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“Abram, we’ll stop it,” Daniel assured him as Abram turned away from him.
“Will we, Daniel?” He grunted. “My brother is in the hospital near death, my lover must live in fear of being killed because she is my weakness, and my cousin, the only one willing to stand at my back has forever gained Azir’s hatred. Just as I did so long ago. Perhaps it’s time to realize there is nothing we can do in this fight. Had I not insisted on being here, where I was safe to feed my hungers, then neither Tariq nor Paige would be facing the danger that now stalks them.”
He didn’t give Daniel a chance to answer.
Turning away he headed back to the bedroom, his fingers curved around Paige’s upper arm before drawing her into the bedroom.
“Abram, I will see you later in the day,” Tariq stated as Abram paused just inside the bedroom.
He turned and stared back at his cousin, then at the young woman watching everything silently, her dark eyes glittering with tears and with pain.
“Leave Chalah alone for the night, Tariq,” he told him quietly. “Jafar wld have known where we were staying with no help from his sister.”
Tariq inclined his head in agreement, but Abram saw something in his gaze, in his expression, that warned him that in this, Tariq would have to cut his own throat before realizing the truth.
Abram closed the door, locked it securely, then turned back to Paige.
Pale, weary, yet with a strength he had always known she possessed. The strength to stare adversity in the face without losing her spirit or her courage.
God, she was the epitome of feminine strength and passion. A woman unlike any he had known before her.
He wanted to protect her. He wanted to place her in his bed and never allow her to leave it. At the same time, he wanted to stand before the world with her and proclaim her as his own. Each time that temptation rose inside him, though, memories of Lessa were there to haunt him.
“I’m sorry.” And he was, clear to the bottom of his soul he fully regretted the fact that Paige had been drawn into this hell.
Weary, worried, and frightened, she gave a hard, brief shake of her head.
“There’s no reason for you to be sorry, Abram.” She sighed. “This has been coming since the day Mother escaped Azir, and we both know it.” Had they? Or, had he orchestrated it with his desire for her? With a look, or a word spoken at the wrong time to Azir, or possibly an edge of hunger not as clearly hidden as he had hoped whenever he saw her in public.
He shook his head.
“You know it has,” she whispered bitterly. “He couldn’t break Mother, and you refused to attempt to break me while we were in Saudi. You knew when we escaped, just as you knew years before he took me that it was coming. Azir wouldn’t have had it any other way.”
And perhaps she was right.
Moving to her, he could do nothing but wrap his arms around her and hold her tight as he closed his eyes and whispered a prayer that God would keep her safe. That he would protect her, and that somehow, some way, there would be a chance for the happiness he had always dreamed of.
A chance that included holding Paige in his arms forever.
Pressing his fingers beneath her chin he lifted her head, watching as her lashes fluttered and those incredible green eyes stared back at him. Emerald eyes. Cat’s eyes. And she was just as fierce, independent, and courageous as any cat he had ever seen.
There was so much he wanted to say. So much inside him. How would he find the courage to tell her how much of him belonged to her?
Feeling her hands, so light, so delicate as they moved to the nape of his neck, he had to grit his teeth against the arousal that suddenly flared to life once again.
He would never get enough of her. It simply wasn’t possible.
“I love you, Abram.” She said the words he could feel beating in his heart.
“You amaze me, hellcat,” he said, feeling an amazement growing inside him. “How can you know how you have always softened the hell I’ve been forced to navigate as I fought to come to this place in my life? I could never express to you how you have eased the wounds I thought my soul could never heal from.”
“And why do I amaze you?” That mysterious little smile played at her lips. “You’ve always known I love you, Abram, don’t pretend you haven’t.”
Had he? Had it been that knowledge that had eased the nights for him, at first because he had seen the innocence and childish acceptance she gave him just after Lessa’s death, and later, after the death of his second wife, there had been so much more.
“Do you know how I’ve loved you?” The words felt torn from his soul. “Do you know, Paige, how I have sought sight of you each time I’ve visited Khalid? How I have lived for the visits here?” His hand cupped her cheek. “How I have lived for you?”
He had lived for her for years, and he knew it. There wasn’t a part of his soul that wasn’t aware of the fact that for so long, she had followed him through each second of his day, each second of the long, dark nights that seemed filled with blood and death.
And now, there was hope. The hope that when the sun rose there could be her laughter, her gentle touch, her loving light that shined for him alone.
“We’re going to get through this, Abram,” she promised, and for the first time in his life he felt the knowledge that he had no other choice but to survive.
He only had one job to complete before that security would be assured.
The death of Azir Mustafa.
16
The weariness that had dragged at them found Paige sleeping in her lover’s arms, exhaustion dragging her deep into that well of slumber that obliterated the senses and dimmed even instinct.
That instinct was too closely honed to ever sleep within Abram though. At least, not at this moment, not this day. And God only knew if he would have another day to ease himself into such peaceful sleep.
His eyes came slowly open.
He didn’t blink. He didn’t pretend to sleep. He didn’t hide the knowledge that he was acutely aware of the company they had acquired.
Dammit, he knew he should have questioned the single terrorist they had captured last night. He should have beaten the truth out of the murderous bastard.
He had to forcibly restrain the urge to tighten his hold on Paige. To take that one last moment to attempt to pull her beneath his flesh, to protect her forever.
There was no chance, no possibility of doing such a thing though. She was vulnerable, and he had slept too deeply, his instincts not quite honed enough to have felt them slipping into the room. He hadn’t awakened until he had felt his cousin glaring down at him with irritable amusement.
