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Fully cognizant he needed to make the night special so Angele would lose her fear of intimacy between them, there was still no denying that making love to her in this way—without the benefit of an official wedding—was not the action of a dutiful, responsible sheikh of his people. An internal voice, that sounded suspiciously like one of his mentors, chided him. Telling him there were other ways he could have allayed Angele’s fears.
The simple truth, as unexpected as it had been to realize, was that Zahir wanted Angele. He found her more sexually desirable than he’d ever allowed himself to realize. The years they had waited to formalize their engagement, much less marry, had taken a toll on him as well. Though he had not known it.
He had forced himself never to think of her sexually. At first, because she had been so young and later because that part of his psyche was reserved for Elsa.
He now accepted that Angele was the ideal woman to share his bed and had been all a
long.
He pulled her back into his arms. “Are you ready to continue this night out of time?”
Her doe-soft eyes darkened with desire and she nodded before angling her head in a clear invitation to kiss.
It was an invitation he would never reject again.
Angele woke to pleasurable, never before experienced aches in her body. No doubt the pain would be acute but for the two soaking baths Zahir had insisted she share with him the night before.
A night filled with more passion and pleasure than she had ever thought possible.
The temptation to ask him to maintain their status quo as promised for future marriage was so strong, she’d literally had to bite her tongue to keep it back as they said their goodbyes in the wee hours of morning.
Though she would have much preferred waking in Zahir’s arms at least one time in her life, she understood his concern with the possibility their tryst would be discovered if she did not leave while all but the security men on duty slept. So, she had gone, her body sated and her heart filled with longing for what would never be.
Although she had showered with Zahir before leaving his rooms, she took another bracing one in semi-cool water now. She needed every trick to maintain her resolve.
She packed quickly, leaving out the four envelopes she had prepared before stepping foot in Zohra.
One held a letter to her pseudouncle, the King of Jawhar telling him she was backing out of the agreement to marry Zahir sometime in the distant future. She apologized, pleaded with him not to hold her father accountable for her choices and told him she would understand if he no longer recognized her as part of his family. Her heart would have broken at the prospect, but it had shattered all those months ago when she’d first seen evidence of Zahir’s affection for Elsa Bosch and there wasn’t anything left to break.
Or so she told herself.
The second envelope was similar to the first, only the letter inside was written to Zahir’s father. In this one she once again apologized and begged the king to consider her actions her own and in no way a reflection on her pseudouncle or her own parents—as none were aware of her growing discontent with the agreement as it stood.
The third envelope was thicker. It contained a letter to Zahir, this one the only one she had written this morning. She thanked him for their one special night and told him she would never forget it.
She also explained about the enclosed pictures, detailing when she had first received them and how. She gave him as much information regarding the blackmail as she could, including a list of payments she had made and how she had done so. She assured him she had told no one, not even her parents of the pictures or the blackmail monies she had paid.
She hoped he would discover how best to keep them out of circulation, for his sake as well as his family’s. But come tomorrow, or perhaps even tonight, the blackmailer would know that Angele was no longer a pony in this race.
Her eyes flicked to the final envelope, the one that would ensure there would be no turning back. Though, really, it was only symbolic. It held a press release, scotching any “rumors” of a suspected permanent connection between the house of Jawhar and the house of Zohra vis-à-vis a marriage between her and Zahir. She had included a couple of personal quotes. One to the effect that she had no desire to live her life in the public eye as a royal and the other her absolute refusal to make a permanent home outside of her adopted country, America.
After reading it, her father might disown her and her mother would undoubtedly be furious, but Angele wasn’t going to live the rest of her life without love. She just wasn’t.
She might not be American by birth, but she’d been raised around an entirely different set of ideals to the duty-bound royals that led Jawhar and Zohra. While she loved the country of her birth and Zohra as well, at heart? She was a modern American woman.
She wasn’t about to allow Zahir to be forced into a marriage he so clearly had never really wanted, either.
She was under no illusions. He would probably enter another arranged contract, but this time he was older. Zahir would have more input into who his chosen bride was to be. Angele could only hope, for his sake, that it was someone he could develop real feelings for.
She snuck down the secret passageways for the last time and left Zahir’s packet in his room while she knew he was busy with his father. She left each of the letters to the kings with their respective secretarial staff. And finally she dropped the press release off with the PR department.
She had prepared a timed email with a duplicate release to be sent to the major news distribution agencies in a few hours. She would be in flight back to the United States when news hit.
Cowardly? Perhaps, but she preferred to think of it as politic.
Back in the U.S., her denial of a connection to the House of Zohra would constitute little more than a blip in the plethora of social news about drunk-driving celebrities and irresponsible megaconglomerates destroying ecosystems.
Once she was in the car headed to the airport, she pulled out her phone to make the most difficult call of her life. Her parents would not be pleased.
