LITMIR.BIZ

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almost had to pick her jaw off the floor this time. “How can I express my gratitude that you’ve gone the extra mile and abolished whatever choice I had in this antiquated process?”

      Kamal’s lips twitched. “Let me rephrase my extremely misleading statement. The Aal Ghaanem prince volunteered. And he is already here. But he had the consideration to let me prepare you before he came in. So shall I send him in...or do you need some more time before you meet your groom-to-be?”

      She sank back onto the couch, objections and insults swarming so violently it was impossible to pick one to voice.

      Calmly disregarding her apoplectic state, Kamal bent and kissed her cheek. “Give this a chance, and it’ll all work out for the best. You have me as the best example for assa ann takraho shai’an wa hwa khairon lakkom.”

      You may hate something and it’s for your best.

      Before she could do something drastic, like poke him in the eye, he straightened, turned on his heel and walked away.

      She watched him disappear, all her mental functions on the fritz.

      What had just happened?

      Was she really back in Judar? Only to find herself being pushed into a far worse cage than anything her previous life here had been? Could it be true that refusal wasn’t an option?

      Suddenly a suspicion cleaved into her brain.

      The logical progression to this nightmare.

      The identity of this “volunteer.”

      The man who was the reason she’d sworn never to return to this region. He was an Aal Ghaanem prince, even if the world forgot that most of the time.

      But he would never volunteer to...to...

      You’re mine, Jala. And no matter how long it takes, I swear to you, I will reclaim you. I will make you beg to be mine again.

      The promise...the threat...that had circulated in her being for six long years, burning her to the core with its malicious arrogance and possessiveness, reverberated in her bones.

      No. He’d just said that out of spite, to poison whatever reprieve walking away would grant her. He hadn’t really wanted to reclaim her. Not when he’d only claimed her as a means to an end. An end he must believe he’d long achieved....

      Her heart kicked, had her pitching forward to the edge of her seat. The door of the reception room was opening.

      The next moment, her heart battered her ribs. Time ceased. Reality fell away. Everything converged on one thing. The shadow separating from the darkness. A shape she remembered all too well.

      Him.

      No. No. Not when she’d finally managed to purge his malignant memory. She must stop this confrontation from coming to pass, flee...now.

      She didn’t move. Couldn’t. Could only sit there, her every nerve unraveling as soundless steps brought him into the circle of light where she sat exposed, besieged.

      His eyes were the first things that emerged out of the gloom. Those fire pits had haunted her dreams and tormented her waking hours since she’d last seen them.

      But the tremors arcing through her weren’t from what she saw in them, or the blow of his presence or its implications. It was the awareness that had swept her from the first moment she’d ever encountered him. Even amidst the terror of the hostage crisis, it had yanked her out of reality, plunged her into a stunned free fall where only he existed. For that same feeling to mushroom again now, after all that had happened...

      He blinked, and the vice garroting her snapped, propelling her to her feet and to the French windows.

      Her steps picked up speed as her exit to the palace gardens neared...then it disappeared. Behind a wall of muscle and maleness. It was as if he’d materialized in her path.

      He didn’t try to detain her, didn’t need to. His very aura snared her. And that was before her gaze streaked up, found him looking at her with that trance-inducing intensity.

      Finding him so near, after all these years, after what he’d cost her....

      Her grip on consciousness softened. The world swirled as she stared up at him, a prisoner to her own enervation. And again the sheer injustice of it all hit her.

      No one should be endowed with all this. He was too...everything. And even in the subdued lighting and through the veil of her own wavering senses she could see he was even more than she remembered. Six years had taken him from the epitome of manhood to godlike levels.

      He towered over her, even though she was six feet in her heels, his physique that of an Olympian, his face that of an avenging angel, every inch of him composed of planes and hollows and slashes of power and perfection. Adding to his lethal assets, his wealth of sun-gilded mahogany hair was now long enough to be gathered at his nape, the severe scrape emphasizing the ruggedness of his leonine forehead and the vigor of his hairline. A trim new beard and mustache accentuated the jut of his cheekbones and the dominance of his jawline and completed the ruthless desert raider image. Maturity had added more of everything to that supreme being of bronze and steel who’d taken her breath away and had held it out of reach for as long as he’d had her under his spell. Something she’d thought she’d broken.

      But if, after all she’d been through, all the maturation she’d thought she’d undergone, he could still look at her and take control of her senses, then the spell couldn’t be broken.

      But this unadulterated coveting in his eyes... She couldn’t be reading it right.

      Still, when he took a step closer, he vibrated with something that simulated barely checked hunger. Which would be unleashed at the slightest provocation—a word, a gasp....

      But she was incapable of even those. She’d expended all her power in her escape effort. Now she was caught in stasis, waiting for his next move to reanimate her.

      None came. He stared down at her, as if her nearness affected him just as acutely. When he’d been the one who’d planned this ambush, who’d been lying in wait for her.

      The barricades around her resentment melted, shattering her inertia, imbuing her limbs with the steadiness of outrage as she put the distance he’d obliterated back between them.

      “Guess your memory must be patchy from all the head blows I hear is an occupational hazard in your line of work. Your presence can only be explained by partial to total amnesia.”

      Another blink lowered his thick, gold-tipped lashes, eclipsing the infernos of his eyes and his reaction. Then they swept up, exposing her to a different kind of heat. Surprise? Challenge? Humor?

      Just the idea that it could be the latter poured acid on her inflamed nerves. “Let me fill one paramount hole in your recollections. What I last said to you remains in full force now. I never want to see you again. So you can take whatever game you think you’re playing and go straight to hell.”

      She swept around then, desperation to get away from him fueling her steps...and her arm was snagged in a hard, warm grip.

      Before she could fully register the bolt that zapped her, a tug swirled her around smoothly, as if in a choreographed dance, and brought her slamming against him from breast to calf.

      Before she could draw another breath, one of his hands slipped into the hair at her nape, immobilizing her head and tilting her face upward. The other hand trailed a heavy path of possession down to her buttocks. Then, as he held her prisoner, exerting no force but that of his will, he let her see it. The very thing she’d once reveled in experiencing—the lethal beast he kept hidden under the civilized veneer. Its cunning savagery had assured his survival in the dangerous existence he’d chosen, his triumph over the most deadly enemies. That beast appeared to be starving—and she was what would sate its cravings.

      Holding her stunned gaze, his own crackling with a dizzying mixture of calculation and lust, he lowered his head.

      Feeling

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