3

“Why are you here? Where’s Khalid?”

She tightened her fingers against the hold he had on her wrists, though she found herself stopping short of actually straining against his hold. After all, if she protested too loudly, or struggled too much, he might actually let her go.

“Khalid and Marty are with her parents.” Deep, dark, she swore she actually trembled as he spoke. “They are completing the plans for your protection.”

Her protection? Right now, all she needed protection from was the brilliant heat she was helpless against.

“He should be here.” Oh man, she was dying here. She could feel her blood racing, her flesh heating, her clit throbbing harder in demand with each second.

The longer she lay there beneath him, the more she wanted him. The more she wanted the sensations, the pleasure she had only had the briefest taste of eight years before.

“Should he be?” His fingers tightened, then relaxed against her hip a second before his palm cupped it, shifting her, moving her against his thigh. “I think at this moment, it’s a very good thing that he isn’t here. Wouldn’t you say?”

A flash of fire streaked through her pussy, clenched the tightened muscles and almost stole her breath. Pleasure raged through her body, but it was a painful pleasure, an achy, needing-so-much-more sensation type of pleasure that it weakened her knees and had her breathing in roughly.

“He kidnapped me,” she breathed out roughly. “I’m going to kick his ass.”

“Go right ahead,” he murmured. “When he arrives. Until then, I believe it might be time to see if your lips are as soft and as sweet as they appear to be. If they are anywhere as sweet as that hot, luscious little pussy I cannot forget the taste of.”

Her entire body clenched in excitement at the declaration.

Then his head lowered.

Paige felt her lashes drift close, lips remaining parted, breath suspended as his lips brushed against the edge of her face, sending a rush of exquisite pleasure washing through her again.

“You’re trying to distract me,” she accused him roughly. “I’m not going to let you do it. Khalid owes me explanations, Abram.”

He owed her. She owed herself. She couldn’t let him do this to her or once he was gone, there would be nothing left of her.

“He’s protecting you,” he stated, though his voice sounded rougher, more strained as his lips moved to her ear, his breath stroking across the shell as he spoke. “You’re in danger, Paige, you should have guessed that by now.”

In danger of screaming in need. Of begging for his touch. Of whimpering with the painful hunger she couldn’t control.

“Guessed what?” She hoped he didn’t actually expect her to be able to think at the moment, because it wasn’t happening. But she couldn’t imagine a single reason why she would be in danger.

Unless it was in danger of dying of arousal. As of this moment, that was definitely a consideration. In all her adult years she had never felt this way with another man, had never ached or lost her breath, or felt on fire as she did now. And never had she been so certain she may lose herself in another person.

“That you’re in danger.” There was a thread of amusement in his voice now, the knowledge of it sweeping through her with the same force the hunger had swept through her moments before.

Amusement was the last thing she could have felt as he held her, as the thrill of touching him, of being touched by him, held her captivated.

Clenching her teeth she tensed, trying to pull back, to put just a breath between their bodies as she attempted to find her control somewhere in the morass of aching hunger and need assailing her.

Wasn’t it just her luck to be so aroused by a man while his own arousal, his own needs, were so obviously distant, just as they had been before. It was the story of her life where Abram was concerned. From the time she’d realized she wanted those devilish, sexy lips of his on her, he’d been either furious or amused by her.

“In danger of killing Khalid perhaps,” she forced out. “Would you please let me go now? Get off me, Abram. I’m not in the mood for your games.”

He rubbed his cheek against her hair as though considering her request for long moments. “Perhaps, I like you fine as you are,” he finally stated. “I like how you feel against me, Paige Eleanora Galbraithe. Do you know how the memory of those very few stolen moments have tormented me?”

“And perhaps I think by now I know better,” she whispered hoarsely. “Stop playing with me.”

“Ahh, Paige, love, this is far beyond playing. This is the reason why I have fought against your touch. Because I can feel my control going straight to hell just from the simple act of holding you against me. How can I convince you how much I enjoy the feel of you against me?”

How she felt against him? Or the fact that for the barest few moments, she’d been unable to tell him what an ass he was being?

At the moment, he wasn’t being his normal, mocking self, but she could sense that beast ready to spring forth. And once it did, their confrontations could turn brutal. His mocking, hers loud. They’d been known to rip at each other for hours, like little children poking at each other to gain dominance.

“I can tell,” she said. “You’re on the verge of laughing your ass off, Abram. Let me go.”

His grip tightened on her wrists for a second as she felt tension hardening his body further. Against her lower stomach his cock felt harder, hotter, his body more insistent as he seemed closer, blanketing her like a sensual, muscular beast.

“Not at you.” His voice was suddenly lower, the feel of his heart racing at her breast as he pulled her closer against him with the hand at her hip. “At myself, hellcat. Because no matter how hard I try to pull away from you, I want nothing more than to sink inside you.”

The second the words passed his lips they were covering hers. His body shifted, his free hand pulling her farther up his thigh, working it against the swollen folds as her gown pooled around his leg. The silk of her panties saturating with her juices as she strained closer to him. Her clit heated with a fiery intensity. Her pussy clenched, tightened, the muscles ached with a desperation to be filled and every cell in her body sizzled with the need to be touched.

Pleasure rose fast and hard inside her. Heart racing, blood pounding through her system as her lips parted, her head falling back as he possessed her with his kiss.

Every thought of protest flew out the window. Past angers, conflicts, and confrontations were gone. With her wrists secured to the wall, his thigh pressed between hers, and his lips and tongue caressing and owning every pulse of sensuality, he was drowning her. Paige could feel herself weakening into the promise of the remembered ecstasy.

Dominance swirled from him. It was a wave of heat wrapping around her and sinking into her flesh as his lips rubbed and caressed hers. His tongue licked at hers, dipping in, tasting and caressing until Paige found herself arching up to him, moaning for more.

The only place his hands touched her were at her wrists, and again at her hip. The rest of his body stroked her though. His rd chest against her breasts, his thigh pressed between hers.

Each flex of his leg stroked the hard muscle against her pussy, her clit, sending incredible pleasure racing through each nerve ending as she arched to be closer.

She had to get closer to him.

The need for the heat, for the pleasure was rushing through her like a tornado. She was dying for more of him. For another taste of him. His kiss was like an aphrodisiac, spicy and addictive as his lips slanted over hers and he kissed her with a pure, sensual hunger that she couldn’t have dreamed existed.

The restraint at her wrists should have made her nervous. No man had ever restrained her. She would have never allowed it until now.

Until Abram.

Until the feel of him against her, until his hands restrained her and his kiss made her like it.

But that didn’t mean she was submitting easily. Even amidst the incredible starbursts of pleasure. On a primitive, primal level, Paige could sense the battle that could brew between them. The one that had been shaping for years now.

How dominant he could be.

How submissive she would never allow herself to be.

She nipped at his tongue as he licked over hers again, causing his head to jerk back, his gaze to narrow in the darkness.

“You’re playing with fire.” There was a growl in his voice that sent a shiver racing up her spine.

“And what are you playing with?” It was all she could do to keep the tremors from her voice, from her fingers as he held them above her head. “I didn’t start this, Abram, you did.”

“You started this eight years ago, Paige,” he rasped. “Eight years and the taste of the sweetest pussy I’ve had touched my tongue to. You torment me. And now, there is no choice but to anger you in our attempt to ensure your security.”

“Do you think you and Khalid can just kidnap me and get the hell away with it? That you can kiss good enough to make up for it?”

She had to force herself not to let a shiver of pleasure race through her body as his fingers moved over her hip before inching closer to her thigh. To where the silk of her gown fell away from her flesh at the point that her knee had bent, lifting to clasp his thigh, to rub herself against him.

She had to fight to maintain her senses, to control the need to sink back into his kiss, to allow him to sink into her, however she could convince him to do it.

But she knew this man. Dominant. Powerful. A force to be reckoned with in a world so different from her own that it may as well be an alien planet.

“Kidnapped you? I?” Amazement filled his voice, and perhaps just a hint of anger. “Had I kidnapped you, hellcat, you would well know it,” he finally scoffed, and the anger was readily apparent just as his accent became stronger.

Thankfully, his fingers relaxed. He stepped back slowly before reaching to the side and flipping the lights on as he released her.

For a second, she was blinded. Her eyes snapped closed and when she opened them again a second later, he was halfway across the room and heading for the bar.

For a drink. She was tempted to join him.

He moved like a predator.

Paige watched as he stalked almost lazily across the expensive, pearlesent carpeting to the bar on the other side of the room.

Without turning back, he poured a whiskey from the looks of it, and if she wasn’t mistaken, it was Khalid’s finest.

His head tilted back as he took a hard drink. Thick, heavy black hair fell nearly to his shoulders, the blue-black strands silky and glistening in the bright overhead light.

“Get out of here before I insult Khalid by fucking you in his bed,” he snapped.

“Talk about a mood change.” Her eyes rolled as he shot her a hard, half angry look from the corner of his eyes.

“Not nearly enough of a change to keep from fucking my brother’s sister.”

Paige blinked back at him. “Damn, that sounded almost depraved, Abram. Would you like to rephrase?”

He turned. Male grace and predatory strength. And pulsing, blazing, male lust.

She could feel her pussy creaming, saturating her panties further and sensitizing her clit to the point of painful need.

Just the sight of him was enough to make her ache, to make her crave with a strength and a power that made her knees weak.

He was tall, broad, and muscular. There wasn’t an ounce of fat on his six-four frame, or beneath the exceptionally soft white shirt and well-worn jeans.

Finishing the whiskey he sat the glass on the bar behind him, his gaze never leaving hers. She could feel that look through every inch of her body. Sensitized and aching for his touch, her sk felt too tight, constricting as she tried to still the rapid rise and fall of her breasts.

“Rephrasing isn’t the only thing I’d like to do, or may attempt to do.” The heavy warning in his voice was followed by a heavy-lidded glance along her body.

Hell, she may as well have been naked. Unfortunately, there was a part of her that wished she was naked.

Paige didn’t have to look down to see that her nipples were trying to burrow their way through the silk of her gown.

She didn’t bother to tug the robe over the swollen curves or even pretend a shame she didn’t feel. And it wasn’t the first time she’d been forced to face Abram as an independent woman rather than the submissive child he often expected her to portray.

Unfortunately, he was rarely shocked by her anymore.

“And what makes now any different from the past years? There was a time when I would have welcomed your touch, Abram, but now I can’t help but be suspicious. What the hell is going on?”

“Besides your determination to acquire that spanking I keep promising you with?” He spoke as though he were serious.

“Promises, promises. My ass stopped tingling in anticipation years ago.” She waved the comment away. “That doesn’t change the fact that unless you tell Khalid’s goons out there to get out of my face and let me go home, I’m going to have every one of you brought up on charges. That wouldn’t please your daddy, Abram. Last I heard old man Azir was already pissed because you were refusing to remarry for the sake of a child.”

Her ass had stopped tingling in anticipation? Abram nearly came in his damned jeans with that comment. His cock hardened to pure iron, the head throbbed, and if there wasn’t pre-cum in his jeans, then he wasn’t iron hard.

Paige watched his black eyes flare with renewed lust. A perfectly arched, perfectly male black brow rose lazily. “Are the phones in the house not working?” He all but smirked as he ignored her last comment.

Her lips thinned. “I’m trying to be nice about this, Abram. Don’t make me call the authorities.”

He waved his hand toward the phone on a nearby desk in invitation. “I didn’t kidnap you, Paige. Daniel Conover and his security team did so, at your brother’s orders and with FBI Director Zachary Jennings’s approval. Would you like to call the authorities now, hellcat?”

She glared back at him irritably. “Stop calling me that.… And it would likely do just as much good to call the cops now as it would to call Khalid,” she snapped. “Get me out of herethis, Ab#x201D;

She was desperate. If she had to stay locked up even one day longer she was going to go crazy. There was nothing to do here. No way to focus her energy or to stop fantasizing about this man who seemed intent on dancing through her mind at all hours of the day and night.

If she didn’t find a way to return home, to get back to her job—knowing now that Abram was the one slipping into the house at night—then she might end up making the biggest mistake of her life.… begging him to take her to his bed and to finish what he had started eight years before.

“Take me home.” She crossed her arms over her breast and stared back at him firmly.

“I can’t do that.” He shook his head, his expression suddenly somber. “Relax, Paige. Enjoy a nice vacation for a few more weeks—”

“Weeks!” Her eyes widened as amazed disbelief flashed through her and rejection instantly snapped through her mind. “Hell no!” Her hands went to her hips as she confronted him furiously now. “I have a job, Abram. I have a life…”

“Not if you leave here.” His tone was suddenly ominous, his expression hardening as though he knew the danger she would face, whatever it may be.

She was damned glad someone knew what was going on, because she sure didn’t.

“What the hell do you mean by that?”

She could feel a premonition of danger then, even stronger than what she had felt in the past ten days.

Khalid wouldn’t just kidnap her without a reason. A part of her had known that whatever was going on was more than simply a suspicion of danger. It was more than a threat against Khalid and Abram.

Abram moved back to her slowly, his expression flashing with frustration, irritation, before slowly smoothing out to an icy calm that sent a chill of dread racing up her spine.

“Why can’t I leave, Abram?” she whispered as she fought the edge of fear threatening to spread through her now. She knew her brother had been having some problems with his and Abram’s two younger half-brothers, but surely those problems didn’t extend to a threat to her? Besides, weren’t they dead now?

“Because your name was found among papers of a certain terrorist, Paige. Until we learn why—” His voice lowered, his expression becoming heavy, sensual, and filled with hunger. “Until we know for certain, you are too precious to risk.”

Something flashed in his eyes, something dark and dangerous as his hand lifted, his fingers sliding beneath the shoulder of her robe, the callouse, heated pads of his fingers caressing beneath the silken material.

“Abram.” Too precious to risk? He’d said it as though he meant it, as though she were actually precious to him.

And she couldn’t let herself believe that. She and Abram had had far too many confrontations over the years to ever believe she was anything more than an irritant, and for the moment, perhaps, a desire.

Focusing on the intimate touch, on the pleasure, was something she eagerly embraced now as she fought to distance herself from the information he had just given her. The knowledge that a terrorist had somehow focused on her.

The question of why raged in the back of her mind as she deliberately forced herself to focus on the desire instead.

She didn’t think she wanted to know why. Not yet. Not until she could still the horrible foreboding, the fear threatening to overtake her.

Throughout the years she had teased, irritated, and deliberately provoked him. She winked at him when he was somber, blew kisses at him when he was angry, and that was just when she had been little more than a child and he an eighteen-year-old man of the world in her eyes. And now, he was the man she couldn’t get out of her dreams, or out of her fantasies.

Paige stood still, silent, as Abram’s fingers caressed from her shoulder to her neck, stroking her flesh as though he enjoyed the feel of it. His gaze locked with hers, his eyes somber, intent, and a flash of fiery hunger filled them as he pushed his fingers into her hair.

He cupped the back of her head, holding her in place as his head lowered slowly. Paige felt her lips part, her heart striking harder against her chest as it raced out of control.

“Let me taste you again, Paige,” he whispered, his lips nearly touching hers. “I see you staring at me with such innocence, and with such hunger. All that’s saved you these past years has been Khalid’s diligence in keeping us apart.” His lips touched hers. “Khalid isn’t here now to save you, precious.”

Paige felt her lips part helplessly.

“He wasn’t there eight years ago,” she whispered. “And you took another woman instead.”

“And yet, all I remember of that day was how wet and sweet you were,” he retorted sensually. “Are you still as sweet?” His lips brushed against hers. “Are you still as wet?”

She should be questioning him. She should be outraged. She should be frightened and trying to figure out a way to stay safe without remaining a prisoner in her brother’s home and for the moment in Abram’s arms.

Instead of questioning him, though, her lips were parting for him, a shaky moan leaving them as he pulled her to him firmly and deepened the intimate possession. A kiss that lacked the dominance of moments before, as well as the demand. This kiss seduced, it cajoled. His lips and tongue rubbed against hers, tasted hers and within seconds her hands were gripping his shoulders, nails biting into his flesh as she fought to get closer to him.

This was a side of Abram that he had never allowed her to see. This gentle, seductive side. The dangerous eroticism that existed just beneath the surface and was now flowing free as his lips, tongue, and hands began to stoke the searing flames of need through her entire body.

His hands slid to her shoulders, gently sliding the sleeves of her robe down her arms until the silk caught at her elbows.

His lips slid from hers, his tongue peeking out to taste the sensitive skin of her neck and sending shivers racing through her body. Paige gasped for breath, a low moan escaping her lips. She swore there was an electric current beneath her skin, brought alive by the touch of his lips as they stroked and kissed their way to her shoulder.

The calloused tips of his fingers moved to the thin strap of her gown, easing it over the curve of her shoulder as his lips continued to play, and to melt her resistance like butter. If there had been any resistance, which Paige was certain she couldn’t have even attempted to fake.

She’d wanted him for far too long, ached for him for too many years to even consider rejecting this touch.

She had never had a man’s touch burn through her as Abram’s did now. She’d never known such abandoned pleasure, or ached to the very core of her body as she did now.

“Abram.” The moaning whisper seemed torn from her as she felt the gown slide down her arms, then past the swollen, heavy flesh of her breasts. “You make my head spin.”

The silk rasped over the tender tips, the sensation surging through her with a wicked rush of ecstatic pleasure as she allowed the words to escape her lips. She knew better. She should hold them back, hold a part of herself back. There was no strength to do so, though.

Her nipples peaked and hardened, rising and falling erratically with her heavy breaths as Abram stared down at them. Paige swore she could feel the very air stroking against her, the invisible currents touching her like a ghostly caress.

“How pretty.” The dark, accented stroke of his voice against her senses had her arching to get closer to him, to feel him touching her breasts in some way, in any way, to ease the ache radiating through her flesh.

She’d fantasized about this. She had dreamed of it.

“What do you want, little hellcat?” His hand moved, his fingers moving over the curveast as her lips parted to drag in air. “What touch do you wish against such pretty flesh?”

Oh God, how was she supposed to deal with this? To handle the sensations that were tearing through her, and the pleasure that made it impossible for her to consider anything but the culmination of the hunger raging through her.

Paige stared up at him, her gaze heavy-lidded as a sense of sensual bravado overcame her.

Her hand smoothed between them, up her stomach to the mound of her breast. Cupping it, she lifted it to him in invitation as his gaze flared in overwhelming hunger. His lips parted, his tongue touching the tip of the tortured flesh.

“Son of a bitch!”

Shock. Horror.

Paige’s head jerked to the side as Abram’s lifted quickly, turning even as he jerked the gowns straps and her robe back over her shoulders to cover her naked breasts.

Khalid.

Her brother stood just inside the doorway, his black eyes almost bulging in shock, his expression, for the briefest moment, slack with complete amazement before it morphed to complete fury.

God, he would show up at the most inopportune time and catch her doing the one thing he’d forbidden her to do years ago.

Don’t mess with Abram, he’d ordered her. Don’t cause such trouble with the only brother he accepted, the only true friend he had ever known. Because it would make enemies of them if Abram took her to his bed.

And what had she done? What had she plotted to do for years? To find herself in Abram’s arms, his lips and hands caressing her. To find herself in his bed, his moving over her, inside her.

Oh hell, Khalid was so pissed.

Slowly, Abram backed away.

Her head turned back and she stared up at him as his gaze turned back to her, his black eyes, darker, more intense than Khalid’s were enigmatic, as Abram straightened her robe over her breasts then began distancing himself fully.

“Go,” he said softly, his tone suddenly remarkably gentle. “You don’t need to be here for this.”

“Paige, what the hell is going on?” Khalid’s tone was coldly furious and striking across Abram’s whispered, though gentle command.

Paige rolled her eyes, stepped back, and finished fixing her gown and robe herself as she turned back to her brother. She couldn’t let herself look at Abram, couldn’t afford to show any weakness now.

Brothers were like wild animals. Show that first hint of weakness and they could be merciless. Rather like an animal at that first scent of blood.

“Get over yourself,” she told him as though unconcerned as she looked behind him and watched as Marty fought to hold back her grin. Khalid’s fiancée was nothing if not laid back and more or less amused by all of them. “What happened Marty? Did aliens kidnap my nice brother again and leave the asshole in its place?”

The “nice brother” referred to his general good mood in the past weeks since he and Marty had become engaged. She’d rather hoped it would last a while.

“The ‘nice brother,’ as you call me, was doing exceptionally well until I walked in here,” he snapped, his arms going across his chest in the classic, arrogant pose.

Just how many times had she seen that pose in the past ten years? Possibly every time Khalid caught her so much as looking at Abram.

Paige glanced between the two men.

It was incredibly easy to tell they were related, to tell they were brothers actually. If she didn’t know better, she would have sworn they were twins rather than half-brothers. But she did know better. Abram was five minutes older than Khalid, and his mother had delicate blond hair rather than the vibrant red hair of Khalid and Paige’s mother. Khalid and Abram’s father, Azir Mustafa preferred American wives. Kidnapped, terrified American wives.

Abram wasn’t her brother though. He wasn’t even her half-brother. But Khalid refused to see the distinction.

“Neither of you have answered me.” Khalid stared between them, his nostrils flaring in anger.

“I would have thought it was pretty self-evident,” Paige replied archly. “You’re not exactly a virgin, Khalid, so unless that question was simply an exercise in arrogance, then you’re well aware of exactly what was going on.”

“It was a mistake,” Abram said then, the shock of the statement ripping through her consciousness.

Paige swung around to stare at him in disbelief.

“What did you say?”

“It was a mistake,” he repeated as he turned back to Khalid. “It will not happen again.”

She could only stare at him. Disbelief warred with a sense of betrayal as he turned back to her, his expression cool and composed, no hint of the hunger, or need, he’d shn only moments before.

“A mistake?” she whispered, feeling her throat tighten as she felt both Marty and Khalid watching.

How shameful. To have them witness such a rejection. How impossibly stupid of her not to have realized exactly what was coming though. He hadn’t stayed away from her, ensured they were never alone together over the past years for no reason.

“A regrettable one,” he answered. “I apologize to you as well, Paige…”

“Save it.” Flipping her hand out to him dismissively she turned on her heel and headed for the door.

Once reaching the exit she turned back, her gaze meeting Khalid’s as anger burned bright and hot inside her. “If I don’t see you in the morning, then you better tell your hired goons to watch their damned backs because I won’t stay here any longer. And you damned well better have an alternative method of protection because I’m not a child to be locked away. Nor am I too damned stupid to understand what the hell is going on when the situation is eventually explained to me.”

She didn’t give him time to speak. She didn’t want to hear his damned explanations at the moment and she sure as hell didn’t want to see the pity in his and Marty’s eyes. She wanted to get the hell away from all of them.

She was a mistake. A regrettable one.

Her teeth clenched furiously as humiliation washed through her.

He could excuse himself until hell froze over but it wouldn’t change the fact that he wanted her. He had wanted her with almost the same destructive hunger that burned inside her whenever he was around.

He didn’t want to admit it? He wanted to ignore it?

That was just damned fine, because it wasn’t over. She’d seen his gaze. She’d seen what he’d wanted to hide behind that deceptively calm, unemotional mask.

She’d seen the hunger burning so hot, so deep that it possibly went even deeper than her own did. She’d felt it. She’d tasted it in his kiss. He wanted to devour her.

She knew herself that denying it simply didn’t work. When he was done with the denials, when he was finished pretending he didn’t want her to keep Khalid’s little protective instincts calmed, then he’d better be damned careful.

She just might show him exactly how rejection felt.