LITMIR.BIZ

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about his neatness. Not that anyone knew this. Her father recognized these characteristics as a potential source of ridicule, projected the opposite. But Amjad Aal Shalaan was infallible in deciphering people. That was just one among the endless weapons that made him unstoppable in the worlds of highest-level finance and politics.

      Needless to say, everyone had succumbed to his wishes. He’d specified three o’clock for arrival.

      It was noon. She’d just called her father to tell him she’d arrived. He’d exclaimed his anxiety that she’d gone alone, had left behind the entourage he’d tried to saddle her with. She’d told him they could catch up, that she had no problem going back with them. But she was getting some one-on-one time with Amjad first, before the desert became a forest of people for him to fade among.

      She eased her foot off the accelerator to savor the last moments of approach. The sight warranted the most leisurely of zooms, to savor its every smidge of magnificence.

      And no, she didn’t mean the majestic desert with its undulating dunes surrounding the naturally flat land. That and the canopy of bleached-blue sky, painted in wisps of incandescent white, were indeed glorious. But it was the sight of him that spread firecrackers of pleasure through her system, had flutters of anticipation accumulating in her rib cage.

      He stood in front of one of the huge tents. Dozens of his men flitted around him. She saw only him. Standing half a foot taller than anyone else, broad, lean and loaded with inborn grace and inimitable power, uncaring of the mercilessness of the sun beating down on his raven head, indifferent to existence in its whole.

      The man was so aptly named “most glorious.”

      And that was before you took into account the difference in him today. She’d only ever seen him in hand-sculpted suits that looked to be made of living silk, designed and delighted to worship his body. She’d thought that nothing could look better than that.

      He did now. All in white, his billowy shirt tucked into skintight pants and those into tan boots, he was … description-defying.

      She parked beside the other cars, grabbed her bag and hat and hopped down from the steel behemoth her father had bequeathed her for the trip. She slung her bag across her torso and hid from the sun’s pummeling rays beneath the hat, willing the necessities to cool down her urge to run to him.

      Not that Amjad was in any rush to acknowledge her. It was only when she slammed the door that he glanced sideways at her in that maddeningly delicious, delightfully nonchalant way of his.

      From beneath the arch of world-famous eyebrows, legendary emerald eyes documented her approach with ponderous detachment. She felt them drilling into her recesses, taking her apart one cell at a time. His ruthlessly sensuous mouth was set, every hollow and slash of his masterpiece bone structure showcased by the almost-perpendicular sunrays. While the harsh shadows they cast turned others into grotesque caricatures of themselves, they made him into the god of vengeance that he was. The ultimate yum that he was.

      As she closed the last feet between them, he sort of faced her, looked at her in his patented insignificance-inducing way.

      Undeterred as usual, she waved a salute to all present, then focused on him, gave him her brightest smile and said, “I’m here!”

       She is here.

      The words reverberated inside Amjad’s mind.

      B’haggej’ jaheem! What, in hell’s name, was Princess Aal Waaked doing here? He’d invited Prince Aal Waaked.

      Yet Maram Aal Waaked was here. As she’d so triumphantly announced after walking up to him with all the mesmerizing intent of a stalking, starving tigress.

      Amjad forced every muscle in his body into neutral as Maram’s every detail surged through his awareness.

      Lushness encased in a loose beige pantsuit that still did nothing to obscure each long limb and ripe curve, each undulation of feminine assurance and fluid grace. A ponytail that would cascade into a waterfall of gold-shot butterscotch when released. Eyes as hot as the sun, as fathomless as the desert, deep-set in mystery and self-possession. Features sculpted from cream flawlessness by a higher god of beauty. A bearing of one who knew her worth, wielded it like a weapon, cast it like a spell.

      His lungs burned.

      It was seconds before he realized why and breathed again.

      Seemed being male was incurable.

      Problem was, his maleness only manifested around this manifestation of brazen womanliness.

      There was no mistaking it. Maram Aal Waaked was a hazard wherever creatures of the XY persuasion trod.

      And that wasn’t his “paranoia” talking.

      At thirty, Maram had already gone through two men. Officially. A prince and a business-empire heir. One older than her father, the other young enough to be her kid brother. Off the record, dozens were no doubt scattered on either side of the swath she’d cut through the male population.

      She now had her eye on him. Both of her dipped-in-molten-gold-and-captured-sunshine eyes.

      Before that implied he was anything special, he had to amend the statement. She had her eye on him and his brother.

      Whichever fell into her honey trap would do. She probably wouldn’t mind and could handle it just fine if they both did.

      She’d sooner entrap the devil than him. But his half brother, Haidar, while a wily, temperamental fiend in his own right, wasn’t as impervious. He’d shared some syrupy friendship with her since they’d been young, and she might penetrate his defenses through nostalgia. Not that he could see any man other than himself even considering resisting her if she made her desire evident.

      She was her name, after all. The aspired to. The coveted.

      But never by him. And she was now more off-limits than ever before.

      If he’d once put her on his most-abhorred list due to her own actions, he now put her on the list of his most-bitter enemies due to her father.

      Yusuf Aal Waaked, ruling prince of the neighboring emirate of Ossaylan, was behind the theft of the Pride of Zohayd jewels, the master conspirator behind the plot to dethrone the Aal Shalaans.

      Now, the serpent’s daughter—a boa constrictor herself who’d squeezed the reason and life out of many a man—was looking up at him with that excitement that always threatened to devour him.

      He inclined his head at her, injected his voice with its maximum level of scorn. “Princess Haram.”

      Maram blinked. Had he just called her Haram?

      The glint in those unique eyes said he had!

       Sinful. Wicked. Evil. Taboo.

      The word encompassed all that. And more.

      And he’d made sure everyone had heard it.

      So. How did he expect her to react? Get flustered? Defensive? Outraged?

      No. The Amjad she knew would expect her to engage him. And boy, would she.

      She gave him a curtsy, fluttered her lashes. “Prince Abghad!”

      Amjad’s eyes snapped a fraction wider before danger slithered across his heart-stoppingly gorgeous face, his hand flattening over his heart in mock hurt. “And here I thought you … liked me.”

      “I far more than … like you. And you know it.” She grinned up at him. “But a Haram deserves at least an Abghad.”

      “Princess Sinful and Prince Hateful,” Amjad said slowly, as if tasting the slurs, his darkest-chocolate voice making them as delicious as the sweetest compliments. “Those do have a far better ring to them than the trite names our pompous parents saddled us with.”

      She nodded,

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