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“I was not flirting with him.”
He shrugged. “It looked like it to me.”
“Then you looked at it wrong.”
“It is not the only reason.”
Olivia bit down on her lip. She wouldn’t cry. She wouldn’t let him see her weakness. “Good. Given that it’s a pretty shitty reason, I’d like to think you could do better.”
“How is this, then?” He muttered, leaning forward in his chair, so that his face was starkly close to her. His eyes ran from her eyes to her mouth, and there they lingered, tracing the full pinkness of her cupids bow lips. “Leaving you was the biggest mistake I have ever made. I have regretted it every day since. I want you here, in Dashan, with me, and I think you want that too.”
His words made no sense. “So you’ve kidnapped me to make me some kind of sex slave?” She chattered through shivering teeth.
“Well … I wouldn’t call you that.”
Her mind reeled. “You’re delusional.”
“You were very happy with me before, habibi. You will be again.”
“No.” Her eyes flashed with pain. “I don’t know why you’re being like this, but I know you, Zamir. I know this isn’t really you. You don’t want me like this.”
“No,” he agreed softly. His word was a dangerous oath. “I don’t.”
“What we had before … you ended it. And you can’t just un-end it.”
“I can try,” he responded seriously.
“But you can’t.” She looked away from him. “I’m not the same girl who came to work for you.”
And in profile, her face was gaunt. Her delicate cheekbones were highlighted by the weight she had lost.
“Maybe not.”
The plane dipped lower and lower, and Olivia kept her eyes focussed on the view beyond her window. It was dark in Dashan, though early in the evening, she would have guessed. She was too proud to ask for the time, and when the pilot began to speak, it was in Zamir’s language. She gathered, though, from the way the plane was now moving swiftly closer towards the ground that he was announcing the fact that landing was imminent.
Indeed, moments later, while Olivia sat in an almost numb fog of confusion, the plane touched down with a degree of smoothness onto the tarmac. Olivia barely noticed. She was in knots. For weeks she had told herself she would do almost anything to see Zamir again. She had dreamed of him by night and longed for him by day; she’d put paid to any idea she had of being a strong independent woman by wishing, more than anything in the world, that he would come back into Vegas and carry her off into the sunset.
But not like this.
Never like this.
“Come.” He stood and held a hand out to Olivia. She resolutely ignored it.
Her bag was in the seat she’d previously occupied. She picked it up as she passed, her eyes not meeting Zamir’s. How could she? The man she had loved seemed so far from this powerful stranger. Looking at him only intensified her feelings of betrayal and hurt.
A black SUV was waiting on the tarmac, and Marook stood by the door. He showed surprise for the briefest of moments, but quickly replaced it with professional politeness. “Miss Henderson,” he spoke in his slightly accented voice. “It is a pleasure to see you again.”
Olivia opened her mouth to say something, and Zamir understood. She was going to beg Marook for help. While Zamir didn’t doubt the other man’s loyalty, he did resent the necessity of putting him in a difficult position. And so Zamir turned to Olivia and brought his lips crashing down to hers. It was a kiss of fierce ownership and possession; a kiss designed to silence and punish; a kiss that was laced with his frustration and impatience. It was a kiss that sent his pulse firing and his chest heaving.
It was a kiss that sealed their fates.
Olivia, at first surprised, seemed to have no choice but to surrender to his passion completely. Her hands crept up around his neck, as if to say that they understood. He was her body’s master and always would be. She might hate him with her brain and mind, but she also needed him.
“Do not embarrass Marook by dragging him into our mess,” Zamir murmured, finally, when he pulled away slightly. His eyes glinted with a warning.
But Olivia felt like she was going to collapse. The kiss had set her fires burning and she knew from experience that only his total possession would answer the need he’d invoked. And how she hated herself for that! Oh, what weakness to feel such soul-destroying hunger for a man such as this.
Angrily, she shrugged away from him. Her cheeks were burning and her eyes were wet. Her emotions had zipped from desperation to desire in the space of seconds.
