He didn’t need her anymore, but he wanted her.
Her mouth parted, whether in surprise or compliance he did not know. But he took advantage of the situation, slipped his tongue against hers—and was rewarded with a sharp intake of breath. Her arms went around him, her body pressing to his so sweetly. If not for the dagger she would be able to feel the effect she still had on him.
He held her close, slanted his mouth over hers to take as much as she would give.
And she gave far more than he would have believed. Proud, beautiful Genie kissed him like a woman starved. Like a woman who’d suffered drought and deprivation and had finally stumbled into an oasis of plenty.
She still wanted him, and the knowledge fired something primal in his blood.
Zafir cupped one of her breasts beneath the soft fabric, groaned low in his throat. He wanted to bare her body and feast his eyes and senses upon her. But he could not do so here—not in the reception tent. He swept her up into his arms and strode toward his sleeping quarters.
Genie clung to him, still kissing him, her passion as hot and intense as ever. He didn’t break the kiss, though he had to keep his eyes open to see where he was going. Her skin was flushed a pretty pink, and her long auburn lashes fanned across her cheeks. He wanted her to open her eyes, to look at him with those deep pools of rainwater-gray, to see the passion flaring in them as he made love to her.
A guard stood at attention as Zafir passed into the interior of his private quarters. He set Genie on her feet. She seemed suddenly wild-eyed as her gaze darted around the room—as if she’d awakened in a prison cell instead of a palace.
“Patience, little one,” he murmured as he unhooked the ceremonial dagger and tossed it aside.
But when he took her in his arms again she stiffened, her hands coming up to brace against his chest. “No, Zafir,” she gasped. “I can’t.”
Frustration and disappointment spiraled through him at once.
“Ah, so this is how it will be. I should have known.” He loosened his hold and she jerked away, wrapping her arms around herself as if she were chilled.
“What’s that mean?” she snapped.
“You know what it means, Genie. You tell me one thing with your body and another with your mouth.”
Her chin tilted up, her eyes flashing. “I agreed to stay for the chance to excavate in Al-Shahar. I did not agree to sleep with you ever again.”
His body pounded with the need for release, and she looked at him as if she’d not just been wrapped around him, wanting him as much as he wanted her.
She was very much the ice-cold scientist she’d always wanted to be. And that infuriated him. How dared she think she was the one in control here?
“Perhaps I wish to attach new conditions to the agreement.”
Her eyes widened. “You wouldn’t.”
He took a step toward her, fury whipping him. “Do not presume that you know me any longer, habiba. The man I was back then is dead.”
“You would blackmail me into your bed simply to get back at me? To punish me because I didn’t want to be your plaything for however long you wanted me?”
Her words stung his conscience. And yet…he didn’t care. He was angrier than he’d been in a very long time. Angry with fate, with her, and with the stubborn sheikhs who argued over territory and made his life difficult when all he wanted was the best for his people.
He focused on the woman before him. She tried hard to hide it, but she was flushed, her lips moist and plump from kissing, her nipples jutting through the soft fabric of the abaya. Not the ice-cold scientist after all.
He was tired of games, tired of lies.
“It is hardly a punishment, habiba. Not when we both know what we want.”
Chapter Three
GENIE couldn’t stop the tremor that slid along her spine. But was it the excitement of what he offered her with the temples, or the thrill of knowing that with one word she would share his bed again?
No. She would not do so. Could not.
“Not everything we want is good for us,” she said. “Bacon double cheeseburgers with chili-cheese fries, for instance. All that fat and cholesterol.” She was babbling, for God’s sake, but she couldn’t seem to help it.
Zafir merely shot her that sexy grin that had always been her undoing. “Do you or do you not want the exclusive right to excavate the temples?” he said silkily. “No other archaeologist has ever been allowed to do so.”
Genie swallowed. With one kiss he’d stolen her breath, her sense, her will. She’d turned into a needy animal, wanting—no, craving—what he offered. If he’d pushed her down on the carpets there and then and lifted her abaya, she’d have been helpless to refuse.
It was only when he’d stopped kissing her, when she’d realized they were in what must be his private tent, that she’d asked herself what the blazes she was doing. She’d been about to negate ten years of her life with that single act. To propel herself back in time and into the arms of the man she’d never really stopped loving.
Never depend on a man, Genie. Make your own career, your own life, and find a partner to share it with. But don’t give up your goals for him. Because he might just leave you with nothing but broken dreams in the end.
Genie shivered. Her mother had said those words to her so often that she could repeat them in her sleep. Zafir was exactly the kind of man her mother had warned her about.
She’d loved him, but he hadn’t loved her. She’d realized it that night when he’d asked her to come to Bah’shar. She’d thought he was asking her to marry him, but she’d been confused because he hadn’t said the words. He’d never said he loved her, had always pushed aside questions of his feelings with more kisses and more lovemaking. And just when she’d thought he’d asked her to share his life, her dreams had been crushed into dust by the realization that he was expected to marry another.
It had been cruel, too ironic, that she should find herself in the situation of loving a man who could never marry her.
She’d known his culture was different, that what he asked was not wrong or immoral to him and his world, but there had been no way on earth she could subject herself to the humiliation. She’d seen firsthand what loving a man who would never be yours did to a woman.
To her mother.
And she was not about to endanger her heart and her hard-earned independence by falling into bed with Zafir bin Rashid al-Khalifa ever again.
“I want the commission, Zafir. But not at the price you’re asking.”
“And what price is that, Genie? I am asking you to share my bed—something you’ve done many times before.” He paused, let his gaze slide down her body. “Or have I erred? Do you have a lover? Someone to whom you wish to be faithful?”
She dropped her eyes from his and shook her head. She should lie, but she found she could not. “There is no one right now.”
“Then there can be no problem, can there?”
What could she say? Yes, there is a problem! The problem is that I still care for you and I’m afraid what will happen if I succumb to my desire instead of listening to my head!
“The answer is still no, Zafir.”
His gaze was laser-sharp. “You would really give up this commission for something so simple?”
“It’s not simple in the least, and you know it.”
“Why is