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Only he didn’t.
He pressed a button and the doors started to close. “Are you coming?” His tone implied impatience.
Though she didn’t know why. Her brain couldn’t quite grasp what he was doing on the other side of the doorway. If he was going back down again, wouldn’t his security be on the elevator with him?
One thing she did know: she wasn’t about to commit the faux pas of joining the emir. “Oh, no. I’ll just go to the service elevator.”
“Do not be ridiculous.” He reached out and grabbed her wrist, drawing shocked gasps from his staff and an imprecation in the Zeena Sahran dialect of Arabic from his personal bodyguard.
Liyah had little opportunity to take that in as she was pulled inexorably into the elevator through the shrinking gap between the heavy doors.
They closed behind her on another Arabic curse, this one much louder and accompanied by a shocked and clearly disapproving, “Emir Sayed!”
“Your Highness?”
“There is no reason for you to take another elevator.”
“But your people…shouldn’t you have waited for them?”
His elegant but strong fingers were still curled around her wrist and he showed no intention of letting her go. “I am not accustomed to being questioned in my actions by a servant.”
The words were dismissive, his tone arrogant, even cold, but the look in his eyes wasn’t. She’d never heard of brown fire before, but it was there in his gaze right now.
Hot enough to burn the air right from her lungs.
Nevertheless, her professional demeanor leaned toward dignified, not subservient. By necessity, she pulled the cool facade she’d perfected early in life around her with comfortable familiarity.
“And I am not used to being manhandled by hotel guests.” S
he stared pointedly at his hold on her wrist, expecting him to release her immediately.
It wasn’t acceptable in the more conservative culture of Zeena Sahra for him to touch any single woman outside his immediate family—and that did not include cousins—much less one that was a complete stranger to him.
However, his hold remained. “This is hardly manhandling.”
His thumb rubbed over her pulse point and Liyah had no hope of suppressing her shiver of reaction.
His heated gaze reflected confusion, as well. “I don’t understand this.”
He’d spoken in the dialect of his homeland, no doubt believing she wouldn’t know what he was saying. She didn’t disabuse him of the belief.
She couldn’t. Words were totally beyond her.
For the first time in her life, she craved touch worse than dark chocolate during that most inconvenient time of the month.
“You are an addiction,” he accused, his tone easy to interpret even if she hadn’t spoken the Zeena Sahran dialect fluently.
Suddenly embarrassed, wondering if she’d done something to invite his interest and reveal her own, she pulled against his hold. He let go, but his body moved closer, not farther away, the rustle of his traditional robes the only sound besides their breathing in the quiet elevator.
With shock she realized there was no subtle sound of pulleys because he’d pushed the stop button.
She stared up at him, her heart in her throat. “Emir?”
“Sayed. My name is Sayed.”
And she wasn’t about to use it. Only she did, whispering, “Sayed,” in an involuntary expulsion of soft sound.
Satisfaction flared in his dark eyes, a line of color burnishing his cheekbones. For whatever reason, the emir liked hearing his name on her lips.
