She was in the Prince of Dahaar’s bedroom—an intimacy that was strictly limited to his immediate family and the woman he would marry, the woman who would irrevocably belong to him.
The very thought sent a stab of pain through her middle, cooling the illicit thrill.
She clasped her nape, and rubbed it, fighting the wave of melancholy. Ya Allah, what madness had led her to agree to this?
A slow burn of awareness inched under her skin. She turned slowly, bracing herself for a caustic remark from those cruel lips.
Azeez stood at the doorway of the bathroom, clad only in loose white trousers that tied with fragile strings.
Sinuous heat drenched Nikhat inside out, zigzagging across a million spots, places she shouldn’t be thinking of in front of him but was painfully aware of.
His shoulder blades were outlined by his lean frame. The golden olive of his skin gleamed dark against the white fabric, stretched tight over his abdomen, delineating every bone and muscle. Sparse chest hair covered dark nipples, arrowing down in a line that disappeared into those trousers. Her gaze instinctively sought the evidence of the bullet wound. Only a small length of a scar, puckered and stitched up roughly, was visible above the band of the trousers.
He didn’t have a whole lot of muscle on him, and yet there was no softness to his abdomen either.
Suddenly, all she wanted was to trace the angular jut of his collarbone, rake her fingernail over his nipple, see if he felt the arc of electricity between them as strongly as she did.
She met his gaze, and something flared into life between them, contracting the space and world around them, as though shoving them both into a world of their own. His breath left him in a soft exhale and she watched as the lean chest rose and fell with it.
Liquid desire, she realized what it was, flowed through every nerve in her body, a thrill coiling her muscles. She wanted to move forward and touch him, feel the heat of his skin slide against hers, smell that intoxicating masculinity that had made her realize her own femininity for the first time.
Eight years ago, she had been naive, green, too overwhelmed by what and who he was to understand the raw awareness between them, too caught up in society’s rules and her own insecurities to comprehend the power and beauty of this thing. The dark heat of his glances, the fire of his checked desire, the power with which he had leashed it so that he didn’t scare her, she had never fully comprehended it. Until now.
It was not her body that had caught up, as he had mocked. It was her mind. And it reveled in the raw charge between them, reveled in the fact that she could put that feral look in his eyes.
The slight rise of his brows, the almost undetectable hint of widening of his jet-black irises—he was amused and yet it was not the eviscerating kind. He was as surprised as she was at her daring.
Coloring, she fought the instinct to look away, to hide from what he made her body feel. She had denied herself so many things. But the simple thrill of watching the Prince of Dahaar, of holding that intractable gaze without shying away, she couldn’t deny herself this. It made her dizzily alive. In that moment, she could believe herself his equal.
His mouth didn’t turn into a sneer, his gaze didn’t mock her for her unwise audacity. He just stood there and stared at her, as though waiting to see how long she could hold it.
She could drink him in for the rest of her life. But of course, she had a job to do.
Searching for that brisk efficiency that she had become well known for among her colleagues, she waved the iPad toward him. “Since you refuse to see an actual physiotherapist, I contacted a friend of mine and downloaded some videos he recommended. Most of them are pretty easy to follow, but I have requested that Khaleef be present in case you need physical—”
He shook his head.
She instantly knew what he was saying no to. “But Khaleef can—”
“I want you.”
She swallowed at the searing heat that blanketed her as he pushed off the wall and moved closer. He had said those words deliberately, she reminded herself. He was testing how far her recklessness of a few moments ago would carry her. And yet they had no less effect on her. “Fine. For this week, our goal is to get you moving again, and for you to attend a dinner with Ayaan and Princess Zohra at the end of the week. And figuring out where it is that you want to go when this is…over, and what you will be doing there.”
Every muscle in his face stilled. “Where I want to go?”
“Yes. I thought about your…leaving Dahaar a little more.” It was all she had done, she felt consumed by it really. This time, she was going to be here and he was going to leave.
She had long ago resigned herself to a life without him and she had accomplished far more than her wildest dreams.