“Or anything but your true self. Since you’re satisfied that I’m suffering as much as you are, let me see your wound, Azeez.”
“Why are you hell-bent on plunging us both into misery again? How much more do you want me to suffer?”
And just like that, he gave her back all the power he stole from her. He hated the servants seeing him like this, his brother seeing him like this, but above all, it was her presence that tortured him the most.
Why? Did he think she would be revolted? Did he not see the very strength inside him that still kept him standing there?
Suddenly, it became irrationally imperative that she learn everything he had suffered, if only to share his pain.
She would have done that much for even a friend. So she stayed silent, refusing to back away.
With a curse that punctured the air, he undid the string of his trousers and Nikhat wondered if he could hear the thump-thump of her heart. Breathing hard, she moved to the side to let the blazing lights overhead illuminate the small sliver of flesh he uncovered.
She breathed hard at the first sign of a violent scar—stitched up roughly, almost the width of her wrist. Closing her eyes, she laid her hand on his hip. His skin was blazing hot under her palm, the muscle clenching into rock hardness as she moved her fingers.
He stiffened but she couldn’t stop herself.
A picture emerged in her mind as she moved her hand, traced the ravaged tissue, learning the breadth and length of it. She clutched her eyes closed, locking the searing heat back.
She couldn’t help imagining the kind of pain he must have suffered. And following that, hope flooded through her.
She had been right. He had survived because he was Azeez Al Sharif. And if he could survive that wound, he could survive anything.
There was no smooth flesh left on the side of his hip. It was a jagged mass of muscle, the patched-up scars abrasive against her soft palm, running down his thigh. The moment her fingers fluttered lower and she felt the coarse hair of his thighs against her fingers again, it was her turn to shudder all over.
His skin here was hot and different against her palm, but the muscles rock hard.
A pulse of something else clamored between them—a heated awareness at how intimately she was touching him. He was half turned away from her, his hard body pressing into her front, his arm brushed up between her breasts, his long, rough fingers anchored around her nape.
Every inch of her came alive at the delicious pressure in all the right places. His breathing sounded harsh, too, every hard muscle that pressed into her tight with tension.
She righted his trousers, her fingers deceptively steady, as if she did this every day, as if she hadn’t pulled them through an emotional firestorm goaded by a fiercely selfish desire. “Did the bullet shatter the bone?”
He sighed, as though accepting that she wasn’t going to back off, and she wrapped her arms around his waist. “No. It hit the bone and dropped momentum somehow. From what I gathered from them, the Mijab were able to quickly extricate it. They took me to a hospital at the border of Zuran. A small metal joint was inserted to hold the bone together until it could grow back.”
“They left it inside,” she said, finally understanding the source of his pain. “That’s why it gets so stiff, why it hurts so much.”
He nodded and his hands pulled her hands away from his hip. “Are we through?”
Nikhat straightened and looked away. “Here, yes. We will start stretching immediately.”
She halted at the exit, her skin gleaming with vitality, her eyes blazing with piercing honesty. The fabric of her caftan stuck to her body and with her hair curling around her face, she was the most striking woman he had ever seen, and a sharp hunger, unbidden and unwelcome, yet one that made him feel fiercely alive, clawed at Azeez.
All he would have to do was close his eyes to feel the feathering touch of her fingers over his flesh, hear the sinuous whisper of her breath over his skin.
“You can’t imagine what Khaleef and the others see,” Nikhat said. “They see the prince who always had a kind word for them, they see the prince who remembers their name without hesitation, they see the prince whom they mourned with tears and their hearts—they do not see your limp or your scars or your guilt. And what you see is not their pity, Azeez, but their love.
“I would give anything to see my mother one more time. Think about what you’re doing to yours.”
* * *
His hip muscles sore, but also surprisingly limber, Azeez slid himself onto the bench in his private garden.
He had expected Nikhat to decline his invitation.
Was she as curious about him as he was about her?
The silverware tinkled as she poured him mint tea. Sitting here, as the sun streaked the sky gold and red, surrounded by lush roses, the scent of Nikhat, jasmine and something undeniably her, shouldn’t have registered at all on him. Yet, as she handed him the tea and took a sweet date cake for herself, the scent of her wafted over him, teasing arousal from his beaten body.