Fire blazed through her blood, and Prue's temperature spiked in an instant.
Lord, oh Lord, what in the world is wrong with me?
She had always been a faithful girlfriend to Klaus, and this was the first time she had such thoughts about another man. Even worse was this alien source of heat that was now snaking all around her body. Every part of her was in agony, and the fact that she didn't know why this was happening had Prue looking up at the stranger in unconscious appeal.
"I think I'm sick."
Khadem took one look at the girl with her long, blond plaits and big, brown eyes, and he knew right away it wasn't that simple. She had 'easy victim' written all over her, and he would bet his birthright that this girl had never gone clubbing before this night.
A few years ago, Khadem had been tasked to rescue local girls from being forced into sexual slavery, which was simply one of the many lucrative kinds of crime that the former king had pretended not to know about, in exchange for millions of profit.
When Khadem and his men had successfully raided the secret hideout where the girls had been temporarily housed, the would-be slaves had been given a drug that made them highly sensitive and sexually responsive to an unnatural degree.
Those same drugs were easily available in America as long as one had the necessary contacts, and based on what Khadem was seeing now, he was grimly certain the girl in front of him had been similarly "medicated".
The thought angered Khadem, which was unlike him at all. In the past several years, Khadem had found himself desensitized to evidence of human abuse. But this girl proved different, and he found himself motioning for one of his incognito bodyguards to come forward.
"Find out who did this to her," Khadem bit out in Huznan. "And I want to know everything possible."
Prue was starting to feel like she was losing her mind as she watched the two men talk in front of her in a foreign language. Why did having two men stand so close to her made her body feel even hotter?
Khadem's gaze swung back to the girl when his bodyguard left. The flush in her cheeks appeared deeper, and he saw her lick her lips unconsciously as soon as their eyes met. Her body started to sway towards him, and Khadem automatically reached for her to keep her from falling.
Prue didn't understand what had taken over her. The moment she felt the stranger's hands on her, it was as if his touch had set her world on fire, and the next thing she knew, she was letting out the most embarrassing moan.
Bad, bad Prue!
You've never even made such a sound for Klaus, so why are you moaning like that because of a stranger?
Khadem's expression turned inscrutable as the girl cut herself off mid-moan. She had a look of dazed disbelief on her face, and as expected, she obviously hadn't a clue as to what her body was going through.
Too bad for her, it was only going to get worse from here.
Prue couldn't understand why her heart was racing faster than ever as she felt the stranger's gaze travel over her frame from head to toe.
There was something about him that felt almost brutally uncivilized, and that this image of him being this wealthy, urbane businessman was nothing but a lie. What this stranger was Prue felt she neither had the knowledge nor the experience to define. All she knew was that he was a different kind of animal from all the other men she had met. Different even from Klaus, whom she used to think was the sexiest man alive.
This man was more than that.
This man was a sexual fantasy come to life, with his rock-hard abs that made her ache to run her hands all over his chest. Would it be smooth? Hairy? What would be the color of his nipples—-
Bad, bad Prue!
Why are you thinking of such indecent things?
Khadem was privately amused at the play of expressions on the girl's face. One moment, she was staring up at him with unconcealed hunger. The next moment she looked as if she had just been given a death sentence.
She likely wasn't even aware of what she was doing, but when he thought of how this girl could be staring at another man in the same manner—-
Hell, no.
This girl was his.
He didn't give a damn if this was his first time meeting her. Didn't give a damn that he knew absolutely nothing about her. She had been the first woman in years to incite his lust, and the more he watched her, the more he wanted her.
And he would have her, in time.
But before anything else—-
"Someone's spiked your drink."
It took Prue a moment to understand what the stranger was saying, his words made surreal by his matter-of-fact tone. And surely, he was mistaken? She shook her head at him, saying, "That's not possible—-"