LITMIR.BIZ

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something deeply wrong with her that she liked it. More than liked it—that hot, dark note in his voice swept over her skin as if he’d used his mouth against her, his mouth and his wicked tongue. “Hold on.”

      She did as he asked. As he commanded. She didn’t even think twice about it, and not only because she wanted him to think she was that slut everyone believed she was, but also because that was so much easier than who she really was.

      Sterling reached up over her head and grabbed the far edge of the table as he leaned in harder, pressing his hips against hers even as this new position made her back arch, as if she was offering up her breasts to him.

      She was. She hoped she looked as if she’d done this a thousand times before—or even if she didn’t, that he’d be too interested in her breasts to care.

      He smiled dangerously as he looked down at the place their bodies pressed together, and Sterling felt the glow of that sweep over her. Through her, hard and hot and needy, until it settled like a lightning bolt between her legs.

      She bucked against him, helpless against these new sensations, and he laughed.

      And then he bent down and found her nipple through the gauzy material of her dress with that dangerously clever mouth of his, so hot and so demanding, and sucked it straight into all that heat.

      Sterling lost her mind.

      There was nothing then, but the fire that rolled through her, one bright flame after the next, building toward something so immense, so impossible, that she would have been afraid of it if she’d been able to catch her breath.

      But Rihad didn’t allow that.

      He pressed the proof of his need hard into the place she hungered for him the most, soft and wet and wild for him even through the trousers he wore, with her ankles locked in the small of his strong back. He set a lazy, mind-melting rhythm, and Sterling could do nothing but meet it, shuddering more with every roll of his lethal hips.

      She didn’t know what she was doing. But she couldn’t seem to stop.

      His mouth teased her breasts through her dress while his hands streaked beneath it, testing her shape, her heat. Learning all kinds of things about her. That she rarely bothered with a bra, even these days when her breasts were still bigger than they’d been before her pregnancy. That a careful pinch against one nipple and a deep tug on the other made her clutch her legs tighter around him and ride him shamelessly, rubbing herself against him as wantonly as she could—

      And then it slammed into her.

      Like a train.

      She cried out, but he was there, licking the sound of it from her lips, moving his own hips harder against hers, making it go on and on and on.

      Making her shatter, then shatter again, then shatter once more.

      Changing everything.

      Changing the whole world.

      Turning Sterling into someone new.

      And when it was over, he let her drop her legs from around his waist and took a step back while she simply lay sprawled there on the table in a thousand pieces, trying to breathe.

      It took a while and even then, it was a shaky thing.

      When she sat up and pulled her dress back down to cover her, Rihad stood there above her, his dark face hard and his golden eyes glittering. He folded his arms over his powerful chest and considered her for a long, breathless moment, as if he wasn’t still so aroused that she could see the proof of it pressing against the front of his trousers, hard and thick, and how could she still want him? Even now?

      Even as the events of this morning flooded her, making her question a lot of things. Her sanity chief among them.

      “Congratulations, Sterling,” Rihad said in that low, rough voice of his that kicked up that fire in her all over again. “You succeeded in distracting me. How long do you think that will work?”

      * * *

      It had worked all too well, Rihad thought a few days later, as he sat in his luxuriously appointed offices and found it impossible to concentrate on matters of state.

      Because she haunted him.

      Her taste. The sounds she’d made as she’d writhed beneath him. The scent of her skin. The sweet perfection of her touch.

      He found he couldn’t think of much else. Especially during the meals they took together in his garden, where they both acted as if that scene right there on the table hadn’t happened. They outdid each other with crisp politeness.

      But it hummed beneath everything. Every clink of silver against fine china. Every sip of wine. Every glance that caught and held. Every movement they each made.

      It was a madness in his blood, infecting him.

      Or she was.

      Because Rihad hardly knew himself these days. His entire relationship with his brother had been a lie. He was hung up on a woman he’d married while he’d believed she was Omar’s mistress—and he had lusted after her while believing it. He was more enamored by the day with a tiny child who was not his in fact, but who felt like his in practice. He felt as if he was reeling through his life suddenly, unmoored and uncertain, and he had no idea how to handle such an alien sensation.

      It was as if there was nothing left to hold on to. Or, more to the point, as if the only thing he wanted to hold on to was Sterling—as if he was as bewitched by her as he’d always thought his brother had been.

      Maybe his enemies were not wrong to threaten invasion. Rihad was beginning to think it would be a kindness.

      He was halfway through yet another inappropriate daydream about his wife when his personal mobile rang with a familiar ringtone.

      Rihad dismissed his ministers with a regal wave and then swiped to open the video chat.

      His sister gazed back at him from the screen, looking as defiant as ever.

      “Amaya.” He kept his voice calm, though it was harder than it should have been, and he didn’t want to think about why that was, all of a sudden, or who was to blame for his endless lack of control. “Have you called to issue your usual taunts?”

      “The quick brown fox always jumps over the lazy dog, Rihad.” Her dark eyes were a shade lighter than the fall of thick dark hair she’d pulled forward over one shoulder, and it irritated him that she was both unquestionably beautiful and entirely too much like her treacherous mother. Smarter than was at all helpful and not in the least bit loyal to the Bakrian throne. It made her unpredictable and he’d always hated that—at least, he’d always thought he had. “I’m only giving you a much-needed demonstration.”

      “I feel adequately schooled.”

      “Obviously not. I can see you scanning behind me for details on my location. Don’t bother. There aren’t any that will help you find me.” The light of battle lit her face, and he stopped trying to find any sort of geographic marker in what looked like a broom closet around her. “Are you ready to call off this marriage? Set me free?”

      This was where Rihad normally outlined her responsibilities, reminded her that despite what she might have preferred, she was a Bakrian princess and she had a duty to her country. That it didn’t matter how many years she’d spent knocking around various artistic, bohemian communities with her mother pretending she was nothing more than another rootless flower child, she couldn’t alter the essential truth of her existence. That her university years in Montreal might have given her the impression that her life was one of limitless choices in all directions, but that was not true, not for her, and the sooner she accepted that the happier she would be.

      He’d been telling her all of this for months. Years.

      None of those conversations had been at all successful.

      Today, he thought of the brother he’d treated as if he was a failure, the brother he’d claimed

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