“Jafar wouldn’t hurt me,” she whispered as she turned to Paige, her eyes large and dark and haunted with fear now.
Oh yes, she knew exactly how that fear felt. She was personal friends with it now. At this rate fear would soon be a part of her personality. She wouldn’t know how to live without it.
“Paige.” Chalah’s lips trembled when no one answered her claim that Jafar would never hurt her. “Tell them. Tell them he wouldn’t harm me.”
Paige could only shake her head. “He’s the same man who put his blade against Abram’s neck after he lost the fight to determine if we could leave or be forced to stay,” Paige whispered. “I’m so sorry, Chalah. He’s capable of anything.”
“No.” Chalah’s denial was weak though.
“He’s not the brother you knew and he’s not the friend I once claimed, Chalah. So no, I don’t believe he would protect you. And if he could use you against Khalid and Abram he would do it in a heartbeat. Think of that. Remember it. Because if you help him again then our blood may well be on your hands.” And if Chalah made that mistake, Paige promised herself, she would ensure the other girl paid for it.
No matter the cost to herself.
14
She was back where it all began, but this time, Khalid wasn’t going to show up and surprise her. He wasn’t going to come pounding on her door at three in the morning just to deliver yet another lecture on the many and varied reasons why it was ill-advised to sleep with his brother. His brother and his brother’s cousin.#p#分页标题#e#
Those lectures haunted her as she lay in bed. She stared up at the ceiling in the darkened bedroom, her brother’s many arguments echoing in her head. She remembered the anger that filled his eyes, his knowledge that no matter how much he lectured, still she ached for Abram. She was fascinated with him. She needed him like she had never needed anything else in her life.
And because of her need for Abram, she had caused Khalid to worry more for her safety than he worried for his own. Had Azir, Mustafa and Jafar not suspected she was Abram’s weakness, something he wanted, then neither of them would have been as intent on kidnapping her. And Khalid could have concentrated on his own safety.
Despite Chalah’s protestations that Jafar would have never gone to that extreme, Paige couldn’t help but remember that knife to Abram’s throat, sharp enough, pressing hard enough to actually draw blood. And she couldn’t help but believe Chalah’s brother would actually kill if tested.
And Jafar was definitely being tested with the date of the emissary’s visit coming closer and the paperwork on Abram and Tariq’s defection being filled out and prepped to deliver to the U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia. And this was the price Abram and Khalid would pay for their determination to break from the Mustafa legacy.
She could lose her brother as well as the man her body burned for, her heart ached for.
Turning, she stared toward the balcony doors and blinked back the tears that threatened to fill her eyes.
She missed him. She was so used to sleeping, cushioned between him and Tariq, that the past three nights she hadn’t truly slept at all.
As a weary sigh left her lips her gaze jerked to the bedroom door. It opened slowly, pushing inward a second before Abram stepped into the room. A dark shadow against the moonlit expanse of the window across the room, he moved slowly toward her.
He didn’t close the door. There was no need to. Her heart raced at the sight of Tariq moving in behind him, closing and locking the door with a deliberate, audible click.
Her eyes met the dark glitter of Abram’s as he paused at the side of the bed. She slowly sat up, the high mattress placing her head just above his hips.
She swallowed tightly, fighting to breathe at the sight of the heavy bulge beneath the denim. She had to force her gaze to lift, to stare up at him, rather than beg him to fuck her immediately.
“I need you, Paige.” He’d only said that to her once before. That bleak, cold winter he and Khalid had arrived from Saudi after the death of his second wife and their unborn child.
“I’ve always been here for you. I told you that.” She’d been eighteen and so infatuated with him that it was all she could do not to tremble in his presence.
He’d been drunk, racked by grief and he’d come to her even though he’d known he would face Khalid’s rage if it was ever found out.
Her gaze flicked to Tariq. Abram hadn’t had a third with him then, but he did now.
“No matter what I need?”
Her heart tripped in her chest at the question.