2

Staring from the window of the bedroom Khalid had given Paige for her visits, he watched as she appeared on the sidewalk, her white silk oversized blouse flattening against her slender body as the breeze whipped around it.

Flame-red hair whipped around her, like strands of burning silk, it blazed around her face, adding a splash of color to the otherwise dull reality that existed around him.

And with each step she took he could feel the bitterness growing inside him as he braced his palms flat on the high windowsill and buried the insane impulse to follow after her. If he did, he would drag her back to this bed and fuck her until nothing else existed for either one of them.

But reality would return. He couldn’t delay it long enough to sate himself with his need for her, or to ensure her safety.

How much more was he to lose? How much more could one man bear to see broken in his life before he finally ceased to exist?

Paige was his last weakness, he thought, answering the question for himself. She was as bright as the sun that rose in the desert, warming those who existed around her, becoming the very essence of their lives if they gave her the chance. To allow his life to break her would be a far greater sin than any he may have committed so far.

To allow his sexuality to break her—her innocence and her dreams—would be the killing stroke. Because the need that would rise inside him to see her beneath a third, one Abram knew he could depend upon to protect her, to pleasure her, to ease her should he ever cease to be, would destroy the romantic dreams he knew Paige had. How could a woman accept that he never wanted to see another man fuck her with the same hunger that he felt to have her beneath him himself? How could a virgin accept the desires he fantasized of fulfilling with her?

Of seeing her beneath Tariq, watching as his dick buried in the sweet, fist-tight grip of her pussy. Of being inside her himself, filling her little cunt, experiencing the ripples of response in the too-tight muscles as Tariq filled her ass with his cock.

His entire body tightened with the thought of it. Of feeling her pussy pulse and flex and milk his dick until he couldn’t hold back his release any longer. Until he came with the vicious, pounding spurts of seed that incited a pleasure so deep, so all-consuming it could never be forgotten. And he wanted nothing with any woman, especially with Paige, that could be forgotten.

She may have been aroused, she may be curious, but he couldn’t see her craving that pleasure as he would crave giving her the pleasure, had he not gone as far as he had.

There was also the knowledge that the dark sexuality that was so much a part of him would accept nothing less. It was his own personal torment, that need that drove at him like an addiction he couldn’t kick.

How could he tell her, explain to her, that to see her pleasure, to watch her as she slipped into that realm of sensuality that he had only seen a woman find when she was overwhelmed by two lovers, was more than he could deny himself. It was more than he could deny his lover.

That as long as there was a third, one as strong, as determined to protect her as he was, then what had happened to Lessa wouldn’t have as great a chance of happening to her.

It was the mistake he and Khalid had made with Lessa. Abram had fought that side of him, fearing Lessa gave into his brother’s touch because she knew it was what Abram wished. He had refused Khalid the privileges he would have given a third as well as the responsibilities of one. He hadn’t told Khalid that he would be away from the province the day his brother had been caught unaware, beaten and left for dead, before Ayid and Aman had gone after Lessa.

But, as Khalid had warned him the day he realized Abram had seen Paige as a woman, she deserved more. She deserved a man who knew possessive love, who understood it. But even more importantly, a man who did not bring with him the shadow of death.

“She’s gone?”

Tariq stepped into the room behind him, his voice somber as he posed the question.

He, too, had seen her standing at the door, her eyes wide, face flushed, that look of drowning sensuality filling her expression the moment they had spilled their release into another woman’s body.

In that expression he had seen the knowledge that it didn’t matter the woman they were with, it didn’t matter how he fought it, how he strove to deny it, each time he stepped foot in the U.S., there was only one face he searched for now. There was only one gaze he avoided with everything inside him.

“She’s gone,” he stated, wondering if he had effectively hid the regret that surged through him.

“She was angry?” Tariq probed.

Abram gave a quick shake of his head. “Surprisingly, no.”

No, she hadn’t been angry. It had been disillusionment. It had been bitterness. It had been the knowledge that girlish dreams never came true no matter how desperately she fought to bring them to fruition.

They died. Painfully. Hurtfully. They were tromped beneath uncaring feet and left to wither by a world that didn’t know true warmth.

And he had done no more than contibute to the cold that filled her gaze now, the disillusionment.

She was a woman searching for the dreams that filled her soul, and he couldn’t be the man to fulfill those dreams, no matter his own wishes.

“Has our companion left?” he turned to Tariq, seeing the intent look on his cousin’s expression.

Tariq had been watching him too closely of late whenever they were in Virginia, especially whenever Paige was present. As though he were searching for something, some affirmation of a suspicion.

Abram refused to give into the question in his third’s gaze. They both desired her, and yet, he refused to act on that desire, or in Abram’s case, that hunger.

“She’s showering.” Tariq shrugged his shoulders beneath the expensive cotton shirt he wore. “She seems discontent with your lack of attention now that your pleasure has been attained.”

Now that his pleasure had been attained? His cock was still as hard as it had been the moment he stepped off the fucking plane. And it was still as hard as the moment he had stepped into Paige’s bedroom to see her fingers preparing to thrust inside the heated depths of her pussy.

He had never imagined she was a virgin. Never imagined it, and now, had no idea how he could force himself to forget it.

“See her home, Tariq,” Abram ordered. “I’ll await your return before leaving to meet with Director Jennings and Senator Mathews. I’d like to give them the information we’ve attained on Ayid and Aman quickly, before Azir realizes we have left Saudi entirely.”

His brothers, Ayid and Aman. Younger half-brothers. Twins who shared a rabid rage and intellectual cruelty that never ceased to amaze him. And Azir, his father. How had he ever believed his father could have the smallest iota of kindness inside his blackened soul? Now, six months after the death of the wife Azir had forced him to marry, and the child she had carried, Abram found it almost impossible to keep from killing the old bastard. Especially after he learned exactly how involved his father had been in ensuring there were no heirs other than Abram before he turned thirty-six.

If there were other heirs, then Abram’s death would not result in allowing Azir to turn the province over to the sons he preferred. The sons who shared his warped vision of the future of the world.

That vision had seen to the death of Abram’s first wife, when he had been no more than twenty. It had seen to the death of his second wife, and his unborn child, two years later. And it would destroy any other woman Abram ever allowed himself to care for.

Just as Ayid and Aman would see to the death of any woman Khalid could love, other than his sister, Paige.

They were cursed. The eldest sons of Azir bore the hatred and the fruits of malice that sprang from not just Azir, but also his youngest sons.

As Paige stepped into the back of the car in which she’d ridden into the city, the driver closing the door solicitously behind her, Abram turned and met Tariq’s gaze.

“She’s gone.” He hadn’t meant the words to pass his lips, or the thought to torment him as it did.

Watching her leave, watching that innocence, that hunger and zest for life, and for him, disappear, had driven home the fact that she could be taken forever if he weren’t very very careful.

Tariq’s lips quirked in amusement though, the bitterness and realization that tormented Abram wasn’t a part of the other man’s present thoughts.

“She won’t be for long,” Tariq assured him. “If that mark on your shoulder is any indication, you’ve given her a taste of what you both hunger for. I have a feeling, Abram, Miss Galbraithe will return sooner than you think.”

The mark?

His gaze jerked to his shoulder before he moved to the mirror atop the dresser next to him.

There, on his shoulder, just as Tariq had stated, a love bite that marred his flesh deeper than he would have imagined she could have given without his knowledge.

It marked him far deeper than flesh alone.

He forced himself to turn away.

He forced himself to leave her bedroom.

He forced himself to forget those few, precious moments when his lips had caressed the softest flesh he had ever known, when his tongue had tasted pure, fiery ecstasy.

A taste that would linger in his senses forever.

And a regret he knew he would never outrun.

He hadn’t expected this, he thought, it had caught him unaware the day he had arrived to help her and her family celebrate her eighteenth birthday. When he had seen her in that simple sundress on the sunny Greek island where she and her family lived part of the year. With the tops of her breasts rising above the bodice of the dress, the tiny straps stretching over slender, graceful shoulders, and the red gold of her hair hanging to the middle of her back.

“Abram,” she had whispered his name with a breathy little sigh. “I’ve missed you.”

Stars had gleaed in the emerald green of her eyes. Her face had flushed beneath the soft hint of the Mediterranean-bronzed flesh. Her skin wasn’t as dark as her father’s, but neither was it as light as her mother’s. When combined with the silken flames of her hair, the combination was enough to daze a lesser man.

It was that day he had seen the woman she was. It was that day his cock had swelled, becoming so engorged, so torturously hot and tight he swore he’d been on the edge of dizziness.

He almost grinned at that thought.

Almost. Because, he knew the fate that would await her.

He knew the hell he would revisit and this time never escape.

He couldn’t have her, he couldn’t allow his need to corrupt her, or his legacy to endanger her.

And he couldn’t keep his hunger for her from raging …

Eight years later

He was home. Finally.

Paige Galbraithe moved from the chaise positioned next to the balcony doors of her bedroom and stared at the lights that swept over the lawn.

The limousine moved with an almost stealthy slowness along the curved, oak-bordered drive. The lights swept over the landscaping like a cat burglar’s penlight as the car neared the garage. The bright gleam disappeared into the three-story mansion Khalid owned in the heart of the exclusive section of Alexandria, Virginia, designed as Squire Point.

After ten days captivity in her brother’s home, the rat had finally shown up. It was about time. She was rather sick of cooling her heels in the luxurious comfort of her brother’s home rather than in her own apartment.

Collecting the silk robe she had left lying on the back of the chaise, Paige pulled it on quickly, covering the ankle-length, matching deep-violet gown she wore. Anger and determination made her movements jerky.

Ten days. She had waited ten days to confront him.

He wouldn’t answer his cell phone—his fiancée Marty was running interference—but still, her brother wasn’t talking to her. Marty assured her daily that she would get to tear a strip off his hide in person, and each day, he was a no-show.

“Relax for a while, Paige…”

“Khalid will call soon…”

“You’ll have explanations when Khalid arrives…”

Even her parents refused to tell her what she needed to know, what she demanded each time they called to see how she was doing.

She was fed up with it. She was twenty-five years old; she wasn’t a teenager. She was Khalid’s sister, not some damned prisoner he could control. She was easy to work with, and she considered herself a very understanding person. But her patience had begun wearing thin a week ago.

Belting the robe furiously as she turned on her heel, Paige stalked across the bedroom and eased open the door before stepping into the hall. Moving to the stairs she stopped and waited, listening carefully.

She wasn’t about to let him think that she was still awake and waiting on him. He’d been slipping into the house after he was certain she was asleep, doing whatever he did, then slipping back out before she awoke.

The damned coward.

Abdul, or Abbie as she called him, his Saudi manservant, was always abjectly apologetic that he hadn’t awakened her before Khalid left, as she had asked him to do. He had a million excuses, but she knew the truth. Khalid was his boss, and Khalid wasn’t about to face her until she simply left him no choice.

They were working together—Abbie, Marty, Khalid’s security team, and even Khalid himself—to keep her in place and completely in the dark as to why she was suddenly being held in what her brother called “protective custody.” Even the U.S. marshal service wasn’t this damned diligent.

Even her parents were refusing to help her. Her mother’s fear for her only daughter, her “baby” as she called her, had Marilyn Galbraithe going along with whatever her son had cooked up this time.

And that son hadn’t even given his sister the courtesy of facing her and giving her a clue as to how long this would last, if there was an end in sight, or the details involving the danger she was facing.

She had a good idea. After all, she was well aware of the fact that his brother, Ayid, had finally played his final hand and attempted to murder Khalid and his fiancée, Marty, less than a month before. Just as Ayid’s twin, Aman, had gone after Abram in D.C. as he waited in a hotel to meet with FBI Director Zack Jennings and the Homeland Security Director to declare his U.S. citizenship based on his mother’s status as an American citizen.

Instead, Khalid had killed Ayid, and Abram had killed his youngest brother, Aman. Though, to keep Abram’s defection to the U.S. a secret, Khalid had taken the blame for both deaths.

She suspected this was why she was placed in isolation in the monstrous mansion her brother now owned. The mansion that shadather, Azir Mustafa, had bought for him.

She wanted to hear it from him, though. She wanted to know exactly why Azir Mustafa thought threatening her was going to gain him anything. And she wanted to know why the hell Khalid thought that destroying the life she was building for herself was going to help.

She’d been all but imprisoned by her overprotective parents for far too many years. Her mother had been so terrified Paige would be kidnapped or taken, that she would disappear as had once happened to her, that she had kept Paige always in sight.

Bodyguards. Security-enhanced private schools. Private tutors. She’d been so overprotected she had nearly smothered to death.

Escaping had taken every ounce of strength she had, because she loved her parents. Because even in their attempts to ensure her safety, she had always been aware of their love for her. Just as she had been of the nightmares they suffered from a past haunted by the horror of her mother’s kidnapping, forced marriage and rapes at the hands of a monster. That monster had been the father of her half-brother’s and the father of the man she couldn’t push out of her mind or her fantasies.

“Stay away from me.” His eyes blazing with black fury and none of the sexual satisfaction he should have felt after spilling himself only moments before into the lover he had shared with his cousin, Tariq. Only moments before he came to her. “For both our sakes, Paige, stay the fuck away from me!”

That had been eight years ago. Eight years since he had buried his lips and tongue between her thighs and threw her into an ecstasy she still hadn’t felt again. Not before and not since. Eight years since he had fucked her with his tongue yet, he had never even kissed her.

In those years she had taken a lover, she had finished college, and she had begun a career that she enjoyed. But still, there was a regret that lay inside her like a weight. The regret that came with so many “what might have been’s.”

Moving from her room to the stairs, she waited. Standing back from the steps just far enough that he couldn’t see her, Paige peeked into the shadows below as he moved to the second floor, turned, and a few seconds later, she heard the door to his suite close.

Her lips tightened into a hard smile.

Ten days. It was ten days too long and she was damned tired of waiting, of being patient and fighting to understand why her parents and her brother had to live in fear of the day that Azir Mustafa or one of his family members would come after her.

Moving quietly, swiftly, she made her way to the second floor and the door of the master suite.

No lights shone from beneath the door, but that didn’t mean anything. She’d seen Khalid move in the dark as though he were born to itt>

His brother, Abram navigated it as though he owned it though.

She shook that thought away. She was not going to think about Abram tonight. She was not going to allow the rest of her night to be as restless as her days had been with the fantasies and the memory of those stolen moments in her bedroom all those years ago.

This was the reason she refused to settle back and relax while she was here. It was the reason why she pushed herself to the point of exhaustion each night after work. To keep low the fires of arousal from building any higher.

Thinking of Abram was always a mistake. And desiring him showed a complete lack of judgment and had nothing to do with why she was here or why she was getting ready to skin her brother alive.

The worst thing she could do at the moment was allow thoughts of Abram to interfere with her determination to get the answers she needed, and to find a way to balance her family’s fears with her own determination to have a life.

She needed a life. Without it, all she could think about, dream about and remember, was Abram and the feel of his lips sucking hard and tight at her clit as his tongue—

She shook away the thought again.

Gripping the doorknob she checked it slowly, quietly. It wasn’t locked. He wasn’t busy with his fiancée, or having wild monkey sex with her. He was obviously there alone, because she couldn’t hear him talking and Marty didn’t move as quietly in the dark as Khalid did. Besides, the door to his suite was always locked when they were in it together.

Easing the door forward stealthily, she all but tiptoed as she began to enter the room. Inside was dark, shadows lengthening through the narrow slits between the curtains, providing the barest hint of moonlight. Determination clenched her teeth a second before the door was jerked out of her hand, a manacle wrapped around her wrist, and in the next second she found herself flat against the wall as the door slammed closed.

Fight or flight.

Flight wasn’t possible, and for the briefest, shocked second, she had no idea the identity behind the hard, masculine body pressing her into the wall. Calloused and rough, a broad hand covered her lips, muffling her cry as her knee slammed upward, almost but not quite managing to connect and slam her attacker’s balls straight to his throat.

Instead, she found her knee blocked by a hard, extremely muscular thigh as it shoved its way between hers, pressed into the juncture and lifted her to her tiptoes. In the same breath she felt her attacker’s head bend, strong teeth nipping her ear and drawing a shocked gasp from her throat.

“Hello to you too, hellcat.”

She froze.

It had been so long since she had heard his voice. The rich, dark, foreign flavor of it wrapping around her senses and sending a heavy, heated lethargy to settle in the depths of her sex.

Memories washed over her.

His hands, calloused and strong, so dark against her thighs as his black hair, like roughened silk falling over her flesh as his lips moved over her clit. They had surrounded it, sucked it, lit a fire to it that had exploded through her system into an ecstasy she longed to revisit every second of her life.

Abram.

Beneath his palm her lips parted to drag in a hard, heavy breath as her body began to soften, to shape to the harder, stronger contours of his masculine body.

She shouldn’t be doing this. He had avoided her for years, slipping in and out of Khalid’s home and her life, and she had seen him only briefly, and always in the company of others.

Without volition her hips relaxed, the mound of her pussy pressing against the hard upper leg shoved between her thighs as she felt her breasts harden, her nipples so sensitive they actually ached.

Pleasure skated through her system as her tongue peeked out to touch her lips, to touch his palm. Slightly salty, male, the taste of him exploded against her tongue as he jerked back from her just as suddenly.

Staring up at the darkened shadow of his face, seeing the glitter of his gaze, feeling the heat of his body, Paige found herself, probably for the first time in her life, unable to speak. She couldn’t find the words, she couldn’t fight past the emotions or the tightening of her throat as she stared back at him.

The need for his touch was a craving she couldn’t resist. She couldn’t deny it. It was like a drug and she had gone far too long without a fix.

Her lips parted, but no words came out. She couldn’t let them, because she was terribly afraid those words would be a plea. That she would beg for things she wasn’t certain how to ask for with this man. Things she knew she was probably better off without.

Her body sure as hell knew how to ask though. She was shocked, flushed with heat and had to forcibly keep her hips from rubbing against the hard flesh pressed into the mound of her pussy.

And he knew it. His leg was tense, but each time her hips shifted against the firm muscle she swore he tightened further against her.

And he wasn’t letting her go. If anything, he was holding her tighter, perhaps, if she weren’t mistaken, his leg was pressing more firmly against the suddenly heated, swollen folds between her thighs. And oh yes, it felt so damned good. That heated, slow rub against her, stroking her clit, sending bursts of incredible sensation ratcheting through her.

She had known over the years that this was coming. At the first opportunity. The moment he touched her, the very second they found themselves hidden from curious gazes. She had known this would happen. That the need and the hunger would rage out of control.

“Why?” squeaky, weak, her voice was nothing as it should have been. It didn’t sound determined or confident as it usually did. And it sure as hell didn’t sound independent and strong.

Swallowing tightly she tried again.