Guilty Pleasure

15

The sleepy, irritated grumble Marty gave as Khalid finished cleaning her with a damp cloth brought a smile to his face.

She hadn’t jumped from the bed the second they’d finished in order to shower. She’d mumbled something about sleeping an hour, then immediately drifted off to sleep.

Sitting next to her on the bed, dressed in the slacks he had worn earlier that evening, he brushed a strand of silken hair back from her face and fought the impulse to hold her to him in a grip no man would ever be able to break.

He was aware of Shayne as he stood by the opposite side of the bed and watched thoughtfully. Sometimes Shayne thought too much, Khalid mused. He was always looking for angles, always searching for answers and solutions. Sometimes there simply was no solution.

“Who knew she could burn us alive like that?” Shayne finally spoke, his voice reflective. “I think she exhausted me.”

Khalid ran his fingers along the slope of her jaw.

“I knew.” Khalid had always known exactly what she would do to his senses. She filled them. She burned through his mind to his soul and left her imprint in a way he knew he would never be free of.

“You love her,” Shayne remarked.

Khalid remained silent. He couldn’t allow himself to love her, but neither could he find the voice to deny the statement. She was important to him, he assured himself. She was a part of him. That didn’t mean it was love; it simply meant he was very very good at lying to himself, perhaps.

“She’s not Lessa, Khalid. Marty can protect herself. She knows what she’s doing.”

Khalid’s jaw clenched at the statement. “I know this.” But a part of him couldn’t forget the past or the lessons learned from it.

A heavy sigh sounded from the other man, as though he had run out of arguments or explanations. Shayne had argued for years that Marty was more than mature enough to handle the hungers that tormented Khalid. He’d urged Khalid on more than one occasion to secure her to him before another man did.

Staying away from her had been nearly impossible at times.

“I’m heading to bed,” Shayne finally announced, when Khalid said nothing more. “We’ll have this taken care of, Khalid, one way or the other.”

Something would have to be done about his brothers soon. Khalid had just enough suspicions that Marty’s boss was working with the brothers determined to destroy him, that Deerfield was risking his life at Khalid’s hands. They had dared to try and harm Marty now; if Joe Mathews and Zach Jennings didn’t finish this soon, then Khalid would be forced to do so.

Tightening his jaw at the thought of that, he rose from the bed, pulled the blankets over his sleeping lover, and paced to the shower.

After stripping again, he adjusted the water in the large shower, and then stepped inside.

Liquid warmth caressed his flesh, reminding him of Marty’s touch, of the sweet velvet rain of her release. She truly had burned them alive. He could feel the blisters on his soul already.

Even Lessa hadn’t burned so sweet, so bright.

That thought had him grimacing as it sent a surge of guilt tearing through his gut. Lessa had been filled with laughter, with life. She had touched him with her laughing dark eyes and heady passion, but she hadn’t been able to touch that inner man, the part of him that Marty seemed to fill.

Lessa had loved him. She had loved him and Abram with everything inside her, and that love had gotten her killed.

Those years in the desert with his father had turned into a nightmare, Khalid acknowledged. Sweet Lessa. She had been Abram’s first wife. She had been his first love, and he had shared that love with Khalid.

Khalid had known for years of the dark desires that raged inside his brother. It was impossible not to know of them when their father berated him often for them. Still, in the darkness of the night, away from prying eyes, Abram often gave in to those hungers himself, and he invited Khalid to share in the warmth.

Those desires had nearly destroyed Abram and Khalid in the end, though. With their father’s help, the evil of their brothers had struck with terrifying, unexpected force and left them reeling with shock.

Khalid had been drugged, kidnapped, beaten, and left for dead in the desert his father so loved, as Abram had been sent to oversee the return of his brothers’ dead bodies. Brothers who hadn’t died. For three days Khalid had struggled to make his way back to his father’s palace. A broken rib, bone-deep bruises, and dehydration had sapped his strength. He wouldn’t have lived if it hadn’t been for Shayne searching for him.

Khalid returned to his father’s palace certain that justice would be dealt to the men who had dared to strike against the sheikh’s youngest son, only to learn that it had been the brothers who had struck him. They had learned of his deception, his betrayal, and they had struck back at Khalid and what they believed was his ungodly affair with his brother Abram’s wife.

Khalid leaned his head against the shower stall, reliving the memory. Stumbling into the palace, he’d heard Abram screaming, enraged. Ignoring the servants, Khalid had pushed his way into his father’s suite to hear the damning words that had torn from Abram’s lips.

“You bastard, you let them kill her!”

Abram’s face was damp. The stoic, often cold heir to the minor throne had shed tears.

“A whore. A blight to your life!” his father screamed back at Abram. “She is better off dead, just as you are better off without the blight she brought to your soul. She let your brother touch her. She allowed another to desecrate the garden you tended.”

Khalid stared at them in horror. Abram swung around as Azir Mustafa had realized what he had said at the second Khalid stumbled into the room.

“Lessa,” Khalid whispered, staring at Abram, praying he’d heard wrong. Praying she was safe.

“They killed her,” Abram snarled, his dark eyes burning with such livid rage that Khalid backed away from him. “That bastard let them kill her.”

Abram stalked out of the room, swearing he’d kill them with his bare hands. As the large doors slammed behind him, Azir sighed wearily, as though dealing with a child’s temper.

“He won’t find them,” he finally said, shrugging. “They will not return until he has regained his senses. It is regrettable, but the girl brought it on herself with her unholy desires.” He had glared at Khalid. “Such women do not deserve the lives they are given.”

To this day, that memory was so vivid, so clear in his head. The scent of sandalwood, the breeze that blew through the opened windows. His father’s bronzed features twisted into a scowl, his black eyes burning in fanatical judgment.

Something had died inside Khalid that day. He remembered staring at the man who had helped create him and thinking that monsters truly did exist in the world.

Azir’s gaze had flickered over him then, as though only then realizing that Khalid had been harmed. A frown had formed between his brows as he reached out for his son. Khalid had flinched, turned, and left. His broken rib had been no more than an ache. The pain in his soul had shattered him.

He’d showered, changed clothes, then stolen a vehicle from the palace garage and driven himself the distance to Riyadh, where he’d called his mother in America. She’d arranged his return. She’d been waiting for him after he’d healed enough to fly, and had tried to heal the wounds his soul had been inflicted with.

Khalid had tried to put the past behind him; he’d put his father behind him and disowned the bastard as well as the half brothers who had never known a moment’s punishment for what they had done to Lessa.

Abram had taken care of her body. He’d had her cleaned, dressed, and buried as his faithful wife. He had gone to her funeral, and as he had written Khalid not long after, he had buried his soul with her.

It should have been over. His ties to the desert and the family he hated above all things should have been severed. They had been, until the suspicious death of Abram’s second wife and unborn child.

Ayid and Aman were determined to ensure that Abram and Khalid paid for the deaths of the women they called wives, the desert vipers who had been as merciless, as vicious as their husbands could ever hope to be. But even more they wanted vengeance for the loss of respect and the money Khalid had cost them each time he managed to track down and destroy one of the terrorist cells his brothers controlled.

After finishing his shower, Khalid dried himself, and then padded naked back to the bed. Marty was still sleeping peacefully in the same position he had left her in. Curled in the middle of his large bed, she looked much too small, too fragile to be the lover she had been such a short time ago.

Lifting the sheet, he eased into bed beside her. His heart clenched as she shifted, moaning a little before turning and rolling into his arms.

She fit against his body perfectly. Her head rested at his heart, her slender legs entwined with his. She was a warm, precious weight, one he feared for more than he wanted to admit.

He would protect her, he promised himself. Her fathers were watching out for her, as was Shayne. He wasn’t alone in protecting her and, unlike with Lessa, he knew the danger was there. He wouldn’t lose her to them. They wouldn’t take this woman and the life he had built for himself in the past ten years. He would kill them before he allowed it.

His brothers had marked themselves when they had struck at her. He wouldn’t rest now; he would never lower his guard or his determination to destroy them. If he had to destroy the throne to destroy them, then he would do so. Abram had better prepare himself, and he had better bring his part to the table quickly. Because Khalid wasn’t playing anymore.