“Hi.” Why did she want to touch him so much? Why was she smiling so hard that her cheeks hurt, despite her definitively shitty day?

“Hello,” he said. He held up a bag, and she didn’t have to open it to know what was inside. She could smell the lunch meat, oil, and vinegar of her favorite sandwich as soon as the bag moved. “We didn’t get to eat, and maybe you were too busy to grab food since you had meetings, I assume? I just happened to pass the bodega—” He stopped talking, and his smile faded as he shook his head. When his gaze met hers again, it was intense, insistent. “Enough of these false pretenses. I don’t care about these carcinogenic sandwiches, however delicious they might be. I’m here because I wanted to see you. I know you’re used to doing everything yourself, but I wanted to make sure you were okay after receiving that news. Are you okay?”

Everything Ledi thought she’d known about her needs and wants slid away, leaving her open, exposed, and shocked by his gruff demand. She’d had support, she’d had friendship, but she’d never had a man standing before her looking so frustrated on her behalf that he might track down whoever had shut down the Disease Task Force and throttle them himself.

Ledi thought she might cry, but that was unacceptable, so she did the next best thing: she grabbed Jamal by the front of his shirt and, for the second time that day, she kissed the hell out of him. This time, she didn’t intend on stopping.

Chapter 17

This was going all wrong, even if it felt all too right.

Thabiso had spent his evening distracted at a last-minute gathering at the Thesoloian embassy that Likotsi had arranged after he’d been left behind in the park. Thoughts of Ledi’s shattered hopes and the way she’d run before she let him see her break had taken too much of his attention. He’d saluted the Kenyan ambassador in French instead of Swahili, had offered the Moroccan envoy a bacon-wrapped scallop, and then turned and done the same to an Israeli minister.

“You’re a mess, friend,” Johan had noted, handing Thabiso a glass of wine. The tabloid Prince of Liechtienbourg, Johan was known in equal measure for his shocking red hair, his weekly brushes with infamy, and for being the stepson of a king—“all the fame, none of the responsibility” he’d teased Thabiso during their boarding school days.

“It’s a woman, isn’t it? Schietze de mierde.” Even the Liechtienbourger mashup of French and German hadn’t lifted Thabiso’s spirits.

“Any advice?” Thabiso had asked. Johan wasn’t exactly a font of wisdom on creating lasting relationships, but perhaps having a new woman every week had given him some special insight.

“Don’t get attached,” Johan had replied drily, before taking a sip of his own wine.

“Sounds like something she would say,” Thabiso had said.

“My kind of woman. Is she here?”

Thabiso had given Johan a playful shove before changing the subject to the upcoming climate talks in Paris.

He’d eventually recovered his wits enough to smooth everything over and send the guests of the Thesoloian embassy home happy; trade deals were unofficially set into motion, mutually beneficial political discourse had occurred without fisticuffs. He was the only one solemn and sullen after what had somehow turned out to be a success.

His return date loomed nearer, and the length of time left for him to tell Naledi the truth and beg her forgiveness was a ticking time bomb that grew ever larger in his mind. Likotsi’s suddenly expert opinions on relationships hadn’t helped either. She’d been smiling and sneaking text messages all night, and Thabiso was jealous. Jealous of his own assistant’s happiness.

So he’d stopped at the bodega on the way from the UN and bought two of the sandwiches Ledi loved, as well as some beer that seemed much too fancy for the cracked glass door it resided behind. He had a plan: he’d check in on her, make sure her school situation was in hand, and reveal every single lie he’d told, starting with his name.

But then she kissed him.

Her soft lips pressed against his and her tongue grazed over his mouth, which had sealed shut in prudish surprise. When he opened for her, she released such a moan of relief—of want—that it spiraled through him, sliding over his skin and down his spine like a living, hungry thing. With her tongue slicking over his as it did—with her soft cry reverberating through him as it did—Thabiso’s cock responded without further prodding. It wanted in on some of the action, his intentions be damned.

Thabiso backed her into the apartment and kicked the door shut behind them, his mouth not budging from hers, mostly because she had grabbed his face with both hands to keep him close. Her palms roughed over his beard as her hands slid behind his neck and her fingers interlaced, pulling him down, down toward the futon. He dropped the bag along the way, not even listening to hear whether the bottles clinked or shattered. His attention was fully directed on the heat of her mouth, of how her shirt was riding up beneath his hands, exposing the bare skin of her waist to his touch. His blood thrummed and his heart was doing some bizarre dance that knew no choreography but the joy of Naledi.

She was on the futon beneath him, her tongue tracing his mouth as her hands slid up under his shirt. Thabiso had never really given much thought to the palms of a woman’s hands, but Ledi’s were warm and capable and scorched over his bare skin. He’d compared her to the goddess of rain, but he’d been wrong. She was pure fire.