“It means nothing to you, does it,” Kareef said behind her in a low voice, “that you’ll give your body to him tonight, when you were in my bed only yesterday?”
She pretended to smile down at Umar on the racetrack as he exuberantly accepted flowers, patting his horse’s nose and shaking his jockey’s hand. “We are divorced,” she said, fighting to keep her voice even. “You mean nothing to me.”
“Don’t marry him, Jasmine.” His voice was hoarse and deep. She heard him rise from his chair. “Don’t.”
She saw her fiancé waving and smiling. He lifted his two-year-old son on his shoulder, and the crowd roared their approval.
She felt Kareef come up behind her, close enough to touch. She didn’t turn around. She couldn’t. The cheers of the crowd became deafening white noise, like static. Until all Jasmine could hear was the pounding of her own heart and the rush of blood in her ears.
She felt Kareef slowly pull off her wide-brimmed hat. The back of her neck was washed in the warmth of his breath. Her body tightened from her scalp to her breasts, and a sweet agonizing tension coiled low and deep inside her.
“Stay with me,” Kareef said in a low voice. “Not because you’re bound to me, but because it’s your free choice. Be my mistress.”
The king’s mistress.
For that kind of joy, Jasmine would have willingly sacrificed anything. Except one thing. Her gaze fell upon her family.
She squeezed her eyes closed. She’d thought she’d known pain before, but this was more than she could bear. With an intake of breath, she whirled around in his arms. Ripping the hat out of his grasp, she held it against her handbag as she backed away. “I can’t.”
“Jasmine—”
“Go back to the palace, Kareef,” she choked out. “Don’t stay for my wedding. It kills me to have you so close—don’t you see you’re killing me?”
She turned and rushed up the steps toward the air-conditioned private room, disappearing behind the door.
Kareef caught up with her almost instantly on the other side of the mirrored window. Grabbing her, he pushed her roughly against the wall. Both hat and handbag dropped hard on the floor. She struggled, but his hands wrapped around her wrists, holding her fast. She couldn’t run. She couldn’t escape. She couldn’t resist.
She braced for a savage plundering of her lips. She waited for him to crush her. Instead, he did something far worse. He lowered his mouth to hers in a kiss far more brutal than any mere force could ever be.
He kissed her…as if he loved her.
Kareef moved his hands over Jasmine’s red silk dress, savoring the feel of her curvaceous body in his arms. Relief filled him that she was back where she belonged. Desire sizzled through his veins like a drug as he tasted the exquisite sweetness of her lips.
He’d thought he’d almost lost her. He’d divorced her, as he’d given his word of honor to do. But he still wanted her. He wanted her to choose to be with him, of her own free will. To choose him over all other men, no matter how inconvenient or difficult their love might be.
Didn’t she realize that they’d already lost too many years of their lives apart?
She belonged to him. As he belonged to her.
He cupped her breasts through her dress, stroking her shoulders, her swanlike neck. He kissed her skin, biting almost hard enough to bruise. He wanted to mark his possession, to remove any memory of another man’s claim on her. To rip that damned diamond off her left hand.
“You belong to me,” he growled. “Say it.”
Her beautiful chocolate-brown eyes gleamed and shimmered, sliding over him with the sensuality of a hot desert night. His body’s memory of making love to her so many times, so urgently, roared through him like a blaze. His hands tightened.
“I belong to you,” she whispered with an intake of breath. “But Kareef, you must know that we—”
He stopped her with a hard kiss. He felt her tremble beneath him as he stroked her body through the red silk. He wrapped his hands in her lustrous dark hair, amid chestnut streaks like woven gold in the daylight.
They belonged together. Now, he would let the whole world know it. He would no longer hide his love for Jasmine in the shadows.
His love.
Oh my God. He loved her.
He didn’t just desire Jasmine. He didn’t just wish to spend his every moment with her.
He loved her. He’d never stopped loving her. It was why he’d never once felt tempted by the endless succession of women who’d tried to throw themselves into his bed. His body, his heart, were for one woman only.