NIKHAT FOLLOWED THE palace maid down a maze of intricate marble-lined corridors, her heart slowly climbing up her throat with every step she took.
Agreeing to Azeez’s proposal was one thing. Venturing into his suite with an action plan in hand, another. At least, Ayaan had been pleasantly surprised when she had informed him what she had in mind, during Princess Zohra’s morning checkup.
With a nod, the maid pointed her to intricately designed double doors and left. Clutching her iPad with shaking fingers, she stepped over the threshold and stilled at the utter magnificence of the suite. She had thought her suite was the lap of luxury. Compared to this one, hers was more like a storage room, in sheer size and the magnificence of it.
She had been here that first night, but in her anxiety to see Azeez, she had paid no attention to her surroundings. She had spent innumerable hours in the palace, roamed most of the corridors and wings with Amira, everywhere but here. Because it was the Prince’s wing and had been forbidden to all of them.
Azeez’s suite, she discovered, looking past the main area, backed onto private gardens and was a cavernous bedchamber rather than a mere suite. She walked past the vast foyer into the main area and stilled. Her breath hitched in her throat. Cream-colored walls flowed seamlessly against the similarly colored marble floors, inlaid here and there with gold piping. She knew it was gold because she had once asked Amira, her mouth falling open to her chest.
Dark red velvet curtains brocaded with gold threads hung heavily beside the floor-length windows. A sitting area was on her left containing gilt-edged sofas and chaise lounges with claw-feet made in intricate detail. Lush Persian rugs in colorful designs lay here and there. A silver tea service, along with a variety of mouthwatering dishes on the table, all lay untouched.
A crystal decanter, which looked as old and priceless as the rest of the trappings of the room, stood next to the tray, the gold liquid swirling at the bottom telling its own story.
Against the opposite wall sat a vast bed, almost waist high, with a wide, intricately designed metal headboard, and sheets again of the darkest red. A velvet-covered stool stood off to the side.
Cushions and pillows of every possible size lay haphazardly atop the sheets. A white cotton shirt was at the foot of the bed that looked half crumpled.
Her feet carried her to the bed—because really she had no idea she had decided to walk toward it. A hint of sandalwood, underlaid with a scent that was his, reached her nose, invading her skin with a lick of heat.
She sucked in greedy bursts, drawing it deep into her lungs before she realized that she was doing it. The sheets were soft and warm against her shaking fingers, and her mind conjured an image of him tangled in them.
A low, thrilling pulse rang all over her body like a bell. She had imagined being in his bedroom, countless times and in a countless number of ways all those years ago. And her body still reacted to it in the same way, even with a gulf of pain and dreams separating them more than ever.
She was in the Prince of Dahaar’s bedroom—an intimacy that was strictly limited to his immediate family and the woman he would marry, the woman who would irrevocably belong to him.
The very thought sent a stab of pain through her middle, cooling the illicit thrill.
She clasped her nape, and rubbed it, fighting the wave of melancholy. Ya Allah, what madness had led her to agree to this?
A slow burn of awareness inched under her skin. She turned slowly, bracing herself for a caustic remark from those cruel lips.
Azeez stood at the doorway of the bathroom, clad only in loose white trousers that tied with fragile strings.
Sinuous heat drenched Nikhat inside out, zigzagging across a million spots, places she shouldn’t be thinking of in front of him but was painfully aware of.
His shoulder blades were outlined by his lean frame. The golden olive of his skin gleamed dark against the white fabric, stretched tight over his abdomen, delineating every bone and muscle. Sparse chest hair covered dark nipples, arrowing down in a line that disappeared into those trousers. Her gaze instinctively sought the evidence of the bullet wound. Only a small length of a scar, puckered and stitched up roughly, was visible above the band of the trousers.
He didn’t have a whole lot of muscle on him, and yet there was no softness to his abdomen either.
Suddenly, all she wanted was to trace the angular jut of his collarbone, rake her fingernail over his nipple, see if he felt the arc of electricity between them as strongly as she did.
She met his gaze, and something flared into life between them, contracting the space and world around them, as though shoving them both into a world of their own. His breath left him in a soft exhale and she watched as the lean chest rose and fell with it.
Liquid desire, she realized what it was, flowed through every nerve in her body, a thrill coiling her muscles. She wanted to move forward and touch him, feel the heat of his skin slide against hers, smell that intoxicating masculinity that had made her realize her own femininity for the first time.
Eight years ago, she had been naive, green, too overwhelmed by what and who he was to understand the raw awareness between them, too caught up in society’s rules and her own insecurities to comprehend the power and beauty of this thing. The dark heat of his glances, the fire of his checked desire, the power with which he had leashed it so that he didn’t scare her, she had never fully comprehended it. Until now.
It was not her body that had caught up, as he had mocked. It was her mind. And it reveled in the raw charge between them, reveled in the fact that she could put that feral look in his eyes.
The slight rise of his brows, the almost undetectable hint of widening of his jet-black irises—he was amused and yet it was not the eviscerating kind. He was as surprised as she was at her daring.
Coloring, she fought the instinct to look away, to hide from what he made her body feel. She had denied herself so many things. But the simple thrill of watching the Prince of Dahaar, of holding that intractable gaze without shying away, she couldn’t deny herself this. It made her dizzily alive. In that moment, she could believe herself his equal.
His mouth didn’t turn into a sneer, his gaze didn’t mock her for her unwise audacity. He just stood there and stared at her, as though waiting to see how long she could hold it.
She could drink him in for the rest of her life. But of course, she had a job to do.
Searching for that brisk efficiency that she had become well known for among her colleagues, she waved the iPad toward him. “Since you refuse to see an actual physiotherapist, I contacted a friend of mine and downloaded some videos he recommended. Most of them are pretty easy to follow, but I have requested that Khaleef be present in case you need physical—”
He shook his head.
She instantly knew what he was saying no to. “But Khaleef can—”
“I want you.”
She swallowed at the searing heat that blanketed her as he pushed off the wall and moved closer. He had said those words deliberately, she reminded herself. He was testing how far her recklessness of a few moments ago would carry her. And yet they had no less effect on her. “Fine. For this week, our goal is to get you moving again, and for you to attend a dinner with Ayaan and Princess Zohra at the end of the week. And figuring out where it is that you want to go when this is…over, and what you will be doing there.”
Every muscle in his face stilled. “Where I want to go?”
“Yes. I thought about your…leaving Dahaar a little more.” It was all she had done, she felt consumed by it really. This time, she was going to be here and he was going to leave.
She had long ago resigned herself to a life without him and she had accomplished far more than her wildest dreams.
Still, the thought of living in a Dahaar that didn’t have him in it was a reality she had never imagined. “Ayaan won’t just let you wander back into the desert. It seems more feasible that Ayaan, King Malik and Queen Fatima will—” he grimaced at the mention of his mother, and she willed herself to continue “—will let you leave if you show an interest in one of the worldwide business ventures that Dahaar invests in.
“You cannot cut them out of your life completely, Azeez. Nor are you capable of wiling away your life doing nothing. That, of all the things in the world, will kill you.”
He didn’t question her assumption. “I can try.”
She didn’t qualify that with a response. “I asked Ayaan a few questions, pretty much lied and said it would give me something to talk about with you.”
“I’ve forgotten how meticulous you are when you set your mind to something.”
“Your options are the investment house in New York, the race course in Abu Dhabi and, of course, your all-time favorite, Monaco.” The last words stuck in her throat like thorns, refusing to come out.
She had developed the most violent and irrational hatred toward that place every time she had looked at the paper and read about his exploits in the year before the terrorist attack. His words that first morning had only intensified it.
A challenge glimmered in his eyes. “Is there something you would like to say, Nikhat?”
The question simmered in the air between them, like an explosive in the middle of a peaceful desert. And the slightest hint of demand from her could detonate it and crumble her carefully constructed life.
She shook her head, clinging to ignorant sanity.
Walking by his side, she adjusted her stride to match his slow one.
“I saw that—” she breathed in a deep gulp as his forearm grazed hers “—I noticed that you’re not completely out of shape, but you’re also obviously in pain.”
He laughed, but there was no real joy in the sound. “Don’t tell Ayaan. When he captured me in the desert, he knocked me off my feet and I landed on my bad hip violently. Fighting him cost me—”
“And yet you did it.”
He continued as though she hadn’t interrupted him. “Also, the longer—”
“The longer you sit around, drinking and throwing bottles at imaginary figures, the worse the pain gets.”
“Yes. But it was too much fun, Nikhat.”
She shook her head, even as a smile rose to her lips. That roguishness—it was incredible to see that still inside him. “I figure the logical step is to get you to move as much as possible every day. I inquired about a hydro-pool, but the hammam should do quite well for our purposes. The steam will loosen the hip joint before we do a little exercise every day. Do you know who I can contact about requesting some medical records about your bullet wound?”
“There are none.”
Her mental gears checked through the list of things she had to do so rapidly that it took her a few seconds to understand. “But then who—”
“Once they realized I would be of no more use to them, the terrorist group left me in the desert to die and moved on with Ayaan, as far as I can figure. He was still valuable to them.” His voice was so low, so weighed down with whatever he felt, that it raised goose bumps on her skin. “I had already lost a lot of blood. The Mijab found me, and patched up my hip the best they could. Luckily for me, I was unconscious for most of it.”
Shock removed the filter from her words. “But the Mijab are not even the most advanced tribe. It’s a miracle you’re still standing.”
Instant regret raked through her.
Because it wasn’t a miracle. She had never believed in them.
Even having gone through everything he had, even weighed down by the bitterest self-loathing he seemed to be under, Azeez Al Sharif was too much a force of life to just wither away and die. The fact that he was still standing was a testament to the man’s sheer willpower and nothing else.
“I like to think of it as my penance, rather.”
“Penance?”
“Death would have been—it still is—too easy a punishment.” His tone was matter-of-fact, as if there was no doubt about what he said. “Living my life is the harder one.”
Her throat felt raw, her entire body felt raw at the quiet resignation of his words, at the emptiness in them. “Why should you have to serve penance at all? Why didn’t you come back when you recovered a little?”
This was the thing that hurt and confused Ayaan the most. And her, too. The very fact that Azeez Al Sharif had chosen to stay away from Dahaar, his family, it shook the very foundations of every truth she knew.
He turned away from her, signaling an end to this conversation. “You’ll have to accompany me to the hammam.”
Whatever she had been about to say misted away. Enjoying a minute of uncensored, unwise desire she felt for him without guilt and shame was one thing, accompanying Azeez Al Sharif to what was essentially a steam room was another.
She had delivered babies, she had no false modesty or squeamishness left in her. But this was…him.
He halted at the door. “Unless you think what I ask is beyond the bounds of propriety and want to call the whole thing off, Dr. Zakhari?”
She fisted her hands, wanting to wipe the mockery off his face. He was constantly going to try to push her to leave. “There are servants to help you there, Azeez.”
“Do you know that Ayaan had all the old servants, like Khaleef, people who have seen me as a baby, reassigned to work in this wing?”
She frowned, remembering what her father had said. “Yes. I thought it a good security measure since you insist on not letting the people of Dahaar learn that you’re alive.”
His mouth set into a bitter line. “These are the same people who carried me on their shoulders in the palace, taught me how to ride a bike, celebrated with me when my father announced me Crown Prince. These are people who have known me my entire life, Nikhat. And now, when they look at me, all I see is their pity. That pity…Ya Allah…” He sounded tortured, his shoulders shaking with the enormity of it. She wasn’t the only one who had loved him—the entire palace, all of Dahaar had worshipped their magnificent prince. “It haunts me day and night, jeers me for the mockery I have become. I hide from my parents and yet…there they are, silent witnesses to my inadequacy, to my guilt.”
He turned away from her. Ayaan had truly no idea how much his brother was suffering inside these walls. “If it scares you to be around me, helping me, then say the word, latifa. But I will not accept help from anyone else.”
That resentment would have frayed her at one time, but not anymore. Each little facet of his pain that she saw only strengthened her resolve.
Somehow, or especially because he wanted to punish her by keeping her close, he had decided she would be the one he leaned on. And even though every word from him, every moment spent with him, poked holes through her will, she still wanted to do this.
She met his gaze, striving for a casualness that she was far from feeling. “I used to feel overwhelmed and afraid and thrilled and God knows what else by you, all those years ago. I don’t anymore.”
His gaze swept over her cotton tunic top and leggings. “I can see that. Living away from Dahaar apparently suits you very well. You will have to change out of those clothes.”
“I’m your servant, remember, not your spa buddy.” That teased a smile from his mouth. “And I have already showered.”
He stiffened next to her, and slowly pulled his arm away. “I know. I can smell the scent of your jasmine soap. You smell exactly like you did eight years ago.” He said it as if it was a curse he was enduring. And for her, it was as if someone had sucked out the oxygen from the room. “But I’m going to need help and you will melt if you enter the hammam in those clothes.”