This explained so much.
The only thing it didn’t explain was the way she’d walked out on him. So she’d wanted to be there for a man she’d clearly cared about, even if other factors had been involved, like his billions. There’d been no need to end things with him so…dramatically.
She claimed she’d suffered the “degradation,” the “inequality and the pointlessness” of their relationship. Even if that had once been true, everything had changed. His situation, hers. The gap between them had almost been obliterated.
He moved, and every step closer brought her beauty into sharper focus. If he’d thought she’d filled out two years ago, now she’d ripened. And he couldn’t wait to sink his teeth and…everything else into all that fire and lushness.
He held her gaze as he came to stand before her. “You should have told me, both of you. You deprived me of the chance to do what I could, what I would have wanted to do with all my heart—even if you don’t think I possess one. But it’s too late. The only thing I can do now is see that Patrick’s legacy remains intact, that his vision for his enterprises is maintained and evolved. Will you promise to leave our…problems out of this and let me help?”
Those incredible eyes flashed again as she looked up at him, making him dizzy with desire. Then she nodded.
He exhaled, nodding, too, then sat down beside her.
“Now we need to agree on something else.” Her nod was wary this time. “You have the secret code to my libido.” Haidar had always said he was a wolf. And damn it, he’d turned out to be right. His body had declared her his mate, had refused substitutes. “And I have yours. When it comes to passion and pleasure, to finding absolute satisfaction in another’s body, we’re each other’s lot.”
She exhaled in resigned agreement. He held her focus, demanding she translate her consent into action. And she did. With her eyes filled with turbulent thoughts and desires, she moved into his arms as he pulled her to him, met him halfway in a kiss that made no attempt to temper its ferociousness and carnality.
* * *
Melding with Jalal’s hunger and the hot vise of ecstasy that was his lips, desire swelled, flooded all considerations and obliterated every moment since she’d been in his arms like that.
She spiraled down the abyss of need as his breath mingled with hers, his hands unraveled her, his lust stoked hers, opened her recesses to his possession.
Her clothes gave way to his expert urgency, her flesh burgeoned for his dominance, her mind hazing, short-circuiting…
“From the moment you put that supple hand in mine,” he groaned against her lips, “everything about you became everything I craved. Whatever happened or will happen, nothing will change that. I must have you again, and you must have me. Say yes, Lujayn. Give yourself to me again. End our starvation.”
His coaxing demand went off like a warning shot in her head. The overwhelming need to obey it felt like staring into an abyss. One she wouldn’t be able to crawl out of this time. Horror tore her out of her surrender to the conflagration of their mutual need.
“No.”
She wrenched herself away from his body, from the desire to merge with him. She struggled up, panting. The brooding hunger that always tampered with her sanity simmered in his wolf eyes, and her heart stampeded with her internal war not to just give in, straddle him, lose her mind all over him again.
She turned, felt the world teeter with every step away from his insupportable temptation, her hands shaking uncontrollably as she rearranged her clothes.
She forced herself to turn to him at the door. “Walking away from you was the best thing I’ve ever done for myself and I’m not falling into your…addiction again. This isn’t a challenge so you’d try harder. This is final, Jalal. I’m just putting my life back together and I won’t let you destroy everything all over again. If you have any honor, stay away from me. Please.”
Four
Jalal stared at the screen of his laptop.
Something wasn’t right....
Frowning, he reread the document he’d just finished writing.
He was wrong. Something wasn’t wrong. Everything was.
It was as if someone bent on sabotage had written the page in front of him.
But that someone was him, unable to stop obsessing over a certain ebony-haired, silver-eyed spitfire and perpetually in a state of crippling, mind-scrambling frustration.
In other words, he should be wearing a sign saying “Keep away from all rational decisions.”
He closed his laptop, backed his chair from it as if it were a bomb. He had been about to cause an explosive mistake.
Rising to his feet, unrest fueled his strides to the veranda.
Exhaling forcefully, his eyes roamed the tranquil vastness of the desert, Lujayn’s voice echoing in his head.
Stay away from me. Please.
And he had stayed away. For four weeks now.
No wonder his mind was disintegrating.
But it hadn’t been honor that had made him stay away.
It had been that “please.”
Had she walked out of that suite without uttering it, he would have kept going after her until she succumbed.
But—ya Ullah. That please. And that desperate look that had accompanied it. It had been their combo of pleading and dread that had depowered him, defused his intentions.
It was as if she did believe that giving in to her desires in the past had almost destroyed her life, would certainly do so now.
He couldn’t see how it had, how it could. And this “degradation” thing. She’d more or less accused him of doing to her what he’d thought Haidar had done to Roxanne, manipulating and taking advantage of her.
But their relationship hadn’t started because of a bet, as he’d thought Haidar and Roxanne’s had. Haidar hadn’t had an as-valid reason to hide his relationship with Roxanne, the daughter of a prominent diplomat. And Roxanne had been living in Azmahar where Haidar had almost relocated. Jalal had had to travel halfway across the world every time he’d wanted to see Lujayn.
Another major difference had been that Roxanne had told Haidar she’d loved him. Haidar hadn’t reciprocated the confession, but continued their intimacies, making it appear as if he’d been taking advantage of her. There’d been no mention of anything beyond passion between him and Lujayn.
They’d been young and preoccupied with establishing their careers and that had enforced the sporadic nature of their relationship. The secrecy, considering what his mother would have done to Lujayn and her whole family had she suspected a thing, had been a no-brainer. What could he have done differently?