Kedah stood and came around the desk. He felt her resistance when he took her in his arms.
His fingers went to her chin and he lifted her face to meet his gaze. He was going to kiss her, she realised. Right now, when she was doing all she could not to break down.
‘I have to go.’
‘Not yet.’
His mouth was fierce and claiming, and she tasted salt at the back of her throat as she squeezed her eyes closed and held on to the tears he must never see her shed.
‘Not here,’ she said.
‘Yes, here.’
He did not want her gone.
He could not picture the future. He just wanted a moment of the oblivion that they created together. So he did what Abdal should have done all those years ago.
Felicia stood as he walked over and turned the lock on the door.
Kedah turned her on in a way no one else ever had or ever would. He tossed his sword to the floor and was opening his robe as he walked back towards her.
His passion was so fierce and overpowering. His hands were at the buttons of her robe and he was holding back from tearing it open.
And she loathed herself for wanting him so badly.
Even with his future wife’s photo on the desk she would do this. She would, Felicia decided as he lifted her onto the desk. Now, while she didn’t know his wife’s name, she would be taken for the last time.
His hands ruched up the skirt of her robe and lifted it over her thighs, and perhaps Kedah was aware that this was the last time because impatient fingers were tearing at the buttons.
She had to walk out of this office soon, so she tried to assist him. But the buttons gave way so that her legs and chest were exposed and he pulled down the cups of her bra. There was no time to take off her knickers. His erection moved the slip of fabric aside and he stabbed into her.
Felicia sobbed as he filled her.
Their mouths were frantic and bruising in their fast, urgent coupling.
He thrust hard, then pressed her so the desk was hard against her back and her hair splayed out. Now he tore at her knickers, and the sight of them, of himself deep inside her, almost made him come. It was intense, it was fast, and as he scooped her up her legs wrapped around him and she bit his shoulder to fight the scream as her body beat with his.
And it could never be over—and yet it was.
He was lowering her down, and she rested her burning face against his chest and listened for the last time to his heart. She told herself that she would never succumb to this bliss again.
‘Felicia...’
She peeled herself from him and started to do up her robe. She wanted to be away from Zazinia, in the safety of the plane and then back in London. There she could sort out her head.
‘I’d better get going.’
‘In a moment. But first...’
‘Kedah, the plane is waiting—there’s a courier at the other end. If there’s to be any hope of getting the results back in time...’
‘Can’t you stop thinking about work?’
‘You are work, Kedah.’
Felicia took a mirror from her bag and ran a comb through her hair, and she saw her own lips start to tremble as he spoke on.
‘In that case, if all goes well, then I am going to be spending a lot more time here in Zazinia. I will need someone to help with my overseas investments, and there will be an opening for an executive assistant...’
And briefly she allowed herself to glimpse it—an amazing career, a stunning flat and a night with Kedah whenever time allowed. A part-time father...yet she would be his full-time mistress...
She snapped the compact mirror closed and managed to sneer as she faced him ‘You mean an executive whore?’
‘Felicia...’
‘I have to go.’
She really did—because otherwise she would say yes to him. If she stayed for just a few moments longer she would accept his crumbs.
‘I’m going to go.’
‘Of course.’ He nodded.
‘I hope you get the result that you’re hoping for.’
And they were through.
She had but one more smile left in her, and she gave it to him now as she held up her bag.
‘My work here is done,’ she said.
‘No,’ Kedah said. ‘You will be back in the office tomorrow. I employed you to look out for my people. This was...’ He hesitated. ‘A personal favour. Thank you.’
He could not quite believe that she knew. That he had asked for and received her help.
‘I trust you, Felicia.’
And she waited for him to warn her, to remind her that if she let him down then she would be dealt with ‘outside the law’, but there was no postscript.
‘I hope it all goes well,’ she said.
And maybe he shouldn’t trust her, because right then she had lied—for there was a part of her that didn’t want him to be Crown Prince.