him away as if she’d found herself wrapped around a slimy monster.
Unable to think, to move, he stood frozen as she struggled to pull down her skirt. Then, without looking back, she ran away.
“I am really curious, Haidar.”
Rashid.
He turned, his body clamped in a vise of agony.
Rashid was approaching from the direction of the ballroom this time, his progress slow, steady, his face impassive. Haidar answered his empty stare with a glare reflecting the storm that still raged inside him. Rashid would no doubt add to the havoc.
“Tell me, Haidar, how did you manage to reach any level of success, let alone your admittedly impressive one? Men who can’t keep it in their pants aren’t known for the discipline and acumen needed to attain, let alone maintain, success.”
Haidar gritted his teeth against the urge to blacken Rashid’s darker-than-sin eyes even more. “After payback already, Rashid?”
“Actually, I’m doing you a favor. A juvenile demonstration at the door of the kingdom’s foremost politico-economic consultant is one thing. Especially since reports confirm you stayed at her place only long enough to get your face slapped. And she made the rounds next day like a mother apologizing for her delinquent teenager’s antics. But to … sexually harass her in the middle of a public and vital function she organized, in a corridor, against a wall? I really had to break that up.”
“And you’re calling this a favor … how? Saving my image? Aren’t you supposed to be pulverizing it?”
The scorn in Rashid’s eyes could have frozen him, if he wasn’t seething. “I’m not using the handicap of your sexual adolescence to beat you, Haidar. Not when there is such an array of far more relevant vices to discredit you with.”
“Best of luck with that, Rashid. And just so we’re clear, with the way your … favor might have crippled me for life, I think I now hate you as much as you evidently hate me.”
“Then my work is done. For today.” Rashid gave him a mock bow, slowed down a fraction as he passed him. “And Haidar, this woman—she’s good.”
Blood shot in his head as he grabbed Rashid’s arm. “Don’t you ever dare—”
Rashid cut his rising fury short, serenely removing his hand. “She is very good. I watched her tonight, watched others as they responded to her, questioned them extensively afterward. She’s putting together what looks like Azmahar’s only chance for stability until our little pissing contest is concluded. Don’t sabotage her credibility and effectiveness.”
With that, he continued on his way, his abaya and that aura of inhumanity billowing around him like a malevolent force field.
He didn’t look back.
Haidar was getting used to everyone doing that.
But he had to concede that Rashid was right about one thing.
He was in danger of destroying everything he’d ever achieved. He’d been making uncharacteristic mistakes for the past two years. He’d managed to rectify each so far. But his inability to predict consequences had been coming faster since he’d returned here. Since he’d seen Roxanne again.
He’d come here thinking he’d fulfill his objectives. Nudge Roxanne toward the bed he had prepared for her, and perform a preliminary feasibility study of his candidacy.
But not only had he crashed headfirst into Rashid’s unexpected reappearance and uberhostility and disrupted the proceedings he’d intended to learn from, he’d ended up pouring out his bewilderment to Roxanne before losing control and nearly consuming her whole. Against a wall.
So, a roundup of the evening? Rashid had had the first and last word. Roxanne had eluded him again. He’d learned zip. And his mind and manhood had been dealt near-crippling blows.
Not waiting for the pain to subside, since it probably wouldn’t tonight, he exited the corridor of chaos. He plowed through the masses of people who now tried to swarm him, and for the first time since he’d come to Azmahar, wished his bodyguards were around. He’d ordered Khaleel to keep them away, to Khaleel’s anxious chagrin, not wanting them around to witness his encounters with Roxanne. Without them running interference for him, it took him longer to extricate himself from the throngs. It was an endless ten minutes before he was on his way back to his hotel.
He couldn’t go to his new house. His fantasies of continuing the night there with Roxanne were so vivid, they might cause him permanent damage if he went alone.
But … maybe he didn’t have to go alone.
Fully hard again with anticipation, he dialed her number.
His call was rejected. By the third time, he got the message. The insanity had lifted and her unclouded mind was screaming at her—and probably at him—in outrage for what the gross indiscretion he’d dragged her into might have cost her. She might even think it had cost her everything. She hadn’t looked back, hadn’t seen who’d walked in on them.
He parked in the first off-road shoulder, texted her. It was only Rashid.
It was after he’d resumed driving that it hit him.
Only Rashid? What was wrong with him?
She must now be going ballistic, thinking she’d exposed herself as terminally ditzy and in his power to the man whose opinion mattered more than the rest of the kingdom combined.
Swearing at himself, he parked again, texted again. It’s purely on me in Rashid’s opinion. He thinks you’re good. Very good. His words. Absolutely no harm done.
Hoping this was enough to alleviate her anxiety, he resumed his drive. He would give her time to go home, then show up at her door.
No, he couldn’t. He never repeated himself.
He needed a new strategy. He’d been going about his pursuit all wrong. He’d been too impatient, too hungry, hadn’t been listening to her properly. He now realized the only reason she’d been resisting him was her dread of compromising her position.
In the past, she’d initially held him off to protect her mother’s and her own reputation in Azmahar’s conservative society. He’d gone to great lengths to arrange for their relationship to remain a secret to free her from that fear. Of course, that had served his purposes, too.
But she was now more serious than ever about her image. So if he stopped his impulsive incursions, assured her of privacy and secrecy, he’d bet she’d beat him to that bed. Just as she had in those months of stolen passion.
Rashid, damn it, had been right about this, too. He couldn’t compromise her. For every reason there was.
He needed to locate some restraint. And he’d thought he had nothing but. Seemed that was only because there’d been no temptations.
But seeing this matured Roxanne, discovering this new ability to talk to her, the even more intense sexual affinity … now, that was temptation.
It was merciful he posed as overwhelming a temptation to her.
Now to make it safe for her to give in to it, to him, fully.
Absolutely no harm done.
Roxanne stared at Haidar’s text message for what must have been the thousandth time in the past week.
There’d been dozens more since. But this was the one she kept scrolling back to. And every time she read it, she wished he were in front of her. So she could break his jaw.
She’d been burning with mortification since that day. She’d seriously considered running out of the royal palace and out of Azmahar. She’d been certain her job had been ruined, that she’d be the laughingstock of the kingdom within hours. Maybe the world, if her viral video prediction to Haidar came to pass.
Haidar