Ryan would walk!
She raced with Rose to Fareed to drown him in thanks, to pluck Ryan from his arms, then from each other’s to deluge him in kisses. Ryan thought this was a new game and threw himself from one set of arms to another, giggling his delight.
But as Emad joined them and dinner followed, Gwen’s euphoria drained gradually.
She’d known the day when Fareed would announce the completion of his role in Ryan’s care was fast-approaching. She couldn’t have hoped for a better outcome. There was no better outcome. For Ryan.
For her…
It was clear from everything Fareed said and did that he thought this day would mark the beginning of that temporary inferno Rose had urged her to hurtle into. She knew it would only herald the end. She’d thought she’d be ready for it. She wasn’t.
As their “family” evening continued, Fareed’s nearness only made it harder. She couldn’t stop herself from feasting on his presence like it was her last meal.
And he made it worse still by no longer tempering the desire in his eyes, by barely touching his food, too, showing her that the only thing he hungered for was her.
For the rest of the evening, as she escaped his unspoken intentions, she struggled to convince herself that walking away would be survivable.
Gwen was suffocating.
Tentacles were tightening around her throat, cutting off air and blood, holding her back. Her arms reached out, but the tentacles jerked her tighter, immobilized her. The shadow she was reaching for tumbled in macabre slow-motion down the abyss.…
“No!”
She heard the shout ring out even as she felt it tear out of her depths…and her eyes shot open.
She jerked up, her hands tearing at the nonexistent noose.
It had been another nightmare.
Knowing that didn’t help. She still gasped, trembled, feeling like the day of the accident all over again. Crushed, torn, strangled by panic and helplessness.
In the months since, night terrors had plagued whatever sleep she’d succumbed to. During the day, anxiety attacks had dismantled her psyche. It hadn’t helped that she knew there had been nothing she could have done.
She stumbled out of the bed. It was 2:00 a.m. She’d barely slept an hour. No use thinking she’d sleep again tonight. She was afraid to, anyway.
She went to Ryan’s room, checked on him even though she’d heard his steady breathing over the baby monitor. She found him on his back, which he hadn’t done since the surgery, his arms flung over his head in abandon. She kissed him and he murmured something satisfied, melting her heart with thankfulness.
She went downstairs, roamed the seemingly deserted mansion, her steps as restless as her mind.
She felt Fareed all over, his scent clinging to her lungs, caressing her senses. And it wasn’t because this was his domain. She’d feel him across the world. And she would, for the rest of her life.
And now, it was over. There was no more reason to stay here. She’d take her tiny family and leave Jizaan in the morning.
And he’d never know how she really felt. But that mattered nothing. What mattered was that he never knew who she really was.…
“Do you know what you are?”
Fareed’s hypnotic tones hit her with the force of a quake.
She jerked around, her gaze slamming to the top of the stairs, the side leading to his quarters.
He wasn’t there. Had she imagined hearing him? Were her dread and guilt playing tricks on her?
Then his voice hit her again. “What I thought when I first saw you? A magical being from another realm.”
She almost sagged. He was here. And he hadn’t meant what she’d feared.
“And do you have any idea about the extent of my craving for you? How long it has gone unfulfilled? How much it has cost me to suppress it, to stay away from you?”
Each beat of her heart rocked her as a shadow detached itself from the depth of darkness engulfing the upper floor, taking his form. His body solidified, his influence intensified with every step. Then his face emerged from the shadows and she gasped.
Even from this distance, there was no mistake.
The ultra-efficient surgeon, the indulgent benefactor, the teasing, patient playmate was gone. A man of tempestuous passion had emerged in his place.
Making it worse was seeing him for the first time in what he’d been born to wear, an abaya that looked tailored of Jizaan’s moonless skies themselves.
And she had no right to his passion. She’d lose even the bittersweet torment of his nearness tomorrow. She’d never again feel as alive.
“You sensed me.” His voice reverberated inside her as he descended the stairs. “You knew I was coming to you, came to meet me halfway. You knew that I would no longer wait.”
Something snapped inside her. Her paralysis shattered.
She needed to tell him…something, anything of the truth, if only that of her feelings, her needs. To have something, anything of him. Just this once.
He quickened his descent as she moved toward him, the abaya billowing around him like a shroud of darkest magic. Her feet felt as if they were gaining momentum from his power, his purpose, that force that had entered her life to change the face of her world forever.
Then he stopped. At the platform where the stairs diverged, as if giving her a last chance to retreat.
She stopped, too, three steps beneath him, momentum lost, confessions fled. She looked up at him, overwhelmed. He was even more than she’d ever dreamed.
The obsidian silk abaya draped over his endless shoulders, pleated for miles to his bare feet, falling open over the perfection of his chiseled, raven hair-dusted chest and abdomen. The low-riding drawstring pants of the same color and material hugged his thighs, hiding none of the power of his muscles, or that of his arousal.
He seemed as if he’d stepped out from another time, a force of nature and of the supernatural, poured into solid form. But it was the fever radiating from him, the same one that raged through her, that shook her most—setting free the one confession she could make.
“I don’t want you to wait.”
Chapter Eight
Something unbridled flared in Fareed’s eyes.
Gwen’s breathing stopped. She stood mesmerized by the ferocity that ate her up, finished her. Now…now he’d descend the last steps separating them, sweep her up in his arms.…
But what he did stopped her heart. With shock.
She would have never expected that he would…laugh.
But he did. Peal after peal of pure male amusement.
His laughter mortified her even as it inflamed her.