As she closed the last feet between them, he sort of faced her, looked at her in his patented insignificance-inducing way.
Undeterred as usual, she waved a salute to all present, then focused on him, gave him her brightest smile and said, “I’m here!”
She is here.
The words reverberated inside Amjad’s mind.
B’haggej’ jaheem! What, in hell’s name, was Princess Aal Waaked doing here? He’d invited Prince Aal Waaked.
Yet Maram Aal Waaked was here. As she’d so triumphantly announced after walking up to him with all the mesmerizing intent of a stalking, starving tigress.
Amjad forced every muscle in his body into neutral as Maram’s every detail surged through his awareness.
Lushness encased in a loose beige pantsuit that still did nothing to obscure each long limb and ripe curve, each undulation of feminine assurance and fluid grace. A ponytail that would cascade into a waterfall of gold-shot butterscotch when released. Eyes as hot as the sun, as fathomless as the desert, deep-set in mystery and self-possession. Features sculpted from cream flawlessness by a higher god of beauty. A bearing of one who knew her worth, wielded it like a weapon, cast it like a spell.
His lungs burned.
It was seconds before he realized why and breathed again.
Seemed being male was incurable. Problem was, his maleness only manifested around this manifestation of brazen womanliness.
There was no mistaking it. Maram Aal Waaked was a hazard wherever creatures of the XY persuasion trod.
And that wasn’t his “paranoia” talking.
At thirty, Maram had already gone through two men. Officially. A prince and a business-empire heir. One older than her father, the other young enough to be her kid brother. Off the record, dozens were no doubt scattered on either side of the swath she’d cut through the male population.
She now had her eye on him. Both of her dipped-in-molten-gold-and-captured-sunshine eyes.
Before that implied he was anything special, he had to amend the statement. She had her eye on him and his brother.
Whichever fell into her honey trap would do. She probably wouldn’t mind and could handle it just fine if they both did.
She’d sooner entrap the devil than him. But his half brother, Haidar, while a wily, temperamental fiend in his own right, wasn’t as impervious. He’d shared some syrupy friendship with her since they’d been young, and she might penetrate his defenses through nostalgia. Not that he could see any man other than himself even considering resisting her if she made her desire evident.
She was her name, after all. The aspired to. The coveted.
But never by him. And she was now more off-limits than ever before.
If he’d once put her on his most-abhorred list due to her own actions, he now put her on the list of his most-bitter enemies due to her father.
Yusuf Aal Waaked, ruling prince of the neighboring emirate of Ossaylan, was behind the theft of the Pride of Zohayd jewels, the master conspirator behind the plot to dethrone the Aal Shalaans.
Now, the serpent’s daughter—a boa constrictor herself who’d squeezed the reason and life out of many a man—was looking up at him with that excitement that always threatened to devour him.
He inclined his head at her, injected his voice with its maximum level of scorn. “Princess Haram.”
Maram blinked. Had he just called her Haram?
The glint in those unique eyes said he had!
Sinful. Wicked. Evil. Taboo.
The word encompassed all that. And more.
And he’d made sure everyone had heard it.
So. How did he expect her to react? Get flustered? Defensive? Outraged?
No. The Amjad she knew would expect her to engage him. And boy, would she.
She gave him a curtsy, fluttered her lashes. “Prince Abghad!”
Amjad’s eyes snapped a fraction wider before danger slithered across his heart-stoppingly gorgeous face, his hand flattening over his heart in mock hurt. “And here I thought you…liked me.”
“I far more than…like you. And you know it.” She grinned up at him. “But a Haram deserves at least an Abghad.”
“Princess Sinful and Prince Hateful,” Amjad said slowly, as if tasting the slurs, his darkest-chocolate voice making them as delicious as the sweetest compliments. “Those do have a far better ring to them than the trite names our pompous parents saddled us with.”
She nodded, enjoyment rising. “They’d sure make for better protagonists in a fantasy novel or D&D video game.”
“They’d also spawn far better descriptions than the ones we’ve earned so far. Instead of the Half-Blood Princess you’d be the Blonde Taboo and instead of the Mad Prince I’d be Bad, Mad and Loathsome. We’d sell millions.”
She grabbed her ponytail, wagged it at him. “I’m not blonde, Your Horrid Highness.”
“Technicalities, Your Venerable Vileness.”
Her grin widened as she noticed that everyone had left their prince to his sparring match.
“Where’s Prince Ass-ef?” he said offhandedly. “Couldn’t wake up early after a nightlong taxing game of solitaire?”
A chuckle burst out of her at his double pun. In Arabic Prince Ass-ef meant the Sorry Prince. In English…
She giggled again. “He is Ass-ef, that he can’t come.”
Everything about him seemed to hit pause. She felt as if the whole desert froze, bating its breath for his reaction.
When it came, it sent a frisson sliding through her spine. His narrowed eyes became laserlike slits. “He isn’t coming at all?”
Weird. That his annoyance would be so great that it would show.
“He recently had pneumonia and his doctors feared a relapse with exposure to unfavorable weather conditions.” She smiled coaxingly. “But isn’t it your lucky day he sent me in his place?”
His spectacularly sculpted lips twisted with disdain. “It feels like every unwanted present I’ve been cursed to receive has burst open in my face at once.”
Relieved that he’d gotten back to searing sarcasm, she chuckled. “Oh, I love it when you try to be mean.”
“I assure you, when I do try, you won’t love it that much.”
“Take your best shot, Prince Abrad.”
At her taunt, another pun meaning meanest or coldest, those obsidian pupils that seemed to respond to his whims overpowered the sun’s constriction, almost obliterating his irises. “You wouldn’t survive it…Princess Kalam.”
She hooted. “I’d thrive on it. Go ahead, see if I’m ‘All Talk.’”