“Get over yourself, Galila. You are the one who sees everyone as competition. Take heed now. I won’t have you upstaging my queen. You will learn to take a back seat.”
“I wouldn’t—”
They were interrupted by a servant. He entered after a brief but urgent knock and hurried to lean into Zufar’s ear. All Galila caught was “...very insistent...”
Zufar’s expression hardened. “Show him in.” As she turned, Zufar added, “Where do you think you’re going?” He glared at Galila’s attempt to exit.
“I assumed we were done.”
“You wish. No, I have no idea why he insists on speaking to me, but I imagine it concerns you, so you’ll stand here while he does.”
“Who?” She looked to the door the servant had left through.
“Sheikh Karim of Zyria.”
“Is that his name?” She had imagined he was one of their more illustrious guests but hadn’t realized—
Zufar slammed his hand onto his desktop, making her jump. “Do not tell me you didn’t even know the name of the man who had his hand up your skirt.”
She looked to the corner of the ceiling, biting the insides of her cheeks.
“Do you honestly think my life has room for your childish antics?” Zufar demanded.
She started to scowl at him, but he came in. Sheikh Karim of Zyria. He had exchanged his ceremonial garb of last night for a Western-style bespoke suit in slate gray sans headdress.
If possible, he was even more knee-weakeningly handsome. The crisp white of his shirt and blood-red tie suggested a man who commanded any world he occupied. He stole the breath from her body in a psychic punch, utterly overwhelming her.
His gaze spiked into hers as though he’d been waiting to see her again, but before her heart fully absorbed that sensation, he offered a terse nod and turned his attention to her brother, leaving her feeling promptly dismissed and inexplicably bereft.
* * *
After ensuring Princess Galila had indeed retired for the night, Karim had gone to his own guest apartment, somewhat disgusted with himself. He had been telling the truth when he’d claimed not to take advantage of women in a weakened state. He considered himself an honorable man.
But he hadn’t been able to take the chances that she would leak his secret to someone else after her next sip of brandy.
He had been wrestling with his conscience over whether he should seduce this tipsy woman to his room, where he could at least contain her, when she had thrown herself against him in the darkest corner of the garden.
Their kiss had been the most potent drug imaginable, jamming into his veins and bringing him throbbingly alive at the first taste of her. As if he’d been dead for three decades. Existing, yet not seeing or tasting or smelling. Not feeling.
Then, for heart-stopping minutes, he had been resurrected. Sunlight had dawned upon him, shaking him awake from a long freeze. Everything in him had wanted to plunge into that world and never leave it.
Somehow, he had pulled back, much the way any sane man would catch himself before teetering like a crazed addict into a hallucinogenic abyss.
That shockingly intense reaction had been a lesson. One he would heed. Now he knew exactly how dangerous she was. It meant he was now prepared to withstand the power of her effect on him.
He kept telling himself his abominable actions were for honorable ends. He was protecting her family as much as his own. His deliberately public display had worked beautifully to put an end to any inquiries she might have made about the man who had impregnated her mother.
Temporarily.
The rest of his strategy would play out now.
With one brief glance, he took in her suitably demure dove-gray skirt and jacket with a flash of passion-pink blouse beneath. Her hair was rolled into a knot behind her head, but she was every bit as beautiful as she’d been last night, if looking a little haunted around the eyes and pouty around the mouth.
He didn’t allow his gaze to linger, even though the flush on her skin was a sensual reminder of her reaction to him last night. She had worn a similar color when their kisses had sent the pulse in her neck racing against the stroke of his tongue. That response of hers had been as beguiling as the rest, and not something he could allow himself to recollect or he’d embarrass himself.
For the most part, Karim kept his emotions behind a containment wall of indifference. It wasn’t usually so difficult. He’d been doing it his whole life.
Last night, however, this woman had put more than one fracture in his composure. Those tiny cracks had to be sealed before they spread. His reaction to her would be controlled. His command of this situation would be logical and deliberate. Effectual—as all his actions and decisions were throughout his life.
He started by refusing to react with any degree of emotion when her brother offered a blistering, opening attack.
“I expected better of a man in your position, Karim.” Zufar didn’t even rise, lifting only one sneering corner of his mouth. “You should have had the grace to be gone by now.”
“Allow me to make reparation for any harm to your family’s reputation,” Karim said smoothly. “I’ll marry her.”
Galila gasped. “What? I’m not going to marry you.”
Karim flicked a glance to her outraged expression. “Do not tell me you are promised elsewhere.” He had to fight to control his reaction, never having experienced such a punch of possessiveness in his life. He would shed blood.
“No.” She scowled. “But I’m not ready to marry anyone. Certainly not a stranger. Not just because I kissed you. It’s ridiculous!”
“It’s highly practical and a good match.” He had spent much of the night reasoning that out, determined emotions wouldn’t enter into this arrangement. “You’ll see,” he assured her. Her flair of passion could wait for the bedroom.
“I will not see!”
“Quiet.” Zufar held up a hand, rising to his feet.
Galila rushed forward and brushed it down.
“Don’t tell me to be quiet,” she hissed. “I will decide whom I marry. And while it’s a kind offer—” she said in a scathing tone that suggested she found Karim’s proposal anything but, she stared Karim right in the eye as she said emphatically, “No.”
Her crackling heat reached toward him, licking at the walls he forced himself to keep firmly in place.
“Clearly your sister has a mind of her own.” She was the kind of handful he would normally avoid, but greater things were at risk than his preference for a drama-free existence. “Was that the problem with your first bride?” Karim asked Zufar with a blithe kick below the belt. “Is that why she ran off with your brother?”
“What?” Zufar’s voice cracked like a whip, but Karim kept his gaze on his intended bride, watching her flush of temper pale to horror.
“Half brother, I mean,” he corrected himself very casually, despite feeling nothing of the sort. This was high-stakes gambling with a pair of twos he was bluffing into a straight flush.
“Galila.” Zufar’s tone was deadly enough that Karim shifted his attention—and the position of his body—to easily insert himself between the two if necessary.
Incensed as her brother looked, he didn’t look violent. And culpable as Galila grew, she didn’t look scared. She was glaring blame at Karim.
“Why are you doing this?” Her voice was tight and quiet.
“I am in need of a wife. Or so my government takes every opportunity to inform me.” It wasn’t a lie. “You are of suitable... What was the word you used when describing your mother’s lover? Station? Stature. That was it.”
“This goes beyond even your usual nonsense,” Zufar said in a tone graveled with fury. “A moment ago, you didn’t even know his name, yet you talked to him about our family’s most intimate business?”
“I was drunk.” She looked away, cheeks glowing with guilt and shame. “That’s not an excuse, but it’s been a very trying time, Zufar. You know it has. For all of us.”
Zufar’s eyes narrowed on her and his cheeks hollowed, almost as if he might accept that as reason enough for her imprudent behavior.
“Allow me to assure you,” Karim said with scalpel like precision, “that if you agree to our marriage, your family’s secrets will stay between us.”
The siblings stood in thunderous astonishment for a few moments.
“And if I don’t agree to the marriage?” Zufar asked, but Karim could see they both already knew the answer.
“Blackmail?” Galila asked with quiet outrage. “Why would you stoop so low? Why do you have to?” she challenged sharply.
He didn’t. He hadn’t made marriage a priority for a number of reasons, most of them superficial and convenience-related. He was a workaholic who barely had time for his mother, who still very much needed him. Women expected things. Displays of emotion. Intimacy that went beyond the physical.
“I’m not going to hurt you, if that’s what you’re suggesting,” Karim scoffed. “I’ll treat you as gently and carefully as the pretty little bird you are.”
“In a gilded cage? You know, you could ask me to marry you, not trap me into it.”
“Will you marry me?”