by Lora Leigh
“What of the less than charming Mr. Connor? Is he still fucking Khalid’s trash up the ass or has he fulfilled his depravity and Khalid’s, by actually taking Khalid like the animals they both are?” Azir watched her like a hungry wolf.
Paige could feel a chill of dread race up her spine as her skin crawled with distaste at the lustful interest in his gaze. Each time he mentioned Khalid and Shane sharing Marty, or any reference to their sexual activities, hunger flashed across his face.
She shook her head warily. “You must have the Shane Connor I know confused with someone else, not to mention the Khalid and Marty I know. Are you sure you haven’t been sniffing the camel glue a little too often?.”
Azir snorted sarcastically, his lips curling in disgust. “I should have killed him and his whoring mother when I had the chance. When I realized she was as faithless as the wind.”
“All women are just whores to you, aren’t they, Azir?” Good common sense was overridden by the continued insults to her gentle, compassionate mother.
Despite the time she had been locked in these rooms, raped nightly and forced to conceive the child of her rapist, still, she had adored her son and lavished him with love, just as she had her daughter.
“Your mother is a whore,” he snarled. “She shares herself as her son shares the diseased flesh of his women. She corrupted my son’s mind and his soul and turned him into a depraved animal.”
“After you kidnapped and raped her, and forced her to marry you I’d say you’re the monster and the animal, not my mother or my brother,” Paige retorted scathingly. She could practically feel the knife against her tongue now.
“Your father stole what was mine. He is the kidnapper, the criminal. From my very home he tore my wife from my arms and turned her against me.” He raged, his arms lifting, fingers curling to fists as he brought them to his chest as though in supplication. “Do you not understand what they did to me?
To my child? They destroyed us.”
“She was running for her life when my uncle and my father found her,” she argued desperately.
“She risked death to escape you, Azir. No one had to tear her from your arms because she had already done it for herself. She risked her life and that of her baby to get away from you, Mustafa!” Hatred.
It was like a disease.
It overrode terror just enough to keep her from shutting her mouth and being prudent. Her temper was getting the best of her. It was her curse. She was a nice person, she really was, until someone ignorant decided to force that ignorance in her face, and then she just couldn’t hold back.
“She belongs to me!” he screamed, his eyes widening, becoming crazed as he surged forward before she could escape him.
He caught her off guard as he backhanded her with what she was certain had to be the full force he possessed. It was enough force to make her feel as if the blow had disintegrated every bone in her head.
Lights exploded before her eyes as she felt herself all but fly across the room to collapse against the stone floor. Her head was ringing with a thousand cymbals, her gaze dizzy as she lost her breath. She felt herself trying to pass out from the coppery taste of her own blood.
The taste filled her mouth, and in a distant, horror-filled part of her mind Paige realized that this was the first time in her life that she had ever been struck.
“You are a disrespectful little harlot, just as your mother was. But she learned her place, and you will learn yours. Or you will die as I should have killed her.” He stood over her, raging down at her like a maniac.
“She escaped you though, didn’t she?” She wheezed as she fought to breathe through the pain, her arms shaking as she tried to brace them under her. “She hates you, Azir. She hates you so much she’d kill you herself if she could.”
If she was going to die, then she would be damned if she wouldn’t inflict just as many insults as she could drag out of her ringing, pain-dazed mind.
“I could break you!” He sounded like a wild animal as she tried to focus on him. “I should show you how easy it is to break a little whore such as yourself. I could make you beg to die. Beg to call your mother a whore to her face just to make the pain cease.”
“I’d kill myself first,” she snarled back at him. She tried to brace herself against the floor, her arm losing strength and giving up on her as she fell to the floor once again.
A second later vicious fingers were curling into her hair, dragging her to her knees as she screamed.
Her struggles were weak, ineffective. She hadn’t managed to get her bearings from that blow yet or the agonizing pain still roiling through her senses, and the strength was just slow returning, she told herself.
She could feel the knotted sheet between her breasts slipping. Suddenly, the knowledge that she would be naked before him seemed as bad as being raped by him. Someone had already undressed her, that violation was enough. She sure as hell had no intention of allowing him to see her again, while she was conscious.
She struggled to grip the sheet and hold it to her as Azir, gripping her arms, jerked her to her feet and began shaking her viciously. Her head jerked dangerously on her shoulders as she tried to dig her nails into his arms, but she was weak and dizzy.
“I trained that little bitch, just as I’ll train you.” With the last word she felt the strength gather in his arms and a second later he had flung her away from him. Hard.
She wasn’t going to be able to break her fall.
Paige braced herself as she lost her grip on the sheet. This one was really going to hurt and there was no way to stop it.
Hell, she was going to be naked in front of Azir Mustafa.
A sob tore from her throat as she felt herself flying. Fear struck every nerve in her body a millisecond before her flight abruptly ended.
Strong hands caught her, pulling her against a hard, warm body as the sheet was simultaneously straightened around her nakedness.
Abram!
Her fingers curled against his arm, feeling the softness of cotton over his flesh as he held her to him, the warmth of his body wrapping around her.
He was here. Finally. He hadn’t really deserted her. Could he control Azir? How long would it take him to get her a T-shirt and jeans? Panties would be nice. She didn’t like running around without her drawers.
Fractured thoughts continued to race through her mind as her senses spun violently.
“Are you okay, precious?” He held her against him, his head bending to whisper gently at her ear, his voice rough with rage and regret as she tried to lift her head, which felt as if it were teetering on her shoulders.
Hysterical amusement threatened to escape in a gale of laughter as she tried to hold her head straight. “Make the room stop moving, Abram.” She blinked back at him. “This sucks.”
“It’s okay, baby.” His voice was a gentle murmur. “I promise you, everything’s going to be okay. I want you to go with Tariq for now, though. He’ll take care of you until I’m finished here. Will you do that, Paige? Go with Tariq, sweetheart.”
“No! I want to go home.” Her fingers curled demandingly into the long, cotton tuniclike shirt he wore as she forced her eyes to focus, forced herself to find whatever little strength was left in her legs.
“Call Khalid or Papa. They’ll come for me.” She wasn’t about to stay here a moment longer than she had to. “This is insane. Get me out of here.”
Her vision was finally clearing, the dizzying blurriness slowly evaporating to focus on the tormented, tortured expression on his face.
Black eyes glowed in feral rage as his face seemed curved from stone into lines of brutal disillusionment.
“Go with Tariq, first, Paige.” He gripped her arms and eased her from him before moving her in Tariq’s direction.
“No. I won’t leave you alone with him.” She stared up at him, seeing the pain in his eyes, the grief in his face, and she knew he had to be inconsolable with rage. She cou
ldn’t leave him alone with this madman. “What if it’s contagious?”
His gaze turned back to hers, a subtle glimmer of bemusement glowing in the wicked, night dark depths. “What is contagious, hellcat?”
“His insanity,” she whispered back at him, at once hearing the ludicrous suggestion, yet the need to make light of the situation couldn’t be fought. That was her. Take it seriously and she could end up sharing Abram’s fate herself. Azir Mustafa could drive a saint crazy, she guessed. And poor Abram, he lived with the old bat.
He had to hate this. This place, this room, it wasn’t Abram. The way he was dressed, the expression on his face, it wasn’t the man she knew. He would never countenance abusing a woman, or kidnapping one.
He was as arrogant as the wind itself, as the very desert that raised him, but he wasn’t the vicious monster his father obviously was.
“I’m certain it’s not contagious,” he promised. “But go with Tariq for now. I’ll take care of everything and I’ll join you soon.”
“You beg a whore to do as you ask?” Azir cracked behind her. “How you have fallen, my son.” Paige refused to glance back at him, rather she continued to stare up at Abram, willing him to leave with her, to refuse to risk himself in his father’s demented company.
“Now,” his voice was nearly silent, but there was no mistaking the dark command that filled it.
“Go with Tariq.”
Tariq Mustafa. She knew him. There were times he had come to America with Abram and visited with Khalid and her family. He had smiled. He had “almost” flirted a time or two, but Abram and Khalid’s displeasure had been clearly apparent.
This time though, his expression was hard, cold, as though he had no idea who she was. There wasn’t so much as a glimmer of recognition as he took her from Abram.
Her lips thinned, her displeasure unable to hide. He had no business lingering here when they needed to make plans. When they needed to get her out of Saudi Arabia.
“Come on.” Tariq wasn’t flirting with her this time as she forced the strength in her legs to walk to the door. He acted as though he didn’t know her, as though he had never met her. And she would find out why the minute Abram joined them.
* * *
Abram watched as Tariq drew Paige from the room, eased her around the doors and led her up the hall to his suite. Dark, emerald green eyes stared back at him, defiance and anger reflecting in her gaze before she disappeared.
He turned back to Azir, though God knew he didn’t want to. He could feel the killing rage rising inside him, threatening the control it had taken so many years to develop.
For a moment he wondered if she could be right, if the Mustafa legacy of blood, death, and insanity, wasn’t actually a contagion that infected each generation after the other.
Staring at his father, he felt nothing but the overwhelming hatred that he was in danger of allowing to spill from the depths of his soul.
He stared at his father, and he saw nothing but the ragged, agonizing pain his first wife had felt as she died, the fear of his second wife as she died with their unborn child, and his own fear when he had learned that Paige’s life was in danger.
“She’s the very image of her mother, isn’t she?” Azir stated calmly, as though he hadn’t just been throwing that vision across the room with enough strength to kill her if her head were to strike the floor when she fell.
The calm, almost rational tone of his voice only incited the icy rage burning inside Abram.
“Why is she here?” He could only barely force a semblance of calm in his voice.
Azir smiled. A mocking, triumphant curve of his lips as he stared back at Abram.
“She is my insurance, my son, and the gift I would grant you for your birthday. Tell me, do you think her mother is worried? Perhaps certain who has taken her daughter and imagining the many ways I could make her suffer for her mother’s crimes?”
The pleasure Azir clearly felt at the thought of the pain only a mother could feel filling Marilyn Galbraithe, sickened Abram.
“I will be returning her home—” he began.
“Then she will die.” Azir’s voice hardened, becoming gravely and tinged with anger. “The moment you leave the walls of the fortress with her then the guards will haul her back and I’ll have her stoned for her mother’s crimes. She is no virgin. She was checked for such innocence as she lay unconscious. Convincing the Matawa to order the stoning will be no hardship.” Abram stared back at his father in shock and disbelief. Surely even Azir wasn’t that insane. To take such an action would only cause the royal family to be forced to take action against them.
“Don’t do this,” he ground out, his fists clenching, adrenaline surging through him and demanding blood. Azir’s blood. And he would be well within his rights to spill it. He should simply do it.
How much better the world would be without Azir Mustafa’s presence. “She’s done nothing to deserve this.”
“But her mother has,” Azir snapped back, his grating tone rasping against Abram’s nerve endings. “She committed adultery against me in her false marriage to another man. She stole my son and turned his heart against me even as she and her American courts ripped from me my right to have him returned to me.”
Azir’s expression twisted with fanatical fury. “My precious Marilyn. She turned Khalid against me, and because of him, you have turned against me. I blame her for the atrocities Khalid has committed against God in his sexual depravity and I blame her for the deaths of your brothers. And her daughter will now pay the price.” He was screaming. Staring back at Abram, the rage infecting not just his sanity, but also his control over himself.
“They were no brothers of mine!” As far as Abram was concerned, this was the last straw for Azir. He would never again claim blood relation to Azir or to the bastards who nearly killed him and Khalid. The same two men had created the situation Abram now found himself in. “Had they still lived when I claim the province from the King’s emissary, then I would have ordered their death’s myself.” Azir glared back at him, his expression working furiously, his face brick red with fury. The old bastard had never been rational where Ayid and Aman were concerned, no more than he had been rational where Marilyn was concerned. Rational or sane.
“You and Khalid were responsible for the deaths of their wives and still you would hate them for their retaliation?” Azir questioned him incredulously, as though he himself had had nothing to do with their vocation or their wrath. “They lost what they held dearest. Chaste, faithful wives and you bemoan a whore who willingly shared her body between you and Khalid as though she were no more than a bitch dog in heat? I should have turned the two of you over to the Matawa the moment I discovered your perversion instead of believing that you would learn your lesson with your wife’s death.” Abram felt the clawing, black ice he continually fought beginning to build, to overtake him. That dark, inner core freezing over, obliterating honor, morality. He stared at Azir and all he could see was the bastard’s blood on the floor, sinking in, staining the stone and forever marking his sins.
How easy it would be to kill him, Abram thought without so much as a hint of guilt. But killing him now would only cause more problems than it would fix.
He was aware of Azir watching nervously now. Abram could only stare, his entire being centered on not killing the evil old bastard.
He couldn’t trust himself to speak, to move. Not just yet. Not until he could wipe away the image of his hands wrapped around Azir’s throat, his bloated, fanatical expression slowly turning blue.
“Forgive me, Abram.” Azir suddenly spoke nervously as though realizing how close to death he was coming. “That was never an option. Never would I see you turned over to the authorities.” Too little. And he would have preferred that if only he could have kept Lessa safe all those years ago.
“In three weeks the king’s emissary will arrive to take your vow to oversee the lands and return to our family the pa
yments they froze so many years ago. Before that day, I give you leave to bed the daughter of my faithless wife. Her bastard child is my gift to you until that day. I have spoken with Tariq and given him leave, nay, I have ordered him to assist you however you wish in the enjoyment of her corrupt body. Once you have given the emissary your vow, you may escort her back to her mother, or if you so choose, you may have her as the first addition to your own harem.” To his harem?
Abram could feel his stomach recoiling sickeningly. In what demented fantasy did his father ever believe he would actually give that vow and remain here to allow Ayid and Aman’s legacy to continue to grow?
“Do not betray me again, Abram.” Azir’s voice was hoarse as he spoke. “Betray your king if you must and leave to join your brother and your whore when it is done. The account is held until your vow is given. It will be mine, or what happened to your precious Lessa will seem a blessing compared to the hell that bastard sister of Khalid’s will know. I beg of you, do not test me in this.” If he had to stand here another moment and listen, then he might lose the last hold on his murderous temper.