Married for the Sheikh's Duty(18)
With a flick of his fingers, Zayn dismissed the aide. In the next blink, he had his powerful arms around her and she was drenched in the musky warmth of the man.
Every inch of her skin sang as his hard chest grazed her breasts, his thighs tangled with hers. Tension was so thick around them that she shivered when his fingers rasped against her nape.
The cold slide of something against her neck brought her head down. Diamonds, enough that she couldn’t even count, nestled around a delicate platinum wire settled against her heated skin. She fingered the dazzling, multifaceted stones, unable to quell the pleasure that rose through her. The gift didn’t matter so much as that he’d put it on. It seemed a romantic gesture although she was the last person who’d know anything about such gestures. “Thank you. I... I’ll make sure to...”
His fingers crawled up the sensitive skin of her nape and into her hair, while the other hand remained on her hip. The intimacy of his touch sent her pulse soaring. “It’s yours to keep,” he whispered at her ear. “I saw it and thought of you.”
A sigh escaped her mouth and brought his gaze level with hers. “You’re trembling. Until this evening, I would have bet my kingdom it was me.”
His cold tone sliced through the daze her senses seemed to be swimming in. Suddenly, his gift, the possessive way he’d put it on her, everything took on a different meaning. “What are you talking about?”
“Your... Massi is here.”
“Here?”
“Mysteriously, yes.” The tip of his finger traced the line of her jaw. “Tonight, at the exclusive fund-raiser whose guest list was decided months ago.”
Massi was here? In Paris?
A smile came to Amalia’s mouth, the thought of a friendly, familiar face filling her with pleasure. A smile that dominated the shock she felt. As far as she knew, Massi was not connected to the Hope charity in any way.
He was here because of her.
Which was exactly what the man in front of her was thinking. Except he’d gone two steps further and come to another conclusion, too.
He didn’t come out and say it, but Amalia saw the suspicion in the granite set of his jaw, in the hard contour of his mouth. In the way his beautiful eyes glittered without any real warmth.
The whole necklace and his putting it on her, it had all been a show. The embrace and the intimacy had been his way of staking claim in front of a man he didn’t even know. Hurt pinged inside Amalia’s chest.
It was her own fault for giving vague answers every time he’d asked about Massi. Now she wanted him to demand answers, to demand his right in her life...
But she would forever be waiting.
Zayn thought of her as the woman who’d blackmailed him. As the woman who wasn’t fit to be anything in his life. These two weeks, their exchanges, nothing had significance to the sheikh. For him, it was only a means to achieve his sister’s happiness.
The cold kiss of the diamonds on her skin made nausea whirl up through her throat. “If you have something to say, Zayn, say it.”
The jut of his stubborn jaw made Amalia want to growl. “No? Then please, let me go so that I can finish this damn pretense and we both can go back to our lives.”
Uniformed waiters circulated through the hall, supplying unlimited glasses of champagne. Amalia had sipped a few times from her flute and then passed it back. Even though she’d been sorely tempted to get drunk for the first time in her life and make a spectacle of herself.
That would show the arrogant sheikh how unsuitable she could be.
But too many fates hung in the balance and she decided her little rebellion wouldn’t be worth it.
An echo of the frisson that had shot through her when he had seen her went through her again as she looked around the banquet hall and found his dark head.
As if she’d telegraphed it, he looked straight at her and raised his champagne flute. Amalia forced a smile to her lips, a sort of sinking sensation in her stomach. Their little confrontation wasn’t over. It hadn’t even started, she realized.
He’d only postponed it to the privacy of the night. Because, of course, the sheikh couldn’t show even a smidgen of emotion, a weakness in front of the public. Even his anger over her supposed betrayal was under his supreme control, whereas she hadn’t been able to hide anything.
What would happen when they went back to the suite they shared?
CHAPTER EIGHT
“I WOULD APPRECIATE it very much if you unhand my fiancée.” Zayn had no idea how he managed to make the warning sound dire when his heart was pounding in his throat. He’d spent a hellish two hours searching for Amalia on the streets of Paris, along with his security team while she...
The fist in his gut would not unclench.
He hadn’t known fear like this in...ever. The thought of Amalia hurt or worse had consumed him.
He had sworn to fire his entire security team once she had been found. He had called himself a hundred names for not making her aware of what a target she could be to so many different factions now that she belonged to him.
And here she was...in the arms of her lover.
“Stop fondling her at the same time, before some camera crew gets a picture of it and plasters it all over social media tomorrow.”
“Zayn, I wanted to...”
Her topaz gaze met his in defiance and slowly, softened. Even her temporary yielding did not calm him. Slowly, she moved in the man’s embrace, trying to extricate herself from him. “Massi wanted to catch up and I thought we would have more privacy away from—”
“You will explain later, habibti, in the privacy of our suite.” A shadow of fear he still could not subdue made his tone harsh. “I have no intention to provide your boss or some other sneaky reporter with a lovers’ spat.
“You are a sheikh’s fiancée, Amalia. Sneaking out with other men is exactly the kind of fodder that the media looks for.”
Her chin tilted up. “Even if it’s to catch up with an old—”
“Friend, or ex-lover or your boss...it doesn’t matter. After the last two weeks, I thought you understood that. Come, let’s return to the suite.”
The man turned and looked at Zayn, the cocky tilt of his head deepening the anger in Zayn’s stomach. “I’m not done ensuring that Amalia is not with you under some sort of coercion,” the Italian replied, his English only slightly accented.
Amalia cringed, but the man’s arm did not budge from her waist. “I have already told you the whole story. I know you mean well but Zayn is right.”
A tender smile curved the man’s mouth, the easy camaraderie between them too obvious to miss. “You have no one else to look after you and...”
Jealousy prowled like a monster in his blood, and it took all of Zayn’s carefully cultivated control to stop from pulling Amalia from her boss’s arms into his. This was how one of his barely civilized ancestors must have felt when their claim on their woman was challenged so blatantly.
Having always believed that a man could use his brains more effectively than fists, right now Zayn saw the appeal to the old approach.
“Amalia knows perfectly well what she means to me, Massimiliano. And I always take care of that which belongs to me.”
Instead of backing off, the man frowned.
Amalia’s laugh, forced and brittle, tinkled in the oppressive silence that was only punctured by the greeting called out by Parisians taking advantage of a beautiful night. Clearly, she didn’t understand that men, arrogant, powerful men, used to getting their own way, communicated on a different level with each other.
Massimiliano wanted Amalia, was doing everything to show he knew her better than Zayn did. But it didn’t matter.
Amalia was his, at least for now.
“Didn’t I tell you meeting in secret like this is not the best idea, Massi?” Her topaz gaze flicked to him only for an instant. Finally, she moved toward him and Zayn felt a wild elation, a primal satisfaction as if he’d won a war.
She stood by him, even as every inch of her was stiff like a pole. Zayn thought she might shatter if he held her too hard. The smile that curved her lips had a tremble to it, as if she was working very hard to keep it together. “Zayn is a little too possessive.”
“I’m aware of the sheik’s personality, Amalia. And I’ve known you for five years. Which is why I find it hard to believe that you would fall for a man like him,” Massi replied from behind her.
Something glittered in Amalia’s eyes then, a shadow of vulnerability when she looked at him before she turned back to the Italian. “There’s more to my fiancé than the world knows. And apparently, I’m no less susceptible than the next woman to a powerful sheikh’s arrogant charm,” she finished, her tone curiously flat.
But Zayn was far too angry to care what it meant.
All he could think of now was if she had betrayed their pact...she had reason to go to the press about their little deal; she had means through her champion to create a furor about Aslam and his release; she owed no loyalty to Zayn...
Why would she when Zayn didn’t know how to inspire trust in a woman? He knew how to charm, seduce and blackmail one...
And it wasn’t Mirah’s happiness that mattered to him in that moment. It was, he was shocked to discover, his own emotions that were blindsiding him from all sides.