the hit. It had been a long, long time, but she thought she could take it. There was no warding off a blow from a man as strong as he was or as close, but if she could take the inevitable fall well, it wouldn’t immobilize her. The trick was not to tense up too much in anticipation, and then to curl into a tight ball against the kick—
“Sterling,” Rihad said then, in that low, dark way of his that rippled through her, making her want to cry. Making her want him, too, which she thought was evidence that she was deeply sick in the head. Twisted all the way through, the way they’d always told her she was. “What do you think is happening here?”
“Please,” she whispered, trying to stand tall, to square her shoulders despite the fact she couldn’t stop shaking. “Just don’t wake the baby. I don’t want her to see.”
And she closed her eyes, tried not to brace herself too much and waited for him to hit her.
The way her foster parents always had.
She heard nothing. For one lifetime, then another.
Then, finally, Rihad’s voice, but he wasn’t speaking to her. He spoke in Arabic, and she didn’t have to understand the words he used to know he was issuing orders again in that matter-of-fact, deeply autocratic way of his that was as much a part of him as breathing.
Then again, the quiet.
The breeze above and the water all around, and she kept her eyes shut tight because the quiet was the trick. It was always a trick. The false sense of security had always, always tripped her up. The moment she’d thought it wasn’t going to happen and looked to see was the moment they’d laid her flat.
She heard footsteps, then the sound of Leyla’s buggy being wheeled away, and her stomach turned over, then plummeted. He was sending the baby off with the nurses, as she’d asked. That meant—
She flinched away from his hand on her arm, making it that much worse. Her eyes flew open and met his, burning dark, dark gold and far too close, and she nearly bit off her tongue.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered hurriedly, in a panic she couldn’t control, even when he let go of her and stepped back. “I didn’t mean to flinch.”
He studied her for a long, long time.
“Sterling,” he said, very quietly, but somehow with more power behind it than she’d ever heard him use before. “Who hit you?”
And everything inside of Sterling ground to a lurching, nauseating halt. She couldn’t risk this. She should never have flinched. Open up that old can of worms and he would see. He would know.
She didn’t think it through, she simply catapulted herself across the wedge of space between them, trusting he would catch her. She didn’t ask herself how she knew he would.
But he did.
His arms came around her as her chest collided with his, and all of that panic and all of those old ghosts shimmered into something else entirely.
His seductive heat poured through her. Into her. Chasing away all those old cobwebs she couldn’t afford to let him see. He couldn’t know.
She didn’t want to think too much about why that was the worst thing she could imagine. The very worst. She only knew, without a shred of doubt, that it was.
“Exactly what do you think you are doing?” he asked, but his voice was as gentle as his hands against her.
And yet she could feel how hot he was, hot and hard and deliciously male against her, everywhere. He wanted her. It was a revelation. He was so hot that she might have thought he was feverish, had she not been looking straight up into those dark gold eyes of his, where she could see he wasn’t the least bit unwell.
Dark and beautiful and much too close to all the parts of her she didn’t want him to see, perhaps. But not sick.
Sterling was more than a little bit worried that she was the sick one here, but she shoved that thought aside. There was no time left to worry about any of that. About the strange revelations this morning had wrought, much less what they meant or the repercussions they might have. She couldn’t let her mind spin out that way. She couldn’t see the future, so there was no use panicking about it.
She could only do her best to confuse the present in the easiest and most direct way available to her before Rihad talked them both to the point of no return. Before he saw who she really was and was as disgusted as everyone else had always been.
So that was what she did.
Sterling pressed against him in what she hoped was an excellent show of wanton abandonment, winding her arms around the strong column of his neck, her mouth actually watering as she let her gaze move from that smooth, brown sweep of skin to his marvelous mouth that was now right there—
“Sterling,” Rihad said repressively, but his hands were flush against her hips and he wasn’t pushing her away. And she could feel him against her belly, so hard where she was so soft and yielding. The wild sensation made her shudder all the way through and then arch against him.
As if this wasn’t the man she’d tried to run from, so long ago in New York, so sure he would ruin her.
As if this wasn’t the man she’d thought was about to haul off and hit her moments before.
Or maybe because it was him. Because she’d snapped into a very old, horribly familiar place and he hadn’t hit her after all. He’d looked appalled at the very idea.
And he wanted her. Even with that glimpse of the truth about her, he wanted her.
He wasn’t like any other man she’d ever known. And that shattering thing swirled inside her, making her feel something rather more like truly wanton after all. That maddening heat, storming through her limbs and gathering low in her belly, making her feel hot and ripe and hungry—
She arched into him, harder this time, then went up on her toes and kissed him.
And everything exploded.
His mouth was divine torture, his kiss insane. Rihad took control almost the second it began, one of his hands moving to wrap itself in her hair, the better to hold her head where he wanted it, the other a hard, wild encouragement at her hip.
He angled his head for a better fit, and then he simply…took.
And she loved it.
Rihad kissed like a starving man, as if Sterling wasn’t the only one scraped raw and left aching by this hungry thing between them. He kissed as if there was nothing at all for her to do but go along for the ride, wherever he took them. He kissed her until she was shivering against him in uncontrollable reaction, need and longing and the rich headiness of desire making her dizzy. And still so needy it hurt.
She couldn’t get close enough. She couldn’t taste him deeply enough. She didn’t care if she could breathe, if her feet touched the ground, and when he shifted to haul her against him and then lifted her high in the air, the only thing she could think to do was kiss him again.
Harder. Deeper. Longer. Hotter.
He wrapped her legs around his waist and held her there, twined around him with no other support, making her tremble at the strength he displayed so offhandedly—and then he shifted again, so their hips dragged against each other, his hardness against the part of her that was the neediest, and she moaned into his mouth.
She’d never liked being touched. But she found that didn’t apply to Rihad, who couldn’t seem to touch her enough.
And right at that moment, she didn’t care why that was. She would die if he knew, she thought. If he comprehended how untouched she truly was.
It wasn’t until her back came up against something that she realized it wasn’t just that spinning in her head that was making her feel loose and adrift—he’d walked over and laid her out on the table like his very own banquet.
“Reach