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“Cairo,” she whispered.
He had made a mistake. This was a dangerous game. He should not have brought the meal outside...he should not have set this up at all. Princess lessons? She did not need to practice eating dinner. And yet... He had felt that he wanted to do this. For her. With her. He could not quite credit it. Could not quite figure out what he had been thinking, except he had felt compelled to give her something.
Her breakdown in the desert, and then the tension the following day when he had bound the scarf around her hands...
It was like when they were young. And he had felt compelled to give her something nice. To make up for the fact that she was somewhere she did not wish to be. Except now was he not the captor? Except now was he not the one who had brought her here? Not her father, but him. He was her jailer in many respects, and he had no right to think that he could bribe her with cake to make it all better when what she wanted was to return to Paris. But there was no question of that, any more than there was a question of...
His chest went tight.
She looked up at him, and he saw the stars in her eyes. And he remembered. Remembered what it was like all those years ago when he had looked down at her and seen...
Hope. A future. One that he could not have, but one that he was desperate for all the same. The need to kiss her now was almost unendurable.
But she belongs to Riyaz.
Riyaz had demanded her. Payment for his suffering.
The bride price. The daughter of his enemy.
Satisfaction for that which he had endured.
For that which Cairo bore blame.
How could he touch her?
She was here because he was bound to do what Riyaz had asked. Because he had to deny himself.
But in this moment he could not look at her and see that. She was simply Ariel. As he had seen her then. The gown she wore showed none of her pale, enticing skin, and yet he was bewitched by it. By the way the fabric clung to her curves. By the way it revealed the shape of her body. He ached. When he had been a boy, he had no practice restraining himself, but he had no knowledge of what touching a woman entailed either.
He knew now. He also should have better restraint.
And yet he found the knowledge far outweighed any self-control he might have acquired in the last few years.
So he touched her face, moved his fingertips over her lips. Her eyes fluttered closed.
“Cairo,” she whispered. He leaned in, slowly. Slowly, for he wanted to prolong the moment. Prolong the breath before the sin. And just as he stopped, a breath before her lips her eyes opened. And his world was filled with aqua stars, and it was as if a shard of glass had been pressed into his heart and turned hard. It was painful, being this close to her. “I wonder,” he whispered, “if you might taste of orange.”
And then he curved his hand around the back of her head and closed the distance between their mouths.
She was citrus and softness and years of longing. She was the innocence of a kiss between two teenagers, and the carnal knowledge of a kiss between two adults who knew full well that what they were doing was wrong.
And he could not stop. He angled his head, deepened it, parted her lips beneath his own and slid his tongue against hers.
She gasped, and it gave him the opportunity to gain yet more ground. To take it deeper.
“Cairo,” she moaned.
“Ariel.Ya amar.” He kissed her deeper. Harder. His body straining against the confines of his pants. His need like a dark, driving force.
He wanted her.
He wanted to strip her naked there beneath the moon. A pagan sacrifice to his selfish desires.
He wanted her.
Bring back Ariel Hart. She is what I want. She is what I’m owed.
It was Riyaz’s voice, echoing in his head that brought him back from the brink. He pulled away from her, his breath ragged. Painful. “No,” he said. “No. This is not possible. You are my brother’s.”
