SEDUCING HIS PRINCESS (4 page)

He towered over her, even though she was six feet in her heels, his physique that of an Olympian, his face that of an avenging angel, every inch of him composed of planes and hollows and slashes of power and perfection. Adding to his lethal assets, his wealth of sun-gilded mahogany hair was now long enough to be gathered at his nape, the severe scrape emphasizing the ruggedness of his leonine forehead and the vigor of his hairline. A trim new beard and mustache accentuated the jut of his cheekbones and the dominance of his jawline and completed the ruthless desert raider image. Maturity had added more of everything to that supreme being of bronze and steel who’d taken her breath away and had held it out of reach for as long as he’d had her under his spell. Something she’d thought she’d broken.

But if, after all she’d been through, all the maturation she’d thought she’d undergone, he could still look at her and take control of her senses, then the spell couldn’t
be
broken.

But this unadulterated coveting in his eyes... She couldn’t be reading it right.

Still, when he took a step closer, he vibrated with something that simulated barely checked hunger. Which would be unleashed at the slightest provocation—a word, a gasp....

But she was incapable of even those. She’d expended all her power in her escape effort. Now she was caught in stasis, waiting for his next move to reanimate her.

None came. He stared down at her, as if her nearness affected him just as acutely. When
he’d
been the one who’d planned this ambush, who’d been lying in wait for her.

The barricades around her resentment melted, shattering her inertia, imbuing her limbs with the steadiness of outrage as she put the distance he’d obliterated back between them.

“Guess your memory must be patchy from all the head blows I hear is an occupational hazard in your line of work. Your presence can only be explained by partial to total amnesia.”

Another blink lowered his thick, gold-tipped lashes, eclipsing the infernos of his eyes and his reaction. Then they swept up, exposing her to a different kind of heat. Surprise? Challenge? Humor?

Just the idea that it could be the latter poured acid on her inflamed nerves. “Let me fill one paramount hole in your recollections. What I last said to you remains in full force now. I never want to see you again. So you can take whatever game you think you’re playing and go straight to hell.”

She swept around then, desperation to get away from him fueling her steps...and her arm was snagged in a hard, warm grip.

Before she could fully register the bolt that zapped her, a tug swirled her around smoothly, as if in a choreographed dance, and brought her slamming against him from breast to calf.

Before she could draw another breath, one of his hands slipped into the hair at her nape, immobilizing her head and tilting her face upward. The other hand trailed a heavy path of possession down to her buttocks. Then, as he held her prisoner, exerting no force but that of his will, he let her see it. The very thing she’d once reveled in experiencing—the lethal beast he kept hidden under the civilized veneer. Its cunning savagery had assured his survival in the dangerous existence he’d chosen, his triumph over the most deadly enemies. That beast appeared to be starving—and she was what would sate its cravings.

Holding her stunned gaze, his own crackling with a dizzying mixture of calculation and lust, he lowered his head.

Feeling she’d disintegrate at the touch of his lips, she averted her face at the last moment.

His lips landed at the corner of her mouth, plucking convulsively at her flesh. The familiarity of his lips, the unfamiliarity of his facial hair, sparked each nerve ending individually. The gusts of his breath filled her with his scent, burying her under an avalanche of memory. Of how it used to feel to lose herself to the ecstasy of his powerful possession.

The hand on her buttocks pressed her closer, letting her feel his arousal, wringing hers from her depths. Before she could deal with this blow, the hand holding her head combed through her hair. Each stroke sent delight cascading from every hair root, spilled moans from her depths in answer to the unintelligible bass murmurings from him. Then his other hand caressed its way beneath her jacket, freeing her blouse from her skirt...and delving below.

A gasp tore out of her as those calloused fingers splayed against her sizzling flesh, imprinting it like a brand, making her instinctively press closer. And then he took his onslaught to the next level.

Yanking up her skirt, he slipped below her panties to cup her buttocks, kneading her taut flesh hungrily before hauling her against him. Weightless, in his power, she keened as the long-craved steel of his erection ground against her core. A scalding growl rolled in his gut as he tugged one thigh, opening her around his hips, spreading her for his domination, while the hand at her back plastered her heaving chest against his. Her breasts swelled with each rub against his hard power, the abrasion of their clothes turning her nipples to pinpoints of agony.

She writhed in his hold as he singed kisses down her neck, ravaged her in suckles that would mark her skin, sending vicious pleasure hurtling through her blood, lodging into her womb with each savage pull.

All existence converged on him, became him—his body and breath, his taste and feel, his hands and mouth—as he strummed her flesh, reclaimed her every inch and response. With just a touch, she’d ceased to be herself, becoming a mass of need wrapped around him, open to him, his to exploit and plunder...to pleasure and possess.

She could no longer hear anything but her thundering heart and their strident breathing as he raised her up and slid her down his body in leisurely excursions. He had her riding his erection through their clothes. He dipped his head to capture her nipple through her bra in massaging nips, sending never-forgotten ecstasy corkscrewing through her every nerve ending.

Her moans droned, interrupted only by sharp intakes of breath. The flowing throb between her thighs escalated into pounding, tipping from discomfort into pain until she cried out. At her distressed if unmistakable demand, he shuddered beneath her, snapping his head up. Then, eyes glazed with ferocity, he crashed his lips onto her wide-open mouth and thrust deep.

She plunged into his taste, fierce wonder spreading in her flickering awareness. How did she remember it so accurately, crave it so acutely still?

Then everything ceased as his tongue invaded her, commanded hers to tangle and duel and drink deeper from the well of passion she’d once drowned in.

Then something stirred in her, shutting down her mind; something cold and ugly tore through the delirium. A realization.

This had happened before. This had been what he’d done to her that last time. He’d taken over her senses, exploited her responses, inundated her with physical satisfaction...and almost decimated her soul and psyche in the process.

Now he’d taken her over again, as if a mountain of pain and resentment didn’t exist between them. She was letting him pull her strings again when he only ever saw her as a means to an end. Having an even bigger end this time, he’d decided to go into all-out invasion mode from the get-go. And she was letting him.
No.

Anger and humiliation shattered the spell, had her struggling in his arms as if fighting for her life.

Stiffening for a long moment, as if unable to make up his mind whether that was an attempt to get away or to press closer, he finally tore his lips from hers and slid her down his body and back to the ground.

Every muscle burning from the slow poison of need with which he’d reinfected her, she staggered, groping for equilibrium. She’d taken barely a step away when his hands descended on her shoulders and pulled her back against him.

She couldn’t even tremble, the control she’d long struggled for shattered, leaving her drained. She could only lean back against him limply, her head rolling on his shoulder.

Taking this as consent, he cupped her breasts, pressing against her as he groaned in her ear. “I didn’t intend to do this. I still have no control over what I’m doing right this second. I walked in here and it was as if time hit Rewind, as if we’d never been apart. And just like you always do, you overrode my every rational thought and impulse with a look, a word. Then I touched you and you responded...like you’re responding still....”

This zapped her with just enough energy to push out of his arms. “Sure. It’s my fault.”

He let her put distance between them this time. “There’s no fault here. Just the phenomenon that exists between us, this absolute physical affinity we share. But I really didn’t intend to kiss you.”

“
Kiss
me? That’s what you call a kiss?”

A rough huff of self-deprecation escaped him. “So I almost took you standing up, probably would have, not giving a second thought that we’re in the middle of your brother’s stateroom, if you hadn’t stopped me. You have that effect on me. I see you and I can only think of pleasuring you.”

Once she’d believed his every word. She’d been certain that what they did share
was
a phenomenon, as undeniable and unstoppable as a force of nature. Then she’d found out the truth. It was clear he thought she didn’t know, that he didn’t need to invent a new deception.

He approached her again, one of those hands stroking a gossamer touch down her cheek. “But you’re wrong. About the last thing you said to me. No matter how many blows to the head I sustain, nothing could make me forget it. You said,
Find yourself someone else who might have a death wish. Because I don’t.
”

He remembered. Word for word.

Figured. He was said to possess a computerlike mind, always archiving, networking, extrapolating. On top of his fighting prowess and weapons mastery, it was what made him the ultimate modern warrior and strategist in this information age.

She pulled away from the debilitation of his touch. “And that statement has been solidified by the passage of time and reinforced by this new stunt. So, since you have a flawless memory, what else is wrong with you? Haven’t I already turned down your marriage proposal once before?”

Perfect teeth sank into his lip, making her feel they’d sunk into hers again. “I prefer to dwell on when you said yes.”

She ignored the tingling of her lips. “Only to follow it with a resounding no, when I came to my senses. Now you’re using an impending war to reintroduce the subject? Since it’s not faulty memory, I assume these are your new orders?”

Something blipped in his gaze. It was gone before she could fathom it. But even that much from him was telling. He was taken aback and clearly had no idea that she was onto him.

Infusing her tone with all the cool derision she could, she cocked her head at him. “This surprises you? Hmm, maybe I must reconsider all I heard about your reputation as a know-it-all spymaster. Anyway, if you’re still not sure what I mean... Yes, I do know. Everything.”

Three

S
he knew. Everything.

For stunned moments that was all that filled Mohab’s mind. Then alarm diminished and questions crowded in its place.

What was “everything” according to her? Whatever she thought that was, could that be the reason behind her sudden rejection six years ago?

He stared at her as she stood safe feet away, tall and majestic in a cream skirt suit that made her skin glow, still the most magnificent thing he’d ever seen. Even more than he’d remembered. And he’d thought he remembered everything about this woman whose memory had refused to relinquish its hold over him, whose feel still seethed beneath his skin, whose taste still lingered on his tongue.

But he’d come here today hoping what he remembered had been exaggerated, that his many sightings of her during the past years had perpetuated the delusion, that one up close look would dissipate it.

Then he’d walked into Kamal’s stateroom, and one look at her had dashed any hopes he’d ever entertained of finally purging her from his system. Everything he’d remembered about her had been diluted. Or maturity had only intensified her effect on him. He
hadn’t
meant to drown in her. But the years of separation, instead of dampening his responses, had only made it impossible for him to ration them.

His gaze swept her ripe curves. His every inch ached, remembering how they’d fit against his angles, how her supple softness had filled his hands, cushioned his hardness, accommodated his demand. His fingers buzzed as they relived skimming her warm, velvet skin, overflowing with her resilient flesh, winding in her silky, raven tresses. His lips and tongue stung with the phantom sensations of feeling hers again, hot and moist and fragrant, surrendering to his invasion, demanding his dominance.

He’d almost taken her, in a near-literal reenactment of their last time together, before saying one word to her. And how she’d responded. He’d felt her every inch vibrate to his frequency, every nerve resonate with his urgency. Even now, after she’d collected herself and retreated behind a barricade of cold contempt, he could still feel it seething. Her mind was another matter, though. If outrage could flay, he’d be minus skin now. He certainly felt as raw as if he was.

So was her rage a reaction to his incursion, or did the developing situation only pile on top of the “everything” she claimed to know?

He could ask, since she seemed to be forthcoming all of a sudden. But he wasn’t here to dredge up the past. And if he could still just touch her and they’d both go up in flames, that was all he needed to know.

All he needed, period.

But she was waiting for him to make some kind of response to her revelation. He’d give her one, all right. Just not what she might expect.

He walked back to where she’d retreated. “So you know everything?” At her curt nod, he shoved his hands into his pockets so they wouldn’t reach for her again. “Let’s test this claim, shall we?”

That twist surprised her.
Zain.
Good. He shouldn’t be the only one not knowing if he was coming or going here.

He cocked his head at her. “Do you know that I committed a cardinal sin during that hostage crisis?”

The tangent seemed to confuse her.

When she answered, the modulated voice that had sung its siren song in his ear for years was lower, huskier. “If you mean killing, I know all too well. Those moments, when you stormed the conference hall with your black-ops team and took out our captors, is forever branded in my memory. I watched you...terminate six of our captors single-handedly, with a precision I only thought happened in movies.” Those slanting, dense eyebrows he’d loved to trace and lips drew together. “But I didn’t think you considered killing a sin. Not in your line of work.”

“Killing
is
my line of work. At least, it’s part of the job description. Though ‘killing’ isn’t what I call it. I prefer ‘eliminating lethal threats to innocents.’”

Her eyes turned a somber cognac as she nodded. She didn’t contest that he spoke the simple truth, that people like him were a necessity to control the monsters who roamed the earth. She’d obviously seen enough in
her
line of work to know that his extreme measures were indispensable at times. Just as they had been that day when she’d been taken hostage with five hundred others at that conference in Bidalya.

But she could have contradicted him to score a point. That she didn’t, that she remained objective even to the detriment of her own attack, thrilled him.

He sighed. “But the sin I committed had nothing to do with the violence I perpetrated. I committed the cardinal sin of my line of work.”

“How so?”

“I deviated from the plan, improvised. I could have gotten so many killed.”

Again, counter to his expectations, her eyes grew impassioned as she contradicted him, in
his
defense. “But you saved hundreds, all of us who remained. And you didn’t seem to be improvising. You acted with such certainty, such efficiency, it was as if everything had been rehearsed. To the point that it felt as if the captors themselves were playing an exact role in the sequence you designed.”

“If it seemed like that to you, it was because of my men’s outstanding skills, and because I managed to compensate on the fly. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t make a huge mistake.” Her eyes were puzzled but engrossed. He could tell that she couldn’t wait to see where he was taking this. “Do you remember what I did when we stormed in?”

She nodded stiffly, as if it still pained her to think of that harrowing time. And who could blame her? She’d watched three people get killed in cold blood as proof of their captors’ resoluteness. She’d once told him that knowing the true meaning of helplessness, failing to protect those people, had damaged her more than her fear of meeting the same fate.

“What do you remember?”

Her exquisite features contorted with the reluctance to conjure up the memories. Still, she answered, “It was so explosive, but I remember it frame for frame. You burst in while one of them was threatening Najeeb that he’d start blowing parts off him. Then I met your eyes across the distance and...and...”

“Go on.”

She swallowed. “You streaked toward me, blowing away those men left and right, and then you were in front of me—shielding me—as you and your team finished off the rest.”

“And that was my sin.
Najeeb
was my mission. And I took one look at you across that hall and made the instantaneous decision to save you first.”

Her eyes widened; her lips opened on a soundless exclamation. She’d evidently never thought to question what he’d done.

When she finally talked, her whisper was impeded. “But you blasted away the one who was threatening him as you ran to me. You gave no one a chance to use him as shield or to harm him.”

“I should have run
to
him, should have shielded
him.
As my crown prince, he should have been my only priority. Instead, I made that you.”

“But you managed to save him and everyone else.”

“Only because I managed to compensate, as I said. Najeeb could have gotten shot before I ended the threat to him. And knowing full well the widespread damage his injury or death would have caused, retaliations that would have reaped far more than five hundred lives, I still risked that.”

Time seemed to stretch as bewilderment glimmered in her gemlike eyes.

She let out a shaky breath. “So what are you saying? That you took one look at me and were so bowled over you decided to risk everyone’s lives—including your own—for
me?
”

“No. That’s not what I’m saying. I was...bowled over a bit before that.”

He watched her mouth drop open. This was news to her. He’d never intimated that he’d seen her before that day. But he’d seen her over two years earlier, had searched her out many times afterward.

“But it was the first time I’d seen you!”

“I saw no upside in letting you see me, or in acting on my interest. You were, as you pointed out so many times when we were together, an Aal Masood...and I was an Aal Ghaanem. The Montagues and Capulets didn’t have a thing on our moronically feuding houses. I also didn’t think it would be wise or fair to ever involve a woman in my crazy existence.” He exhaled. “Then I saw you in danger and every rational thought flew out the window.”

Her eyes filled with so much; he struggled not to drag her to him and kiss them closed.

Then they emptied of everything, leaving only hardness. “Why are you telling me this now?”

He shrugged. “I am testing your claim that you know everything. I just proved that you don’t.”

“You proved only that you spin a good yarn. As I already knew you did. Is this one supposed to appeal to my ego?”

A mirthless huff escaped him. “You think I’m making this up? Why? To butter you up for my current purposes? I wish. As someone who knows what a bullet feels like ripping through my flesh, I would have preferred one to admitting how fallible I am, how unprofessional I was, how I risked everyone’s lives to protect a woman who didn’t know me...whom I believed could never be mine.”

Steel mixed with gold in her gaze, clearly not buying his admissions. Funny. If he’d ever thought he’d confess this to her, he wouldn’t have dreamed this would be her reaction.

Might as well confess the rest, let her make whatever she wished of it. “When I burst in and I met your eyes, saw that mixture of terror and courage and fury...I couldn’t imagine I wouldn’t be able to look in those eyes again, to get the chance to know you. My instincts took over...and I let them.”

She averted those eyes, depriving him of their touch. “Yet after you went to such lengths to save me, you didn’t follow up on your wish to ‘know’ me. Not for over a year.”

He exhaled heavily. “I might have saved the day, for you and for everyone else, but
I
knew how badly I messed up. I guess I was punishing myself for failing to fulfill my duty and couldn’t reward my failure by giving myself the gift of knowing you, the one behind my lapse.”

She raised her eyes, that derision back in full force. “So was it guilt that stopped you from giving yourself the ‘gift’ of knowing me, or was it that you didn’t think it ‘wise or fair’ to involve a woman in your crazy existence?”

“Both. And the family feud. Everything.”

“Then, a year later, you just decided to disregard all those overpowering reasons you had not to approach me. Once you made that first contact, you relentlessly courted me all the way to your bed. Then, before I could catch my breath, you pushed for marriage. And when I tried to slow things down, you pushed harder. And when I decided to put a stop to it, you threatened you’d slander me and destroy any man who came near me.”

He gritted his teeth on the memory of his despair, when he’d felt her slipping through his fingers. “These were my most indefensible moments. Trying to hang on to you, then going almost berserk when I couldn’t.”

“Yeah, sure,” she scoffed. “You lost control out of sheer emotion. That coming from the ice-cold man they sent after the Mata Haris of the world, to seduce, entrap and destroy them.”

It was his turn to blink in surprise. She knew that? How?

She elaborated on just how much she knew. “I’ve been told how you are the man to rely on when a woman is involved, the incomparable undercover agent no female can resist. You’re not only known as
Al Moddammer,
but
Qatel an-Nesaa—
the lady-killer. And you’re claiming you took one look at the twenty-year-old nobody I was, an obscure member of your family’s hereditary enemies, and couldn’t think straight on account of my irresistibility?”

He exhaled. “That does about sum it up.”

“Tut.”

That click of her tongue shot straight to his loins. Any second now he was going to ravish her again, come what may.

Unaware of his state, she went on, “I expected better from the ultimate secret-service weapon that you are. Some airtight premise, at least something more plausible. Seems I have to revise many things I believed about you. You do remember I prefaced this unfortunate encounter, before you took that detour into badly scripted drama, by mentioning that I know everything, don’t you?”

“Again I say I wish it was anything but the pathetic truth. So, against all my intentions, I find myself forced to ask, according to you, what
is
everything?”

Her eyes became icy embers. “Everything from the moment I went to meet Najeeb and found you waiting for me instead.”

* * *

Jala watched those eyes of his blaze at her declaration.

She’d never been able to decide when they were most hypnotic: when they glowed with a constant flame or when they fluctuated—as they’d been doing throughout this confrontation—their pupils expanding and constricting, giving the intense tawny irises the illusion of burning coals.

She’d dreamed of those fiery eyes, his voice, his touch, for over a year after the hostage crisis. And it had had nothing to do with his saving her life. He’d just...overwhelmed her. He’d melted her just by looking at her, just by being near. When feeling that way had been totally out of character for her. She’d been too mature for her age, as her brothers had always told her. Cerebral, almost jaded.

But Mohab...he
had
bowled her over. For over a year, she’d relived every single second of being pressed against the body he’d fearlessly offered as her shield. She’d suffocated with remembered terror that a bullet could tear through his perfection. Then she’d relived every second as he’d sheltered her away from the scene of carnage. But before she could have even a word with him, the Bidalyan government had bundled all the hostages, sending them back to their countries to close that case as quickly as possible.

For months afterward, she’d gone crazy trying to find out who he was. Until Najeeb, her fellow hostage, had sought her out.

Najeeb had been magnificent during the crisis. Levelheaded, fearless, shrewd, he’d managed their captors like a veteran used to being under fire. It was certain more people would have died if not for his intervention. He’d recognized her as the only one he could depend on and they’d forged an instantaneous bond, as if they’d always worked together, minimizing damages for two agonizing days.