She pushed at him. “What you feel? Holy suspension of disbelief.”
“Give me a break here, Maram.”
“Gladly. Where would you like it?”
His smile took over his face as he hauled her to him, plastered her stiff body against his warmth and intoxication. “Yes, Maram. Flay me with your sarcasm. Hurt me for real, any way you like. It’s as good as an admission that this will pass, that you still lo—”
She socked him. And almost broke her hand against his jaw.
She yelped as she staggered away, trying to shake the pain. “So you are made of stone through and through.”
He moved his jaw from side to side as if to make sure it was still hinged in place. “I am sorry my jaw hurt your hand. I again suggest blunt, heavy objects instead.”
“You don’t get to joke with me. That’s over.”
She turned on spastic legs, feeling she was stomping on her own heart as she rushed to the en-suite bathroom.
“So it was all a plan from the start, just not what I thought. Get the intractable madman to fall irrevocably, then lead him around by the nose wherever you wish, preferably over broken glass. You are a femme fatale after all.”
She turned, all but baring her fangs.
He grimaced a pained, bedeviling smile as he maneuvered her away from the bathroom, back to the bed. “Made you look.”
“Jerk.” She gasped as her knees hit the bed.
She fell back. He caught her mid-fall, rode her momentum, came down on top of her. “I never said I’m anything but. But you made it worse. You seemed to love me more the bigger the jerk I was.”
She pushed against him, and he only bent to take the frantic pulse at her neck in his lips. With each pull on her flesh, each groan reverberating his pleasure at the feel of her, she felt her body melting, the ice around her heart fracturing.
No. She wouldn’t surrender everything she was again.
She buried her hands in his hair, tried to tug his will-draining, body-igniting lips away from her flesh, panted, “The jerk I loved was so truthful it made your jerkiness…exhilarating, so wounded it made it…not only understandable but something…to love you more for. When you take the honesty and wounds away, what remains is an…unfeeling, lying jerk I don’t…and can’t love…”
As if to erase her words, he took them and her lips, thrust deep, breaching her with need, submerging her in his power.
She whimpered, feeling the holes that losing her faith in him had gnawed into her sanity and soul widen. Her heart, her body wept, for him, for what had and could have been.
“Believe me, Maram,” he groaned as he took her thigh, opened her over his hip, until she felt molded around his hardness. “I never lied to you about my feelings. Not for a second.”
“Again, what feelings?” she moaned, trying not to undulate her need against him, drag him inside her.
“As much as it pains me to realize it, not to mention admit it, I’m not dead inside as I thought, as you think now. When it comes to you, I’m anything but.”
She turned her face away, searching for air and her evaporating sense of self-preservation. “Yeah, sure. You were sleeping beauty, poisoned into a long hibernation and woken up by my kiss.”
His smile was insatiable indulgence incarnate. “Exactly.”
Then he dragged her into the depths of his possession.
She started to beg for him, and an override mechanism kicked in, made her pant the only words that might save her now.
“Haidar and I…are announcing we’re getting married…today.”
Maram’s declaration detonated inside Amjad’s head like a gunshot.
He lurched up, stared down at her.
Not even in his worst nightmares did he…could he…
Maram was taking advantage of his enervation, slipping from his hold. No.
He sank his fingers into her shoulders, feeling she might dematerialize if he didn’t hang on tight enough, heard the butchered growl that spilled from his lips.
“You will marry Haidar over my dead body. Over his, too.”
“Phew, so reassuring to know you’re not against killing me.”
It took seconds to recognize the teasing voice.
Bowing over Maram to hide her vulnerable pose beneath him, to keep her away from the brother who was suddenly his worst enemy, he snarled over his shoulder, “Get out of here, Haidar. Out of the kingdom. Don’t tell anyone where you’re going.”
Maram struggled beneath him. He let her up, feeling that if she went to Haidar, it would really be over.
He caught her back against him as she straightened her clothes. “I’m not letting you do this, Maram.”
She knocked his hands off her, heaved up to her feet. “You’re not ‘letting’ me do anything. I’ll do whatever I want!”
He came between her and Haidar. “Then you can’t do this, to us.”
“Kind of creepy seeing you go all territorial, Amjad.” Amjad swung toward Haidar, who danced smoothly away. “And I thought you didn’t care if anyone—especially of the female persuasion—lived or died. There goes another corner pillar of my belief system.”
“This is far bigger than what your exercise-atrophied mind can handle, so butt out, Haidar.”
“Isn’t it about time you decided to cut the drama?” Amjad swung back at Maram’s reprimand. “Now that we have your attention, let me fill you in on the details…”
He couldn’t hear those. “Maram, this is insane. I asked you to punish me, not finish me.”
“I never thought I’d say this, but I’m actually feeling sorry for you.” Amjad looked back at the other side of his tormenting duet. “I would love to mess with you some more, get a few tons of flesh back, but the way you look, you might blow something vital for real, so cool it, all right? Our budding romance is for my mother’s benefit.”
“Now…the details your theatrics interrupted.” Amjad turned back to Maram, feeling like a tennis ball being smashed from one pro to another. “We set up a ruse to make her believe her original plan was working, that her son and her planned future husband’s daughter were allying with each other and would still sway my father to take his place in her game.”
“Because she wouldn’t believe I’d turn against you of my own accord,” Haidar said, “we had to convince her that Maram—who now hates your guts—has become sympathetic with her plans, has me so blinded by love I’ll do anything to please her.”