In the past week she had found that she loved showering with him. He took forever beneath the hot spray, using incredibly soft cloths to clean every inch of her body.
She slid from the table with his help, staring up at him as he released the zipper of her dress and helped it pool at her feet. Leaving her in nothing but heels and stockings, his black gaze flared again with decided male interest.
“I can’t get enough of you.” He sighed as he stripped off the remainder of his clothes. She had no idea how he’d managed to shed his shoes and slacks without her knowing.
Slipping her shoes from her feet, Marty moved slowly away from him, heading to the shower.
“We need to talk,” she said, all too aware of him behind her as he watched her walk.
“Some discussions need to wait until daylight.” Amusement lingered in his voice.
“Not this one.” Turning back to him, Marty watched him as she felt the ache in her heart begin to intensify.
He was the ultimate in male arrogance, dominance, and supreme sexuality. Tall and broad, dark and brooding. He was the epitome of the male sexual animal. Enough so that her womb clenched with a renewal of spiraling, fiery need.
How could she ever let him go? Khalid wasn’t known for his long-enduring affairs. What if she became nothing more than another notch on his bedpost? It was something she needed to be prepared for.
And it could come sooner rather than later if she didn’t have her questions answered. She needed to trust him. She needed to know that no matter how strong was his need to protect her, he would always be honest with her.
Pausing at the bed, she shed her stockings before continuing to the shower. She hated the knowledge that she had to confront him for information; some things he should have volunteered.
If he had been accused of murdering a young woman, then that was information she should know. It was information that could have aided her in the investigation into who was trying to murder him, and why.
And on the heels of that thought:
Why hadn’t her fathers told her?
18
Khalid found himself clenching his teeth as he followed Marty into the shower. He should be well beyond the fiery lust that he felt as he watched her rounded ass tighten and shift as she walked ahead of him. Hell, he’d just fucked her until they were both nearly exhausted, and still he could feel the white-hot bite of hunger clenching his balls and tightening his dick.
What the hell did she do to him? What was it about her that had his back teeth locking against the urge to bend her over and sink inside her again? Balls deep, his cock surrounded by the fist-tight, slick velvet depths of her pussy.
Hell. He was damned near sweating with the need now.
“Deerfield had some very interesting information when I met with him,” she commented, her back still to him as she moved to the shower door and reached in to adjust the water.
“Did he?” He’d waited impatiently, torn between the need to jerk her out of the room with the bastard and protect her and the need to allow her the independence he knew she demanded.
As he moved into the shower with her, Khalid watched as she stepped back, grabbed her shampoo, and began lathering her hair.
Silence but for the pounding of the water filled the shower stall as Khalid watched her expression closely. She hid her emotions when she deemed the situation warranted it. Her face was calm, composed; there was nothing but the eerie sense of impending doom that circled his head to warn him of danger ahead.
“You haven’t asked me about the meeting.” She stepped beneath the spray to rinse her hair as she spoke. “Were you waiting on Shayne to discuss it with him?”
“We’ve been rather busy,” he said. “Is there something that should concern me other than the manner in which he spoke to you?”
There was a trap in her question; Khalid could feel it, and he didn’t like it.
“Is that all that concerns you?” She opened her eyes as the last of the shampoo ran from her hair and stared back at him, her lashes spiked with moisture.
“Why not get to the point, Marty?” he growled. “You obviously have something on your mind here.”
Even the sense of impending doom did nothing to affect the jutting erection aimed her way. Damned stubborn cock. The woman had an effect on him that he simply couldn’t fight.
“Why haven’t you told me what happened in Saudi Arabia before you left? What happened with your brother’s wife, Khalid?” she asked him as she pulled a soft cloth from the towel rack and dampened it.
Khalid’s nostrils flared as he dipped his head beneath the spray, closed his eyes, and concentrated on the answer for a second.
“You don’t have to make up a lie for me.”
His eyes snapped open as he reached for shampoo and tried to occupy himself with the shower rather than with fucking her against the shower wall and stilling the anger he could feel building inside her.
“I have never lied to you,” he snapped.
“Then you don’t have to find a way to delay or avoid the question.” Her slim shoulders shrugged nonchalantly, though her demeanor was anything but.
Rubbing the cloth over the scented soap, his luscious little lover began washing delicate, silken flesh with rough strokes. Khalid almost winced at the force she used. He would have stroked her, caressed her, washed her with delicate sensuality and much pleasure.
“Deerfield believes you and your brother Abram shared, then murdered, his first wife.”
Khalid’s gaze jerked up in shock. “This has nothing to do with the investigation.”
Marty watched as Khalid turned his back on her and soaped a cloth with a bar of creamy soap that she knew was made especially for him.
When he was finished, the soap was slammed back onto its small tile shelf. With rough, furious strokes he began to wash himself silently, his shoulders tense, the air in the shower suddenly thick with tension.
“It’s not your place to decide if this pertains to the investigation,” she informed him. “Vince Deerfield knows about it, and he was particularly volatile over the subject. I want to know what happened, Khalid.”
“This has nothing to do with us.” His tone was icy. Despite the warmth of the water flowing over her, Marty could feel the chill of it licking over her flesh.
“Do you really want me to get my answers in other ways, Khalid? Do I have to search for them?”
She watched as the cloth stilled for a moment. When it resumed, it was with efficient deliberation. He washed, tossed the cloth to the corner of the shower, then stepped beneath the spray once again to rinse.
Amazingly, he was hard. His cock stood out stiff and heavy from his body, the thick, engorged crest throbbing enticingly as rivers of water and suds flowed around it.
Marty resisted the urge to lick her lips as she jerked her gaze to his face.
A flush stained her face as she caught him watching her, his black eyes narrowed, the sign of emotion in his expression being the glimmer of hunger in his black eyes.
“There is no need for you to search for answers,” he said, his voice still cold. “I told you. Lessa has no more to do with this than Abram and I had to do with her death. It requires no more explanation than that.”
“I’m sorry, but it’s not that easy.” After wringing the excess water from her hair, she reached for the shower door as she stared back at him intently. “I need to know what happened, Khalid, and I need more than you gave me as an explanation for your brothers’ behavior. Otherwise, I’m going searching for answers whether you want me to or not.”
“Is that a threat?” he asked, his tone snapping with ire.
“It’s an alternative,” she informed him. “It’s information I deserve to know, whether it’s part of this investigation or not. If a woman died because she was a lover to you and to your brother, then as your lover now, it’s something I need to be aware of. Something I deserve to be aware of.”
“Damn it, it has nothing to do with you,” he growled, the anger she knew was brewing in him shading his voice.
“It has everything to do with me.” Emotion erupted as her voice rose slightly, the pain she was beginning to feel tearing through her now. “You have all of me, Khalid. You have parts of me I swore I’d never give a man, and you share them. Don’t you bloody well tell me that I have no right to the answers I need. Don’t you dare even think you have a right to deny me those answers.”
Marty was shaking. She felt the tears rising to her eyes and stepped quickly from the shower, slamming the door behind her as she placed a stranglehold on the screaming pain beginning to radiate through her.
Why this hurt so desperately she couldn’t fully explain. She was fighting to protect him. She had lain her own career on the line even before becoming his lover to protect the innocence she believed in. To protect the man who already held a part of her heart.
He’d refused point-blank to ever discuss the time he had spent with his family in the Middle East. She’d assumed it was because of the ill feelings he harbored toward them. She had never imagined it was because someone had died, that there had been a woman, one he had shared with his brother, whom he hadn’t been able to forget.
That was what hurt. She’d seen the look in his eyes, the sudden chill that had filled his expression. Khalid felt something for the mysterious Lessa. There was a part of him that still belonged to her.
How the hell was she supposed to fight a dead woman for his heart?
Jerking the towel from around her body, she dried quickly before heading to the bedroom. She dressed quickly as well. Panties; loose, dark blue pajama bottoms; and a matching T-shirt that fell well below her hips. Sitting down on the side of the bed, she gripped the thick socks she held in her hand and fought to breathe past that hurt.
She felt chilled, uncertain. Naked.
God, what was she doing to herself? She felt as though a part of her was splintering from the inside out in pain.
“Why is this so important to you?” His voice was low, brooding, as she jerked her socks on.
Marty lifted her head and stared back at him in pain.
“I have the right to know.” Perhaps she didn’t; she could be wrong. Her heart assured her she wasn’t. He was becoming so much a part of her that she wasn’t certain anymore where she ended and he began inside her soul.
Plowing his fingers through his damp hair, a heavy sigh left his chest as he moved into the bedroom and jerked a pair of loose white pants on over his dark, muscular legs.
Silence filled the bedroom. It was thick, heavy with tension, as Marty waited to see what he said, or what he would do.
“She was our lover,” he finally said softly.
Marty stood slowly, turning to him only to find herself staring at his back as he stood in front of the heavily tinted windows.
“Yours and Abram’s,” she said.
He nodded. “More Abram’s. She was his wife.” He shrugged as though in afterthought.
She watched his profile as he rubbed at his face and grimaced heavily.
“What happened?”
He gripped his neck tight for long seconds before blowing a hard breath and turning back to her.
“As I told you before, we thought Ayid and Aman as well as their wives had been killed in that explosion. We didn’t know Ayid and Aman had surivived. I was attacked hours later, taken out into the desert and nearly killed. Abram went to Riyadh at our father’s request to learn what had happened to Ayid and Aman. Once we were both out of the way, Ayid and Aman returned to the palace.” He closed his eyes as he turned away from her and fought back the tightening of his gut at the knowledge of how Lessa had been found.
“Ayid and Aman did it?” she asked.
He nodded. “They weren’t where they were supposed to be. Their wives were there, but they weren’t. The moment the building was bombed, they knew I had betrayed them. They knew, because I had been at their home and seen the paper that the location was written on. They knew that. Ayid caught me reading it. I told him it was near my favorite coffeehouse. We laughed about it.”
Marty felt the raw agony that glittered in his eyes.
“There was no reason for them to believe I would think anything of it.” He breathed out roughly. “No reason to think it would affect their plans. After all, I was no more than the bastard brother who wanted nothing more than to make the world my playground.”
Marty sat silently, watching the emotions that flitted across his face.
Hatred and fury flashed in his eyes for a second before he shook his head and moved from the window to the small sofa that faced the bed. Sitting down, he laid his arms on his knees and stared at the floor for long seconds.
“Shayne found me in the desert,” he continued wearily. “When I made it back to the castle it was to find Abram screaming in rage at our father. As strong as he was, as unbendable as he could be, still, he cried when Azir called his wife a whore. Then he admitted he knew that Abram had shared his wife with me, and that because of that he would do nothing to Ayid and Aman for her murder.” He turned away from her for a long moment before continuing in a voice thick with grief. “I had sworn to protect her as I would my own wife. I swore to love her as I would love my own. And I failed her.” When he turned back to her his gaze was bleak with sorrow. “You have always watched me with such pride, with such confidence in my strength. To have you know the truth, to know I failed Lessa when I swore to protect her, to love her with all I was…” He gave his head a hard shake. “It was a truth I did not want you to know.”
“And you think this affects how I see you?” she whispered painfully. “That I would blame you?”
“I blame me,” he stated simply. “I failed, when I should have been more diligent.”
“Your father failed.” A tear slipped down her cheek as she read the pain in his eyes, in his face. He had made a promise, a vow, and the knowledge that fate had conspired against him had obviously nearly destroyed him.