It was fascinating, shattering, this glimpse into his past.

Another reminder that she hadn’t known him at all, another proof of how unimportant she’d been—that he hadn’t shared this with her, clearly a major incident in his life.

But it was worse than that. She’d believed he’d been born without the capacity for emotional involvement. It had been what had mitigated her heartache and humiliation. Believing he’d never given her what he hadn’t had to give.

But his emotions existed. And they could be powerful, pure. It seemed that it took something profound to unearth it, like what he’d shared with others. Not as trivial as what he had with her.

The discovery had the knife that had long stopped turning in her heart stabbing it all over again.

Dear Reader,

Writing Haidar Aal Shalaan’s story was a surprise with each word. He first appeared in Pride of Zohayd, his halfbrothers’ trilogy. In the last book, To Touch a Sheikh, he found out his mother was conspiring to depose his father and brothers to make him king. But even though he did all he could to abort her conspiracy, I knew then that it wouldn’t end with him a hero and the near-catastrophe forgotten, or forgiven.

And it wasn’t, least of all by him. As I wrote his story, he showed me his turmoil over his dichotomy, a man both blessed and cursed by birth. He shared with me how he’d had to fight all his life against what he thought to be his inherited nature, which he believed had cost him everyone he’d ever loved and stigmatized him forever. He was on a mission to redeem himself from the taint of his mother’s treachery, and to reclaim his heart from the woman who’d once trodden all over it. I thought he’d be a stoic, vengeful, hot-blooded knight of the desert as he accomplished both missions.

But he kept surprising me, demonstrating his duality in every word and action. He was fierce yet tender, unyielding yet flexible, unstoppable yet vulnerable and most of all, the last thing I expected him to be, he was funny. And fun. And boy, was he irresistible for it. His heroine, Roxanne, wholeheartedly agrees.

I truly hope you enjoy Haidar and his journey toward making peace with himself—and finally loving Roxanne well—as much as I did.

I love to hear from readers, so e-mail me at oliviagates@gmail.com. And please stay connected with me on Facebook at my fan page, Olivia Gates Author, and on Twitter, @OliviaGates.

Thanks for reading!

Olivia

About the Author

OLIVIA GATES has always pursued creative passions such as singing and handicrafts. She still does, but only one of her passions grew gratifying enough, consuming enough, to become an ongoing career—writing.

She is most fulfilled when she is creating worlds and conflicts for her characters, then exploring and untangling them bit by bit, sharing her protagonists’ every heart-wrenching heartache and hope, their every heart-pounding doubt and trial, until she leads them to an indisputably earned and gloriously satisfying happy ending.

When she’s not writing, she is a doctor, a wife to her own alpha male and a mother to one brilliant girl and one demanding Angora cat. Visit Olivia at www.oliviagates.com.

The Sheikh’s Redemption

Olivia Gates

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To my mom. The most courageous, persevering and accomplished woman I know. Thanks for being you.

Prologue

Twenty-four years ago

The slap fell on Haidar’s face, stinging it on fire.

Before he could gasp, another fell on his other cheek, harder, backhanded this time. A ring encrusted in precious stones dragged a ragged line of pain into his flesh.

Disoriented, he heard a crack of thunder as tears misted his sight. Admonishments boomed again as more slaps tossed Haidar’s head from side to side. One finally shattered his balance, sent him crashing to his knees. Tears singed the fresh cut like a harsh antiseptic, mingling with the blood.

A tranquil voice broke over him. “Shed more tears, Haidar, and I’ll have you thrown in the dungeon. For a week.”

He swallowed, stared up at the person he loved most in life, incomprehension paralyzing him.

Why was she doing this?

His mother had never laid a hand on him. He’d never even gotten the knuckle raps or ear twists his twin, Jalal, drove her to reward his mischief with. He was her favorite. She told him so, showed him her esteem and preference in every way.

But there had been times lately when she’d been displeased with him, when he’d done nothing wrong. Actually, when he’d done something praiseworthy. It had bewildered him. Still, nothing could have prepared him for her out-of-the-blue, ice-cold fury just when he’d expected her to shower him with approval.

She stared down from her majestic height, looking as he’d always imagined a goddess of myth would, her eyes arctic. “Don’t compound your stupidity with whimpering. Stand up and take your punishment like your twin always does—with dignity and courage.”

Haidar almost blurted out that it was Jalal—and their cousin Rashid—who deserved the punishment. The “experiment” he’d warned them against and had refused to take part in had caused the fire that had consumed a whole chamber in the palace and ruined his and Jalal’s tenth birthday party.

Being habitually wild and reckless, Jalal and Rashid had long depleted their second chances with their elders. Their punishment would have been severe. Being the one with a track record of caution and commitment, his reserve of leniency was intact. So he’d stepped forward as the accidental culprit.

Just when his confession had garnered what he’d expected from his and Jalal’s father and Rashid’s guardian—surprise followed by acceptance of his explanation and dismissal of the whole debacle—his mother had walked up to him.

Her eyes had told him she knew what had really happened, and why he’d stepped forward. He’d expected admiration to follow the shrewdness that made him feel she could read his slightest thought. What had followed were the slaps that hadn’t stopped even when her husband, the king of Zohayd, had ordered her to cease.

Haidar rose and lifted a trembling hand to the sticky warmth oozing across his left cheekbone. She swatted it away.

“Now beg your twin’s and cousin’s forgiveness for being slow in coming clean about your thoughtless transgression, almost causing them to be punished in your stead.”

Disbelief numbed him, chagrin seared his chest. It was one thing to take punishment for them, another to apologize to them, and in front of everyone present, relatives, servants … girls!

His mother clamped his face in a vicious grip, her long nails digging into his wound. “Do it.”

She released him with a shove, made him stumble around to face Jalal and Rashid. They were staring at their feet, faces red, chests heaving.

“Jalal, Rashid, look at Haidar.” His mother now spoke as Queen Sondoss of Zohayd, her voice clear and commanding, carrying to the whole ballroom. “Don’t spare him the disgrace of groveling for your forgiveness in front of everyone.”

Jalal’s and Rashid’s gazes wavered up to her before turning to him, apology and contrition blazing in their eyes.

His mother prodded him with a head whack. “Tell them you’re sorry, that you’ll never do anything like this again.”

Burning with mortification, he looked into his twin’s eyes, then into his distant cousin and best friend’s, and repeated her words.

“I didn’t do it!”

Haidar blurted the words out as his mother finished dressing his wound. Now that they were in the privacy of her chambers, he had to exonerate himself, if only in her eyes.

Her smile was filled with pride and love as she kissed the injury she’d inflicted. “I know.” So he’d been right! “I know everything. Certainly about you and Jalal and that rascal Rashid.”

His confusion deepened. “Then … why?”

She cupped his cheek tenderly. “It was a lesson, Haidar. I wanted to show you that even your twin and best friend wouldn’t say a word to spare you. Now you know that no one deserves your intervention or sacrifice. Now you know to trust no one. Most important, you know what humiliation feels like, and you’ll always do anything you must to never suffer it again.”

His head spun at her explanations, their implications.

He didn’t want to believe her, but—she was always right.

Was she about this, too?

She came down beside him, hugged him. “You’re the only true part of me and I’ll do anything so that you never get hurt, so that you become the man who will get everything you deserve. This world at your feet. Do you understand why I had to hurt you?”

Shaken by the new perspective she’d shown him, he nodded. Mainly because he wanted to get away, to think.

She stroked his hair and crooned, “That’s my boy.”

Eight years ago

“You’re just like Mother.”

Haidar flinched as if from a teeth-loosening slap.

Jalal was twisting the knife that had been embedded in his chest ever since they’d been old enough to realize what their mother was. What she was called. The Demon Queen.

To Haidar’s heartache, no matter his personal feelings for her, he’d been forced to concede the title had been well earned.

While his mother possessed unearthly beauty and breathtaking intelligence and talents, she wielded her endowments like lethal weapons. She flaunted being unpolluted by the foolish weakness of benevolence. Instead of using her blessings to gain allies, she collected cowed servants and cohorts. And she relished making enemies, the first of which being her own husband.

If it weren’t for her fierce love for her sons, or for him mainly and to a lesser degree, for Jalal, he would have doubted she was human at all.

But what had always tormented Haidar was that the older he got, the more he realized what a “true part” of her he was. He’d felt the taint of her temperament, the chronic disease of her traits spreading inside him. He’d lived in fear that they’d one day obliterate his decent and compassionate components.

It was ironic that Jalal had thrown that similarity in his face now, when he’d been feeling his mother’s shadow recede, her legacy loosening its noose from around his thoughts and inclinations. Ever since he’d met Roxanne …

“I take it back.” Jalal, the twin who resembled him the least of probably anyone in the world, shook his head in disgust. “You’re worse than her. And that I didn’t think was possible.”

“You talk as if she’s a monster.”

They’d never spoken this openly about their mother. They’d been speaking less and less about anything at all.

Jalal shrugged, the movement nonchalant but eloquent with leashed force. A reminder that though they were similar in size and strength, Jalal was the … physical one.

“And I love her nonetheless. But that’s the unreasoning affection a mother wrings from her child. You don’t get the same leniency. Not on this. This is one instance where I cannot, will not, rationalize or forgive your heartlessness.”

Unable to deal with his twin’s disapproval any better than he ever had, he let the fury and suspicion that had brought him to this confrontation take over. “So this is your strategy? Like they say in Azmahar, ‘Yell accusations lest your opponent beats you’?”

“It’s you who are resorting to ‘Hit and weep, preempt and cry foul.’”

Jalal’s derision scraped his already raw nerves. “I never suspected you’d be such a sore loser when Roxanne chose me.”

Jalal snorted, his eyes smoldering like black ice. “You mean when she was manipulated by you. Conned by you.”

Haidar suppressed another spurt of indignation, the frost at his core resurfacing. “Can’t find a more realistic excuse for trying to steal her from me? We both know I can get any woman I want without even trying, no manipulation involved.”

“You couldn’t have gotten Roxanne without it. She saw you for the ice-cold fish that you are that first night. It must have taken some Academy Award–winning acting to create the fictional character that she fell for.”

Haidar had never resorted to violence, not even while growing up among an abundance of male-only relatives who relished rough … resolutions. He’d always suppressed his temper, used cold deliberation to outmaneuver them. Now he wanted to smash in Jalal’s well-arranged face.

He gritted down on the urge. “The fact remains—she’s mine.”

“And you have been treating her like property. Worse, like a dirty secret, making her hide your intimacies from even her mother, forcing her to watch you flaunt the other women ‘you have without even trying’ in public. You told her they’re decoys to draw suspicion away from her, right? It must be killing her, even if she believes your self-serving lies. I can’t imagine what it would do to her if she knew you’d been playing her from the start, that she’s just another source to feed your monstrous ego.”

Haidar vibrated with a charge that seemed as if it would burst his every cell if it wasn’t released. “And you know all about her supposed turmoil because you’re her selfless confidant, right? And you want to take your so-called friendship from your squash dates into her bed. Well, hard luck. That’s where I am. Constantly.”

Jalal’s snarl felt like an uppercut. “Very gentlemanly of you, to kiss and tell.”

“No need for evasions since you know we’re intimate. And still you try to take her away from me.”

“You don’t even want her,” Jalal hissed. “You seduced her to beat me. She’s just a pawn in another of your power games.”

“You were the one who started that game, as you’ve conveniently forgotten.”

“I forgot about that silly bet in five minutes. But you took it like you take everything, with obsessive competition. You went all out to entrap her.”

“And you’re out to save her from monstrous me? You’re admitting you want her for yourself?”

Jalal’s jaw hardened. “I won’t let you use her anymore.”

Rage blotched Haidar’s vision. He wanted to pulverize Jalal’s convictions. Arguments and defenses pummeled his mind. Then he opened his mouth and something from the repertoire of his lifelong rivalry with his closest yet furthest person came out.

A taunt. “How are you going to stop me?”

Jalal shot him a lethal glance. “I’ll tell her everything.”

His head almost burst.

Out of the rants clanging there, he snarled only “Good luck.”

If he’d thought he’d seen antipathy in his twin’s eyes before, he was wrong. This was the real thing. “Nothing good can come of this. You’re not only like Mother—you inherited the worst of both sides of our families. You’re manipulative and jealous, cold and controlling, and you have to win no matter the cost. It’s time I exposed your true face to her.”

Haidar’s blood charred with the futility of watching this train wreck. “There’s one hitch in that plan. If you do, it won’t only be my face she won’t want to see again, but yours, too.”

“I’m okay with losing Roxanne, as long as you lose her, too.”

The detonation of fury and frustration shattered his brakes. “If you tell her, Jalal, never show me your face again.”

Bleakness spread in Jalal’s eyes. “I’m okay with that, too.”

A door closed, aborting the salvo of reckless bitterness he would have volleyed at his twin’s intention.

Roxanne.

As she walked into the sitting room, his blood heated, his breath shortened. Her effect on him deepened with every exposure. Even when he had thought theirs would be a mutually satisfying liaison that would end when his fascination dissipated. Until her, he hadn’t suspected himself capable of attaining such heights of emotion, plumbing such depths of passion.

She was fire made flesh, incandescent in beauty, tempestuous in spirit, consuming in power. And she was his.

He had to prove it, know it, once and for all.

The fear that she had feelings for Jalal had been compromising his sanity. His mother’s passing comment about how Roxanne and Jalal shared so much had colored his view of their deepening closeness. But dread had taken root when he’d realized Roxanne had revealed the essence of her self to Jalal but not him. That had snapped his restraint, forced him to have this confrontation with both of them.

Jalal had made his position clear.

But it wouldn’t matter, not if she chose him. As she had to.

He tried to get confirmation from the hunger that always ignited in her eyes at the sight of him. But for the second she spared him the touch of her focus, her eyes were blank. Then they swept to Jalal.

Haidar pounced on her, his fingers digging into her flesh, almost vicious in their urgency, his heart thundering. “Tell Jalal that he can’t come between us no matter what he does or says. Tell him that you’re mine.”

Her face became a canvas of stupefaction. Then it set in hardness, her eyes becoming emerald icicles. She knocked his hands off as if they soiled her. “That’s why you so imperatively demanded I drop everything? How creepy can you get?”

It was his turn to gape. “Creepy? And this is imperative. I’ve sensed Jalal developing … misconceptions about you. I had to nip them in the bud.”

Her eyes narrowed into lasers of anger and disgust. “I don’t care what you ‘sensed.’ You don’t get to summon me as if I’m one of your lackeys, and you can’t trick me into a confrontation where you go all territorial on me and demand I parrot back what you say. You’re the one who’s under the misconception that you have any claim to me.”

His heart slowed to an excruciating thud, the pillars of his mind shuddering. “I have a claim. The one you gave me when you came to my bed, when you said you love me.”

“You do remember when I said it, don’t you?” When he’d been arousing her to insanity and driving her to shattering orgasms. “But thanks for bringing things to a head. I’m going back to the States, and I was debating how to say goodbye. You men always take a woman walking away as a blow to your sexual ego, and it gets messy. I was worried that it would get extra messy with you, being the Prince of Two Kingdoms with an ego the size of both.”

His shook his head, as if from too many blows. “Stop it.”

She gave a careless shrug. “Sure, let’s do stop it. You were the best candidate for the exotic fling I wanted to have while living here. But since I decided to move back to the States, I knew I had to end it with you. I have needs, as you know, and no matter how good in bed you are, I’m not about to wait until you drop by to satisfy them. I have to find a new regularly available stud. Or three. But a word of advice—don’t pull that territorial crap on your new women. It’s really off-putting. And it makes me unable to say goodbye with any goodwill. Now that I know what kind of power you imagined you had over me, I’m so turned off I don’t want to ever see or hear from you again.”

He watched her turn around, walk in measured steps out of the room.

In seconds the penthouse door closed with a muted thud, the very sound of rejection, of humiliation.

From the end of a collapsing tunnel he heard a macabre distortion of Jalal’s voice. “What do you know? She has sharper instincts than I gave her credit for, took you only as seriously as you took her. Seems I shouldn’t have worried about her.”

He looked at Jalal through what felt like a stranger’s eyes. “You should worry about yourself. If you ever show me your face again.”

The twin he barely recognized now looked back at him with the same deadness. “Don’t worry. I think it’s time I detoxified my life of your presence.”

Haidar stared into nothingness long after Jalal had disappeared. It wasn’t supposed to happen this way.

Jalal should have told him he’d never trespass on the sanctity of his relationship with his woman. Roxanne should have denounced his doubts as ludicrous.

He should have had his twin back and his lover forever.

Those he’d thought closest to him shouldn’t have walked away from him. But they had.

Trust no one.

His mother’s words reverberated in his head. She’d been right.

He’d ignored her wisdom at a cost he might not survive.

Never again.

One

The Present

It wasn’t every day a man was offered a throne.

When that man was Haidar, it should have been a matter of never.

But the people of Azmahar—at least, the clans that made up a good percentage of the kingdom’s population—had offered just that.

They’d sent their best-spoken representatives to demand, cajole, plead for him to be their candidate in the race for the vacant throne of Azmahar. He’d thought they were kidding.

He’d kept his straightest face on to match their earnest efforts, pretending to accept, to brainstorm his campaign and the policy direction for a kingdom that was coming apart at the seams.

When he’d realized they were serious—then he’d gotten angry.

Were they out of their minds, offering him the throne of the kingdom that his closest maternal kin had almost destroyed, and his paternal ones had just dealt the killing blow? Who in Azmahar would want him to set foot there again, let alone rule the damn place?

They’d insisted they represented those who saw him as the savior Azmahar needed.

One thing Haidar had never imagined himself as was a savior. It was a genetic impossibility.

How could he be a savior when he was demon spawn?

According to his estranged twin, he amalgamated the worst of his colorful gene pool in a new brand of bad. His recruiters had countered that he mixed the best of the lofty bloodlines running through his veins, would be Azmahar’s perfect king.

“King Haidar ben Atef Aal Shalaan.”

He tried the words out loud.

They sounded like a premium load of bull. Not only the “king” part. The names themselves sounded—felt—like lies. They no longer felt as if they indicated him. Belonged to him.

Had they ever?

He wasn’t an Aal Shalaan, after all. Not a real one like his older brothers. Without the incontrovertible proof of their heritage stamped all over Jalal, he’d bet cries would have risen that he didn’t belong to King Atef. From all evidence, he belonged, flesh, blood and spirit, to the Aal Munsoori family. To his mother. The Demon Queen.

The ex–Demon Queen.

Too bad he could never be ex–demon spawn.

His mother had besieged him from birth with her fear that her abhorred enemy, the Aal Shalaans, starting with her husband and his older sons, would taint him, the “true part” of her. She’d made sure they had no part of him. Starting with his name.

From the moment she’d laid eyes on her newborn sons, she’d seen that he was the one who was a replica of her, hadn’t bothered thinking of a name for his twin. Their father had named Jalal, proclaiming him the “grandeur” of the Aal Shalaans. Jalal was doing a bang-up job proving their father’s ambitious claims right.

She’d named him. Haidar, the lion, one type of king. She’d been plotting to make him one that far back. When she’d known it was impossible. Through non-insurrectionist means, that was.

As a princess of Azmahar, she’d entered into the marriage of state with the king of Zohayd knowing her half-Azmaharian sons would not be in line to the throne. As per succession rules, only purely Zohaydan princes could play the game of thrones.

So she’d plotted, apparently from day one, to take Zohayd apart, then put it back together with herself in charge. She would have then been able to dictate new laws that would make her sons the only ones eligible for the throne, with him being first in line.

Two years after her conspiracy had been discovered and aborted, he still had moments when denial choked him up.

She could have caused a war. She would have, gladly, if it had gained her her objective.

She’d stolen the Pride of Zohayd jewels that conferred the right to rule the kingdom. She’d planned to give them to Prince Yusuf Aal Waaked, ruling prince of Ossaylan, so that he could dethrone her husband and claim the throne. Having only a daughter and being unable to sire another child, he would have named her sons his successors.

Haidar imagined she would have gone all black widow on Yusuf right after his sitting on the throne in the joloos, intimidated her brother—the newly abdicated king of Azmahar—into abdicating then, and put him, her firstborn by seven minutes, on the throne of a new superkingdom comprising Zohayd, Azmahar and Ossaylan.

She’d had such heartfelt convictions for such a heartlessly ambitious plan. When he’d pleaded with her to tell him where she’d hidden the jewels, to save Zohayd from chaos and herself from a traitor’s fate, she’d calmly, lovingly, stated those convictions as facts.

After heavy initial damage, her plans were for the ultimate good. For who better than he to unite these kingdoms, lead them to a future of power and prosperity instead of the ruin they were heading for under the infirm hands of old fools and their deficient successors? He, the embodiment of the best of the Aal Munsooris? She was certain he’d one day surpass even her in everything.

He’d heard that before. According to Jalal, he already had.

But no matter what he’d thought her capable of, what she’d done had surpassed his worst predictions. And as usual, without obtaining his consent, let alone his approval, she’d executed her plans with seamless precision to force his “deserved greatness” on him. She’d been positive he’d come to appreciate what she’d done, embrace the role she’d tailored for him.

And she could have so easily succeeded.

Even Amjad, his oldest brother and now king of Zohayd, who suspected everything that moved, hadn’t suspected her. As queen of Zohayd, she had seemed to have as much to lose as anyone if her husband was deposed. Ingenious.

He recognized that convoluted, long-term premeditation in his own mind and methods. But he consciously confined it to business, driving himself to the top of his tech-development and investment field in record-breaking time. His mother used her intricate intelligence with every breath.

“Please, fasten your seat belt, Your Highness.”

He swept his gaze up to the flight attendant. He’d almost forgotten he was on board his private jet.

The beautiful brunette could have said, Please, unfasten me, for all the invitation in her eyes. She’d jump on the least measure of response in his attitude.

He regarded her with his signature impassiveness, which had frozen hardened tycoons and brazen media people in their tracks.

Her color heightened. “We are landing.”

He clicked his seat belt into place. “As I gathered.”

She tried again. “Will you be needing anything?”

“La, Shokrun.” He looked away, dismissing her.

Once she’d turned, he watched her undulate away, sighed.

He would order Khaleel to assign her a desk job. And to confine his immediate personnel to men, or women at least twenty years his senior.

He exhaled again, peered from his window at Durrat Al Sahel—the Pearl of the Coast—Azmahar’s capital. From up here he had an eagle-eye view of the crisis he’d been called upon to wrestle with.

He’d thought he’d seen the worst of it in the oil spill off the coast. The ominous blackness tainting the emerald waters was terrible enough. But seeing the disorganization and deterioration even from this altitude was a candid demonstration of how deep the problem ran. How hard it would be to fix.

His heart tightened as the pilot started the final descent, bringing more details into sharper focus.

Azmahar. The other half of his heritage. Decaying.

What a crushing pity.

He hadn’t thought he’d ever see this place again. The day Roxanne had walked out on him, he’d left Azmahar swearing he’d never return.

He wasn’t only returning—he’d promised to consider the kingship candidacy. He’d made the proviso that his return would be unannounced, that he’d make his own covert investigations and reach a decision uninfluenced by more sales pitches or pleas.

He was still stunned he’d conceded that much. From all evidence, this was one catastrophic mistake in the making.

Life really had a way of giving a man reason to commit the unreasonable.

After his fatherland had rejected him, his motherland claimed to be desperate for his intervention. Investigating if he could be the one to offer it salvation was near irresistible.

He also had to admit, the idea of redeeming himself was too powerful a lure. No matter that logic separated him from his mother’s treachery, the fact remained. Her actions had skewered into his very identity, which had already been compromised from birth by her influence. Her most outrageous transgression had tarnished his honor and image, no matter what his family said. Most of them, anyway.

Jalal had less favorable views. Of course.

Jalal. Another reason he was considering this.

His twin was another candidate for the throne, after all.

Then there was Rashid. His and Jalal’s best friend turned bitterest rival. And yet another candidate.

Was it any wonder he was tempted?

Trouncing those two blowhards was an end unto itself.

So whether it was duty, redemption or rivalry that drove him, each reason was imperative on its own.

But none of them was the true catalyst that had him Azmahar-bound now.

Roxanne was.

She was back in Azmahar.

He took it as the fates nudging him to stop trying not to think of her. As he’d done for eight years. Eight years.

Way past high time he ended her occupation of his memories, her near monopoly of his bitterness. He had enough unfinishable business. He would lay the ghost of her share of it to rest.

He would damn well exorcise it.

“… repercussions and resolutions, Ms. Gleeson?”

Roxanne blinked at the distinguished, silver-haired man looking expectantly at her.

Sheikh Aasem Al-Qadi had been her liaison to the interim government since she’d started this post two months ago. And she had to concentrate to remember who he was, and what he—hell, what she—was doing here.

She cleared her throat and mind. “As you know, this affects the whole region and many intertwining international entities, each with their own complexities, interests and ideas about how to handle the situation. A rushed study would only cause more misinformation and complications.”

The man raised an elegant hand adorned with an onyx-set silver ring, his refined face taking on an even more genial cast. “The last thing I intend to do is rush you, Ms. Gleeson.” And if he did, he knew nothing about her if he thought an inperson nudge would make her step up her efforts. She and her team had been flat out digging in that sea. “I’m merely hoping for a more hands-on role in your investigations, and if it’s available, a look at a timeline for your intended work plan.”

“I assure you, you’ll be the first to know when a realistic timeline can be set.” She tried on the smile she’d long practiced, formal and friendly at once, which always gained her cooperation. “And my team could certainly do with the highlevel insider’s perspective you’d bring to the table.”

After much cordiality and what she felt was a reaffirmed faith in her effectiveness, Sheikh Al-Qadi left her office.

She leaned against the door she’d closed behind him, groaned.

What was she doing here?

So this post was a politico-economic analyst’s holy grail. And she had been bred for the role. But it had brought her back to where she could stumble upon Haidar.

She’d been certain she wouldn’t. She’d kept track of him, and he’d never come back to Azmahar. And then, she was no longer the girl who’d fallen head over heels in love with him. She was one of the most sought-after analyst-strategists in the field now, Azmahar being her third major post. If the “ax lodged in the head,” as they said here, and she did meet him, she’d treat him with the neutrality and diplomacy of the professional that she was.

But she wouldn’t have risked it if not for her mother.

When all you had in the way of family was your mother, a word from her wielded unfair power. She hadn’t stood a chance when her mother had shed tears as she’d insisted that this post, an expanded version of her old job, was her redemption, the perfect apology for the way she’d been driven from Azmahar in shame.

When Roxanne had argued that they should have been reinstating her, she’d revealed she had been offered the job but didn’t want to come out of retirement. It was Roxanne who was building her career, who was in the unique position of possessing her mother’s knowledge along with her own fresh perspective and intrepid methods. She’d been the second on the two-candidate shortlist for this post, and the only one with the skill set to make a difference in it now.

She’d capitulated, signed on and packed up. And she’d been excited. There was so much to fix in Azmahar.

According to Azmaharians, the one thing King Nedal had done right since his joloos decades ago was arrange his sister Sondoss’s marriage to King Atef Aal Shalaan, winning them Zohayd’s alliance. Which had nearly been severed by Sondoss herself, the snake-in-the-grass mother of that premium serpent, Haidar.

Roxanne had no doubt Sondoss’s exile-instead-of-imprisonment verdict had been wheedled out of the Aal Shalaans by Haidar, who could seduce the stripes off a tiger.

But when Amjad had become king, everyone had thought the first thing he’d do was deal Azmahar the killing blow of letting go of its proverbial hand. He hadn’t owed his ex-stepmother’s homeland any mercy. Strangely enough, he hadn’t ended the alliance.

Then, one month after she’d arrived, all hell had broken loose.

The arrogant fool of a now ex–crown prince had voted against Zohayd for an armed intervention in a neighboring country in the region’s latest defense summit, snapping the tenuous tolerance Amjad had maintained for Azmahar. And the kingdom that had been held together by the glue of its ally’s clout had come apart.

Just as Azmahar was gasping from the alienation, catastrophe struck. An explosion in one of its major oil drills caused a massive spill off its shores. Unable to deal with the upheavals, in response to the national and regional outcry, the overwhelmed and disgraced king had abdicated.

His brothers and sons, held as responsible, would no longer succeed him. Azmahar was in chaos, and Roxanne was one of those called upon to contain the situation, internally and internationally, as the most influential clans started fighting among themselves.

Out of the anarchy, consolidations had formed, splitting the kingdom into three fronts. Each backed one man for new king.

One of the candidates was Haidar.

Which meant he would come back. And she would stumble upon him.

She wanted that as much as she wanted a hole in the heart.

Then again, he’d already pulverized hers.

She cursed under her breath. This was ancient history, and she was probably blowing it out of proportion, anyway. She’d been a twenty-one-year-old only child who’d been sheltered into having the emotional resilience of a fourteen-year-old.

And man, had he been good. Phenomenal wouldn’t do him justice.

It had only been expected that she’d gotten addicted, physically, emotionally. Then she’d woken up. End of story.

She’d moved on, had eventually engaged in other relationships. One could have worked, too. That it hadn’t had had nothing to do with that mega-endowed, sizzling-blooded, frigid-hearted creature.

God. She was being cornered into defending her feelings and failures by a memory. Worse. By an illusion. Beyond pathetic.

She pushed away from the door, strode to her desk, snatched up her briefcase and purse, and headed out of the office.

It took her twenty minutes to drive across the city. One thing this place had was an amazing transportation system. Zohaydan—planned, funded and constructed.

It would take a miracle to pull Azmahar’s fat out of the fire without Zohayd. No wonder Azmaharians were desperate to get their former ally back in their corner. And a good percentage of them had decided on the only way to do that. Put the embodiment of the Zohayd/Azmahar merger on the throne.

But as people in general were addicted to dispute, and Azmaharians were no different, they couldn’t agree on which one. But disunity would serve them well now. Going after the two specimens in existence doubled their odds of having one end up on the throne.

She turned through the remote-controlled gates of the highest-end residential complex in the capital. This job came with so many perks it … unsettled her. Luxury of this level always did.

When she’d asked for more moderate accommodations, she’d been assured the project’s occupancy had suffered from so many investors leaving the kingdom. They hoped her presence would stimulate renewed interest in the facility.

Seemed they’d been right. Since she’d moved in, the influx of tenants had tripled. One neighbor had told her her reputation, and her mother’s, had preceded her, and her presence had many investors feeling secure enough to trickle back to Azmahar, considering it a sign things would soon be put back on track.

Yeah. Sure. No pressure whatsoever.

But the “privilege” she dreaded was being at ground zero with every big shot who would grace the kingdom as the race for the throne began. Word was, none of the candidates had announced a position or plans to show up. That only made stumbling across Haidar a matter of later instead of sooner.

She would give anything for never.

But then, she would give anything for a number of things. Her mother with her. A father. Any family at all.

In minutes, she was entering the interior-decorating triumph of an apartment that spanned one-quarter of the thirty-thousand-foot thirtieth floor. She sighed in appreciation as fragrant coolness and calibrating lights enveloped her.

She headed for the shower, came out grinding her teeth a bit less harshly.

She would have thrived on rebuilding the kingdom’s broken political and economic channels. But now the Aal Shalaan “hybrids,” as they were called here, would feature heavily in this country’s future—and consequently, partly in hers. Contemplating that wasn’t conducive to her focus or peace of mind. And she needed both to deal with the barrage of information she had to weave into viable solutions. Even if a new king took the throne tomorrow, and he and Zohayd threw money and resources at Azmahar, it wouldn’t be effective unless they had a game plan …

An unfamiliar chime sundered the soundproof silence.

She started. Frowned. Then exhaled heavily.

Cherie was almost making her sorry she’d invited her to stay.

They’d been best friends when they’d gone to university here, and they’d kept in touch. Roxanne’s return had coincided with Cherie’s latest stormy split-up with her Azmaharian husband. She’d left everything behind, including credit cards.

After the height of the drama had passed, Roxanne should have rented her a place to stay while she sorted out her affairs.

Though she loved Cherie’s gregarious company, her energy and unpredictability, Cherie took her “creative chaos” a bit too far. She went through her environment like a tornado, leaving anything from clothes to laptops to mugs on the floor, dishes rotting in the sink, and she regularly forgot basic order-and-safety measures.

Seemed she’d forgotten her key now, too.

Grumbling, Roxanne stomped to the foyer, snarling when the bell clanged again. She pounced on the door, yanked it open. And everything screeched to a halt.

Her breath. Her heart. Her mind. The whole world.

Across her threshold …

Haidar.

Air clogged in her lungs. Everything blipped, swam, as the man she remembered in distressing detail moved with deadly, tranquil grace, leaned his left arm on her door frame. His gaze slid from her face down her body, making her feel as if he’d scraped every nerve ending raw, before returning to her sizzling eyes, a slow smile spreading across his painstakingly sculpted lips.

“You know, Roxanne, I’ve been wondering for eight years.”

The lazy, lethal melody emanating from his lips swamped her. His smile morphed into what a bored predator must give his prey before he finished it off with one swat.

“How soon after you left me did you find yourself a new regularly available stud? Or three?”

Two

Something finally flickered in Roxanne’s mind.

Not an actual thought. Just … Wow.

Wow. Over and over.

She didn’t know how long it took the loop of wows to fade, to allow their translation to filter through her gray matter.

So this was what eight years had made of Haidar Aal Shalaan.

Most men looked better in their thirties than they did in their twenties. Damn them. A good percentage improved still in their forties, and even fifties. The loss of the smoothness of youth seemed to define their maleness, infuse them with character.

In Haidar’s case, she’d thought there had been no room for improvement. At twenty-six he’d seemed to have already realized his potential for perfection.

But … wow. Had photographic evidence and her projections ever been misleading! He’d matured from the epitome of gorgeousness into force-of-nature-level manifestation of masculinity. Her imagination short-circuited trying to project what he’d look like, feel like, in another decade. Or three.

His body had bulked up with a distillation of symmetry and strength. His face had been carved with lines of untrammeled power and ruthlessness. He’d become a god of virility and sensuality, hewn from the essence of both. As harsh as the desert’s terrain, as menacing as its nights. And as brutally, searingly, freezingly magnificent.

Whatever softness had once gentled his beauty, warmed the frost she’d always suspected formed his core, had been obliterated.

“Well, Roxanne?” He cocked that perfectly formed head, sending the blue-black silk that rained to his as-dark collar sifting to one side. She would have shivered had her body been capable of even involuntary reactions. She could actually hear the sighing caress of thick, polished layers against as-soft material. Mockery tugged at his lips, enhanced the slant in his eyes. He could see, feel her reaction. Of course. He was triggering it at will. “I’ve had bets about which of us found a replacement faster.”

“Why bet on a sure thing? I had to settle in back home, reenroll in university before I started recruiting. That took time. All you had to do was order a stand-in—or rather a lie-in—from your waiting list that same day.”

His eyebrows shot up.

If he was surprised, it wasn’t any more than she was.

Where had all that come from?

Seemed she had more resentment bottled up than she’d known. And his appearance had shaken out all the steam. Good to depressurize and get it over with.

“Touché.” He inclined his head, his eyes filling with lethal humor. “I was in error. The subject of the bets shouldn’t have been how long until you found replacements, but how many you found. I was just being faithful in quoting your parting words when I said a stud or three. But from … intimate knowledge of the magnitude of your … needs, I would bet you’ve gone through at least thirty.”

Her first instinct was to take off his head with one slashing rejoinder. She swallowed the impulse, felt it scald her insides.

No matter how she hated his guts and his nerve in showing up on her doorstep, damn his incomparable eyes, he was important. Vital even. To Azmahar. To the whole damn mess. His influence was far-reaching, in the region and the world. And he had the right mix of genes in the bargain.

And then, she wasn’t just a woman who was indignant to find an ex-lover at her door unannounced, but also one of the main agents in smoothing out this crisis. Whether he became king or not, he could be—should be—a major component in the solution she would formulate. She should rein in further retorts, drag out the professional she prided herself had tamed her innate wildness and steer this confrontation away from petty one-upmanship.

Then she opened her mouth. “By the rate you were going through women when I was around, you must be in the vicinity of three hundred.” Before she could give herself a mental kick, the bedevilment in his smile rose, prodded her on instead. “What? I missed a zero? Is it closer to three thousand?”

He threw his head back and laughed.

Her heart constricted on what felt like a burning coal. The sound, the sight, was so merry, so magnificent, so—so … missed, even if she didn’t remember him laughing like this …

“You mean ‘regularly available’ … um, what is the feminine counterpart for stud? Nymph? Siren?” He leveled his gaze back at her, dark, rich, intoxicating laughter still revving deep in his expansive chest. “But that number would pose a logistical dilemma. Even the biggest harem would overflow with that many nubile bodies. Or did you mean three thousand in sequence?”

She glared at him. “I’m sure you can handle either a concurrent or a sequential scenario.”

He let out another laugh. “I knew I should have approached you for endorsements. But I also have to burst your bubble. Whatever tales you heard of my … exploits were wildly exaggerated. I had to prioritize, after all, and other lusts took precedence. Success, power, money. The drive to acquire and sustain those doesn’t mix well with deflating one’s libido in a steady supply of feminine arms. And then, time is not only all of the above, it is finite. You know how time-consuming women can be.”

Her lips twisted, with derision, with the twinge that still gripped her heart. “I don’t. I’m still playing for the same team.”

His eyes turned pseudo-amazed. “You never even … went on loan? I would have thought someone with your … needs wouldn’t mind widening her horizons where the pursuit of pleasure was concerned.”

“Why? Have you? Widened your horizons?”

He let out another bark of distressingly virile amusement. “How can I, when I’m a caveman who’s unable to develop beyond my programming? The only thing I managed was to take your advice—purged myself of any trace of ‘creepy territorial crap.’”

She reciprocated his razzing, sweeping his six-foot-five frame with disdain. By the time she came back to his eyes, she was kicking herself. It didn’t do a woman’s heart or hormones any good, getting a load of how his sculpted perfection filled, pushed, strained against his black-on-black clothes. Inviting touch, inciting madness …

She gritted her teeth against the moist heat spreading in her core. “And that must be the legendary eidetic memory some of you Aal Shalaans are said to possess. As if you need more blessings.”

He slid an imperturbable glance down the foot between them. “If you feel we’ve received more than our fair share, you can take up your grievance with the fates.” A sarcastic huff accompanied a head shake. “But if you think perfect recall is a blessing, you have evidently never been plagued by anything like it. True blessing lies in the ability to forget.”

Her heart squeezed with something that confused her. Regret? Sympathy? Empathy?

No. That would indicate she was responding to something he felt. And everyone knew that the ability to feel was not among his abilities or vulnerabilities.

She narrowed her eyes, more exasperated with the chink in her resolve than with him. “Come to think of it, it must be terrible to have an infallible memory. There must be so much you would have preferred to forget, or at least blur enough to rationalize and romanticize.”

All traces of devilry vanished as he thrust his hands into his pockets. Her gaze dragged from his stunning face down to the silky material stretching across the potency she remembered in omnisensory detail …

“I can certainly do with some blurring to take the edge off at times.” The predatory challenge flared again. “But one thing about possessing clarity that time doesn’t dull—I make one hell of an unforgiving enemy, if I do say so myself.”

She snorted. “Yeah. And I hear so many love you for it.”

“Does it look like I’d want or even abide ‘love’?”

His mock affront would have been irresistible if it wasn’t also overwhelmingly goading. She felt just a second away from venting her unearthed frustration in a gnawing, clawing physical attack on this unfeeling monolith!

She exhaled. “That simpering, useless sentiment, huh? No. From what I hear, you want only obedience, blind, mute and dumb.”

His smile was self-satisfaction itself. “And I get it, too. Very useful, and blessedly soothing, for someone in my position.”

“Your mother’s son to the last gene strand, aren’t you?”

“I like to think I’m the updated and improved version.”

His smirk made her want to drag him to her by the hair to taste those heartlessly sensual lips—and to bite them off.

Had he always been this … inflammatory?

He had been exasperating, unyielding in demanding his own way. And getting it. One way or another. Mainly one way. But she’d been so in love—or so in raging, blinding, enslaving lust—that the edge of fury his overriding tactics kept simmering beneath the blissful surface had only made everything she felt for him more explosive.

But now the addiction had been cured. Now that she knew what he was without a trace of the “rationalizing or romanticizing” she’d been guilty of heavily employing, she was reacting to him as she should have all along.

Yeah? With thinly suppressed hostility overlying a barely curbed resurgence of lust?

“Invite me in, Roxanne.”

Her heart choked out another salvo of arrhythmia.

The electrifying invocation he made of his demand, her name.

She swallowed, trying to extricate herself from his influence, damning him and herself for how effortless it was for him, what a struggle it was for her. “You … you want to come in?”

“No, I came to conduct a verbal duel on your doorstep.”

He moved forward and she surged to abort the step that would have taken him over her threshold. “I couldn’t care less what you came to do. But said duel is done. Not so nice of you to drop by, Prince Aal Shalaan. Hope I don’t see you again.”

He resumed his former position, feet braced farther apart, hands in pockets again. “Tsk. All those reports lauding your ability to deal with the most thorny situations and the most exasperating individuals must have been exaggerated.”

“No one factored you in when they were gauging thorny exasperation. Even my super diplomacy powers have a limit.”

“Or maybe I’m your kryptonite.” His smile was now the essence of patience. A hunter with unlimited time to set up his quarry’s downfall. “As much as I enjoyed our opening skirmish out here, I would continue our battle in a more private setting. For your sake, really. You’re the one who lives here. Surely you don’t want your neighbors to witness our … escalations?”

“Since those won’t occur, there’s nothing for them to witness. Nothing but your departing back.” She started to shut the door.

The polished, maple surface met a palm with two-hundred-pounds-plus of sinew, muscle and maleness behind it.

“You know who I am, right?”

Her eyes widened. “You’re pulling rank?”

“You think I use my status to get my way? How boring and juvenile would that be?”

“If you’re not referring to being the all-powerful Prince of Two Kingdoms, what the hell was that threat about?”

“No threat. Just statement of fact. Take all the trappings away and who am I?”

The most magnificent male in history.

Out loud she seethed. “A huge pain?”

The look he gave her had all her hairs standing on end. “The son of the queen of bitches.”

She stared at him. She couldn’t agree more about his mother. But she hadn’t thought he had that brutal clarity about her, either, let alone would admit it.

She exhaled. “That you are.”

Unperturbed, even satisfied by her agreement, his smile widened, raising the voltage of her distress. “So you realize how far I’ll go to gain my objectives. Or do you need a demonstration?”

The seventy-five-hundred-square-foot apartment at her back closed in on her.

“Why is coming in even an objective? If I’ve aroused your confrontational beast, tell it to go back to sleep. We’ve used up all the digs we can make at each other. Anything else would be redundant, and neither of us likes to waste time.”

His shrug was dismissal itself. “First, we’re just getting warmed up. Second, surely you don’t think I’ll allow another abrupt ending between us? Eight years ago, you took me by surprise. And I was young and soft. Third, that was a rhetorical question, right? About why it’s an objective to get inside … your personal space? You do look in the mirror on occasion? And you have an idea of how you look now?”

For the first time, she focused on how she must look. How she felt. Tiny and defenseless without her towering heels, business clothes and makeup, with her hair drying in a rioting jungle around her shoulders. With the added vulnerability of being just a bathrobe away from total nakedness.

She could almost feel his gaze slipping beneath the terry cloth to explore, reminisce and appraise the changes eight years had wrought in the flesh he’d once thoroughly possessed and pleasured.

Judging he’d disrupted her to the desired level, he gestured, encompassing her. “Add all that to the delights of your tongue of mass destruction, and you’re wondering about my motives?”

She wrinkled her nose. “Quote, ‘How creepy can you get,’ unquote. You think I’ll invite a man twice my size, twenty times as strong and two million times as powerful in every other way into my ‘personal space,’ after he’s made his lewd intentions clear?”

His face lost all lightness. “You think you won’t be safe with me?”

Haidar might be many things, but to women he would always be master through pleasure, not pain; seduction, not coercion.

Unable to get rid of him that way, she exhaled. “No. But you are trying to persist your way in when I don’t want you here.”

A smile transformed his face back to the supreme male who knew the exact level of estrogen overproduction he commanded in females. “You do. I remember, in unfailing detail, how you want, Roxanne. My knowledge of your mind may be deficient, especially with eight years of maturity and experience, but your body hasn’t changed, and I know everything about it. I can sense its every nuance, decipher its every signal.”

She wrestled with the overwhelming urge to knee him.

Knowledge glittered in his eyes, threatened to snap her control. “My sudden appearance rattled you. That made you defensive, and that made you angry. You want me to go only so you can regroup.”

One little kneeing. Surely it wouldn’t be too damaging. To her position.

His grin was designed to loosen her restraint another notch. “But you can get yourself together while I’m around. I’ll make myself a cup of tea until you do. You can even dress if you must. If you need the fortification of clothes, that is.”

“How condescending can you get?”

He inclined his head. “Condescending is several steps up from creepy. I must be evolving after all.”

“The jury will remain out on that.” He leaned more comfortably against her door frame, as if preparing to spend hours hanging around until he achieved his “objective.” She looked pointedly at the foot strategically placed across the threshold. “But I still advise you to leave now. You need your beauty sleep to deal with what awaits you here. I heard you were approached for a job. The top job.”

His expression remained unchanged, but she could feel his surprise. And dismay. He had hoped that was still a secret. Why?

He finally jerked one formidable shoulder. “News still travels faster than a speeding bullet around here. As well as rumors, exaggerations and fabrications.”

“This isn’t any of those. It’s why you’re here.”

His lips quirked. “And if I tell you I’m here for you?”

“I’d say that’s bull. I’ll also issue you further advice. My neighbors are always coming and going and receiving tons of visitors at all times. You’re a famous figure, and I bet if someone sees you standing on the doorstep of a woman in a bathrobe—one who’s leaving you standing there, to boot—the footage will be on the internet in minutes and will go viral in hours. Not a prudent way to start your campaign for the throne.”

He pretended to worry for a moment before he grinned again. “See? You progressed to giving me strategy advice. You can do that much better when we slip into a more comfortable … environment.”

She exhaled. “Very mature. Go away, Haidar.”

He folded his arms over his chest. “Why?”

Why? “You want the reasons alphabetized?”

“Just pull out a random one.”

“Because I want you to.”

“We already established that’s a false claim.”

“I have no interest in what you established, and no intention of arguing its merit.”

“Your prerogative. Mine is waiting until you give me a reason I can accept.”

“Who says you have to accept anything?”

He cocked his head, his steel-dawn eyes taking on a thoughtful cast. “Still getting back at me for ‘summoning you like a lackey’ and daring to presume I have a ‘claim’ to you?”

She balled her fists. “Use that infallible memory of yours and remember that there was nothing to get back at you for. It just …”

“Put you off. Aih, I remember. But you can’t have been cringing ever since. And you’re not doing so now. This is the very healthy reaction of the hot-blooded spitfire I was afraid had disappeared, from all reports of the imperturbable goddess of analysis and mediation you’ve become.”

This was so unfair. That he could debate as superlatively as he did everything else. But she was no slouch in that department.

Before she could find anything to say to back up that claim, he said, “With that out of the way, repeat after me. ‘It’s all in the past, and will you please come in, Haidar?’”

“It’s all in the past, and will you please go away, Haidar?”

He unfolded his arms, braced his hands on his hips. “You think it’s a possibility I will? I’m beginning to lose faith in the clarity of your insight and the accuracy of your projections.”

She gritted her teeth. Exchanging barbs was like quicksand. The more she said, the further she sank. She’d say no more.

He gave her one last brooding glance. Then he turned around.

He—he was … leaving?

She watched him walk away, got a more comprehensive view of his … assets as he receded. Just looking at him had longing clamping her chest.

He was messing with her. Haidar didn’t give up. He didn’t know how.

But he was now at the far end of the hall that led to the elevators. He was really leaving.

Before he made the left that would take him out of sight, he stopped. Her heart revved a jumble of beats. Would he …?

He turned, rang the bell of her farthest neighbor.

What the hell …?

Without stopping, he continued retracing his steps, stopped by the second-farthest apartment, ringing its bell, too. Without slowing down this time, he did the same at her closest neighbor’s.

Then he moved to the middle of the hall, semifacing her, calmly sweeping his gaze across all the doors.

Before his actions could sink in, one door opened. Two seconds later, another did. The last followed.

Then her neighbors—and, just her luck, the female components only—stood staring at Haidar. Their wariness at having their bells rung without a preceding intercom alert turned to amazement as recognition dawned.

Haidar let them marinate in it before he said, “Sorry for disturbing you, ladies. I wasn’t sure which apartment I wanted.”

Roxanne’s jaw dropped. Or dropped farther. Where had that accent come from? He sounded like a redneck!

“Oh, my God! You’re him!” Susan Gray, the forty-something CEO of the Azmaharian branch of a multinational construction company, babbled like a teenager. “You’re Prince Haidar Aal Shalaan!”

Haidar shook his regal head, making his mane undulate in a swish of silk—on purpose, she was sure. “Oh, I’m just his doppelgänger. I was paid five grand online by some lady who wants to act out her fantasy of dominating him. I usually come for less, but I charged extra since she wants to get real kinky. I was given this address, the floor, but not the number of the condo. So which of you has a thing for this Haidar guy?”

Her neighbors gaped at him, at each other, then finally, at her. She was the one in the bathrobe, after all.

Her brain was too zapped to function. But she had to. If she didn’t do something, this … this … madman would demolish her image. And his own.

She staggered out of her apartment, her perspiring bare feet making her advance on the polished marble precarious.

He watched her with feigned uncertainty. “Oh, it’s you?” His gaze swept her with what looked like earnest assessment. “I somehow thought you wouldn’t be a babe. So why can’t you find guys to dominate the regular way? Hey … you’re not nuts, are you?”

He looked to her neighbors for confirmation as she stumbled the last step to him, grabbed him by the lapel of his jacket.

He pretended to ward her off. “Whoa, lady. The deal is degradation in private. Public displays will cost you extra.”

She grimaced at her neighbors, expending all her restraint on not thumping the huge lout. “Sorry, ladies. Haidar is an old friend, regretfully. I left him eight years ago without a sense of humor, but it seems he’s contracted some terminal prankster disease. He thinks this is a fun way to say long time no see.”

She was dragging him toward her apartment while she talked, for the second time in her life wishing grounds yawned open and swallowed people. The other time had also involved him.

He resisted her, looked back at her neighbors imploringly. “I don’t know this dame. Is she dangerous?” She smacked him hard on the arm. “Hey! We agreed on domination, not abuse!”

The son of a literal royal bitch was making the situation worse with every word out of his mouth.

Who was she kidding? It was irretrievable already. God.

She could think of nothing to say but “Shut up, Haidar.”

He looked down at her, eyes morphing from vapid porn-actor mode to a dozen devils’ cunning. “I’m a working dude, lady. Show me some respect. When I’m not on the clock, that is.”

Her neighbors’ expressions kept yo-yoing from the verge of bursting into laughter to wondering if their neighbor did have a kinky—or worse—side to her.

“You win, okay?” she grumbled for his ears only. “Now stop with the act, take your bows and let the ladies get on with their evening.”

He raised his voice for all to hear. “So you’ll pay extra if I start pretending I’m this Haidar guy right now?”

“Ooh!” She shoved him ahead of her across her threshold.

This time he surrendered to her manhandling, clung to the edge of the door, addressed them over her head. “Do you mind checking up on me in an hour’s time?”

She shot her flabbergasted neighbors another dying-of-embarrassment glance, dragged him away from the door, slammed it shut.

Then she rounded on him.

His grin lit up his impossibly gorgeous face. “I did warn you. Next time, give in gracefully.”

She stomped her heel over his foot. It felt like ramming rock-enclosed steel. Pain shot through her whole leg, had her hopping on one foot yelping.

He caught her by the arms, steadied her, chuckling. “Go put on your most lethal stilettos and we’ll try it again.”

Grimacing, she punched his chest, hard. “You reckless jerk.”

He groaned, definite pleasure darkening the deep, rich sound.

So the bastard hadn’t been lying about his predilections after all. The savage, dominating edge to his desire used to thrill her. But maybe he didn’t mind exchanging roles. Something to keep in mind …

The trajectory of her thoughts made her whack him again.

He bit his lip with what looked like intense enjoyment, his eyes sparkling like turbulent seas in a full moon. “Is that the political adviser’s indignation? How sweet of you to care.”

“I care about my effectiveness. As for you, by the time this gets out, and boy will it, you can kiss the throne goodbye.”

“Fair enough. As long as I can finally kiss you hello.”

He dragged her up until only her toes touched the hardwood floor, swooped his head down to hers and did just that.

At the first touch of his lips, she spiraled like a shot-down plane into the past. All her being was captured into a reenactment of that first kiss that had swept her away on a tide of addiction. He took her mouth with that same lazy savoring laced with coiled ferocity. Her body had learned then what kind of heart-stopping pleasure such deceptively patient coaxing would lead to, had burst into flames at his merest touch, fire raging higher with each exposure.

The conflagration was fiercer now, with the fuel of anger, of eight years of repression. This was wrong, insane. And it only made her want it, want him, more than her next breath.

Gravity loosened its hold on her, relinquished her to the effortless levitation of his arms. The world spun in hurried thuds, then she was sinking into the firmness of a couch as his weight sank over her. Her moans rose, confessions of the arousal that had fractured the shackles of hostility and memory and logic, drowned them and her.

The rough heat of him electrified her as her bathrobe and his shirt came undone. His chiseled, roughened steel flesh crushed her swollen breasts, teasing her turgid nipples into a frenzy. His bulk and power settled between her spread thighs, and he ground against her molten core, plunged into her gasping mouth.

She writhed to accommodate him, enfold him, the decadence of him on her tongue, lacing her every sense.

Suddenly he severed their meld. She cried out as he rose above her. His gaze scalded her, his lips tight with grim sensuality.

“I should have listened to what my body knows about yours and done this the moment you opened the door.”

His arrogance should have made her buck him off. But lust gnawed her, ruled her. Hunger for him, as he was now, memorized yet unknown, the same yet changed beyond comprehension, brimming with contradictions, seethed its demand for satisfaction.

He’d come here for this possession, this closure. She’d been aching for it, too. She’s only be hurting herself if she denied—

A slam sent the crystal on the mahogany table beside them emitting a harmony of hums, felt like being drenched in ice water.

Cherie.

“You won’t believe who I found waiting for me. Ayman in all his glory, wanting to talk. Why now, I ask you …”

Cherie’s prattling trailed off. Roxanne met her eyes over Haidar’s shoulders, would have giggled at her friend’s deer-in-the-headlights expression if she weren’t as distressed.

If Cherie had been any later, Haidar would have been buried deep inside her, thrusting her to oblivion.

Even now, with horror at her actions crashing over her, her body still whimpered for his completion.

“Cherie …” was all she could wheeze.

“Uh … I … God, I didn’t mean—” Cherie stopped, before spluttering again, “I never thought you’d … you’d …”

She’d never thought she’d find her cerebral friend beneath a lion of a man, naked and wrapped around him, in full view for her to see as soon as she walked in the door.

Haidar began to rise off her. She stared up into his face as it changed from ferocious lust to deprecating resignation.

“A flatmate, Roxanne? Seriously?”

“What am I doing still standing here?” Cherie babbled as she ran inside. “Sorry, guys. Please, carry on. I’m not really here!”

By the time they heard Cherie’s bedroom door slam, he was on his feet, buttoning his shirt. For one mad moment, she didn’t see why they couldn’t take Cherie’s advice.

Then sanity lodged back into her brain.

She scrambled up, pulled her bathrobe tight around her.

He shook his head at her far-too-late modesty as he turned away.

At the door, he half turned again, his eyes hooded with stillsimmering desire. “We’ll meet again, ya naari.”

She lurched. His fire.

She’d never thought she’d hear that again. From him. Or ever. She’d long thought her fire had been extinguished.

“But next time, it will be on my turf. And on my terms.”

He touched his tongue to the lip she’d bitten, as if tasting her passion. Then, with one last inflaming look, he whispered, “Until then.”

Three

“I’d give an arm to know your secret, Roxanne.”

Roxanne stared at Kareemah Al Sabahi. Hers was the third and last door she’d knocked on to explain away Haidar’s shenanigans.

She hadn’t been up to facing another day, let alone those who’d witnessed Haidar’s innovative blackmail tactics. But damn him to an as-novel hell, she had to live among them, as he’d said.

Kareemah was the only one who hadn’t needed explanations, having watched developments through her intercom camera. Cherie’s arrival had had her mind going into hyperdrive. But Haidar had left minutes later, aborting her visions of threesomes. She’d opened her door, hoping for an explanation, when he’d suddenly turned. In his real voice, he’d said he hoped she’d enjoyed the show, had her giggling like a fool as he’d bowed to her before he’d walked away.

“I mean, you’re gorgeous and all, but it can’t only be that. You have to have a secret. Women everywhere would kill for a tip.”

Roxanne shook her head. She wasn’t up to deciphering neighbors’ riddles. Now that Haidar had rematerialized in her life with the force of a live warhead and left promising further destruction, her brain was officially fried.

Either that, or Kareemah was talking gibberish. Which was an imminent possibility. The woman had been exposed to Haidar, too.

“So what do you do to get gods knocking down your door?”

“Uh, Kareemah, if you mean Haidar, I already explained—”

“And I might have bought you explaining one god away. But how do you explain another?”

Suddenly, she realized Kareemah wasn’t looking at her. Her eyes were glued to a point in the distance.

Someone was standing behind her.

She whirled around. And her heart hit the base of her throat.

No. Not another Aal Shalaan “hybrid.”

Jalal.

He was standing by the door she’d left open, in a charcoal suit with a shirt the color of his golden eyes, hands languidly in his pockets, looking as if he’d teleported off a GQ magazine cover.

That might not be far-fetched. She hadn’t heard the whir of the elevator or the fall of his footsteps.

For the second time in less than twenty-four hours, one of the two men she never wanted to see again had managed to sneak up on her.

Kareemah tugged on her arm, made her stagger around. “Like we say here, ‘the neighbor takes precedence in charity.’ I anxiously await a glimpse at your methods.”

With that, she cast Jalal another starstruck glance and stepped back into her apartment.

Roxanne stared at the door Kareemah had just closed, her mind in a jumble.

“Koll hadi’s’seneen, kammetman’nait ashoofek menejdeed.” All these years, how I wished to see you again.

Her heart squeezed so hard she felt it would implode.

Suddenly fury spurted inside it, incinerating all shock and nostalgia. She wasn’t letting another Aal Shalaan twin mess her up all over again. She’d hit her limit last night.

She turned, hoping she didn’t look as shaky as she felt. “If it isn’t one of the region’s two most eligible bastards.”

The warmth infusing his face didn’t waver as he slipped his hands out of his pockets, spread his arms in a gesture that had always had her running into them. “Ullah yehay’yeeki, ya Roxanne.”

Ullah yehay’yeeki—literally, may God hail you, one of the not-quite-translatable colloquial praises he’d once lavished on her, usually when she’d said something that had resonated with his demanding intellect and wit. Which had been almost every time she’d opened her mouth. They’d been so alike, so in tune, it had been incredible. It had also turned out to be a lie.

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