Sure, she might come to feel something for Haroun. But the idea that she might never, ever experience true love, the giddy highs of real passion—the stuff of films and great books, emotions that drove people to fight wars, create magnificent art, build soaring temples—depressed her.
As much as Brandt mocked her for being royal, it wasn’t easy. She couldn’t have the things normal people aspired to, even though her needs as a woman might be just as deep and real as the next woman’s.
He reached into the backseat suddenly, yanked out the whiskey bottle, held it between his thighs as he unscrewed the cap, took a deep swallow. She watched his Adam’s apple working, and slow fingers of desire tickled down inside her...she couldn’t help it. Even now.
He held the bottle out to her.
“Want some?”
“No.”
He took another sip, then recapped it.
“What are you seeking alcoholic relief from? Me?”
He gave a hard, dry, hard laugh. “I’m not seeking relief. It’s the breakfast of kings. Oh, wait, not your kind of king.”
Her jaw dropped. “You’re jealous?”
He barked another laugh, pressing down on the gas, and bouncing the jeep in a way that forced her to grab the roll bar for balance.
“Jealousy doesn’t suit you, you know.”
“Suits me just fine.”
“I thought you’d want to stay sharp, not drunk,” she said.
“This is me being sharp, sweetness.”
She cursed at him in Arabic again and he drove faster, jouncing her around in the front seat.
“So that’s it—you despise me because I’m engaged to a man with more money and power than you’ll ever have, yet I still kissed you.”
“Jesus, Dalilah, give it up, will you? It’s just a freaking kiss.”
“You think I’m promiscuous, cheating on him, betraying him, is that it? Is it that simple?”
“I’m a simple guy.”
“Oh, that’s amusing! Simple is the last thing you are. You’re a...a cantankerous bull with issues over your past and...God knows what else.”
He snorted.
“See? You even sound like one.”
He spun abruptly to face her, and she recoiled slightly at the sudden ferocity in his features. “You want the truth, Dalilah? Here it is—” he turned back to face the terrain “—I don’t do commitment and I like to be with women who don’t do commitment, either. No promises. Just straight-up good sex. Both sides understand the equation and want nothing more. I do not have a problem with promiscuity.”
Blood flared hot into her face. “So what is the problem?”
“The problem is you. You do commitment. You made the choice to marry Haram—”
“Haroun!”
“You made him a promise by wearing a rock big enough to feed a small goddamn country, and you know what? While I don’t do commitment as a matter of routine, when I do choose to make a promise, that’s everything in my book. Believe it or not, I do have honor, and I’m loyal to a goddamn fault. Just ask your brother. It’s why I went to work with men like him—men who promise to leave no man behind, and know how to keep that promise. And it’s why he came to get me out of a hellhole in Nicaragua—he wouldn’t leave me behind. And that, Princess, is why I owe Omair. That’s why I’m here saving your pretty little ass right now, because Omair knows I owe him, and that I’ll die before I let you get hurt.” He clamped his mouth shut as he swerved sharply round a steep rock, almost tipping the jeep onto its side.
“Doesn’t mean I have to be nice about it,” he muttered as he gunned the jeep into an expanse of sand dotted with squat Mopani.
Dalilah stared at his rugged profile, assimilating this new information, her heart thudding wildly in her chest. “You think I have no honor? You think I don’t keep a promise? Because that’s not true! You have no idea what I’m prepared to give up for a promise not even made by—”
“Just stop talking, okay.”
Her eyes widened. “Where in hell do you get off—”
“I was in that other man’s position, Dalilah,” he snapped angrily. “Not once, but twice. Call me a fool, but I didn’t learn from the first time around and a woman just like you burned my ass. Then got killed for it.”
Her mouth dropped. “That’s not...you don’t understand. I—”
“I don’t want to understand.”
He drove faster, harder, sending up clouds of fine gray dust that coated the trees, giving them a ghostly air of menace in the heat. Vegetation closed in again, as if the bush was deliberately trying to block their way.