He gasped in mock shock. “You not only flaunt your power over me, you’d abuse that power, disregard your oath to do no harm? You would torment me while I’m under your scalpel? You’d gloat at my helplessness and need, and take pleasure in my pain?” He let excitement at her implied threat spread his lips. “I can’t wait.”

Her eyes swept him with now blue-cold disdain. “So you have an extreme form of masochism among your perversions, huh? Figures.”

“Not to me, it doesn’t. At least, it didn’t. But I am discovering I’d welcome anything from you.”

She snorted. He shook his head as he huffed another chuckle. He couldn’t believe it himself, how fully he meant that.

Sighing, admitting that for the first time in his life, he was experiencing something beyond his control, he reached for what had survived of his bloody clothes. And though she aimed more detestation at him, he felt her unwilling coveting spread over every inch of his cold flesh, heating it from the inside out. He shuddered at the caress of her eyes over every bulge and stretch of his muscles as he carefully pulled his clothes back on.

His satisfaction rose. Her reactions to him had not only alternated between delightful and brutal honesty, they were as overpowering as his. Her mind might be telling her to slash him open, but everything else was clamoring for his nearness, delighting in his every detail. And of course that was making her madder. At him.

He’d finished dressing before it occurred to him to try the heater. It was still working.

He turned his gaze back to her with a smile, and she slammed him with a disapproving scowl.

“Now you turn on the heater. Were you trying to see how long you can last before you succumb to hypothermia? Or were you hoping I’d offer you the best remedy for it?”

“Flesh-on-flesh warming.” He almost shivered with imagining the mind-melting sensuality of such an act with her. “And now you’ve cornered me. I must admit either that I was such a remiss male that I didn’t think of it, or such an inefficient field officer that I didn’t remember the onboard heater. Will I get leniency points if I cite my reason for failing to think of it to be preoccupation with your golden self?”

“Nah. I have another explanation. You didn’t think of it because you’re cold-blooded like all your species. Snakes.”

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A laugh overpowered him and sent another bolt of pain through him. “Ah, I’ve never been so inventively insulted before. I can’t get enough of whatever spills from your mouth.”

Her smile was one of condescension and disgust. “I’m such a refreshing acid bath after all the slimy, simpering sweetness you usually marinate in, huh, you jaded jerk?”

He put a protective hand to his side as he laughed again and groaned in pain simultaneously. “What you are is literally sidesplitting. It is positively intoxicating what an irreverent, fearless wildcat you are, ya nadda jannati.”

“Don’t you dare call me that again!” she growled.

“Talia…”

She slammed her fist on her thigh in chagrin. “And don’t call me that, either. I’m T.J.—no, Dr. Burke to you. No—I’m nothing to you. So don’t call me anything at all!” He began to say her name again but she bulldozed over his insistence. “And now I take back everything I called you. You’re not monqethi or buttuli. You’re just one of those self-serving, criminal dictators. Or wait—since you were sent to retrieve me, you’re probably one of their lower ranks, maybe even disposable. Not that it makes you any better than the higher-ups.”

Everything inside him stilled.

Then he slowly asked, “You don’t know who I am?”

“You’re an Aal Shalaan,” she spat the name. “That’s all I need to know.”

Would knowing exactly who he was change her attitude? For the better? By now, he was hoping it would. Her antagonism, now that it seemed there to stay, was fast losing its exciting edge.

Then he inhaled. “I’m not just an Aal Shalaan. I’m Harres.”

“Yeah, I heard you the first time. But just Harres, huh? Like you’re Elvis or something!”

“Around here? I’d say I’m more Captain Kirk. And you really have no idea, eh?”

Her eyes narrowed on him. “So you’re some big shot?”

He huffed, the last traces of elation snuffed. “The third-biggest shot around, yes.”

He saw that lightning-fast mind of hers reach the conclusion. She still stared at him, as if expecting him to say something else to negate his declaration and her deduction.

He quirked a prodding eyebrow at her. He wanted to reach the new status quo his identity always triggered and be done with it.

She shook her golden head dazedly, her lips opening and closing on many aborted outbursts, before she finally managed to voice one.

“You’re that Harres Aal Shalaan?”

“You mean there are others? And here I thought I was the one and only.”

“And here I thought the dumb-blonde stereotype had been long erased. Clearly not in Zohayd, if you think I’ll believe that.”

“Actually I think you’re superiorly intelligent and extensively informed. In general. In this specific case, I think you’re suffering from severe and very damaging misinformation.”

“Fine. One of the hallmarks of superior intelligence is an open mind. So here’s my mind, wide as the desert and ready for amending info. What is the king’s second son and Zohayd’s worshipped minister of interior doing on a hostage-retrieval mission?”

“You see? Brilliant. You cut to the core of logic in any situation like an arrow. And as the question is the only one to be asked, the answer is as singular. I couldn’t entrust anyone else with retrieving you. I had to be here myself. And I thank the circumstances that necessitated my presence.”

She cracked a bitter laugh. “Sure, because it turned out to be me, and I’m unique, magical, and our meeting under these circumstances is an unprecedented and unrepeatable act of munificent fate, and all that over-the-top drivel.”

His hands itched with the need to capture that proud, obstinate head, subdue her resentment, resurrect her hunger.

But he knew that would backfire. He was finally realizing the gravity of the situation. The depth of her prejudice. He had no idea what had formed such an iceberg within her, but if he wasn’t careful, all his efforts to win her trust would be wrecked against it.

He let the last trace of the smile go. This needed to be serious, heartfelt. That would be easy. He didn’t have to act either sentiment. “A few minutes ago, before learning my identity turned you from an ally into an enemy, you would have agreed with all that you now consider devious nonsense.”




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