There was such fury, such rage in his face that Paige could only stare back at him in bemusement.

There was no fear. She knew in the deepest recesses of her soul that Abram would never hurt her. He would never lift a hand to threaten her. But there was something in his gaze that warned her to beware, that there were far worse things to be frightened of than his anger.

But she also heard, felt, and saw the hunger in his gaze that assured her that he hadn’t been lying about burning just as she did. He wanted her. He was aching for her.

“Do the other women make the need any less sharp?” she whispered painfully. “Tell me, Abram. Does taking another lover ease that hunger?”

Would it ease hers? Would it stop the fantasies and make the restless need go away. Would finding her own lover help to stop each impulse of hunger that had her teasing him at every opportunity.

“Don’t.” There was no lessening of the anger, or the iron-hard determination in his expression. But what did change was the addition of painful knowledge that crossed his expression.

He knew exactly what she was asking. Just as he knew exactly why she had asked it.

“Answer me.” She forced him to move back or risk touching her as she came up, kneeling in the bed to stare back at him with her own anger now. “Does fucking those other women make it easier to bear the pain? Will acquiring a lover rather than saving my virginity for someone who doesn’t want it, make it easier to bear?”

For a second, for just a second, shock gleamed in his eyes.

“A virgin?” he seemed to choke on the words before he gave his head a hard shake and moved away from her. “Save your virginity for someone who deserves it.ȍ Self-disgust competed with the anger in his expression as he straightened and stared down at her, his jaw flexing, the muscle working furiously as he obviously fought whatever he was forcing himself not to say.

“You’re absolutely right,” she said, her throat tight with the knowledge that it was something he may want, but he had no intentions of accepting.

She could want him until hell froze over. She could ache, she could need. And at this moment she might even hate him. Because it didn’t matter how much she needed him, or how much he needed her, and she could see that need in his eyes, but he would walk away no matter what she said. No matter what she felt.

“I’m right about what?” he seemed to bite the words out.

“You’re right, you don’t deserve it,” she said bitterly as she forced herself from the bed, found her panties and clothes and dressed hurriedly. “You don’t have to tell Khalid I was here. He’ll only worry.”

“Did you come to see Khalid?” he questioned, his arms going over his chest as a glare settled on his face.

“Actually, I did.” Buttoning the snug jeans she pushed her feet into her sandals before lifting her head and staring back at him, refusing to feel any shame or embarrassment. “I came, because he hadn’t told me you were here, and I just wanted to see you.” The pain in her chest was overwhelming as emotion clogged her throat. “How insane was that?”

“Insane,” he snapped, his expression like stone.

She nodded to the response. “Exactly. So I’ll just return to the house and pack. We’re returning to Greece tonight.” Regret welled inside her when his expression didn’t even shift. No regret, nothing. “I guess I won’t be staying in Virginia this year after all.” She let her gaze flick over him scathingly. “There’s no reason whatsoever to stay.”

She had to get out of there before she lost control of the tears that tightened her throat and threatened to fill her eyes. Turning on her heel she quickly unlocked the door before rushing out of the room and heading for the door and the hall that led to the elevator, and below, back to the safety her parents’ home represented.

Her body still hummed with pleasure.

Her clit was still so sensitive and swollen that each step was an agony of sensation as it rubbed against the silk of her panties.

One more year. She would stay away from Virginia, her brother, and her dream of working in America for one more year. And pray it was enough time to rid herself of the emotional and the physical complications Abram Mustafa caused within her.

Because if she didn’t, then he just may well end up breaking her heart.

* * *

Abram watched her leave.

Staring from the window of the bedroom Khalid had given Paige for her visits, he watched as she appeared on the sidewalk, her white silk oversized blouse flattening against her slender body as the breeze whipped around it.

Flame-red hair whipped around her, like strands of burning silk, it blazed around her face, adding a splash of color to the otherwise dull reality that existed around him.

And with each step she took he could feel the bitterness growing inside him as he braced his palms flat on the high windowsill and buried the insane impulse to follow after her. If he did, he would drag her back to this bed and fuck her until nothing else existed for either one of them.

But reality would return. He couldn’t delay it long enough to sate himself with his need for her, or to ensure her safety.

How much more was he to lose? How much more could one man bear to see broken in his life before he finally ceased to exist?

Paige was his last weakness, he thought, answering the question for himself. She was as bright as the sun that rose in the desert, warming those who existed around her, becoming the very essence of their lives if they gave her the chance. To allow his life to break her would be a far greater sin than any he may have committed so far.

To allow his sexuality to break her—her innocence and her dreams—would be the killing stroke. Because the need that would rise inside him to see her beneath a third, one Abram knew he could depend upon to protect her, to pleasure her, to ease her should he ever cease to be, would destroy the romantic dreams he knew Paige had. How could a woman accept that he never wanted to see another man fuck her with the same hunger that he felt to have her beneath him himself? How could a virgin accept the desires he fantasized of fulfilling with her?

Of seeing her beneath Tariq, watching as his dick buried in the sweet, fist-tight grip of her pussy. Of being inside her himself, filling her little cunt, experiencing the ripples of response in the too-tight muscles as Tariq filled her ass with his cock.

His entire body tightened with the thought of it. Of feeling her pussy pulse and flex and milk his dick until he couldn’t hold back his release any longer. Until he came with the vicious, pounding spurts of seed that incited a pleasure so deep, so all-consuming it could never be forgotten. And he wanted nothing with any woman, especially with Paige, that could be forgotten.

She may have been aroused, she may be curious, but he couldn’t see her craving that pleasure as he would crave giving her the pleasure, had he not gone as far as he had.

There was also the knowledge that the dark sexuality that was so much a part of him would accept nothing less. It was his own personal torment, that need that drove at him like an addiction he couldn’t kick.

How could he tell her, explain to her, that to see her pleasure, to watch her as she slipped into that realm of sensuality that he had only seen a woman find when she was overwhelmed by two lovers, was more than he could deny himself. It was more than he could deny his lover.

That as long as there was a third, one as strong, as determined to protect her as he was, then what had happened to Lessa wouldn’t have as great a chance of happening to her.

It was the mistake he and Khalid had made with Lessa. Abram had fought that side of him, fearing Lessa gave into his brother’s touch because she knew it was what Abram wished. He had refused Khalid the privileges he would have given a third as well as the responsibilities of one. He hadn’t told Khalid that he would be away from the province the day his brother had been caught unaware, beaten and left for dead, before Ayid and Aman had gone after Lessa.

But, as Khalid had warned him the day he realized Abram had seen Paige as a woman, she deserved more. She deserved a man who knew possessive love, who understood it. But even more importantly, a man who did not bring with him the shadow of death.

“She’s gone?”

Tariq stepped into the room behind him, his voice somber as he posed the question.

He, too, had seen her standing at the door, her eyes wide, face flushed, that look of drowning sensuality filling her expression the moment they had spilled their release into another woman’s body.

In that expression he had seen the knowledge that it didn’t matter the woman they were with, it didn’t matter how he fought it, how he strove to deny it, each time he stepped foot in the U.S., there was only one face he searched for now. There was only one gaze he avoided with everything inside him.

“She’s gone,” he stated, wondering if he had effectively hid the regret that surged through him.

“She was angry?” Tariq probed.

Abram gave a quick shake of his head. “Surprisingly, no.”

No, she hadn’t been angry. It had been disillusionment. It had been bitterness. It had been the knowledge that girlish dreams never came true no matter how desperately she fought to bring them to fruition.

They died. Painfully. Hurtfully. They were tromped beneath uncaring feet and left to wither by a world that didn’t know true warmth.

And he had done no more than contibute to the cold that filled her gaze now, the disillusionment.

She was a woman searching for the dreams that filled her soul, and he couldn’t be the man to fulfill those dreams, no matter his own wishes.

“Has our companion left?” he turned to Tariq, seeing the intent look on his cousin’s expression.

Tariq had been watching him too closely of late whenever they were in Virginia, especially whenever Paige was present. As though he were searching for something, some affirmation of a suspicion.

Abram refused to give into the question in his third’s gaze. They both desired her, and yet, he refused to act on that desire, or in Abram’s case, that hunger.

“She’s showering.” Tariq shrugged his shoulders beneath the expensive cotton shirt he wore. “She seems discontent with your lack of attention now that your pleasure has been attained.”

Now that his pleasure had been attained? His cock was still as hard as it had been the moment he stepped off the fucking plane. And it was still as hard as the moment he had stepped into Paige’s bedroom to see her fingers preparing to thrust inside the heated depths of her pussy.

He had never imagined she was a virgin. Never imagined it, and now, had no idea how he could force himself to forget it.

“See her home, Tariq,” Abram ordered. “I’ll await your return before leaving to meet with Director Jennings and Senator Mathews. I’d like to give them the information we’ve attained on Ayid and Aman quickly, before Azir realizes we have left Saudi entirely.”

His brothers, Ayid and Aman. Younger half-brothers. Twins who shared a rabid rage and intellectual cruelty that never ceased to amaze him. And Azir, his father. How had he ever believed his father could have the smallest iota of kindness inside his blackened soul? Now, six months after the death of the wife Azir had forced him to marry, and the child she had carried, Abram found it almost impossible to keep from killing the old bastard. Especially after he learned exactly how involved his father had been in ensuring there were no heirs other than Abram before he turned thirty-six.

If there were other heirs, then Abram’s death would not result in allowing Azir to turn the province over to the sons he preferred. The sons who shared his warped vision of the future of the world.

That vision had seen to the death of Abram’s first wife, when he had been no more than twenty. It had seen to the death of his second wife, and his unborn child, two years later. And it would destroy any other woman Abram ever allowed himself to care for.

Just as Ayid and Aman would see to the death of any woman Khalid could love, other than his sister, Paige.