Dangerous Pleasure

5

She couldn’t believe this.

There wasn’t a single article of clothing to be found in any of the four armoires arranged around the stone room. There were sheets, throws, there were even pillows. But there wasn’t a single shirt, pair of pants, or even a pair of socks … Would socks have been out of the damned question?

This was completely ridiculous. The least they could have done was left her something to wear.

Tucking the silk sheet between her breasts, she propped her hands on her hips and stared around the dim, sun-dappled room with a frown and narrowed eyes.

Her mother had never really said much about this room, other than it had belonged to Azir’s first wife, Abram’s mother, Shahla, as Azir had named her. Her actual name, as she had told Marilyn, had been Anna Bailey. She’d been on vacation in Saudi Arabia with her family. Her father had been an executive for one of the oil companies.

Paige’s mother had contacted Anna Bailey’s family as soon as she had been able to, but they seemed reluctant to believe her, or to do anything to rescue their daughter.

Pavlos had checked into it for the woman he still intended to marry, and learned that when Anna had been kidnapped, her father had received a large deposit to his account to cover excess gambling debts.

Marilyn had always suspected Anna’s family had sold her, or perhaps accepted the payment to stop searching for their daughter and accusing the Saudi government of covering up her disappearance.

Both Anna Bailey and the French-born tourist Marilyn Girard would have been forgotten had it not been for Pavlos Galbraithe’s determination to find his fiancée, and Marilyn’s stubbornness in not giving up her plans to escape.

But, by the time Pavlos had put together a team willing to breech the fortress and rescue Anna and her son, Azir had killed her. According to Abdul at the time, Azir had strangled her to death in her own bedroom, in front of her three-year-old son, after dragging them both back from an escape attempt.

Abdul had recounted to her parents and to Khalid how the young Abram had screamed and even then, fought to free himself from the wooden crib he had been placed in. How the moment his mother had dropped to the ground, lifeless, he had stopped screaming, stared at her, then slowly sat down in his bed, lifted his eyes to his father, and simply stared back at him.

Now, more than thirty years later, Abram was still attempting to stand between his father and a woman Azir was trying to kill.

Where the hell was he now? She could use a little rescuing herself.

He had to be here somewhere. There was no doubt in her mind this was the Mustafa fortress on the Iraqi border. She hadn’t been kidnapped and sold, she had simply been kidnapped by a madman. Didn’t that just round out her week.

Turning, she walked back to the middle of the " align=where she stood looking around once more, trying to find something that would at least make her feel as though she were trying to escape.

As she started to move toward one of the armoires again, the wide, heavy wooden door was thrown open, a breeze surging past her. She stared at the apparition that entered with a nightmarish vision of terror.

The sense that this couldn’t be happening almost overwhelmed her. It had to be a dream.

Azir Mustafa swept into the room, his black eyes locked on her, his desert-dark face worn and creased with bitter lines. The long white thobe, the loose, ankle-length garment mostly worn in the Middle East seemed to ripple around his broad, overweight body. The ghutra, or keffiyeh, the large white square cloth secured to his head by a black cord, swept out behind him only to reverse direction and swirl around him as he came to an abrupt stop. He stared back at her as though mesmerized.

His eyes appeared dazed and damp. His expression filled with deepening hope as he watched her carefully, as though frightened she would disappear at any moment.

He lifted a shaking hand as though to touch her from a more than ten-foot distance, before he let it fall limply back to his side.

“Marilyn,” he whispered, his lips trembling as he took a step forward, bemusement and mesmerism slackening his expression. “You stayed so young, Marilyn. And I have grown so old. What trick is this that you return to me, the same as you left?”

Paige gripped the sheet between her breasts and stepped back, her eyes narrowing at the proof of Azir’s weakening sanity. He thought she was her mother.

“I’m not Marilyn.” Paige informed him cautiously. She didn’t look that much like her mother.

“Marilyn,” he whispered again. “My precious Marilyn. Why did you leave? Why did you corrupt my sons?” Pain, bitter and filled with a little boy’s confusion, he watched her with tears in his eyes. “Did I not love you above all others? Did I not whisper my love to you each time I held you?”

Paige inhaled sharply. Her mother had said Azir was insane, even when he was younger. Paige had always argued that it wasn’t insanity, it was criminal arrogance. Now, she wondered if her mother hadn’t been right all along. It was obvious the man had some serious, delusional issues.

The crazed belief that filled Azir’s face as he stared at her wasn’t in the least bit comforting. He truly believed that somehow, Marilyn had returned to him.

Paige moved back another step as Azir came forward the same distance. She felt like a mouse being toyed with by a very large cat, and she had no hole to hide in.

“Come to me, Marilyn. His expression tightened in anger as she kept retreating. “Do not test my anger, beloved. You know you will lose and I will feel remorse for the need to punish you. You are my wife. You may not refuse me.”

He actually thought she was going to let him touch her? If he was playing a game, then he was doing a damned good job of it. And if he wasn’t, then he was far crazier than anyone suspected and she was in a hell of a lot more trouble than she had imagined.

“There’s been a mistake,” she stated warily. “I’m not Marilyn. I’m her daughter, Paige.”

Azir stopped and frowned at her, his body poised as though ready to jump on her. He eased back, his eyes narrowing on her before pure, furious hatred snapped into his gaze for a quick second. In the next second, his eyes cleared and he stared around the room as though wondering how he had found himself there.

He turned back to her slowly.

“Paige Galbraithe,” he murmured, his rasping voice the sound of a nightmare in her mind. “The daughter of my faithless, adulterous wife and the whore’s son that stole her from me. A diseased bastard daughter. You should have been stoned to death at birth.”

As he spoke, his voice became louder, harder, and more furious until the enraged tone sounded grating and filled with the very insanity Paige had doubted he suffered from.

Oh, he was insane all right. There was no doubt in her mind now that he was bat-shit crazy.

“Mother wouldn’t be pleased if you killed me, Azir,” she told him with subtle, flippant mockery, as though he might really give a fuck. “She might never come visit you before you die.”

“You mock me,” he rasped. “No worries, I can have it done whenever I please. It is a matter easily taken care of. The sins of the mother become the responsibility of the daughter.”

She couldn’t believe this. It was a nightmare. He was past insane.

“I’ve committed no sin.” Her fingers tightened on the sheet as his gaze flicked to her breasts then back to her eyes. She actually felt dirty from the look.

“Your mother did, that’s enough.” He smiled almost pleasantly. Pretty much crazily. “I could have you dragged to the courtyard and stones would be battering your weak body within minutes. I could take that very pretty face, so much like your mother’s, and I could crush it.” His hand lifted, his fingers snapping into a fist in emphasis.

She could see the rage in his eyes and in his face. He was flushed with it, his gaze becoming demented with it. There was a need glittering in his eyes to hurt her, to destroy her. He looked at her and he saw the mother, not the daughter. But he also saw what he called her mother’s sins. Hell, she wasn’t going to win here.

Strange, her horoscope hadn’t mentioned to beware of crazy kidnappers or demented desert sheikhs this week.

If Abram didn’t get here, really fast, then she was going to be in a hell of a lot more trouble than she could pull herself out of on her own. Maybe. It was kind of hard to find options that involved being dressed in nothing but a very expensive, very soft sheet.

It was apparent Azir thought he could punish the daughter because the mother had escaped him. And she didn’t doubt he had all intentions of doing just that.

Marilyn Girard had escaped and taken his three-month-old son, and she had married another man and had a child by him as well. Paige was that child, and as he stared at her, she realized he could easily choke the life right out of her and never regret it. He could happily throw her to whomever would stone her, and feel nothing but cheerful glee as each heavy blow broke her body further.

Oh God, where was Abram?

“You have her eyes,” Azir said as he stilled once again, his head tilting to the side to stare back at her with an odd smirk. “Eyes that mesmerize a man and fill him with the desire to do nothing but possess you.”

“It could be indigestion. Trust me, possessing me is a very bad idea. It could be considered really irritating I’ve been told,” she suggested brazenly, certain she was going to die at any moment, but she would be damned if she would go down without a fight.

She would not give this old, vicious monster the satisfaction of seeing her cry, or beg. Unless it hurt too badly. She might beg then, she thought irrationally. Anything was possible.

The shark’s smile that curled his lips was filled with a pure, cruel menace as his expression turned mocking, threatening.

“Speak to me with such disrespect again and I will have your tongue sliced from your mouth before you have the chance to beg my son to aid you,” he warned her, his monstrous voice grating with savage anticipation. “I will ensure he does not endure the disrespect of the daughter as I did the mother.”

Okay, no more disrespect. She liked her tongue in her mouth, thank you very much.

She stared back at him silently, certain there had to be a weakness she could exploit to at least survive until she found a way to run.

Running beat standing here and waiting for him to choke her to death as he had Abram’s mother.

“You know my son don’t you, my dear? Both of my sons, actuen tol One is your brother, and what would the other be to you, I wonder?” He chuckled insidiously. “Are you a whore as your mother is? Do you lie down and spread your legs for any dog that would hump between them as well as the friends he would bring with him? Do you lie between two as easily as you would with one?”

The vulgarity of the insult had her eyes narrowing as anger began to swirl and tighten into pure fury. She bit her tongue until she thought she might bite through it as easily as the knife he had threatened to slice it off with.

She really didn’t want to lose her tongue, and she had no doubt he wasn’t dead fucking serious about the threat, but dammit, that was her mother.

“And your brother.” He sneered. “His perversions infected my heir and my home until Abram gave to him the virtuous wife he had married. She spread her legs for them together and spoke such filth that she desecrated the marriage bed she was given.”

Khalid was her brother. He pissed her off regularly, but she would die for him. If Azir kept this up, she would be losing her tongue for certain.

She stepped back cautiously as he took another step forward, his fists clenching and unclenching spasmodically as she breathed in deeply.

“Azir, this isn’t a good idea.” She was wasting her breath and she knew it. “Come on, I know many of your nephews and nieces. Several of your king’s great granddaughters are friends of mine. Protests are already being filed with your government over this, if I know my parents and if Abram finds out you harmed me, he won’t be happy, and you know Khalid will go crazy on you.”

She could see the hatred in Azir’s face as she said his son’s name. Khalid had killed his two sons, but only to protect himself as well as Marty when they attacked him in his home.

Paige watched him warily as she tried to maneuver closer to the door, only to have him block her attempt to slide around a chaise and run for the exit.

He smiled in anticipation.

“If you die, then he will not risk God’s displeasure, nor the retaliation of the Matawa for his perversions with you,” he murmured. “You were seen, spreading your thighs, speaking the filth and begging for more.”

She flushed, not in shame or in embarrassment, but in anger. Maybe, if she screamed for Abram, he would hear her? But if he were that close, he would have been here.

“Tell me, Paige, how is my bastard, traitorous son and his whore doing these days?” His lips curled in disgust. “I was actually surprised his brother Abram wasn’t present in the bed with him and his little Jezebel, rather than that ineffective agent to your FBI that was fucking her instead.”

How in God’s name did Azir know these things?

Shane Conner, the FBI agent, was Khalid’s third, that was the truth. He was also working with Daniel Conover’s security firm to upgrade the electronic security on Khalid’s estate.

But Azir’s men hadn’t managed to kidnap her from Khalid’s estate.

Oh yeah, that’s right, she was too fucking stupid to stay there. Azir’s men had caught her in her own home.

Azir knew things that were going on in that house that no one should have known about. Shane Connor’s role as Khalid’s third wasn’t a well known fact, even among the few friends Paige knew they had, who shared that little sexual taste.

“You’re not answering me.” Malice flashed in Azir’s face. “Did your mother not teach you to respect your elders, you little bitch? Or did she only teach you to be the whore she is as well?”

“My mother is no whore!” The words jumped from her lips as though they had a mind of her own.

He could have her tongue at this point. She wouldn’t stand to hear her mother called such names. “I did not ask your opinion on whether or not she was the whore we both know she is. I asked you how that bastard brother and his Jezebel are doing. A simple enough request I thought, or are you too stupid to understand even that much?”

“Sorry, I don’t know a bastard brother or anyone called Jezebel.” Brief. To the point. She had to fight the need to tell the dirty son of a bitch exactly where he could get off at.

His lips twisted in satisfaction. “Punishing you will be a pleasure.”

“I have no doubt you’ll find it the highlight of your old and wasted life,” she muttered. “So why don’t you tell me why I’m here rather than threatening me all day?”

He grunted at what she considered a very clear order.

“What of the less than charming Mr. Connor? Is he still fucking Khalid’s trash up the ass or has he fulfilled his depravity and Khalid’s, by actually taking Khalid like the animals they both are?” Azir watched her like a hungry wolf.

Paige could feel a chill of dread race up her spine as her skin crawled with distaste at the lustful interest in his gaze. Each time he mentioned Khalid and Shane sharing Marty, or any reference to their sexual activities, hunger flashed across his face.

She shook her head warily. “You must have the Shane Connor I know confused with someone else, not to mention the Khalid andrty I know. Are you sure you haven’t been sniffing the camel glue a little too often?.”

Azir snorted sarcastically, his lips curling in disgust. “I should have killed him and his whoring mother when I had the chance. When I realized she was as faithless as the wind.”

“All women are just whores to you, aren’t they, Azir?” Good common sense was overridden by the continued insults to her gentle, compassionate mother.

Despite the time she had been locked in these rooms, raped nightly and forced to conceive the child of her rapist, still, she had adored her son and lavished him with love, just as she had her daughter.

“Your mother is a whore,” he snarled. “She shares herself as her son shares the diseased flesh of his women. She corrupted my son’s mind and his soul and turned him into a depraved animal.”

“After you kidnapped and raped her, and forced her to marry you I’d say you’re the monster and the animal, not my mother or my brother,” Paige retorted scathingly. She could practically feel the knife against her tongue now.

“Your father stole what was mine. He is the kidnapper, the criminal. From my very home he tore my wife from my arms and turned her against me.” He raged, his arms lifting, fingers curling to fists as he brought them to his chest as though in supplication. “Do you not understand what they did to me? To my child? They destroyed us.”

“She was running for her life when my uncle and my father found her,” she argued desperately. “She risked death to escape you, Azir. No one had to tear her from your arms because she had already done it for herself. She risked her life and that of her baby to get away from you, Mustafa!”

Hatred.

It was like a disease.

It overrode terror just enough to keep her from shutting her mouth and being prudent. Her temper was getting the best of her. It was her curse. She was a nice person, she really was, until someone ignorant decided to force that ignorance in her face, and then she just couldn’t hold back.

“She belongs to me!” he screamed, his eyes widening, becoming crazed as he surged forward before she could escape him.

He caught her off guard as he backhanded her with what she was certain had to be the full force he possessed. It was enough force to make her feel as if the blow had disintegrated every bone in her head.

Lights exploded before her eyes as she felt herself all but fly across the room to collapse against the stone floor. Her head was ringing with a thousand cymbals, her gaze dizzy as she lost her breath. She felt herself trying to pass out from the coppery taste of her own blood.

The taste filled her mouth, and in a distant, horror-filled part of her mind Paige realized that this was the first time in her life that she had ever been struck.

“You are a disrespectful little harlot, just as your mother was. But she learned her place, and you will learn yours. Or you will die as I should have killed her.”

He stood over her, raging down at her like a maniac.

“She escaped you though, didn’t she?” She wheezed as she fought to breathe through the pain, her arms shaking as she tried to brace them under her. “She hates you, Azir. She hates you so much she’d kill you herself if she could.”

If she was going to die, then she would be damned if she wouldn’t inflict just as many insults as she could drag out of her ringing, pain-dazed mind.

“I could break you!” He sounded like a wild animal as she tried to focus on him. “I should show you how easy it is to break a little whore such as yourself. I could make you beg to die. Beg to call your mother a whore to her face just to make the pain cease.”

“I’d kill myself first,” she snarled back at him. She tried to brace herself against the floor, her arm losing strength and giving up on her as she fell to the floor once again.

A second later vicious fingers were curling into her hair, dragging her to her knees as she screamed.

Her struggles were weak, ineffective. She hadn’t managed to get her bearings from that blow yet or the agonizing pain still roiling through her senses, and the strength was just slow returning, she told herself.

She could feel the knotted sheet between her breasts slipping. Suddenly, the knowledge that she would be naked before him seemed as bad as being raped by him. Someone had already undressed her, that violation was enough. She sure as hell had no intention of allowing him to see her again, while she was conscious.

She struggled to grip the sheet and hold it to her as Azir, gripping her arms, jerked her to her feet and began shaking her viciously. Her head jerked dangerously on her shoulders as she tried to dig her nails into his arms, but she was weak and dizzy.

“I trained that little bitch, just as I’ll train you.”

With the last word she felt the strength gather in his arms and a second later he had flung her away from him. Hard.

She wasn’t going to be able to break her fall.

Paige braced herself as she lost her grip on the sheet. This one was really going to hurt and there was no way to stop it.

Hell, she was going to be naked in front of Azir Mustafa.

A sob tore from her throat as she felt herself flying. Fear struck every nerve in her body a millisecond before her flight abruptly ended.

Strong hands caught her, pulling her against a hard, warm body as the sheet was simultaneously straightened around her nakedness.

Abram!

Her fingers curled against his arm, feeling the softness of cotton over his flesh as he held her to him, the warmth of his body wrapping around her.

He was here. Finally. He hadn’t really deserted her. Could he control Azir? How long would it take him to get her a T-shirt and jeans? Panties would be nice. She didn’t like running around without her drawers.

Fractured thoughts continued to race through her mind as her senses spun violently.

“Are you okay, precious?” He held her against him, his head bending to whisper gently at her ear, his voice rough with rage and regret as she tried to lift her head, which felt as if it were teetering on her shoulders.

Hysterical amusement threatened to escape in a gale of laughter as she tried to hold her head straight. “Make the room stop moving, Abram.” She blinked back at him. “This sucks.”

“It’s okay, baby.” His voice was a gentle murmur. “I promise you, everything’s going to be okay. I want you to go with Tariq for now, though. He’ll take care of you until I’m finished here. Will you do that, Paige? Go with Tariq, sweetheart.”

“No! I want to go home.” Her fingers curled demandingly into the long, cotton tuniclike shirt he wore as she forced her eyes to focus, forced herself to find whatever little strength was left in her legs. “Call Khalid or Papa. They’ll come for me.” She wasn’t about to stay here a moment longer than she had to. “This is insane. Get me out of here.”

Her vision was finally clearing, the dizzying blurriness slowly evaporating to focus on the tormented, tortured expression on his face.

Black eyes glowed in feral rage as his face seemed curved from stone into lines of brutal disillusionment.

“Go with Tariq, first, Paige.” He gripped her arms and eased her from him before moving her in Tariq’s direction.

“No. I won’t leave you alone with him.” She stared up at him, seeing the pain in his eyes, the grief in his face, and she knew he had to be inconsolable with rage. She couldn’t leave him alone with this madman. “What if it’s contagious?”

His gaze turned back to hers, a subtle glimmer of bemusement glowing in the wicked, night dark depths. “What is contagious, hellcat?”

“His insanity,” she whispered back at him, at once hearing the ludicrous suggestion, yet the need to make light of the situation couldn’t be fought. That was her. Take it seriously and she could end up sharing Abram’s fate herself. Azir Mustafa could drive a saint crazy, she guessed. And poor Abram, he lived with the old bat.

He had to hate this. This place, this room, it wasn’t Abram. The way he was dressed, the expression on his face, it wasn’t the man she knew. He would never countenance abusing a woman, or kidnapping one.

He was as arrogant as the wind itself, as the very desert that raised him, but he wasn’t the vicious monster his father obviously was.

“I’m certain it’s not contagious,” he promised. “But go with Tariq for now. I’ll take care of everything and I’ll join you soon.”

“You beg a whore to do as you ask?” Azir cracked behind her. “How you have fallen, my son.”

Paige refused to glance back at him, rather she continued to stare up at Abram, willing him to leave with her, to refuse to risk himself in his father’s demented company.

“Now,” his voice was nearly silent, but there was no mistaking the dark command that filled it. “Go with Tariq.”

Tariq Mustafa. She knew him. There were times he had come to America with Abram and visited with Khalid and her family. He had smiled. He had “almost” flirted a time or two, but Abram and Khalid’s displeasure had been clearly apparent.

This time though, his expression was hard, cold, as though he had no idea who she was. There wasn’t so much as a glimmer of recognition as he took her from Abram.

Her lips thinned, her displeasure unable to hide. He had no business lingering here when they needed to make plans. When they needed to get her out of Saudi Arabia.

“Come on.” Tariq wasn’t flirting with her this time as she forced the strength in her legs to walk to the door. He acted as though he didn’t know her, as though he had never met her. And she would find out why the minute Abram joined them.

Abram watched as Tariq drew Paige from the room, eased her around the doors and led her up the hall to his suite. Dark, emerald green eyes stared back at him, defiance and anger reflecting in her gaze before she disappeared.

He turned back to Azir, though God knew he didn’t want to. He could feel the killing rage rising inside him, threatening the control it had taken so many years to develop.

For a moment he wondered if she could be right, if the Mustafa legacy of blood, death, and insanity, wasn’t actually a contagion that infected each generation after the other.

Staring at his father, he felt nothing but the overwhelming hatred that he was in danger of allowing to spill from the depths of his soul.

He stared at his father, and he saw nothing but the ragged, agonizing pain his first wife had felt as she died, the fear of his second wife as she died with their unborn child, and his own fear when he had learned that Paige’s life was in danger.

“She’s the very image of her mother, isn’t she?” Azir stated calmly, as though he hadn’t just been throwing that vision across the room with enough strength to kill her if her head were to strike the floor when she fell.

The calm, almost rational tone of his voice only incited the icy rage burning inside Abram.

“Why is she here?” He could only barely force a semblance of calm in his voice.

Azir smiled. A mocking, triumphant curve of his lips as he stared back at Abram.

“She is my insurance, my son, and the gift I would grant you for your birthday. Tell me, do you think her mother is worried? Perhaps certain who has taken her daughter and imagining the many ways I could make her suffer for her mother’s crimes?”

The pleasure Azir clearly felt at the thought of the pain only a mother could feel filling Marilyn Galbraithe, sickened Abram.

“I will be returning her home—” he began.

“Then she will die.” Azir’s voice hardened, becoming gravely and tinged with anger. “The moment you leave the walls of the fortress with her then the guards will haul her back and I’ll have her stoned for her mother’s crimes. She is no virgin. She was checked for such innocence as she lay unconscious. Convincing the Matawa to order the stoning will be no hardship.”

Abram stared back at his father in shock and disbelief. Surely even Azir wasn’t that insane. To take such an action would only cause the royal family to be forced to take action against them.

“Don’t do this,” he ground out, his fists clenching, adrenaline surging through him and demanding blood. Azir’s blood. And he would be well within his rights to spill it. He should simply do it. How much better the world would be without Azir Mustafa’s presence. “She’s done nothing to deserve this.”

“But her mother has,” Azir snapped back, his grating tone rasping against Abram’s nerve endings. “She committed adultery against me in her false marriage to another man. She stole my son and turned his heart against me even as she and her American courts ripped from me my right to have him returned to me.”

Azir’s expression twisted with fanatical fury. “My precious Marilyn. She turned Khalid against me, and because of him, you have turned against me. I blame her for the atrocities Khalid has committed against God in his sexual depravity and I blame her for the deaths of your brothers. And her daughter will now pay the price.” He was screaming. Staring back at Abram, the rage infecting not just his sanity, but also his control over himself.

“They were no brothers of mine!” As far as Abram was concerned, this was the last straw for Azir. He would never again claim blood relation to Azir or to the bastards who nearly killed him and Khalid. The same two men had created the situation Abram now found himself in. “Had they still lived when I claim the province from the King’s emissary, then I would have ordered their death’s myself.”

Azir glared back at him, his expression working furiously, his face brick red with fury. The old bastard had never been rational where Ayid and Aman were concerned, no more than he had been rational where Marilyn was concerned. Rational or sane.

“You and Khalid were responsible for the deaths of their wives and still you would hate them for their retaliation?” Azir questioned him incredulously, as though he himself had had nothing to do with their vocation or their wrath. “They lost what they held dearest. Chaste, faithful wives and you bemoan a whore who willingly shared her body between you and Khalid as though she were no more than a bitch dog in heat? I should have turned the two of you over to the Matawa the moment I discovered your perversion instead of believing that you would learn your lesson with your wife’s death.”

Abram felt the clawing, black ice he continually fought beginning to build, to overtake him. That dark, inner core freezing over, obliterating honor, morality. He stared at Azir and all he could see was the bastard’s blood on the floor, sinking in, staining the stone and forever marking his sins.

How easy it would be to kill him, Abram thought without so much as a hint of guilt. But killing him now would only cause more problems than it would fix.

He was aware of Azir watching nervously now. Abram could only stare, his entire being centered on not killing the evil old bastard.

He couldn’t trust himself to speak, to move. Not just yet. Not until he could wipe away the image of his hands wrapped around Azir’s throat, his bloated, fanatical expression slowly turning blue.

“Forgive me, Abram.” Azir suddenly spoke nervously as though realizing how close to death he was coming. “That was never an option. Never would I see you turned over to the authoritie”

Too little. And he would have preferred that if only he could have kept Lessa safe all those years ago.

“In three weeks the king’s emissary will arrive to take your vow to oversee the lands and return to our family the payments they froze so many years ago. Before that day, I give you leave to bed the daughter of my faithless wife. Her bastard child is my gift to you until that day. I have spoken with Tariq and given him leave, nay, I have ordered him to assist you however you wish in the enjoyment of her corrupt body. Once you have given the emissary your vow, you may escort her back to her mother, or if you so choose, you may have her as the first addition to your own harem.”

To his harem?

Abram could feel his stomach recoiling sickeningly. In what demented fantasy did his father ever believe he would actually give that vow and remain here to allow Ayid and Aman’s legacy to continue to grow?

“Do not betray me again, Abram.” Azir’s voice was hoarse as he spoke. “Betray your king if you must and leave to join your brother and your whore when it is done. The account is held until your vow is given. It will be mine, or what happened to your precious Lessa will seem a blessing compared to the hell that bastard sister of Khalid’s will know. I beg of you, do not test me in this.”

If he had to stand here another moment and listen, then he might lose the last hold on his murderous temper.

Turning, Abram stalked from the room Khalid’s mother had once shared with his own mother for a short time. His own suite was above it with a private entrance to the secured quarters that had once held Azir’s harem.

Abram moved up the stairs with a deliberately calm pace. His fists clenched and unclenched at his sides while the tightening of his teeth actually had his jaw aching with a hard burn from the stress of the pressure.

He needed to regain control. He needed to still the rush of adrenaline and come down from the high of the black icy fury that had filled him while he was with Azir.

He had to do it before he made it to his suite, before he saw Paige.

Because there was another side of the black ice.

There were consequences to the thaw of that icy rage.

And if he didn’t get a handle on it, then it would be Paige that felt the full force of it.