Her blood tumbled in a spin cycle. “Another endearment?”
Great. She sounded like a fish thrashing out of its bowl. Probably looked it, too.
He gave a nod, deceptively lazy, laden with so much heat and temptation. “My sweet. And you are, so unbelievably sweet, every word you say, everything you do. I can’t wait to find out if your sweetness runs through and through.” He suddenly stood straighter, obliterated the breath between them, let her feel him, if only in whisper touches along all of her. It felt as if his magnetic field was all that kept her upright. “But you haven’t told me your name yet. I need to know it. I need to murmur it against your lips, against every inch of you, taste it with your nectar, get high on it as I do on you. Tell me.”
She tried to find her voice, her name, but couldn’t. She was being swept away, the shores of reason receding. She saw nothing but his eyes, his lips, wanted nothing but for them to fulfill his promise, taste her, possess her, devour her.
But he was waiting, insisting on finding out her name, as per her idiotic objection, before he acted on his promises.
Just tell him. She did, gasped it, “Farah…”
His sharp intake of breath felt as if it tore into her own lungs, flooding her with his scent. “Farah. An Arabic name. This is fate. And your parents knew just what you’d be. Joy.”
She’d always smirked at the meaning of her name. Apart from the sporadic times of contentment in the company of her ultra-busy father, she’d never experienced anything approaching joy.
She gave a laugh, shaky, self-deprecating. “Not according to my mother. I certainly haven’t been her joy.”
“Of course you were. How could you not be?”
“And to answer that, I’ll have to refer you to her.”
His frown was spectacular. “She actually told you that you are not the joy of her life? What mother says that to her child?”
“A mother who turned out to have lived a much more complicated life than I dreamed possible. I guess I was the reminder of my real father. Not a source of happy thoughts.”
He cupped her cheek. Was his hand on fire? She pressed into his palm, wanting to burn. His hand pressed back before going to her nape, tilting up her head. “She had no right to taint your life, to let her emotions for you be polluted by her bitterness against your biological father.”
She pressed her head harder into his assuagement. “Oh, she never said anything like that. It’s my own conclusion. You see, she’s always been morose, withdrawn. She does everything right, but it’s all…held back, as if she’s going through a chore, finding no…joy-there’s that word again-in it. When I learned about my real father, it made sense. She loved him beyond reason it seems, and was never the same after losing him.”
A long moment passed as he stared at her, his face a blank mask. At last he exhaled. “So you don’t feel bitter toward her? Or toward your real father for scarring her, making her less than the perfectly loving mother that you deserved?”
“I don’t do bitterness. What does it serve?”
“Indeed. So, not only a siren, but a deeply sane one, too.”
She coughed a laugh. Sane? Not that she’d noticed since she’d laid eyes on him.
“Is your real father alive? Do you now know who he is?”
“Yeah, to both questions. I found out over a month ago. And let me tell you, it’s been one hell of a roller-coaster ride.”
“Care to elaborate?”
“Uh…I’d appreciate it if we change the subject. It ranks right up there with tearing my skin on barbed wire.” And she wasn’t exaggerating. If anything, she was understating how discovering her real parentage had left her feeling. Her world had blown apart when her mother had dropped the bomb that Francois Beaumont wasn’t her father-that some Middle Eastern monarch was. Then her newfound father, King Atef of Zohayd, had overwhelmed her with his happiness at finding her, his eagerness to know her-his long-lost daughter. And she’d found herself responding, liking him, waiting with baited breath for his next call or message. She’d worried about her eager reaction, wondering if she was desperate for a new father figure to fill the gaping void her adoptive father’s death had left inside her. But King Atef had swept her up in his excitement, soothing her worry that she was betraying her dad’s memory by being so happy to find another father. Then he’d come to meet her and had dropped another bomb. He needed her to marry some prince from a neighboring kingdom as part of a political pact.
And she’d realized that it had been another setup. Another lie. He was just another man pretending emotions he didn’t feel, saying whatever it took to get her to go along with his self-serving plans. She’d shut him and his protestations of sincerity out, kept hoping he’d find another easy way to put his pact through so he’d stop badgering her, so he’d forget she existed…
Shehab trailed a forefinger along her forearm, jogging her out of her oppressive musings before tears of letdown and heartache and guilt spilled from her eyes again.
“It hurt that much?”
“Actually, tearing my skin didn’t hurt that much.”
His eyes flared. “How? When?”
Her bones rattled with the blast of response to his intensity. “You mean the wound? Uh, I was trying to sneak under a fence on one of my father’s ranches and got caught on the barbed wire. I was eleven.”
“Where?”
“O-on my back…” She barely held back the rest, the other wound she’d sustained on her left buttock when she’d panicked and struggled to free herself.
“Show me.”
It wasn’t a request. It was a demand. A demand she didn’t even think of denying. She could only close her eyes, turn.
And his hands were on her. Spanning her waist, removing the cascade of her hair, exposing the dipping back of her dress.
His hands skimmed her skin as he searched for the healed evidence of her injury. She stood mute, unable to tell him he wouldn’t find it there. He didn’t need to be told. He eased her zipper down, the sound, the idea of what he was doing, what she was letting happen, almost making her keel over.
He traced warm, knowing fingers down her spine until they met the slightly raised scar above her tailbone. She keeled over then, over the balustrade, swamped in sensation. He traced its outline, and the tissue that alternated between numbness and aching fired with stimulation. Each caress sent lightning forking throughout her body, lodging in her nipples and core.