LITMIR.BIZ

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Your primary role will be to present an image of a healthy marriage and to give birth to our children. An affair with another man will have disastrous consequences. The media will rip us into shreds and the country will be in uproar.”

      “Is Your Highness promising the same fidelity in marriage, then?”

      It was already a fantasy, this game they were playing with each other. This pretense they were both playing at, knowing that it was leading nowhere. Only one thing they both wanted.

      She had to know that he would never marry her. He had told her that. And yet, she was still here, provoking him, luring him in for a taste. An affair with him—was that truly what she wanted, then?

      Even in the charade, Zayn wouldn’t lie. “On the contrary, I fully expect that within a few years, the reality of our marriage and the pressures of this life will make us, if not hateful, at least indifferent toward each other. And when that day comes, I intend to seek another woman. I’m sure you’ll be glad to not have to bear my unwanted attentions. I enjoy sex and I do not intend to give it up.”

      “And this is your idea of marriage? This is what you’ve been offering all the women you’ve been meeting all morning?”

      “No. All those women already understood these terms and accepted them. They knew even before they saw me today, that that was reality. It is only for you I see the need to set the expectation.”

      “Because you think I’m naive enough to believe in love? To believe that a man like you will offer fidelity and respect and love?”

      The cynical light in her eyes shocked him. Why, when she was clearly here with not so pure motives... “No, I explained it all because I thought it would tell you that I’m as unsuitable a husband for you as you are a wife for me. Marriage to each other would be war, Amalia, and I have enough of them to contend with in the other areas of my life.”

      “Wait, you thought I’d be heartbroken that you’re rejecting me for the role of your wife and this is you softening up the loss for me?”

      “Yes.” Before she could skitter away from him in her outrage, Zayn cupped her neck and arrested her movement. The small indent at the base of her nape was the sexiest part of a woman he had ever touched.

      He swallowed his shock at how swiftly lust rose through him.

      Her breath fell in rough exhales while a tight stiffness entered her body. He held her loosely enough to not threaten her, leaving it in her hands if she wanted to move away. Other hand sliding to her waist, he exerted enough pressure to bring her closer to him.

      Gorgeous brown eyes widened into innocent pools. Very likely, the vulnerability in her eyes was a well-rehearsed act, but still it turned him on incredibly. Pursuing one sophisticated woman after the other, sleeping with women who knew the score, Zayn had forgotten, or maybe he had never known, how hot this kind of vulnerability was.

      He wanted to kiss her. He wanted to make her all flustered again. He wanted to see if she would taste sweet as her soft sigh said or tart as her words suggested. When it came to women, Zayn had always taken what he wanted, pursued models and actresses ruthlessly. He wasn’t going to let this rough-around-the-edges woman slip past him.

      “I’m going to kiss you, Amalia. This is your moment to go all outraged on me and call me a savage beast.”

      If possible, she stiffened even more in his hold. “I...refuse to provide you with any more entertainment. I was right in thinking that you would be just as bloated and corrupt with power as—”

      * * *

      Whatever outrage Amalia had amassed to fight the man’s autocratic ideas and her own out-of-control senses, all of it disappeared as Zayn’s mouth touched hers.

      The scent and taste of him was an overwhelming assault on her senses. He tasted of mint and some dark potency that stirred everything in her to waking. Heat poured through her in rivulets as he pressed one tender kiss after the other, from one corner of her mouth to the other. The softness of his mouth—who could know such a hard man could have such soft lips?—was a delicious contrast against the rough scrape of his jaw, tugging Amalia’s senses this way and that.

      If he had kissed her with the aggressiveness she sensed within him, or if he had employed that sensual mastery that had made him a favorite lover of women, maybe she would’ve resisted.

      But instead the soft flick of his tongue against the seam of her lips, the kisses punctured by the sweetest endearments in Arabic, Amalia melted like an ice cube on a hot and sultry Khaleej summer day. He tasted her as if he was dying to probe all her beguiling secrets; he kissed her as if she were a treasure he had just discovered.

      This supposed connoisseur of women requested entry into her mouth as if she was the most enchanting woman he had ever met. And sensible, rational, rarely discomposed Amalia fell for it all. She eagerly opened her mouth under his questing one.

      And just like that, the tenor of the kiss changed. It went from a pleasant seaside breeze to an intense scorching heat wave. His tongue swiped over the moist recesses of her mouth, teasing and taunting her tongue to play with him. The stroke of his tongue over hers released a dampness between her thighs. It was what he had done with words, too. He had somehow provoked her, called the part of her that she didn’t even know existed, made her revel in the moment, made her prolong what was only a dangerous charade.

      He was seducing her mind.

      He was doing that now, too. It was as if he knew to soften his aggressiveness for her, to slowly draw her out instead of demand. At least until she came to him of her own volition.

      With a shamefully wanton moan, she sank her fingers into his hair and pushed herself closer to him. She sucked his tongue into her mouth just as he had done with her.

      Large hands roved over her body now, tracing the ridges of her shoulders, the line of her spine, setting every nerve ending on fire. Urgent and aggressive, he stroked every inch of her to the same need. Amalia had never felt like this before and she didn’t know how to stop it, how to gain control over herself or this madness that had overtaken her.

      All she knew was that she never wanted to stop.

      Her mouth stung and her nipples peaked to tight points, grazed again and again by the hard contours of his chest. His hungry hands finally stilled on her waist and he pulled her even closer. Mouth left hers, giving her a chance to breathe. “Point proven. You can huff and puff and act outraged but truly, you want me. And you can’t see how all your self-control and rules about needing respect and recognition before attraction are out the window already. That’s what all this feminist bluster is about, isn’t it?

      “It’s not about my double standards but about your own conflict in wanting me when you do not want to.”

      If he had slapped her, Amalia couldn’t have been more shocked. It was like being drenched in an ice bath to douse her overheated senses. Still, her body throbbed in all these newly aware places, slow to cool down.

      With a disgusted growl, she pushed away from him and turned around. Lungs burned as if she had run a long distance, her mind blank under the onslaught of such heady pleasure.

      She rubbed her palm roughly against her stinging lips as if she could get rid of his taste. A horrified sound escaped her mouth. Dear God, she couldn’t believe she’d been kissing the Sheikh of Khaleej.

      The thought of her twin rotting in that jail cell while she played ridiculous games with the man who held his fate in his hand made nausea whirl up through her throat. How could she have forgotten Aslam so thoroughly?

      How had she gone from asking for help to a harmless pretense to climbing all over him like a vine?

      “You’re offended by the kiss. But I will not apologize for doing something both of us wanted.”

      She whirled around, his self-assured words scraping at her. Could she blame him for thinking she was putty in his hands? “I’m not just offended. I’m disgusted with myself.”

      He

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