“Abram,” she had whispered his name with a breathy little sigh. “I’ve missed you.”
Stars had gleaed in the emerald green of her eyes. Her face had flushed beneath the soft hint of the Mediterranean-bronzed flesh. Her skin wasn’t as dark as her father’s, but neither was it as light as her mother’s. When combined with the silken flames of her hair, the combination was enough to daze a lesser man.
It was that day he had seen the woman she was. It was that day his c**k had swelled, becoming so engorged, so torturously hot and tight he swore he’d been on the edge of dizziness.
He almost grinned at that thought.
Almost. Because, he knew the fate that would await her.
He knew the hell he would revisit and this time never escape.
He couldn’t have her, he couldn’t allow his need to corrupt her, or his legacy to endanger her.
And he couldn’t keep his hunger for her from raging …
1
EIGHT YEARS LATER
He was home. Finally.
Paige Galbraithe moved from the chaise positioned next to the balcony doors of her bedroom and stared at the lights that swept over the lawn.
The limousine moved with an almost stealthy slowness along the curved, oak-bordered drive. The lights swept over the landscaping like a cat burglar’s penlight as the car neared the garage. The bright gleam disappeared into the three-story mansion Khalid owned in the heart of the exclusive section of Alexandria, Virginia, designed as Squire Point.
After ten days captivity in her brother’s home, the rat had finally shown up. It was about time. She was rather sick of cooling her heels in the luxurious comfort of her brother’s home rather than in her own apartment.
Collecting the silk robe she had left lying on the back of the chaise, Paige pulled it on quickly, covering the ankle-length, matching deep-violet gown she wore. Anger and determination made her movements jerky.
Ten days. She had waited ten days to confront him.
He wouldn’t answer his cell phone—his fiancée Marty was running interference—but still, her brother wasn’t talking to her. Marty assured her daily that she would get to tear a strip off his hide in person, and each day, he was a no-show.
“Relax for a while, Paige…”
“Khalid will call soon…”
“You’ll have explanations when Khalid arrives…” Even her parents refused to tell her what she needed to know, what she demanded each time they called to see how she was doing.
She was fed up with it. She was twenty-five years old; she wasn’t a teenager. She was Khalid’s sister, not some damned prisoner he could control. She was easy to work with, and she considered herself a very understanding person. But her patience had begun wearing thin a week ago.
Belting the robe furiously as she turned on her heel, Paige stalked across the bedroom and eased open the door before stepping into the hall. Moving to the stairs she stopped and waited, listening carefully.
She wasn’t about to let him think that she was still awake and waiting on him. He’d been slipping into the house after he was certain she was asleep, doing whatever he did, then slipping back out before she awoke.
The damned coward.
Abdul, or Abbie as she called him, his Saudi manservant, was always abjectly apologetic that he hadn’t awakened her before Khalid left, as she had asked him to do. He had a million excuses, but she knew the truth. Khalid was his boss, and Khalid wasn’t about to face her until she simply left him no choice.
They were working together—Abbie, Marty, Khalid’s security team, and even Khalid himself—to keep her in place and completely in the dark as to why she was suddenly being held in what her brother called “protective custody.” Even the U.S. marshal service wasn’t this damned diligent.
Even her parents were refusing to help her. Her mother’s fear for her only daughter, her “baby” as she called her, had Marilyn Galbraithe going along with whatever her son had cooked up this time.
And that son hadn’t even given his sister the courtesy of facing her and giving her a clue as to how long this would last, if there was an end in sight, or the details involving the danger she was facing.
She had a good idea. After all, she was well aware of the fact that his brother, Ayid, had finally played his final hand and attempted to murder Khalid and his fiancée, Marty, less than a month before. Just as Ayid’s twin, Aman, had gone after Abram in D.C. as he waited in a hotel to meet with FBI Director Zack Jennings and the Homeland Security Director to declare his U.S. citizenship based on his mother’s status as an American citizen.
Instead, Khalid had killed Ayid, and Abram had killed his youngest brother, Aman. Though, to keep Abram’s defection to the U.S. a secret, Khalid had taken the blame for both deaths.
She suspected this was why she was placed in isolation in the monstrous mansion her brother now owned. The mansion that shadather, Azir Mustafa, had bought for him.
She wanted to hear it from him, though. She wanted to know exactly why Azir Mustafa thought threatening her was going to gain him anything. And she wanted to know why the hell Khalid thought that destroying the life she was building for herself was going to help.
She’d been all but imprisoned by her overprotective parents for far too many years. Her mother had been so terrified Paige would be kidnapped or taken, that she would disappear as had once happened to her, that she had kept Paige always in sight.
Bodyguards. Security-enhanced private schools. Private tutors. She’d been so overprotected she had nearly smothered to death.
Escaping had taken every ounce of strength she had, because she loved her parents. Because even in their attempts to ensure her safety, she had always been aware of their love for her. Just as she had been of the nightmares they suffered from a past haunted by the horror of her mother’s kidnapping, forced marriage and rapes at the hands of a monster. That monster had been the father of her half-brother’s and the father of the man she couldn’t push out of her mind or her fantasies.
“Stay away from me.” His eyes blazing with black fury and none of the sexual satisfaction he should have felt after spilling himself only moments before into the lover he had shared with his cousin, Tariq. Only moments before he came to her. “For both our sakes, Paige, stay the f**k away from me!”
That had been eight years ago. Eight years since he had buried his lips and tongue between her thighs and threw her into an ecstasy she still hadn’t felt again. Not before and not since. Eight years since he had f**ked her with his tongue yet, he had never even kissed her.