LITMIR.BIZ

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trepidation now when she never had before. She wouldn’t have to deal with the consequences of emotions that would no doubt remain unrequited. Rashid was driven, self-contained and off-limits. He had no place in his life for a woman or in his heart for love.

      But it didn’t matter. It brought her peace to accept her emotions, even revel in them. To know the one man she could love existed, and why exactly she loved him, and would never be with another.

      It wasn’t as pathetic or melodramatic as it sounded. She’d even call it wise, since that was learning from others’ experiences and mistakes. She’d seen too many marriages that had been made without love and how disastrously they’d ended, or worse, continued. She also had the example of those marriages that had flourished because they’d been based on the kind of love that came once in a lifetime, and thrived against all odds. That kind of love she’d feel only for Rashid. It was unwise, even self-destructive, settling for less. But what were the odds he’d reciprocate her emotions? Negligible, really.

      He might have let her “influence” him tonight, but only as an extension of his chivalry. Maybe the old times he’d discounted did count for a man afflicted by a gargantuan sense of honor. After all, he’d once gone to unimaginable lengths to pay the debts of a man who’d abused him, to repay that man for the shelter he’d given him when the already motherless Rashid had become a complete orphan.

      Suddenly, that familiar chill moved through her.

      She now knew the feeling was a Rashid proximity alert. Could he be approaching? If he was, would it be because he…?

      She wished. He must be coming to check up on her after she’d misled him about the nature of her turmoil. But what if…

      Reality check, moron. He probably just wanted something from the bedroom she occupied.

      Breath bated, she expected him to walk in any moment.

      He didn’t. Had she imagined it?

      No. Something had intensified her awareness of him. This might mean… Something was wrong!

      Who knew where that scumbag’s switchblade had been? That wound Rashid had dismissed might be starting to fester. He’d probably refused antibiotics like he had analgesics.

      She shot to her feet. At the mezzanine’s railing, her streak came to a stumbling halt as if she’d slammed into an invisible force field. From the far end of the hangar-sized space, something reverberated in her ears, her bones. It felt and sounded like the erratic, furious pounding of a distant, gigantic heart.

      She hadn’t heard the sound in the sequestered bedroom area. But it must have been what had sent anxiety skewering through her.

      She ran down the stairs, almost slipping on the slick stone. Once her feet touched rougher floor, her dash resumed. The force of the sounds ratcheted up with every step as she approached a wall partition at the far end of the loft. Beyond it, the pounding felt as if it would bruise her insides.

      Her own heart thundering in response, she walked around the wall. And she saw the sound’s origin. Rashid.

      Stripped to the waist, barefoot and barehanded, he was kick-boxing a punching bag in a constant barrage of viciousness that had almost destroyed its supposedly indestructible form. Those punches and roundhouse kicks could bring down a wall. A single one would have killed anything living. It made her realize he’d actually held back when he’d dealt with her attackers.

      It was as if he was venting surplus anger, tearing the bag apart as he hadn’t a chance to do to them. Or was he imagining striking out at those who’d given him his ghastly scar?

      Ya Ullah—that scar.

      Continuing on a path of mutilation from his neck, it widened as it ran down his back. At his waist it snaked around to his front, as if to shackle his body, slithered up over his abdomen to his chest in a passage of livid disfiguration. Where it ended, its very tip, sharp and jagged, seemed to plunge beneath his skin to skewer into his heart.

      It certainly felt as if it had plunged into hers. What he must have suffered!

      B’Ellahi—how and when had this happened to him? And more important, what had it done to him? How deeply had that scar sunk into his psyche, into his soul?

      It sank talons of anguish into hers.

      Yet as she neared, fascination began to replace the anguish that gripped her insides. He was moving so fast, she hadn’t been able to make out what that darkness staining his skin around the scar was. She’d at first thought it was charred flesh, making her almost want to retch. But now she realized what it was.

      A tattoo. Weaving around the scar as if to ward off its advance, stop it from spreading its damage.

      Then she was close enough to fathom its complex configuration, to realize what the shapes enveloping the scar were. An ingenious pattern made of the symbol of the noble house he belonged to, a distant branch of her maternal family, of which he was the last surviving member.

      She stood for what felt like hours, mesmerized, watching that powerhouse display of heart-wrenching rage and mind-numbing might. His skin, flawless apart from the scar that marred it and that he’d so boldly outlined, glowed as if real flames fueled his fury. Sweat accentuated the polish and definition of every formidable muscle, spraying crystalline droplets with each swing. His every line and move was sheer poetry of power and perfection.

      What kind of training and drive fueled this level of expertise and endurance? He didn’t even seem to be breathing hard. Or seem to show that he’d ever slow down or stop.

      Suddenly, he did, his arms falling to his sides. Fists clenched, he remained rock-still, feet planted apart, primed for reeruption into full-blown aggression, staring at his handiwork, every muscle bunched on the precarious control that momentarily contained the demon driving him to such excesses.

      She’d never seen anything so absolutely magnificent.

      Even unaware of her presence, lost to his inner struggle, his aura flooded her. It felt mystical, limitless. A knight with might enough to bear mythical burdens, determination enough to forge legends. She had no doubt she was looking at the only man who could restore Azmahar to its now-distant glory. He might have lived as an orphan and an outcast, but he was born to be a king.

      He’d always been king of her heart.

      And she couldn’t bear witnessing his turmoil. He’d suffered enough. She’d give anything so he wouldn’t suffer ever again.

      “Rashid.”

      At her tremulous whisper, he swung around, his face a mask of surprise, his slanting eyes widening, the flames beneath his skin blazing brighter.

      “Laylah…”

      It was the first time he’d ever said her name. Just her name.

      Hearing it in that incomparable voice of his, darkness and magic made audible, shot liquid fire from her heart to flood her limbs. Her feet almost tangled around each other as she approached him. The field of agitation enveloping them tightened, choking her as she stopped before him.

      Surprise deserted his face, harshness replacing it, hardening its hewn angles. “Don’t you know curiosity always backfires, princess? Now you have to live with this sight polluting your mind’s eye forever.”

      Her gaze darted to where his exercise pants hung precariously low on his muscled hips. She forced it back up to his drenched face. “Your all-out revenge on the punching bag?”

      Those obsidian flames lashed out from his eyes again. “Are you pretending that this—” he made a sweeping gesture to his tattooed scar “—doesn’t horrify you? I thought you had enough courage and candor to spare me the damned political correctness. Everyone struggles to pretend my scar doesn’t exist, when it’s all anyone can see anymore, and they’re torn between cringing, curiosity and the unreasoning worry that it will somehow infect them. But to a perfect woman used to perfection in everything, especially in men,

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