“No? If I don’t care, why did I even help you in the first place? I could have just told you to sod off.”
“Are you telling me you care now? If I live or die? This is you and me, Cobra, remember?”
Richard gave a gruff exhalation. “As if you ever let me forget. But I also remember we were once best friends.”
“Yes, until you reported that I was planning to escape so you could gain your superiors’ favor. My body still bears the scars of the sixty days straight they tortured me within an inch of my life in punishment.”
There. He’d gotten it out in the open at last.
Richard stared at him for a long, charged moment. Then he exhaled. “Did you ever wonder why I did it?”
“No. Because I already knew why. You were a monster by choice and preference, Cobra. You still are.”
After holding his eyes for another moment with an inexplicable expression filling his own, Richard finally shrugged. “As are you. Or at least, as you were, until Princess Aal Ghamdi.”
Numair looked back as the helicopter landed, seething with urgency. “Don’t think my feelings for her tame me, Cobra. A predator with a mate is even more deadly.”
“But more vulnerable.”
Before he could snarl a response, the copter’s door was flung open and Jenan jumped out, hitting the ground running as usual. Forgetting Richard within a heartbeat, he swung around and rushed to meet her halfway.
Watching her run to him was, as always, an agonizing joy. Her hair caught the declining rays of the sun and reflected it into tones of fire and ruby. Her eyes rivaled its golden heat. Her smile was everything he lived to see anymore, her body everything he lived to feel and her whole being everything that embodied his reasons for existence.
Suddenly her expression sobered, and her steps faltered. Something sharp stabbed him in the gut at the loss of her eagerness, even when he realized it was on account of Richard’s presence. She’d only just noticed that hulk. And it doused her spontaneity. Another thing for which to wish Richard an eternity in the deepest abyss.
As he covered the remaining distance and took her in his arms, Jenan asked, “Who is that?”
He gritted his teeth over the expletives on the tip of his tongue. “Richard Graves. My associate.”
“Not one of your Black Castle brothers, is he?”
Numair’s heart fired. Every time she mentioned his brothers or made a comment that correctly diagnosed a truth he hid, the need to tell her everything almost overpowered him. With those uncanny instincts of hers, she’d realized there was far more to him than what he’d made known.
But she accepted the darkest parts she knew of his manufactured history without reservations, with even admiration for what he’d become. It made him hope that when he was able to divulge the whole truth, it wouldn’t shock her, wouldn’t alienate her.
He now only said, “No, he’s not.”
“I thought Black Castle was exclusively a partnership between you and those men you consider brothers.”
“Richard, regretfully, is the exception.”
“Regretfully, huh?” She suddenly chuckled. “And he’s still in one piece and living and unavoidably in your life, too? He is certainly a man worth meeting. Introduce me?”
Grinding his teeth again, he knew he had to comply. At least he’d made Richard realize he would kill him this time if he messed this up with Jenan. He hoped, for her sake, that Richard behaved. He’d rather not kill him in front of her.
Entwining her arm with his, he took her to meet Richard.
* * *
Deep into the night, Numair woke up with a start.
He subsided when he felt Jenan draped over him, every inch of her warm, firm, precious flesh plastered to his.
They’d made love for hours after Richard left. To his shock, Richard had behaved with perfect gallantry in Jenan’s presence. And Jenan had been her usual spontaneous self with him. Numair, however, still wanted to kill him. He clearly had serious insecurity issues, even when he knew he had no reason to.
But he did have a reason, he corrected himself. A huge one. And it had nothing to do with jealousy.
During the past weeks, while everything had fallen into place according to his methodical plans, with him releasing Jenan from Hassan, then forcing him to relinquish Zafrana’s debts one at a time, with the last ones being what Richard had brought him today, he’d kept realizing that nothing was going as he’d envisioned.
The cousins he’d come here intending to engage in a vicious fight were nothing he’d thought they were. They were all admirable men and women. Even worse, he liked Najeeb more every time he saw him. His plan to wrest the throne from him after condemning his father for a murderer and destroying his family honor no longer seemed feasible. For how could he deal with Najeeb with as much cold blood as he’d always dealt with adversaries when he no longer considered him one?