But she knew this man. Dominant. Powerful. A force to be reckoned with in a world so different from her own that it may as well be an alien planet.
“Kidnapped you? I?” Amazement filled his voice, and perhaps just a hint of anger. “Had I kidnapped you, hellcat, you would well know it,” he finally scoffed, and the anger was readily apparent just as his accent became stronger.
Thankfully, his fingers relaxed. He stepped back slowly before reaching to the side and flipping the lights on as he released her.
For a second, she was blinded. Her eyes snapped closed and when she opened them again a second later, he was halfway across the room and heading for the bar.
For a drink. She was tempted to join him.
He moved like a predator.
Paige watched as he stalked almost lazily across the expensive, pearlesent carpeting to the bar on the other side of the room.
Without turning back, he poured a whiskey from the looks of it, and if she wasn’t mistaken, it was Khalid’s finest.
His head tilted back as he took a hard drink. Thick, heavy black hair fell nearly to his shoulders, the blue-black strands silky and glistening in the bright overhead light.
“Get out of here before I insult Khalid by fucking you in his bed,” he snapped.
“Talk about a mood change.” Her eyes rolled as he shot her a hard, half angry look from the corner of his eyes.
“Not nearly enough of a change to keep from fucking my brother’s sister.”
Paige blinked back at him. “Damn, that sounded almost depraved, Abram. Would you like to rephrase?”
He turned. Male grace and predatory strength. And pulsing, blazing, male lust.
She could feel her pussy creaming, saturating her panties further and sensitizing her clit to the point of painful need.
Just the sight of him was enough to make her ache, to make her crave with a strength and a power that made her knees weak.
He was tall, broad, and muscular. There wasn’t an ounce of fat on his six-four frame, or beneath the exceptionally soft white shirt and well-worn jeans.
Finishing the whiskey he sat the glass on the bar behind him, his gaze never leaving hers. She could feel that look through every inch of her body. Sensitized and aching for his touch, her skin felt too tight, constricting as she tried to still the rapid rise and fall of her breasts.
“Rephrasing isn’t the only thing I’d like to do, or may attempt to do.” The heavy warning in his voice was followed by a heavy-lidded glance along her body.
Hell, she may as well have been naked. Unfortunately, there was a part of her that wished she was naked.
Paige didn’t have to look down to see that her nipples were trying to burrow their way through the silk of her gown.
She didn’t bother to tug the robe over the swollen curves or even pretend a shame she didn’t feel. And it wasn’t the first time she’d been forced to face Abram as an independent woman rather than the submissive child he often expected her to portray.
Unfortunately, he was rarely shocked by her anymore.
“And what makes now any different from the past years? There was a time when I would have welcomed your touch, Abram, but now I can’t help but be suspicious. What the hell is going on?”
“Besides your determination to acquire that spanking I keep promising you with?” He spoke as though he were serious.
“Promises, promises. My ass stopped tingling in anticipation years ago.” She waved the comment away. “That doesn’t change the fact that unless you tell Khalid’s goons out there to get out of my face and let me go home, I’m going to have every one of you brought up on charges. That wouldn’t please your daddy, Abram. Last I heard old man Azir was already pissed because you were refusing to remarry for the sake of a child.”
Her ass had stopped tingling in anticipation?
Abram nearly came in his damned jeans with that comment. His cock hardened to pure iron, the head throbbed, and if there wasn’t pre-cum in his jeans, then he wasn’t iron hard.
Paige watched his black eyes flare with renewed lust. A perfectly arched, perfectly male black brow rose lazily. “Are the phones in the house not working?” He all but smirked as he ignored her last comment.
Her lips thinned. “I’m trying to be nice about this, Abram. Don’t make me call the authorities.”
He waved his hand toward the phone on a nearby desk in invitation. “I didn’t kidnap you, Paige. Daniel Conover and his security team did so, at your brother’s orders and with FBI Director Zachary Jennings’s approval. Would you like to call the authorities now, hellcat?”
She glared back at him irritably. “Stop calling me that.… And it would likely do just as much good to call the cops now as it would to call Khalid,” she snapped. “Get me out of here, Abram.”
She was desperate. If she had to stay locked up even one day longer she was going to go crazy. There was nothing to do here. No way to focus her energy or to stop fantasizing about this man who seemed intent on dancing through her mind at all hours of the day and night.
If she didn’t find a way to return home, to get back to her job—knowing now that Abram was the one slipping into the house at night—then she might end up making the biggest mistake of her life.… begging him to take her to his bed and to finish what he had started eight years before.
“Take me home.” She crossed her arms over her breast and stared back at him firmly.
“I can’t do that.” He shook his head, his expression suddenly somber. “Relax, Paige. Enjoy a nice vacation for a few more weeks—”
“Weeks!” Her eyes widened as amazed disbelief flashed through her and rejection instantly snapped through her mind. “Hell no!” Her hands went to her hips as she confronted him furiously now. “I have a job, Abram. I have a life…”
“Not if you leave here.” His tone was suddenly ominous, his expression hardening as though he knew the danger she would face, whatever it may be.
She was damned glad someone knew what was going on, because she sure didn’t.
“What the hell do you mean by that?”
She could feel a premonition of danger then, even stronger than what she had felt in the past ten days.
Khalid wouldn’t just kidnap her without a reason. A part of her had known that whatever was going on was more than simply a suspicion of danger. It was more than a threat against Khalid and Abram.
Abram moved back to her slowly, his expression flashing with frustration, irritation, before slowly smoothing out to an icy calm that sent a chill of dread racing up her spine.
“Why can’t I leave, Abram?” she whispered as she fought the edge of fear threatening to spread through her now. She knew her brother had been having some problems with his and Abram’s two younger half-brothers, but surely those problems didn’t extend to a threat to her? Besides, weren’t they dead now?
“Because your name was found among papers of a certain terrorist, Paige. Until we learn why—” His voice lowered, his expression becoming heavy, sensual, and filled with hunger. “Until we know for certain, you are too precious to risk.”
Something flashed in his eyes, something dark and dangerous as his hand lifted, his fingers sliding beneath the shoulder of her robe, the calloused, heated pads of his fingers caressing beneath the silken material.
“Abram.” Too precious to risk? He’d said it as though he meant it, as though she were actually precious to him.
And she couldn’t let herself believe that. She and Abram had had far too many confrontations over the years to ever believe she was anything more than an irritant, and for the moment, perhaps, a desire.
Focusing on the intimate touch, on the pleasure, was something she eagerly embraced now as she fought to distance herself from the information he had just given her. The knowledge that a terrorist had somehow focused on her.
The question of why raged in the back of her mind as she deliberately forced herself to focus on the desire instead.
She didn’t think she wanted to know why. Not yet. Not until she could still the horrible foreboding, the fear threatening to overtake her.
Throughout the years she had teased, irritated, and deliberately provoked him. She winked at him when he was somber, blew kisses at him when he was angry, and that was just when she had been little more than a child and he an eighteen-year-old man of the world in her eyes. And now, he was the man she couldn’t get out of her dreams, or out of her fantasies.
Paige stood still, silent, as Abram’s fingers caressed from her shoulder to her neck, stroking her flesh as though he enjoyed the feel of it. His gaze locked with hers, his eyes somber, intent, and a flash of fiery hunger filled them as he pushed his fingers into her hair.
He cupped the back of her head, holding her in place as his head lowered slowly. Paige felt her lips part, her heart striking harder against her chest as it raced out of control.
“Let me taste you again, Paige,” he whispered, his lips nearly touching hers. “I see you staring at me with such innocence, and with such hunger. All that’s saved you these past years has been Khalid’s diligence in keeping us apart.” His lips touched hers. “Khalid isn’t here now to save you, precious.”
Paige felt her lips part helplessly.
“He wasn’t there eight years ago,” she whispered. “And you took another woman instead.”
“And yet, all I remember of that day was how wet and sweet you were,” he retorted sensually. “Are you still as sweet?” His lips brushed against hers. “Are you still as wet?”
She should be questioning him. She should be outraged. She should be frightened and trying to figure out a way to stay safe without remaining a prisoner in her brother’s home and for the moment in Abram’s arms.
Instead of questioning him, though, her lips were parting for him, a shaky moan leaving them as he pulled her to him firmly and deepened the intimate possession. A kiss that lacked the dominance of moments before, as well as the demand. This kiss seduced, it cajoled. His lips and tongue rubbed against hers, tasted hers and within seconds her hands were gripping his shoulders, nails biting into his flesh as she fought to get closer to him.
This was a side of Abram that he had never allowed her to see. This gentle, seductive side. The dangerous eroticism that existed just beneath the surface and was now flowing free as his lips, tongue, and hands began to stoke the searing flames of need through her entire body.
His hands slid to her shoulders, gently sliding the sleeves of her robe down her arms until the silk caught at her elbows.
His lips slid from hers, his tongue peeking out to taste the sensitive skin of her neck and sending shivers racing through her body. Paige gasped for breath, a low moan escaping her lips. She swore there was an electric current beneath her skin, brought alive by the touch of his lips as they stroked and kissed their way to her shoulder.
The calloused tips of his fingers moved to the thin strap of her gown, easing it over the curve of her shoulder as his lips continued to play, and to melt her resistance like butter. If there had been any resistance, which Paige was certain she couldn’t have even attempted to fake.
She’d wanted him for far too long, ached for him for too many years to even consider rejecting this touch.
She had never had a man’s touch burn through her as Abram’s did now. She’d never known such abandoned pleasure, or ached to the very core of her body as she did now.
“Abram.” The moaning whisper seemed torn from her as she felt the gown slide down her arms, then past the swollen, heavy flesh of her breasts. “You make my head spin.”
The silk rasped over the tender tips, the sensation surging through her with a wicked rush of ecstatic pleasure as she allowed the words to escape her lips. She knew better. She should hold them back, hold a part of herself back. There was no strength to do so, though.
Her nipples peaked and hardened, rising and falling erratically with her heavy breaths as Abram stared down at them. Paige swore she could feel the very air stroking against her, the invisible currents touching her like a ghostly caress.
“How pretty.” The dark, accented stroke of his voice against her senses had her arching to get closer to him, to feel him touching her breasts in some way, in any way, to ease the ache radiating through her flesh.
She’d fantasized about this. She had dreamed of it.
“What do you want, little hellcat?” His hand moved, his fingers moving over the curve of her breast as her lips parted to drag in air. “What touch do you wish against such pretty flesh?”
Oh God, how was she supposed to deal with this? To handle the sensations that were tearing through her, and the pleasure that made it impossible for her to consider anything but the culmination of the hunger raging through her.
Paige stared up at him, her gaze heavy-lidded as a sense of sensual bravado overcame her.
Her hand smoothed between them, up her stomach to the mound of her breast. Cupping it, she lifted it to him in invitation as his gaze flared in overwhelming hunger. His lips parted, his tongue touching the tip of the tortured flesh.
“Son of a bitch!”
Shock. Horror.
Paige’s head jerked to the side as Abram’s lifted quickly, turning even as he jerked the gowns straps and her robe back over her shoulders to cover her naked breasts.