by Lora Leigh
Closing the door to the sitting room behind them, Tariq turned to him, his lips tightening as his dark eyes flashed with silent, burning anger.
“Jafar brought Chalah here today and she was simply a fount of information.” He sneered. “As well as carrying a tiny listening device attached to the medallion I fucking gave her for her sixteenth birthday.”
There was the reason for the fury. Tariq had always been fond of his little cousin. That medallion held special significance for him, and for her to use it against him or Abram would seem the worst betrayal.
Chalah Mustafa, Jafar’s half-sister. She was Abram’s first cousin, and would have been Tariq’s if it weren’t for the fact that Tariq’s father hadn’t been Hussein Mustafa as everyone assumed it was. That bit of knowledge was something even Azir was unaware of. There were a lot of half-siblings, step-siblings, half-cousins, and half-families parading as Mustafas these days though. There were times the dynamics of it boggled his mind and he wasn’t a stupid man.
Abram listened silently to the conversation Tariq had recorded. His mind turned with suspicions and possibilities as Chalah attempted to gain the details of his relationship with Paige, as well as any plans they might have for leaving. She had revealed the recording device to Paige before leaving though, which meant she hadn’t been there voluntarily.
She had been forced.
Somehow, Azir and her brother had found a way to make her attempt to betray those she considered family, as well as Paige, who had always been a friend.
Abram wasn’t going to hold it against her, but neither would he ever be able to trust her again.
Had she revealed the device before the conversation started, then he would have felt differently.
“What was your impression?” he asked Tariq as he rubbed the back of his neck in irritation when the recording ended. “Was she forced by Jafar, by Azir, or by both?” Tariq grimaced furiously, his dark brown eyes burning with his anger and perhaps even a hint of betrayal. He’d always cared for Chalah, always watched out for her whenever she returned to the province. To have her do something like this, without warning them, would have struck him in one of the few vulnerable areas he had.
“Hell, Abram, you know both of them, your guess is about as good as mine. Besides, you know that little hellion as well as I do.” He growled as his arms crossed over his chest and his jaw clenched with his attempt at control. “Let’s say she sounded sincere in her offer to help as well as her worry.
Enough so that she had Paige fooled until she showed her that device.” Disgust filled his voice. “She had Paige convinced.” He pushed his fingers through his thick, dark brown hair. “Of something. Hell, I would have believed her if I hadn’t known she was bugged.”
Yeah, it was damned hard to lose trust in someone he had known all his life, protected, and taken care of.
“Is she coming back?” He breathed out roughly.
Jafar wouldn’t be satisfied with the information he would have heard, what little Tariq had allowed past the jammer. He would have to try again.
He didn’t need this. They didn’t need it. Chalah was as wild as the wind and just as unpredictable, but she had never been a danger until now.
That danger was forced. She hadn’t done it willingly, but still, she had done it before warning them. That was a deal breaker in the trust department.
“If she comes back, Jafar will be escorting her, and to be honest, I can’t assure you Paige will have the self-control not to confront Jafar. Remember, she doesn’t know him like this, in the setting he was raised in. If she attempts to berate him, he could have her arrested and sent to the Matawa in the next province. Which is what I’m beginning to fear they intend to do with us the minute you give your vow to the monarch’s emissary.”
It was no more than Abram suspected himself.
Hell, he didn’t suspect it, he knew it. It was one of the reasons he knew he had to get the hell out of there before the emissary showed up.
“Hell, at the very least, he could punish her himself, or Azir could,” Tariq bit out as he continued.
“Either way, it would end in bloodshed.”
If either of them dared to touch Paige, then bloodshed would be the very least of their worries.
He had to find his contact, and that wasn’t an easy chore when combined with the need to sleep and to leave Tariq there with her while he fought against the bond he knew would come when he took her.
And that was the overwhelming reason why he was the one out there searching for the contact rather than Tariq. That bond that he could feel growing night by night as he lay next to her naked body while she slept. Without moving, without speaking, she was invading a part of him that he had always managed to keep her from invading before.
She was like lightning, and there was nothing he could do to tame her, nothing he could do to keep her from burning into his soul if he gave her the chance.
Already, she was burning through his control and inciting a hunger inside him unlike anything any other woman could have touched.
He was so fucking hard and horny he was in agony. The past three days and nights had been hell.
As soon as she fell asleep he had to drag his ass out of the bed and do what he could to work their way out of an impossible situation. When he was done, when he couldn’t go without sleep any longer, only then did he send Tariq out. And then, he was left with her, sleeping beside her, feeling her against him, her delicate limbs entwined with his as they lay together.
What should have been accomplished quickly if he and Tariq worked together was taking twice the time and had become twice as dangerous. And much of the danger stemmed from the fact that he couldn’t keep his mind off her enough to ensure he wasn’t making mistakes.
All he could think about was fucking Paige until he had to cover her mouth to muffle her screams of pleasure. Or of holding her, controlling the movements of her body as he watched Tariq take her. Watched his cock slide slow and easy up her sensitive, tight pussy, or better yet—
His entire body tensed with a brutal, unrelenting hunger.
Or watching Tariq stretch the tight, small entrance of her ass, pushing inside her with the heavy breadth of his cock as she tried to scream from a pleasure that she knew how to distinguish from pain. A pleasure that engaged every sense, that left her focused on nothing but the submission of the act, the feel of a man’s dick pounding inside her body in a way that forced home the knowledge that she was taken. That they trusted each other just as deeply.
The sight of it had been incredible in the past, Abram knew. Sharing a woman with another man was to be able to experience his lover’s pleasure as he couldn’t do in any other way.
To allow him to watch her being taken. To see the primal, possessive clasp of her flesh as it stretched and took the invader pumping inside her.
The need for it was growing. The hunger for it was tearing at him even as he fought it, to delay it until he could get her out of Saudi Arabia.
Now, Jafar thought he could mess with Abram’s life further, with his happiness, by involving his sister and garnering evidence that he and Tariq were involved in sexual indecency?
If Jafar and Azir took their suspicions to the Matawa, the religious police, with the audio proof of admission from Paige, then even the king wouldn’t be able to save them. And for that, Abram would have to kill Azir and Jafar both.
He looked around Tariq’s suite, aware of the other man watching him carefully. He fought to push back the fury that was becoming harder to tame with each successive day.
“I expect Jafar to bring her back, Abram,” Tariq revealed. “He obviously has no problem with using her however he can.”
“If he brings Chalah back tomorrow, then we’ll deal with it. We can’t let him see either of us in the room with Paige though, and by all appearances both of us have to be staying in your suite.
Tomorrow, he’ll be aware that we’re both there if he sho
ws up at the door again.” Tariq tensed, his eyes narrowing at the declaration and the knowledge that Abram had reach his limit. It was in his voice, in the tension building inside him.
They had known each other too long perhaps, shared too many lovers in the past. They knew the signs the other showed, and could gauge interest as well as that point where it couldn’t be ignored any longer.
He wasn’t hiding well either, Abram knew. The hunger for her was tearing him apart inside as he tried to give Paige and Tariq the room he felt they needed for Paige to become closer to the man he had picked as his third. Hoping, a part of him terrified, that she would find in Tariq whatever emotion it was that she was searching for in Abram.
Could he handle it?
Could he handle it if she didn’t?
God help him, she was his greatest weakness and he couldn’t seem to find a way to protect himself should the unthinkable happen.
“Is she ready?” he finally asked Tariq when nothing else was said.
Surprise filled Tariq’s eyes. “Ready in what way?”
Surely his cousin couldn’t be surprised by the question, or unaware why Abram had been leaving them both here, naked, in the bed together, each morning.
“For you?” Abram paused, his brow arching sarcastically. “For both of us? Why do you think I’ve busted my ass the past nights to do the work of two men? So you can catch up on your nightly beauty sleep, Prince Mustafa?”
He’d left them there alone for a reason. To allow Paige to acclimate herself to the man she would call lover as well. He sure as hell hadn’t left the two of them alone together for his mental health, because the knowledge of it had nearly corroded the last of his control.
Tariq grunted irritably at the comment.
“What did you want me to do, Abram?” Tariq’s arms crossed over his chest as he tilted his head and stared back at him with cynical mockery. “She stands in the window and watches for you. She waits for you as a new wife awaits her husband. Would you have me attempt to seduce her when she clearly shows no interest?” He gave a bitter, hard laugh. “Do I appear the fool to you? There is no desire that comes from her until she sees you. Only then does she begin to burn.” Abram’s teeth clenched. This wasn’t what he’d expected despite the ambivalent feelings he had toward Tariq seducing not just her body, but her heart as well.
“I haven’t exactly been standing outside the fortress twiddling my fingers,” Abram growled disparagingly.
“Why don’t I go ahead and find our contact tonight and you can seduce your woman,” Tariq suggested, distinctly annoyed. “Don’t make the mistake I see you walking into, my friend. Because she is not a woman that will forgive you for it.”
She was the type of woman whose memory of her kiss and of her touch would torment him for life.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Tariq,” Abram snarled.
A dark chuckle met his protest as Tariq stared back at him knowingly.
“Yes, you do know,” Tariq informed him. “You know you haven’t yet taken her because you fear when you do, she will become a part of your heart. Should that happen, then what defenses will you have if Azir and Jafar win in this game as Ayid and Aman always won in the others? Especially with Lessa.
You are afraid you will not survive losing her.”
“We won’t be here long enough to allow that to happen,” Abram stated savagely. “And I haven’t taken her yet because I’ve wanted her to have the chance to acclimate to both of us. This isn’t a life she’s used to, nor is it one her innocence will have prepared her for.” It was technically the truth, Abram told himself furiously.
“Do you really believe her feelings are transferrable?” Tariq grunted sarcastically. “She will accept me as a third, Abram, but this is all I will ever be to her. If you attempt to chance that, then you’ll lose her. And I don’t believe that’s really what you want.” But was her heart, the knowledge, the acceptance of her feelings, something he could face?
Abram almost felt his hands shaking at the thought of it.
“Do you want a third, Abram, or do you want to be the third?” Abram narrowed his eyes, restrained his anger.
The question had a surge of powerful, forceful adrenaline racing through him. Never in his life had he allowed himself to play the third. He wasn’t beginning now.
“I am no third,” he growled in a flash of dominance.
Tariq chuckled at the exclamation.
“Then you should seduce your love, Abram. Prepare her yourself for the third you have chosen.
Otherwise you may find yourself missing the opportunity to create that bond that will secure her heart to yours, rather than leaving it drifting and wild and searching for a home.” Secure her heart to his? Abram rubbed at the back of his neck, his teeth clenching at the thought of everything that could go wrong in his attempt to get them out of the fortress and to the extraction point on time.
The transport wouldn’t be able to wait on them for long. The terrorist activity in the area made the extraction itself highly dangerous.
“No risk, no gain, my friend.” Tariq grinned as Abram shot him a hard glance.
The risk was high enough to scare the shit out of him if he allowed himself to think about it.
“Are you two finished bonding in there yet?” Paige’s voice came through the connecting door.
“Or do you need a few more minutes?”
Immediately arousal turned to full, flaming lust. It swept through his body like a tidal wave and sent fingers of electric energy sizzling through his brain.
Seduce his woman? God help him, he would be lucky if he found the control to undress first.
How much easier it would be to push the thobe to her waist, his trousers below his hips, and take her with all the impatience and driving need torturing him.
He’d stayed away from her for three days, he’d fought like hell to find the CIA asset able to locate and set up the extraction team. He had to get her the hell out of Saudi Arabia.
“See if you can find our contact tonight then,” he ordered. “I want extraction ASAP, Tariq. If I have to wait much longer, I’m contacting Khalid. Tell our mutual friends who pass along information that in twelve hours I contact the desert lion.”
Khalid’s nickname among the tribes in the outlying desert areas was cemented. He was known as a savage enemy, a fierce ally.
Tariq nodded sharply, his expression stilling, all frustration, arousal, or any hint of anger smoothing away.
“While you’re out, check the tunnel exit as well and ensure no one has found the cavern that leads to it. If Azir and Jafar are still searching for it, then they may get lucky. If they do, then we’re all screwed.”
Abram watched as the door at the other end of the room swung open to reveal Paige.
Her expression was coolly polite, her emerald gaze straightforward and revealing little of her emotions.
“Do you think you two boys could play together later?” she asked as she propped her hand on her hip and leaned against the door frame.
Abram’s gaze narrowed on her slowly. She knew how such a display of dominance toward him would affect him.
His dick, already iron hard and fully engorged seemed to swell further and harden painfully.
He’d stayed away from her as much as possible. Now, there would be no saving either of them from the hunger raging through him.
“Of course we can, precious,” he all but crooned as his gaze drifted over the thobe and he imagined the sweet perfection of her body underneath. “If you’re offering to play in other ways, then I am of course available.”
Her nostrils flared in irritation. “Well of course you’d be available for your idea of fun,” she scoffed. If he wasn’t mistaken there may have been a flash of hurt in her eyes.
“Tonight, precious, I am at your disposal however you may wish me.” He held his arms out at his side, a part of him cringing that she should be hurt by any
thing after what she had already suffered. She had suffered because he had been unable to rein in his interest in her enough to at least keep her safe.
Turning, he nodded to Tariq to begin the job he’d given him before moving for the entrance to the other room and the woman that haunted his thoughts and his desires.
As he escorted her back into his suite he was aware of Tariq closing the door between them and allowing them privacy as he prepared to leave.
“Now, what activities would please you within the confines of what I can provide you?” How he wished they were in the U.S. rather than here. She could dress in the sexy, flirty clothes he had seen her in before and he could take her to her favorite restaurant or perhaps a starlit dinner on one of the exclusive dinner yachts.