“I can’t stop, Azeez.”
His palm landed square below her chest, and her heart began a race. “Do not test the breadth of my goodwill, habeeba. I worked very hard to achieve it. If you tempt me today, if you tease me today, I won’t walk away.”
She smiled and, anchoring herself against his arms, pushed herself into his touch. The sharp hiss of his breath felt like music to her ears. “Then don’t. Make love to me, Azeez.”
His jaw tightened like carved stone even as a dark fire glittered in his eyes. He was more than tempted and it fueled her own desire and satisfaction. “I think seeing your sisters has twisted your mind.”
She clasped his jaw with her hands. “On the contrary, visiting with them only helped me see clearly. I want this. I have always wanted this. Only, eight years ago, I never understood this fire between us.”
His mouth took on a bitter slant as he tugged her hands away from her. “Is this gratitude for ordering your father to send your sisters? Because I would have done the same for any loyal servant of the palace. A simple thanks is enough for that.”
Hearing him put it in that stark way, it still didn’t douse the fire in her. He was creating distance between them, letting her down in the only way he knew.
But he had no idea how much she had deprived herself of, how bereft her life had been of this compelling awareness she found near him. “You’re the man I’ve always wanted beyond reason and sense. What Richard and I had—”
He cursed so colorfully that Nikhat forgot what she was saying for a minute. “Don’t manipulate me, Nikhat. I don’t want to hear his name.”
“Our relationship was based on mutual respect and suitability. What I feel near you, I’ve never felt like that, ever.”
“Why now, when you threw everything I offered you before at my face and went off to pursue your dreams?”
Leaning into his body, she bent her forehead to his shoulder, the truth dancing on her lips. How could she tell him that she had never stopped wanting him? That it had never been the case of not wanting him enough. “This is not me trying to revert or start something new. This is me living in the moment.”
Before her courage deserted her, before she remembered the thousand reasons this was unwise, she pulled his arm around her waist and did what she had been dying to do since she saw him, did what she had dreamed of a million times and more.
She leaned into him, until her breasts were crushed against his chest, until his groin cradled hers. Until she felt the evidence of his arousal—hard against the V of her own legs.
Air left her lungs on a long whoosh, her muscles liquefying with uncontrollable shaking. The shudder that went through him goaded her beyond reason. She pressed her mouth to his jaw, the stubble on his jaw rasping her lips in the most delicious way. “Tonight, you’re not the prince who’s bent upon walking away from the very thing you were born for, and I…I’m not the woman who walked away from you. For one night, will you not grant us both what we want, Azeez?”
Her pulse ringing like an incessant bell in every inch of her body, Nikhat slipped away from him and left the courtyard.
CHAPTER NINE
ONE NIGHT, AZEEZ.
Azeez stood outside Nikhat’s suite, her words ringing in an endless loop in his head, traveling through his blood, moving inside him with the force of a lightning bolt.
Her proposal coming on the heels of the high he had found in uncovering information, in realizing that there was still a salvageable part of him, that he could still be of some use to his brother and Dahaar, was temptation he couldn’t deny.
Standing there with her kohl-rimmed eyes staring at him with the brazen need dancing in her eyes made him feel fiercely alive, made him want to ride the wave, accept the escape she offered.
For one night, she would be his.
He pushed the door and stepped in, his gaze hungrily searching for her. She lay on the bed, her face bathed in a golden light from the bed lamp. The sheets rustled as he ventured farther in, and she rose to her knees in the middle of the vast bed, her gaze glittering with a bright hunger.
Lust and something else hit him hard in the gut, little shivers sprouting everywhere, causing tremors in his muscles.
A dazzling smile, edged with anticipation, thrill and even a flash of trepidation curved her mouth. “You came.”
He felt his mouth twist into a bitter curve. “Did you doubt it?”
Her eyes closed for a second, as if she wanted to shield something from him. And he realized that she was as conflicted about this as he was, just in a different way. She had asked for this night with that characteristic bluntness that he had begun to see, but it didn’t mean she wasn’t nervous about it.