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Prologue

“Do you knohat it felt like, being trapped for two days in those hellish negotiations, away from you?”

Farooq’s voice swept over Car into, the exotic accent turning it into a potent weapon, an irresistible spell

She’d felt hi before that Probably the otiations that had taken hihts had been all hers All theirs Madness and ht she’d braced herself, was ready for her first exposure to hiht hours of deprivation

After she’d found out soed her life forever

She wasn’t ready His approach felt like that of a hurricane Her teeth chattered with the convulsion of eh her How she loved hiht she stopped believing in love, wasn’t even equipped to feel lust Then, everything inside her had shuddered with the first sight of him, stumbled with the first hours in his coht in his ar deeper ever since

She’d known that, when her ti, hadn’t cared ould happen then, had only been desperate to experience every azed blindly through the floor-to-ceiling reinforced glass overlooking Manhattan, which sparkled beyond the sprawling darkness of Central Park Each quiet step of now-bare feet on the luxurious carpet echoed inside her, along with the hiss of cash velvet steel, his masterpiece body slowly revealed, not in reflection, but in her memory, where his every nuance was etched in obsessive detail

She still couldn’t turn to hian to slice into her, cutting slow and deep

This would be their last night

She wanted to cram a lifetime into it Tear open every second and fill it with him, with them She wanted to consuance, tenderness and ferocity, all devastating, all at once

“Wahashteeni, ya ghalyah” His croon dipped into the bass reaches of her tor him say he missed her, the endearment he favored—precious, treasured—hit a chord of blind yearning inside her Her breasts heaved, her nipples hardened to points of agony She couldn’t bear the crush of cotton over her infla emptiness inside her Then he made it far worse “I shouldn’t have stayed away no matter what Now I’m almost afraid to touch you, afraid that when I do, it will take us to the very edge of survival”