“My safety was necessary.” There was no sentimentality in that.
“Oh, yes, absolutely, but your dad sent you away. The king would have just increased your security. How often did he and your mother come to visit you in the U.S.?”
“Several times a year.” Though Sayed had only been allowed home a few times in all the years he attended school in the States.
They’d spent the summers together in Europe with his aunt and young cousins, their exact location kept from any but his father’s closest advisers.
“Tell me again, your father was never more or less than melech.”
“He was and is my father,” Sayed said, never having denied it, but also understanding she had a point in what she said.
“And right now? You are my man, rohi. Even if it is only for the next hour, I won’t give up a second of that and I won’t let you, either.”
“I am supposed to be the experienced one here, but you are seducing me utterly.” He could not acknowledge the my soul.
No doubt she had heard it from her mother and did not realize the deeper connotations the endearment carried between lovers. Those implications were all too fitting between them, though he would probably never have the freedom to acknowledge.
But their souls fit, just like the rest of them.
“I like that.” She pushed his outer robe off his shoulders. “Because everything about you makes me want you more.”
He did nothing to stop the gold-trimmed black fabric from pooling at their feet.
She went directly for his suit jacket, taking time to lay it over a chair in the corner. “I may be repressed, but you dress like a monk.”
“I do not think monks wear Armani.” And she did not seem very repressed right now.
“Maybe not.” She grinned up at him cheekily. “I’d rather you weren’t wearing it right now, either.”
Delighted by her, he laughed. “Your wish is my pleasure to grant.”
He finished undressing, not minding in the least that she seemed intent on helping him.
When he was totally naked, his swollen sex jutting out from his body, he let her look her fill. He’d noticed how much she enjoyed it the night before. And having her gaze on him with such innocent hunger turned him on like nothing else.
She didn’t even wait for him to suggest she join him in his nudity before she started stripping, too.
Primal masculine satisfaction coursed through him and he grinned, even as his body reacted to every inch of honey skin she revealed.
“What?” his undeniably proactive lover asked as she laid her oh-so-conservative skirt on the chair with his clothes.
“It is me, not the alcohol.”
“What?” she asked, her expression confused as she unbuttoned her simple white blouse.
“Repressed Aaliyah has abandoned you for the present.”
Her hands stilled, the blouse gaping to reveal the luscious curves of breasts in another very feminine bra while a blush climbed her throat and up into her face. Yet she didn’t pull the open edges together.