Dane frowned, his brow furrowing like a predator denied a snack.
“I want a security detail on her,” Kade declared.
Dane nodded. “I’ve called some friends in. They’ll be here in a few days. Until then, Landon is on the case.”
“And Cooper,” Tal said.
“Tal?” Dane started to argue.
“She is more important.” Tal would brook no disobedience in this. “They will watch her and take care of her. She is more important than me. If she dies, I will have no crown and no throne because I don’t intend to take another wife. Do you understand me?”
Kade sighed. “Thank god. That makes me feel better.”
“What do we tell her?” Rafe asked. “Are we even doing the right thing? I’m afraid for her.”
Tal was afraid for them all. He knew damn well what could happen to a woman an al Mussad brother cared about. He could still see Lily’s body, broken and twisted. She’d cried, begging him to give something that wasn’t his to relinquish. He hadn’t loved her. She hadn’t invaded his fucking soul the way Piper had, but he’d felt her death. The guilt of it weighed on him.
And he still couldn’t let Piper go. “She’ll be fine. Once our marriage is settled, Khalil will have no recourse and he will cease to be an issue.”
Once their marriage was settled, he would have Khalil very quietly assassinated. It was funny. He’d avoided it all these years. He had his suspicions about his cousin, but the instant Piper was in danger, he threw out all sense of justice and simply wanted the fucker out of the way.
What was happening to him? He hadn’t been able to get her out of his head all day. He still felt her gripping his cock, milking him for every ounce of come he had in his body. He’d never felt like he had when he’d made love to Piper. Had sex. Damn. He’d had sex with her. It had been a simple physical function, a consummation of their coming marriage.
So why did his heart threaten to beat out of his fucking chest when he thought about her? Why did he stop breathing when she walked in a room? He’d been a different person when he’d talked to her over the computer. It had been easy. He hadn’t needed to be a sheikh. He could talk about what he loved—the economics of energy. And she’d spoken his language. A true friend. A partner.
It had been a near betrayal when he’d found her so fucking desirable.
She wasn’t supposed to arouse him. She was supposed to fucking soothe him. Theirs was supposed to be a partnership, but he didn’t feel like her partner. He felt like her husband, her pissed off, possessive as hell husband.
“I don’t know that he will stop.” Alea moved away from the window. Her face was grim as she looked at her cousins. “I don’t think the marriage being legal will have an effect on him. He will only try to kill her again.”
Rafe turned to her, his hands cupping her shoulders. “We don’t know that he tried to hurt her, sweetheart.”
Alea’s face flushed, crimson marking her skin. “Don’t patronize me, Rafe. You think I don’t know what’s going on? You think I don’t know who was behind Talib’s kidnapping?”
It was Talib’s turn to flush. His whole system went on emotional overload, but he tried to present a calm front. He had his suspicions, but he hadn’t voiced them to his brothers. But Alea wasn’t finished.
“And I blame him for what happened to me, too. I can’t prove a damn thing, but no one knew where I was going that night except for the consulate. I received a message from the consulate telling me where I should be and when, and surprise, cousins, the only person to meet me was the man who kidnapped me.”
“Alea?” Dane stepped forward, a fierce look on his face.
She put a hand out. “Don’t. I can’t handle it. Whatever Khalil did to me, it doesn’t matter now.”
“It fucking matters to me,” Cooper said.
Tears pooled in Alea’s eyes. “Nothing matters now, not when it comes to me. But Piper is another story. She shouldn’t have to deal with this. Why did you choose someone like her? She doesn’t understand the exchange. She just wants to be loved. She shouldn’t have to worry about being killed because she married one of us.”
Landon, Coop, and Dane all looked ready to surround his cousin, but Tal needed to shut that down. Alea wasn’t ready for anything like a relationship, much less one that involved three hardened soldiers. “I’m not going to allow anything to happen to Piper, Alea. And I will have Dane look into any connections Khalil has with the consulate in New York.”
“Oh, I will absolutely look into that,” Dane said under his breath.