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‘I can see why you feel that way.’
The faltering softness of her voice brought his head in closer to catch the words so that now his mouth was just inches above her own. She saw the tightness that had clamped his lips together ease and felt her own mouth soften, lips opening as she tilted her head to one side, feeling the warmth of his breath on her cheek.
‘I understand.’
Did he plan to kiss her? The words had barely had time to register in her thoughts before they were pushed away again, driven out by the violence of his response.
‘You understand?’ Nabil demanded in a dark undertone. ‘Oh, you do, do you? And what, precisely, is it that you understand?’
‘I— You...’
Caught up sharp when she was still drifting on the heated waves of awareness that just touching him had brought to the surface, Aziza found the words had tangled up on her tongue and she couldn’t get them out. How had she found herself in this situation, here on this darkened terrace with the man who was ruler of all of Rhastaan?
But he was more than a sheikh, he was a man, a dark, powerful male. A man who was like a force of nature, hard and strong as the mountains that bordered his country, and she had overstepped some mark with him, trampling in where angels feared to tread and so sparking off some terrible wave of rejection and fury that she didn’t understand.
‘What do you know of me? Of anything?’
Nabil moved forward, reaching out to capture her chin in long, powerful fingers, twisting her head so that she was looking up at him, unable to avoid his burning gaze unless she closed her own eyes. Something she didn’t dare to do.
‘What can you tell me that I don’t know already?’
Nabil was having such trouble controlling the force of his feelings that his voice was just a dark, intent hiss of sound. Her words had hit on things he didn’t want to remember; things he didn’t want to let into his mind. He’d faced them once and it had almost destroyed him. Not again. Not now.
Not when this woman was before him, curvaceous, dark-haired and wide-eyed, reminding him so much of Sharmila. The woman who had died in his arms, taking the bullet that had been meant for him in a bungled assassination attempt. He had felt the impact of that attack in the way she had shuddered in his arms before she had crumpled to the ground. It was only much later that he’d realised that the bullet had nicked his own face, gouging a raw wound along his cheekbone on its way to a much more vulnerable, more valuable target.
But by then he had been unable to care about anything that happened to him because the bullet that had ended his young wife’s life had also taken his country’s future. The hole her death had left in his own life was something he flinched away from even now. Sharmila had been pregnant with the heir to his throne when she’d died, and the gap that had left in the heart of the country was one he had yet to fill.
Which was why he was going to have to make a decision some time very soon. As everyone kept reminding him. Even Clemmie had advised him, gently of course, that the country desperately needed an heir. He had no time, should have no inclination, for any dalliance with a woman he had just met by chance.
The twist of Zia’s head, pulling away from his fingers, dragged Nabil back into the present, and he wasn’t any happier to be there. The bitterness of memory lingered, making him tighten his grip, holding her still for a moment.
‘You know nothing,’ he said, dark and dangerous. ‘Nothing at all.’
‘I saw...’
‘You saw what you wanted to see—what everyone wanted to see. And it has nothing to do with you.’
Her swiftly indrawn breath brought his eyes down to where her soft mouth was partly open, exposing sharp white teeth. As he watched he saw her pink tongue slip out and slick hastily over her dry lips, the tiny gesture making his pulse pound in primal response. Some change in the position of her head brought her face closer to his, the feel of her skin soft against his gripping fingertips.
How did she make him want her so much when he had felt only indifference for so long? The soft sheen of moisture that lingered where her tongue had touched her lips made his own mouth hunger for the taste of her.
One night...
Even as his body put the suggestion into his mind, rational thought was pushing it away again. He was not going down this path again, even if her slender body was pure temptation, the need to hold her close making him ache with the battle against carnal hunger that threatened to destroy rational thought.
‘You want me to kiss you, do you?’
