Then her neighbors—and, just her luck, the female components only—stood staring at Haidar. Their wariness at having their bells rung without a preceding intercom alert turned to amazement as recognition dawned.
Haidar let them marinate in it before he said, “Sorry for disturbing you, ladies. I wasn’t sure which apartment I wanted.”
Roxanne’s jaw dropped. Or dropped farther. Where had that accent come from? He sounded like a redneck!
“Oh, my God! You’re him!” Susan Gray, the forty-something CEO of the Azmaharian branch of a multinational construction company, babbled like a teenager. “You’re Prince Haidar Aal Shalaan!”
Haidar shook his regal head, making his mane undulate in a swish of silk—on purpose, she was sure. “Oh, I’m just his doppelgänger. I was paid five grand online by some lady who wants to act out her fantasy of dominating him. I usually come for less, but I charged extra since she wants to get real kinky. I was given this address, the floor, but not the number of the condo. So which of you has a thing for this Haidar guy?”
Her neighbors gaped at him, at each other, then finally, at her. She was the one in the bathrobe, after all.
Her brain was too zapped to function. But she had to. If she didn’t do something, this … this … madman would demolish her image. And his own.
She staggered out of her apartment, her perspiring bare feet making her advance on the polished marble precarious.
He watched her with feigned uncertainty. “Oh, it’s you?” His gaze swept her with what looked like earnest assessment. “I somehow thought you wouldn’t be a babe. So why can’t you find guys to dominate the regular way? Hey … you’re not nuts, are you?”
He looked to her neighbors for confirmation as she stumbled the last step to him, grabbed him by the lapel of his jacket.
He pretended to ward her off. “Whoa, lady. The deal is degradation in private. Public displays will cost you extra.”
She grimaced at her neighbors, expending all her restraint on not thumping the huge lout. “Sorry, ladies. Haidar is an old friend, regretfully. I left him eight years ago without a sense of humor, but it seems he’s contracted some terminal prankster disease. He thinks this is a fun way to say long time no see.”
She was dragging him toward her apartment while she talked, for the second time in her life wishing grounds yawned open and swallowed people. The other time had also involved him.
He resisted her, looked back at her neighbors imploringly. “I don’t know this dame. Is she dangerous?” She smacked him hard on the arm. “Hey! We agreed on domination, not abuse!”
The son of a literal royal bitch was making the situation worse with every word out of his mouth.
Who was she kidding? It was irretrievable already. God.
She could think of nothing to say but “Shut up, Haidar.”
He looked down at her, eyes morphing from vapid porn-actor mode to a dozen devils’ cunning. “I’m a working dude, lady. Show me some respect. When I’m not on the clock, that is.”
Her neighbors’ expressions kept yo-yoing from the verge of bursting into laughter to wondering if their neighbor did have a kinky—or worse—side to her.
“You win, okay?” she grumbled for his ears only. “Now stop with the act, take your bows and let the ladies get on with their evening.”
He raised his voice for all to hear. “So you’ll pay extra if I start pretending I’m this Haidar guy right now?”
“Ooh!” She shoved him ahead of her across her threshold.
This time he surrendered to her manhandling, clung to the edge of the door, addressed them over her head. “Do you mind checking up on me in an hour’s time?”
She shot her flabbergasted neighbors another dying-of-embarrassment glance, dragged him away from the door, slammed it shut.
Then she rounded on him.
His grin lit up his impossibly gorgeous face. “I did warn you. Next time, give in gracefully.”
She stomped her heel over his foot. It felt like ramming rock-enclosed steel. Pain shot through her whole leg, had her hopping on one foot yelping.
He caught her by the arms, steadied her, chuckling. “Go put on your most lethal stilettos and we’ll try it again.”
Grimacing, she punched his chest, hard. “You reckless jerk.”
He groaned, definite pleasure darkening the deep, rich sound.
So the bastard hadn’t been lying about his predilections after all. The savage, dominating edge to his desire used to thrill her. But maybe he didn’t mind exchanging roles. Something to keep in mind …
The trajectory of her thoughts made her whack him again.
He bit his lip with what looked like intense enjoyment, his eyes sparkling like turbulent seas in a full moon. “Is that the political adviser’s indignation? How sweet of you to care.”
“I care about my effectiveness. As for you, by the time this gets out, and boy will it, you can kiss the throne goodbye.”
“Fair enough. As long as I can finally kiss you hello.”
He dragged her up until only her toes touched the hardwood floor, swooped his head down to hers and did just that.
At the first touch of his lips, she spiraled like a shot-down plane into the past. All her being was captured into a reenactment of that first kiss that had swept her away on a tide of addiction. He took her mouth with that same lazy savoring laced with coiled ferocity. Her body had learned then what kind of heart-stopping pleasure such deceptively patient coaxing would lead to, had burst into flames at his merest touch, fire raging higher with each exposure.
The conflagration was fiercer now, with the fuel of anger, of eight years of repression. This was wrong, insane. And it only made her want it, want him, more than her next breath.
Gravity loosened its hold on her, relinquished her to the effortless levitation of his arms. The world spun in hurried thuds, then she was sinking into the firmness of a couch as his weight sank over her. Her moans rose, confessions of the arousal that had fractured the shackles of hostility and memory and logic, drowned them and her.
The rough heat of him electrified her as her bathrobe and his shirt came undone. His chiseled, roughened steel flesh crushed her swollen breasts, teasing her turgid nipples into a frenzy. His bulk and power settled between her spread thighs, and he ground against her molten core, plunged into her gasping mouth.
She writhed to accommodate him, enfold him, the decadence of him on her tongue, lacing her every sense.
Suddenly he severed their meld. She cried out as he rose above her. His gaze scalded her, his lips tight with grim sensuality.
“I should have listened to what my body knows about yours and done this the moment you opened the door.”
His arrogance should have made her buck him off. But lust gnawed her, ruled her. Hunger for him, as he was now, memorized yet unknown, the same yet changed beyond comprehension, brimming with contradictions, seethed its demand for satisfaction.
He’d come here for this possession, this closure. She’d been aching for it, too. She’s only be hurting herself if she denied—
A slam sent the crystal on the mahogany table beside them emitting a harmony of hums, felt like being drenched in ice water.
Cherie.
“You won’t believe who I found waiting for me. Ayman in all his glory, wanting to talk. Why now, I ask you …”
Cherie’s prattling trailed off. Roxanne met her eyes over Haidar’s shoulders, would