already here. But he had the consideration to let me prepare you before he came in. So shall I send him in...or do you need some more time before you meet your groom-to-be?”
She sank back onto the couch, objections and insults swarming so violently it was impossible to pick one to voice.
Calmly disregarding her apoplectic state, Kamal bent and kissed her cheek. “Give this a chance, and it’ll all work out for the best. You have me as the best example for assa ann takraho shai’an wa hwa khairon lakkom. ”
You may hate something and it’s for your best.
Before she could do something drastic, like poke him in the eye, he straightened, turned on his heel and walked away.
She watched him disappear, all her mental functions on the fritz.
What had just happened?
Was she really back in Judar? Only to find herself being pushed into a far worse cage than anything her previous life here had been? Could it be true that refusal wasn’t an option?
Suddenly a suspicion cleaved into her brain.
The logical progression to this nightmare.
The identity of this “volunteer.”
The man who was the reason she’d sworn never to return to this region. He was an Aal Ghaanem prince, even if the world forgot that most of the time.
But he would never volunteer to...to...
You’re mine, Jala. And no matter how long it takes, I swear to you, I will reclaim you. I will make you beg to be mine again.
The promise...the threat... that had circulated in her being for six long years, burning her to the core with its malicious arrogance and possessiveness, reverberated in her bones.
No. He’d just said that out of spite, to poison whatever reprieve walking away would grant her. He hadn’t really wanted to reclaim her. Not when he’d only claimed her as a means to an end. An end he must believe he’d long achieved....
Her heart kicked, had her pitching forward to the edge of her seat. The door of the reception room was opening.
The next moment, her heart battered her ribs. Time ceased. Reality fell away. Everything converged on one thing. The shadow separating from the darkness. A shape she remembered all too well.
Him.
No. No. Not when she’d finally managed to purge his malignant memory. She must stop this confrontation from coming to pass, flee... now.
She didn’t move. Couldn’t. Could only sit there, her every nerve unraveling as soundless steps brought him into the circle of light where she sat exposed, besieged.
His eyes were the first things that emerged out of the gloom. Those fire pits had haunted her dreams and tormented her waking hours since she’d last seen them.
But the tremors arcing through her weren’t from what she saw in them, or the blow of his presence or its implications. It was the awareness that had swept her from the first moment she’d ever encountered him. Even amidst the terror of the hostage crisis, it had yanked her out of reality, plunged her into a stunned free fall where only he existed. For that same feeling to mushroom again now, after all that had happened...
He blinked, and the vice garroting her snapped, propelling her to her feet and to the French windows.
Her steps picked up speed as her exit to the palace gardens neared...then it disappeared. Behind a wall of muscle and maleness. It was as if he’d materialized in her path.
He didn’t try to detain her, didn’t need to. His very aura snared her. And that was before her gaze streaked up, found him looking at her with that trance-inducing intensity.
Finding him so near, after all these years, after what he’d cost her....
Her grip on consciousness softened. The world swirled as she stared up at him, a prisoner to her own enervation. And again the sheer injustice of it all hit her.
No one should be endowed with all this. He was too...everything. And even in the subdued lighting and through the veil of her own wavering senses she could see he was even more than she remembered. Six years had taken him from the epitome of