That as long as there was a third, one as strong, as determined to protect her as he was, then what had happened to Lessa wouldn’t have as great a chance of happening to her.
It was the mistake he and Khalid had made with Lessa. Abram had fought that side of him, fearing Lessa gave into his brother’s touch because she knew it was what Abram wished. He had refused Khalid the privileges he would have given a third as well as the responsibilities of one. He hadn’t told Khalid that he would be away from the province the day his brother had been caught unaware, beaten and left for dead, before Ayid and Aman had gone after Lessa.
But, as Khalid had warned him the day he realized Abram had seen Paige as a woman, she deserved more. She deserved a man who knew possessive love, who understood it. But even more importantly, a man who did not bring with him the shadow of death.
“She’s gone?”
Tariq stepped into the room behind him, his voice somber as he posed the question.
He, too, had seen her standing at the door, her eyes wide, face flushed, that look of drowning sensuality filling her expression the moment they had spilled their release into another woman’s body.
In that expression he had seen the knowledge that it didn’t matter the woman they were with, it didn’t matter how he fought it, how he strove to deny it, each time he stepped foot in the U.S., there was only one face he searched for now. There was only one gaze he avoided with everything inside him.
“She’s gone,” he stated, wondering if he had effectively hid the regret that surged through him.
“She was angry?” Tariq probed.
Abram gave a quick shake of his head. “Surprisingly, no.”
No, she hadn’t been angry. It had been disillusionment. It had been bitterness. It had been the knowledge that girlish dreams never came true no matter how desperately she fought to bring them to fruition.
They died. Painfully. Hurtfully. They were tromped beneath uncaring feet and left to wither by a world that didn’t know true warmth.
And he had done no more than contibute to the cold that filled her gaze now, the disillusionment.
She was a woman searching for the dreams that filled her soul, and he couldn’t be the man to fulfill those dreams, no matter his own wishes.
“Has our companion left?” he turned to Tariq, seeing the intent look on his cousin’s expression.
Tariq had been watching him too closely of late whenever they were in Virginia, especially whenever Paige was present. As though he were searching for something, some affirmation of a suspicion.
Abram refused to give into the question in his third’s gaze. They both desired her, and yet, he refused to act on that desire, or in Abram’s case, that hunger.
“She’s showering.” Tariq shrugged his shoulders beneath the expensive cotton shirt he wore. “She seems discontent with your lack of attention now that your pleasure has been attained.”
Now that his pleasure had been attained? His c**k was still as hard as it had been the moment he stepped off the f**king plane. And it was still as hard as the moment he had stepped into Paige’s bedroom to see her fingers preparing to thrust inside the heated depths of her pu**y.
He had never imagined she was a virgin. Never imagined it, and now, had no idea how he could force himself to forget it.
“See her home, Tariq,” Abram ordered. “I’ll await your return before leaving to meet with Director Jennings and Senator Mathews. I’d like to give them the information we’ve attained on Ayid and Aman quickly, before Azir realizes we have left Saudi entirely.”
His brothers, Ayid and Aman. Younger half-brothers. Twins who shared a rabid rage and intellectual cruelty that never ceased to amaze him. And Azir, his father. How had he ever believed his father could have the smallest iota of kindness inside his blackened soul? Now, six months after the death of the wife Azir had forced him to marry, and the child she had carried, Abram found it almost impossible to keep from killing the old bastard. Especially after he learned exactly how involved his father had been in ensuring there were no heirs other than Abram before he turned thirty-six.
If there were other heirs, then Abram’s death would not result in allowing Azir to turn the province over to the sons he preferred. The sons who shared his warped vision of the future of the world.
That vision had seen to the death of Abram’s first wife, when he had been no more than twenty. It had seen to the death of his second wife, and his unborn child, two years later. And it would destroy any other woman Abram ever allowed himself to care for.
Just as Ayid and Aman would see to the death of any woman Khalid could love, other than his sister, Paige.
They were cursed. The eldest sons of Azir bore the hatred and the fruits of malice that sprang from not just Azir, but also his youngest sons.
As Paige stepped into the back of the car in which she’d ridden into the city, the driver closing the door solicitously behind her, Abram turned and met Tariq’s gaze.
“She’s gone.” He hadn’t meant the words to pass his lips, or the thought to torment him as it did.
Watching her leave, watching that innocence, that hunger and zest for life, and for him, disappear, had driven home the fact that she could be taken forever if he weren’t very very careful.
Tariq’s lips quirked in amusement though, the bitterness and realization that tormented Abram wasn’t a part of the other man’s present thoughts.
“She won’t be for long,” Tariq assured him. “If that mark on your shoulder is any indication, you’ve given her a taste of what you both hunger for. I have a feeling, Abram, Miss Galbraithe will return sooner than you think.”
The mark?
His gaze jerked to his shoulder before he moved to the mirror atop the dresser next to him.
There, on his shoulder, just as Tariq had stated, a love bite that marred his flesh deeper than he would have imagined she could have given without his knowledge.
It marked him far deeper than flesh alone.
He forced himself to turn away.
He forced himself to leave her bedroom.
He forced himself to forget those few, precious moments when his lips had caressed the softest flesh he had ever known, when his tongue had tasted pure, fiery ecstasy.
A taste that would linger in his senses forever.
And a regret he knew he would never outrun.
He hadn’t expected this, he thought, it had caught him unaware the day he had arrived to help her and her family celebrate her eighteenth birthday. When he had seen her in that simple sundress on the sunny Greek island where she and her family lived part of the year. With the tops of her br**sts rising above the bodice of the dress, the tiny straps stretching over slender, graceful shoulders, and the red gold of her hair hanging to the middle of her back.