The Mustafa lands would have been saved for Abram as Azir’s legal heir, and Ayid and Aman would have been sent away to be raised by aunts and uncles who would not have pampered their criminal habits nor risked their own families to aid their terrorist proclivities.
That icy nothingness had enveloped him, allowing him to see past the fiery, brutal pain and into the logic of his actions.
Punishment for Azir would be so thorough, so perfect, if only he could follow through with it. Abram would be free of the land and the land itself would return to the monarchy and be given back to tribal control.
But allowing Azir to live was becoming harder by the day. And today. He stopped as he reached the top of the stairs and stared down at the fist his fingers were still formed into.
Today, he’d almost given in to the impulse.
Today, he had almost become a murderer and God knew that wasn’t what he wanted. Not now, not this close to freedom. Because if he killed Azir, the monarchy would have no choice but to punish him. Jafar and his men, supposed members of the Mustafa family, would eagerly step forward and demand his punishment.
Because Abram had plotted and worked against Jafar and Azir, and even though Khalid had taken responsibility for both Ayid’s and Aman’s deaths, there were those that suspected Abram had killed Aman.
And they would have been right. Fortunately, there were very few who knew the actual truth, but if his half-brother’s co-conspirators had a chance to strike out in such a way, they would eagerly take it.
There was no doubt that he had run out of time. He would have to find a way to get both Paige and Tariq out of Saudi Arabia and into America and take his chances there.
He didn’t know what the hell Azir thought he could accomplish by kidnapping Paige and gifting him with her, or by “ordering” Tariq to aid him in whatever manner Abram required in bedding her. One thing was for damned sure, it wasn’t out of the kindness of his heart.
More like, the minute he made his vow to the emissary both Jafar and Azir would have the authorities waiting to arrest him, Paige, and Tariq for sexual misconduct. And that was a killing offense.
Tearing the keffiyeh from his head and bunching it in his hand, he inhaled deeply and moved slowly to the securely locked door of his bedroom suite.
The electronic security was the only defense he possessed in the fortress now. There were less than half a dozen of the men that had once been loyal to him and Tariq. Those men couldn’t be identified or step forward publicly if anything happened because of their own families.
He couldn’t trust the guards, and he couldn’t trust the men he had grown up with, or those he had attended college with who had returned to the Mustafa lands after him.
Throughout his life there had only been Khalid, Tariq, and Paige that he could depend upon to accept him as he was. And two of those, Tariq and Paige, were awaiting him now.
He was moving closer to the door, closer to the woman he hungered for with an irrational strength.
Reaching the door to the suite he keyed in the code to the security lock, waited for the click to indicate the locks had disengaged, then stepped inside.
The other side of black ice.
The second he closed the door it kicked in.
The black ice was cracking and burning inside him, heat whipping through his body as fiery, burning lust sizzled through the dark emotionless protective layer.
In a single, blinding second the adrenaline switched gears. Murder wasn’t an option, but sex was.
He couldn’t squeeze the life from Azir’s corrupt body, but he could allow Paige’s tight, hot little pussy to squeeze the release from his dick.
Paige was there.
Lush.
Exotic.
Sensual.
With the sheet still her only covering, she was curled at the corner of the couch as Tariq sat in the chair opposite her. He leaned forward, his entire demeanor protective.
Long, silken, red-gold curls cascaded around the bruised side of her face. The abraded, darkening flesh almost had him turning around and completing the murderous act, imagining Azir gasping for air as his eyes began to glaze in death.
Emerald green eyes stared back at him in defiance, and always, always, in hunger. In that inp height="t, just that fast, his cock was brutally hard, the need to fuck thundering through his body with a force nearly double what the drive to kill had been.
This was the fallout. The other side of the brutal ice-encased fury was this overwhelming, desperate need to push every sexual boundary. To make his lover touch that point between pleasure and pain. To fuck her until none of them could move. And once his third had caught his breath, to begin again.