paige moved past him as he opened the door for her. She walked outside to the cab.

Just a few hours, she promised herself. She wasn’t going to worry her family unnecessarily. She wasn’t going to risk her life or her bodyguards. But she needed to go home to recharge away from the too-big, too-empty house she was usually in alone.

And she needed the space to figure out how to sit back and accept her brother’s protection, her father’s offer to pay the bills while the situation was being resolved, and to decide which was more important. Following her heart, or obeying the brother she would lose if she didn’t walk away from Abram.

She had a feeling that decision was going to be impossible to make.

3

Her apartment was simple, a kitchen and living area, a bedroom and a bathroom with a large soaking tub. That bathtub had been the selling point for her. The electric fireplace sat in front of the overstuffed couch and was the focal point of the room.

The kitchen was small, but roomy enough to cook and entertain a few friends in.

It was hers. She paid the bills, stocked the cabinets, and lived comfortably and happily on the salary she earned at the advertising firm she had gone to work for after graduating from college.

The floors were hardwood, gleaming around the large area rugs beneath the small kitchen table and the coffee table in the living area.

She didn’t have a television, yet. For entertainment she used her laptop, which she had left at her brother’s. She’d been so busy in the past year that she hadn’t really had time to watch television or enjoy movies as she once had.

She’d missed her home while she had been at Khalid’s. Her brother’s home was too big, too private perhaps. The suites were self-contained except for eating, and his house staff was always more than happy to fix a meal and bring it to her room.

She’d been lost there, and lonely. At first, she’d been sequestered there by herself, then with Khalid’s return it had been one lecture and argument after another until she was ready to go insane.

As she placed her purse on the small table inside the door, her cell phone rang again. The ring tone was a set of strident cymbals. It reminded her of her brother’s habit of demanding she answer the phone quickly.

She ignored it.

Pushing her fingers through her hair she walked through the apartment, checked each room, straightened a pillow on the bed then moved back into the living area where she turned on the electric fireplace and collapsed on the large pillows in front of it.

She felt exhausted.

Fighting with Khalid always left her feeling as though she had just run a marathon. It sapped her energy and made her question her own logic.

At the end of the day, what it came down to was the fact that whether it was logical or not, she was miserable living in that big house, unable to visit friends, unable to feel safe and secure in her own home because Khalid’s father was a crazy bastard.

He’d kidnapped their mother when she was seventeen, forced her to marry him and immediately raped her and forced her to conceive.

She’d been locked in a harem, forced to spend her days with only one pursuit, that of pleasing him.

Her mother had lived in hell while she had been imprisoned in the Mustafa stronghold, and only a stroke of luck had afforded her escape.

Pavlos Galbraithe, her then-fiancé and now Paige’s father, had learned of the meeting between Marilyn and Azir Mustafa while Marilyn was visiting family in Cairo, Egypt. Mustafa, he had been told, had been insistent on meeting Marilyn. He’d been entranced by her flame-red, silky hair and brilliant emerald green eyes.

He’d made her so uncomfortable with his stares and his disapproval each time she spoke that she had excused herself and returned to her room. Only to have her cousin, upset and concerned by Mustafa’s attitude, convince her to come back down because he was becoming so irate.

The next day, Marilyn had disappeared.

But still, Pavlos and his future brother-in-law, Henry Girard, wouldn’t have had a chance of gaining entrance into the fortress or rescuing Marilyn if she hadn’t found her own way out through a secret door in the stronghold’s outer wall. A wall that had surrounded the private gardens of the Mustafa harem.

Paige’s mother had in essence rescued herself and her newborn son, Khalid Mustafa. The baby Azir had forced on her, yet one she had come to adore.

Pavlos and Henry had been outside that wall, searching for the same secret door they had heard existed that led into the harem. They had been there as the stones seemed to part, push forward, and a slim, darkened figure had slipped out.

How her mother had managed to survive her time there, Paige had never understood. She knew Marilyn hated Azir Mustafa with a violence that could erupt into fury if his name was mentioned.

But she loved the son that had been forced on her. Khalid had been her salvation, she claimed. If it hadn’t been for her baby, and the knowledge of what she feared Azir would turn him into, then she wouldn’t have had the strength to keep searching for a way out.

To Pavlos’s credit, he had endured Khalid. Paige was always aware of the fact that there was an underlying tension between her brother and her father, but the truce was one that had always stood.

He’d raised Khalid, looked after him and educated him.

When Khalid had returned to Saudi Arabia after his high school graduation for the agreed-upon stay with his father, Pavlos had been furious. It had been negotiated years before between Marilyn and the Saudi ambassador who had been sent to negotiate what had become an international incident after Mustafa had attempted to kidnap Khalid. But Paige knew her father had arranged with a CIA asset in the area to watch over Khalid and to ensure he came to no harm.

Staring into the electric flames of the fireplace, Paige readily admitted that Khalid was as hard as he was for a reason. That he knew the dangers, understood the monster that never seemed to stop haunting him, and worried constantly that Azir would strike out at his family.

The man was insane.

But Abram wasn’t.

Khalid knew Abram, she understood that, just as she understood Khalid’s fears in regards to her broken heart. God knew, she didn’t want to face that pain unless she simply had no other choice. But the risk was one she was willing to take. She simply didn’t believe Abram was going to lock her into a harem and beat her each time she tried to escape.