He didn’t recognize her then. There was something bleak in her gaze, and for a moment he forgot completely that she wasn’t for him. That this wasn’t real. That she had no business here and wouldn’t be stretching herself out on the sacrificial altar of his choosing any time soon, no matter how much he wished otherwise. No matter what she said to the contrary.
“Great,” she said, and he could feel the way she set her jaw, as though she expected a hit, when all it did was make him notice that mouth of hers. Plump lips and a thousand fantasies of what he could do with them. “Do it. Do all of it. That’s why I’m here.”
“You’re such a liar, Nora.” But he moved his hand against her cheek in a gesture that could only be called a caress, and for a moment he hardly knew himself. “And this is how little girls like you get themselves in trouble.”
Her blue eyes flashed dark at that. He saw her fists clench at her sides, and there was no particular reason either of those things should pool like lust inside him, but they did. God, the things he wished he could do to this woman.
“I wasn’t a little girl six years ago and I’m not one now,” she told him, and there was too much he couldn’t read then, in her eyes and across her lovely face. “Why don’t you stop threatening me and put your money where your mouth is?”
“If you insist,” Zair murmured, and he made no attempt whatsoever to cloak the threat in his voice then. Or the dark longing beneath it.
He reached over and wrapped his hand around her smooth upper arm. He felt the immediate kick of it, as if it were a far more intimate touch. The fire roared inside him again, making him harder than before, and ready. Almost too ready. He ignored that and tugged her closer to him, forcing her off balance so she swayed into his chest.
“What are you doing?” she hissed as he slid his palm down the length of her arm and took her hand, and he could feel her nerves in the way she jolted at the contact.
Not a whore, then, he thought, with far too much satisfaction, as if he’d had any doubt. Or if she was, she was a terrible one.
“You’re the only woman in the room who isn’t fucking or about to be fucked,” he pointed out coolly. “Let’s rectify that, shall we? But not here.”
Finally, a look of alarm. As if the precariousness of her position was sinking in at last.
“I’m not going anywhere with you,” she said.
“You are.” He didn’t wait for her to reply, he simply started walking, which meant she had to walk with him or be pulled off her feet. She chose to walk, though she kept tugging against the hold he had on her hand. “This is how it works, Nora, or don’t you know that? You don’t choose. I do.”
“Let’s be clear, Zair, that this is who you are. This is the kind of man you are.”
She shouldn’t have said that, and he thought she knew it when he looked at her then without the usual filter he used to hide his temper. Or his dark, twisted soul. He saw her swallow again, almost convulsively. He saw a hectic glitter in her luminous eyes, and he felt a little tremor run through her.
“This is what selling yourself means,” he said softly, and he knew when she flinched that he’d scored a direct hit. He would have to congratulate himself for that later, he thought bitterly. Zair closed his hand harder around her arm and pulled her closer, so he could speak directly into her ear. He could smell her shampoo and the soft scent of her skin. He could feel her heat. And he wanted her, the way he had for years. And as hopelessly, because she was a pretty little heiress who lived in the light and he was the bastard brother of a twisted king, dark unto his very soul. “We go where I want to go. We fuck how I want to fuck. I’ll let you know if I want you to speak. Until then? You keep your mouth shut unless I’m putting something in it.”
* * *
He felt her temper like a living thing between them, but then she ducked her head down and she didn’t argue. And he liked that too much.
“Good girl,” he said again, and he felt her shake at that, too. Almost as if she really were bent like him. Almost as if she found as much pleasure in the act of obeying him as he would have found in issuing orders, if any of this were real. If it weren’t dangerous. If there weren’t too many eyes on them already.
This is the sister of the famous Hunter Grant, Laurette had said in her arch, insinuating way, the fact that she spoke in her native French making it sound harsher, somehow. But you know this already, do you not? He is a great friend of yours, I believe.
We went to university together, Zair had replied mildly. But there is friendship between men, Laurette. And then there are whores. And he’d shrugged, letting his mouth flatten as he did. These things have very little to do with each other.
The woman had laughed. Enjoy breaking her in, Zair, she’d said. Try not to do any permanent damage.
He’d laughed, too, because that was what he did. It was who he was, who he’d been for long enough now that the edges had long since blurred. The boundaries were no longer clear.
I always leave my mark, Laurette, he’d said quietly. Or how will she know I was there?
And that was the trouble. That was always the trouble. The best lies, the best disguises, started with a kernel of truth. He knew his did. He wanted whatever Nora’s game was tonight to be rooted in the same kind of truth—and that was as crazy as it was unlikely. He’d seen her insipid boyfriends over the years. He’d seen the dynamics of her relationships, where she held all the power and was always bored. Even if, somewhere deep inside, she secretly longed to hand over her control in the most intimate of settings, he very much doubted she was ready to face that, and certainly not here. Not like this. Not with him. Those were dark imaginings and best kept locked deep inside him, he knew.
He wasn’t going to force her. Zair could barely tolerate himself as it was.
But his ace in the hole was that she didn’t know that.
He kept his grip on her as he steered her toward the exit, slightly harder than necessary. He pulled out his phone as they moved through the crowd, calling the embassy in Washington, DC, where it was just after 5:00 p.m. He talked business almost idly as his security detail fell into place on either side of him, letting go of Nora only when they were all settled in his private speedboat.
He saw Laurette watching him from up on the yacht’s deck and nodded at her the way he had every time he’d left one of these parties with another pretty girl in tow, but he didn’t end the call. He let his assistant relay his messages as the boat set off for Cannes, and when they hit the shore and were met by his driver, he looked around for cameras before he escorted Nora into the car with the same firm grip, like a bare-handed leash.
He caught his head of security’s dark gaze and the other man shook his head. Which meant a camera Zair hadn’t seen. He let out a breath, turning over the implications of that in his head…but there was no undoing this. There was no un-taking that picture and there was no letting Nora wander off to do this kind of thing again tomorrow night with God knows which monster. There was only hoping the paparazzo in question was too lazy or too glutted on all the Hollywood royalty in town this month to make the connection between another blonde woman on Zair al Ruyi’s arm and former tabloid staple Hunter Grant.
Once in the car, he sat back and made a few more calls to the usual people—the sultan’s primary aide for the daily update on his brother Azhil’s bad rulings and uncertain temper, his other liaison in the palace in Ruyi for the unofficial political