“Ouch.” He winced, looking anything but hurt, the calculation in his eyes growing more cutting. “But then again, an ego stroke from a woman of your caliber is something to be coveted. Any kind of stroke would be…most welcome.”
She gaped as he stopped barely a foot away, tried to step back. He stepped forward, maintaining the suffocating nearness.
She, too, had thought the tales she’d heard about him had been exaggerations. They were absolute under-statements. This close, she got a good look at what Amjad had become.
It was as if his magnificent body was a shell, housing an entity of overpowering intellect and annihilating disdain. He’d used to be a loving, outgoing, deeply passionate and committed man. The woman who’d tried to poison him might have failed to kill him, but she’d poisoned his soul and killed off everything that had made him the incredible force for good he’d once been.
Regret squeezed her heart.
Suddenly every hair on her body stood on end, in sheer shock.
His hand slid around her waist, tugged her flush against his hardness from breast to knee.
She froze, unable to even breathe.
At last, she choked out, “Amjad, please, don’t—”
He pressed her closer. “Don’t what, ya joharti?”
Hearing Shaheen’s endearment for her from anyone else would have startled her. Hearing it from Amjad, spoken with that insolent familiarity, seriously disturbed her.
He didn’t disgust her. It was impossible for him to do so; he was Shaheen’s flesh and blood. He was like her brother, even if he was behaving as anything but. She only felt so sad she wanted to weep. Then she got mad.
She pushed at him with all her strength. “Don’t call me that. I’m not your anything.”
She could have been fighting a brick wall. His hold didn’t even loosen. He even pulled her closer. “Not yet. But I can be. Your everything, if you only say the word. I can give you everything, Johara. Just name it and it’s yours.”
Mortification washed over her as the full realization of what he was doing here radiated outward, drenching her in a storm of goose bumps. “Please…don’t do this.”
He caught her hands, dragged her arms around his neck, held them in place with one hand, the other keeping her head prisoner as he swooped down and latched his lips to her exposed neck. She might have cried out, but the next second, thunder drowned out all her efforts.
“B’haggej’jaheem, what are you doing?”
Eight
Johara’s heart stopped the moment Shaheen’s enraged voice slammed into her back.
But it wasn’t only her heart that plunged into deep freeze. The paralysis was total as Amjad straightened in degrees, not in any hurry to turn to face Shaheen. She could only stare up at him as he raised his head, releasing her neck from the coldness of his lips, which may as well have been draining her life away. Then she met his eyes and the ice encasing her turned to stone as he let her see what he felt toward her for the first time. Sheer abhorrence.
One hand was still locking both of hers around his neck. He brought the other one up and her horror deepened. To any onlooker—to Shaheen—it would seem as if he were unclasping the hands she had clamped there of her own will.
Then Amjad moved aside, affording her a direct look at Shaheen. He was standing under the arch between the foyer and the expansive sitting area. She would have sobbed if she hadn’t been struck mute. She’d never imagined Shaheen looking like that. He looked…frightening.
“Shaheen, you’re home early.” Amjad turned to his younger brother in a sweep of pure grace and power, unperturbed, imperturbable. “Johara and I were getting…reacquainted.”
Inside, she was screaming. Don’t believe him. Outside, she could only watch his reaction in mounting horror. Then realization descended and she gave up trying to break out of her paralysis.
Maybe this was for the best. Shaheen’s best. If he believed Amjad, he’d be hurt, betrayed. But he’d eventually be free of his love for her. Free of her. She wished that for him, the peace and freedom she’d never have.
Shaheen moved then, walked up to them. Even with desperation descending on her, his every step closer thudded in her now stampeding heart like the ticking of a time bomb. And he didn’t even meet her eyes. He kept his locked on his older brother’s.
Then he stopped, his gaze moving to the arm maintaining a hold on her waist. Without raising his eyes again he said, “Take your hand off Johara, Amjad. Or have every bone in it broken.”
She shuddered. His voice was now as pitiless as Amjad’s. Worse. Laden with barely contained aggression.
Amjad finally let go of her, raised both hands up in a cross between mock placation and false surrender. “Intense. And here I thought you were gentleman enough not to make this more…awkward than it is. So, little brother, is this your way of laying claim to a woman? Threatening other men off? Afraid if you let her choose which man best fulfills her…needs, she won’t choose you? So it is like Johara said. You are leaving her no choice but to succumb to your…attentions.”
“One more word and you’ll be flat on your back with a broken jaw, spitting out blood and teeth.”
“I should have believed you when you told me what a caveman he was being.” Amjad’s ruthlessly handsome face shifted from chillingly sincere as he addressed her to devilishly goading as he turned to Shaheen. “That was over a dozen words, by the way.”
Shaheen pounced, grabbed Amjad by his casual yet superbly cut zippered black sweater. Every nerve in her body slackened as the two majestic forces of nature prepared to collide.
They were equal in every way, so similar, yet seemed like opposites. Even in his fury, Shaheen’s spirit shone untarnished, radiating a spectrum of positive vibes and influences, while Amjad’s emptiness seemed to suck all light and life from his surroundings, to turn everything dark and hopeless.
After a breathless moment of tension as she trembled with the need to throw herself between them but forced herself to let this unfold without her intervention, with a mutter of disgust, Shaheen pushed Amjad away so hard that his older brother took several steps backward to steady himself.
“You’re not worth it,” Shaheen hissed.
“Go ahead, make me the villain here. But this was mutual.”
Shaheen bared his teeth on a fed-up grimace. “Shut up.”
“Or what? You’ve already decided not to sully your hands with my blood.” Amjad straightened his clothes, swept the hair that had rained down his face to frame his slashed cheekbones back in place. “I didn’t know you were that involved, but maybe it’s for the best. You really have to be objective, Shaheen. A woman has a right to look out for her best interests. Johara is justified in looking out for number one and going out for number one. And let’s face it. With your problems, you don’t make the grade.”