Paige could only stare back at him incredulously. “How little you know your brother, or your sister for that matter,” she told him, pity and anger converging together. “Does he beat his women, Khalid? Does he lock them up, or demand that they have no life outside of him? Does he have six wives and twelve children that I know nothing about?”
Khalid’s frown deepened. “You know he would never do such things.”
“Then your only objection is that you’re worried Abram may try to curb my independence?”
“You’ll forget the meaning of the word independence,” he told her.
“Has Leyla forgotten the independence you taught her?” Leyla was one of the six young women Khalid had raised after his father sent them to Khalid as teenagers. They were young women Azir had bought and then given to his son to begin his own little harem.
Leyla was engaged to a young man who had come to America with his parents from Saudi Arabia.
“Leyla’s fiancé is much younger than Abram,” he snapped. “Don’t you understand that, Paige? Abram is a full-grown man who has spent much of his life in the Middle East. A man that will never—”
“Stop preaching at me,” she demanded roughly, her head practically ringing with the list of objections he was repeating from earlier. “You say Abram would attempt to make me live by his rules? What the hell do you believe you’re doing? You’re trying to force me to do what you want, whether it’s what I want or not.”
And that was beginning to piss her off. She had tried to avoid these confrontations for the past few days. Several times she had simply left the room only to have him follow her and continue the argument.
“Paige, I’m trying to protect you,” he snarled. His frustration was readily apparent but she couldn’t make herself feel sorry for him, or even suggest they agree to disagree.
“Go to your party, Khalid. I’m sick of your lectures and I’ve had enough of your judgmental attitude. Now leave my room.”
She didn’t wait for him to leave. Paige turned and stomped to the bathroom, slamming the door behind her.
Then, the tears she’d only barely held back filled her eyes and began to fall down her cheeks. She didn’t sob. She remained silent, pressing her hands to her lips and tried to stop the tears as she had so many times in the past.
She loved her brother. Khalid had always been a mainstay in her life, even if he had frustrated the hell out of her. He’d been amused at her father’s nerves when she rode her bicycle without training wheels, and laughed at her mother’s fears when Paige got her driver’s license.
He had always acted damned strange about Abram though, despite the fact that Abram had been married the first time Paige had met him and his wife Lessa.
Paige had been drawn to Abram from the first moment. She’d been fascinated by this man who looked so much like her brother, who her brother called a brother, yet he wasn’t her brother. She’d only been nine when she first met him, and he’d been nineteen and already married.
The relationship between him and his brother had at first confused the hell out of her. After all, Khalid was her brother, so why wasn’t Abram?
That confusion had amused her parents and Abram’s wife Lessa, but Khalid hadn’t seemed nearly so amused by it.
Paige liked Abram’s wife, Lessa, enjoyed her laughter and her quiet manner the few times she’d been able to spend any time with her. Lessa was murdered several years after Paige met her, and Paige’s heart had broken for Abram.
He’d loved his wife, there had been no doubt of it. Over the next few years, he’d been a regular in her life. He’d visited when her family vacationed in Cairo, and joined Khalid in Greece when he returned for their mother’s birthday.
She was eighteen when things suddenly changed, when he had looked at her for the first time and hadn’t seen a child. When his gaze had flicked to her br**sts, encased in the bodice of the strapless ball gown she had worn.
He had danced with her, his hand riding low on her back and pressing her closer to him than any of the younger men she had danced with had done.
Her heart had raced so hard she had thought it would tear from her chest. He’d stared down at her, somber and intense, holding her eyes as she swore she saw some message swirling in the depths of his own.
And against her hip, hard and thick, she had felt his erection, proof that he was seeing her as a woman, and that she wasn’t alone in the sensations surging through her.
It was the first time she had creamed her panties. The first time her cl*t had become so swollen and sensitive that it only took her seconds to come when she had masturbated in her bed later that night.
From that night, she hadn’t been able to get him out of her mind, or her fantasies. She hadn’t even tried to keep him from stealing her heart as the years went by.
Khalid was equally determined to keep anything from happening between them. Even during those first years when Paige had been determined to go to college and get her degree before allowing any relationship to develop too far, still, Khalid had begun arranging Abram’s visits to keep her from seeing him.
It didn’t always work.
And nothing had ever stemmed the need that only grew with each year, with each moment spent with him. And with each acknowledgement that her brother was willing to alienate her rather than see her with Abram.
Sniffling quietly she wiped at the tears and tried to stem them. If she stayed here, then they were going to end up saying things that couldn’t be taken back.
She didn’t want that. She didn’t want to lose her brother. That left only one other option. To leave his house, at least until they could learn to agree to disagree where Abram was concerned.
It had been almost two weeks since Khalid’s security team had practically kidnapped her and brought her to the mansion.
Today, she had lost her job. Her savings wasn’t nearly enough to keep her rent and utilities going, along with her car payment, for more than a few months. She would have to find a job, and there was no doubt she would have to ask her parents for money or borrow from her trust fund. A fund she had wanted to save for a time when she really needed it.
Getting another job wasn’t going to be easy. The advertising firm she had worked for had already informed her that there would be no reference forthcoming.
Her entire life had been changed because of this and on top of it, she was losing Khalid because she couldn’t get his brother out of her mind, or out of her fantasies.