The Billionaire's Innocent: Zair al Ruyi (Forbidden Book 3) Read online

  “Unlikely.” He watched her much too closely, a muscle she’d never seen before at work in the lean perfection of his faintly shadowed jaw. “In my line of work it doesn’t pay to be wrong. I rarely am.”

  “What line of work is that, again? The ambassadorial efforts on behalf of your brother or the diplomatic immunity you can hide behind while breaking, for example, the many international laws against patronizing prostitutes?”

  That muscle of his jumped again, making his jaw seem that much more male, somehow. Then his mouth moved into something so hard it made her stomach flip over, before plummeting straight down to her feet.

  “Does Hunter know?” he asked.

  That was meant to be a blow, she thought. She didn’t know why it wasn’t. It was that kiss, maybe. It was still running through her like a lightning storm. She let her smile deepen into a smirk.

  “That’s an excellent question, Zair. I don’t think he’s a huge fan of the sex trade, especially with everything that’s happened this year. Pimps and sex rings and so on. Do you think he knows his best friend likes to pay for it, too?”

  Which, all things considered, would be the very best outcome of this, Nora realized—and that was when she knew that she was truly sick. Truly, deeply, irrevocably. That her pathetic teenage obsession with this man’s physical beauty had made her as twisted as he was, if she was actually hopeful that he only bought sex.

  Because buying sex was better than masterminding an international sex trafficking ring.

  You need help, she told herself harshly. Desperately. The Zair you thought you knew is dead. He never existed in the first place.

  His mouth shifted into something much too dangerous to be a smile.

  “What makes you think he doesn’t pay for it himself?”

  Nora didn’t have to consider that appalling possibility. “Because Hunter is many things, but he’s never been a hypocrite.” She met his eyes. “Unlike some.”

  “Is that what you think I am?” Zair’s voice was lazy then, but she could see that harsh light in the depths of his green gaze. That muscle that still flexed in his lean jaw. He’s acting, she thought, confused. But for whose benefit? And he was still talking. “I told you exactly who I was six years ago. You didn’t listen. And now here you are, at my mercy.”

  Chapter Two

  SHE DIDN’T BELONG here.

  Zair al Ruyi had been surprised very rarely in the last few years, since the day he’d realized his entire life was a lie. Once on a terrace in Manhattan when this golden, gleaming emblem of all the things he couldn’t have had offered herself to him, as if she were entirely unaware that he was a twisted, terrible man. Broken and unworthy. He’d refused her because it had been the right thing to do, and back then that had still mattered. Barely.

  And then tonight, when he’d looked up to see Nora sitting on a couch in the middle of this hellhole.

  This time he wasn’t going to refuse her, and he didn’t care if it was right or wrong. She didn’t belong here, but she was here anyway, and it didn’t matter why. He had to play the game.

  Which meant she did, too.

  Zair didn’t believe for a second that Nora Grant, of all people, had been seized with a sudden desire to whore herself out like that infamous redhead the host had said she’d come in with, who was known to have a vast trust fund she couldn’t touch before her fortieth birthday and a very deep fondness for the extreme side of things.

  That wasn’t Nora’s style. Not pretty, satisfied, confident Nora, who sailed merrily through a life as gleaming and shallow as she was. There was no fucking way.

  “How did you end up here?” he asked her. He shifted slightly so he could look out at the rest of the party. It was the same as it always was. Flesh and power. Money and lies. It was as old as time, it was abrading him unto his very soul, and tonight he felt the bleakness of this path he’d taken like a great, suffocating weight on his chest.

  Not that it mattered, either. He was in too deep to get out now.

  “I took a boat,” Nora replied tartly, and he slid his attention back to her. To those huge blue eyes of hers that a man could get lost in, if he were to allow himself such weaknesses, which Zair could not. “It was that or swim.”

  He had the sudden image of her in the same frothy peach-colored dress she was wearing now, but soaking wet, the material transparent and clinging to the breasts he’d finally felt pressed up against him and those sleek hips of hers his hands itched to touch, to hold, to pull hard and flush against his own—

  Enough.

  He couldn’t let himself forget where they were or why he was doing this. There were too many eyes on him—and now on Nora, too, which made him want to break things. If he could have thrown every one of these revolting people off this boat and torn the rest of it to shreds with his own hands, he would have. Hell, he would have done it years ago. Instead, he smiled at the woman who gazed up at him, the woman who shouldn’t have been here and shouldn’t have tasted so good, either, and kept playing the game.

  Always the goddamned game.

  “You’ve wanted me for years,” he murmured, watching her lovely eyes darken. “Haven’t you?”

  “I got over that,” she told him, but he could hear the huskiness in her voice. And he could see the fascination in her gaze that doomed her. “I had a crush on Justin Timberlake, too, with about the same amount of success.”

  Zair felt cruel. He felt wild. And he knew exactly how he’d like to solve both of those problems—but he knew he couldn’t indulge himself. This was his best friend’s little sister, and no matter that Hunter had spent his life as a professional fuckup knee-deep in women and scandal, he still wouldn’t appreciate a man like Zair anywhere near his baby sister. But more than that, Zair knew—he knew—that no matter what, no matter the hint of a certain intriguing vulnerability he saw in her pretty eyes every time she looked at him, no matter how she’d shivered when he’d pulled her hair and taken her mouth as though she were already his, she wasn’t that kind of girl. She was Nora Grant.

  But he could test that theory. “Perhaps it’s high time I gave you what you think you want,” he said, watching her closely. “Consider this your one and only warning, Nora. Nothing about me is easy.”

  He could see the effect of the small smile he gave her in the gooseflesh that prickled up the length of her arms, and he liked that more than he should. He wanted it to mean more than it could. But then, he’d been born a broken man and he’d only ever pretended he might be anything else. What was this but further confirmation of things he already knew? He angled his head closer to hers and tormented himself with her scent. Lavender and cream, and he was already hard. Who was he kidding? He’d been hard the moment he’d seen her here, in this cesspool, and he was all too aware the kinds of things that said about him.

  He hadn’t cared about that in years. And he cared less the longer he studied the woman before him, served up to him here like his own fantasies come to life at last.

  “I like art,” she replied, her voice crisp and her chin at a challenging angle, but there was a darker truth in those pretty eyes that he felt inside him like a touch. It made him imagine things that could never be, not with her. Not here, not now. He wanted her proud and desperate. Begging and then his. Irrevocably his—and he couldn’t have it. Her. “You have nice lines and a pleasing shape, Zair. Who wouldn’t appreciate that? Too bad that up close, with a little bit of scrutiny, it all falls apart.”

  “Did I ask you a direct question?” he asked softly, and the wild thing in him growled hard at the way she shivered, then pinkened, at the quiet rebuke.

  “I thought we were having a conversation.”

  “No, you thought you were putting me in my place,” he corrected her, his voice mild though he knew his gaze was not. He saw her blue eyes widen. “Do you feel that you succeeded in that?” He watched the way she swallowed, her gaze trained on his, and once again let his imagination go a little crazy. She’s never going to be what you w
ant her to be, he reminded himself. No matter what it looks like. “That was a direct question, Nora, but I should advise you to think very carefully about the way you speak to me. There are consequences.”

  “It seems like there are nothing but consequences,” Nora said, still in that husky voice that tempted him to forget himself entirely and follow his lust instead, which was something he’d never allowed himself to do. Nor was this the place to start.

  She tilted her head slightly to one side, and her expression changed. Became speculative, as if she could see straight past the mask he wore, down deep inside him, where there was nothing but emptiness and gloom and iron control.

  “Is that what you like, Zair? Doling out the consequences? Is that what you think I can’t handle?”

  He reached over and traced the soft line of her neck, down over the exposed skin of one sleek shoulder, and felt his mouth curve when she sucked in a breath he almost couldn’t hear.

  “Perhaps it is,” he said, his voice low, so she was forced to angle herself closer to hear him—and she did it without being asked. As if she wanted to hear him more than she wanted to be safe, and the way he thrilled to that wasn’t safe at all. “Perhaps the consequences I mean involve you over my knee. Or down on yours, awaiting my judgment. Perhaps I mean my hand, or a whip, or far more diabolical tools to make you cry out and beg for mercy. There are so many ways to torture a soft, pretty thing like you.” He slid his hand up along her neck to cup her tender cheek and held it there, feeling the way she shook, knowing it came from deep inside her. Arousal. Fear. His favorite combination, and for a moment he was nothing more or less than a man who wanted her. Badly. “And I know every last one of them.”

  He didn’t recognize her then. There was something bleak in her gaze, and for a moment he forgot completely that she wasn’t for him. That this wasn’t real. That she had no business here and wouldn’t be stretching herself out on the sacrificial altar of his choosing any time soon, no matter how much he wished otherwise. No matter what she said to the contrary.

  “Great,” she said, and he could feel the way she set her jaw, as though she expected a hit, when all it did was make him notice that mouth of hers. Plump lips and a thousand fantasies of what he could do with them. “Do it. Do all of it. That’s why I’m here.”

  “You’re such a liar, Nora.” But he moved his hand against her cheek in a gesture that could only be called a caress, and for a moment he hardly knew himself. “And this is how little girls like you get themselves in trouble.”

  Her blue eyes flashed dark at that. He saw her fists clench at her sides, and there was no particular reason either of those things should pool like lust inside him, but they did. God, the things he wished he could do to this woman.

  “I wasn’t a little girl six years ago and I’m not one now,” she told him, and there was too much he couldn’t read then, in her eyes and across her lovely face. “Why don’t you stop threatening me and put your money where your mouth is?”

  “If you insist,” Zair murmured, and he made no attempt whatsoever to cloak the threat in his voice then. Or the dark longing beneath it.

  He reached over and wrapped his hand around her smooth upper arm. He felt the immediate kick of it, as if it were a far more intimate touch. The fire roared inside him again, making him harder than before, and ready. Almost too ready. He ignored that and tugged her closer to him, forcing her off balance so she swayed into his chest.

  “What are you doing?” she hissed as he slid his palm down the length of her arm and took her hand, and he could feel her nerves in the way she jolted at the contact.

  Not a whore, then, he thought, with far too much satisfaction, as if he’d had any doubt. Or if she was, she was a terrible one.

  “You’re the only woman in the room who isn’t fucking or about to be fucked,” he pointed out coolly. “Let’s rectify that, shall we? But not here.”

  Finally, a look of alarm. As if the precariousness of her position was sinking in at last.

  “I’m not going anywhere with you,” she said.

  “You are.” He didn’t wait for her to reply, he simply started walking, which meant she had to walk with him or be pulled off her feet. She chose to walk, though she kept tugging against the hold he had on her hand. “This is how it works, Nora, or don’t you know that? You don’t choose. I do.”

  “Let’s be clear, Zair, that this is who you are. This is the kind of man you are.”

  She shouldn’t have said that, and he thought she knew it when he looked at her then without the usual filter he used to hide his temper. Or his dark, twisted soul. He saw her swallow again, almost convulsively. He saw a hectic glitter in her luminous eyes, and he felt a little tremor run through her.

  “This is what selling yourself means,” he said softly, and he knew when she flinched that he’d scored a direct hit. He would have to congratulate himself for that later, he thought bitterly. Zair closed his hand harder around her arm and pulled her closer, so he could speak directly into her ear. He could smell her shampoo and the soft scent of her skin. He could feel her heat. And he wanted her, the way he had for years. And as hopelessly, because she was a pretty little heiress who lived in the light and he was the bastard brother of a twisted king, dark unto his very soul. “We go where I want to go. We fuck how I want to fuck. I’ll let you know if I want you to speak. Until then? You keep your mouth shut unless I’m putting something in it.”

  *

  He felt her temper like a living thing between them, but then she ducked her head down and she didn’t argue. And he liked that too much.

  “Good girl,” he said again, and he felt her shake at that, too. Almost as if she really were bent like him. Almost as if she found as much pleasure in the act of obeying him as he would have found in issuing orders, if any of this were real. If it weren’t dangerous. If there weren’t too many eyes on them already.

  This is the sister of the famous Hunter Grant, Laurette had said in her arch, insinuating way, the fact that she spoke in her native French making it sound harsher, somehow. But you know this already, do you not? He is a great friend of yours, I believe.

  We went to university together, Zair had replied mildly. But there is friendship between men, Laurette. And then there are whores. And he’d shrugged, letting his mouth flatten as he did. These things have very little to do with each other.

  The woman had laughed. Enjoy breaking her in, Zair, she’d said. Try not to do any permanent damage.

  He’d laughed, too, because that was what he did. It was who he was, who he’d been for long enough now that the edges had long since blurred. The boundaries were no longer clear.

  I always leave my mark, Laurette, he’d said quietly. Or how will she know I was there?

  And that was the trouble. That was always the trouble. The best lies, the best disguises, started with a kernel of truth. He knew his did. He wanted whatever Nora’s game was tonight to be rooted in the same kind of truth—and that was as crazy as it was unlikely. He’d seen her insipid boyfriends over the years. He’d seen the dynamics of her relationships, where she held all the power and was always bored. Even if, somewhere deep inside, she secretly longed to hand over her control in the most intimate of settings, he very much doubted she was ready to face that, and certainly not here. Not like this. Not with him. Those were dark imaginings and best kept locked deep inside him, he knew.

  He wasn’t going to force her. Zair could barely tolerate himself as it was.

  But his ace in the hole was that she didn’t know that.

  He kept his grip on her as he steered her toward the exit, slightly harder than necessary. He pulled out his phone as they moved through the crowd, calling the embassy in Washington, DC, where it was just after 5:00 p.m. He talked business almost idly as his security detail fell into place on either side of him, letting go of Nora only when they were all settled in his private speedboat.

  He saw Laurette watching him from up on the yacht’s deck and nodded at
her the way he had every time he’d left one of these parties with another pretty girl in tow, but he didn’t end the call. He let his assistant relay his messages as the boat set off for Cannes, and when they hit the shore and were met by his driver, he looked around for cameras before he escorted Nora into the car with the same firm grip, like a bare-handed leash.

  He caught his head of security’s dark gaze and the other man shook his head. Which meant a camera Zair hadn’t seen. He let out a breath, turning over the implications of that in his head…but there was no undoing this. There was no un-taking that picture and there was no letting Nora wander off to do this kind of thing again tomorrow night with God knows which monster. There was only hoping the paparazzo in question was too lazy or too glutted on all the Hollywood royalty in town this month to make the connection between another blonde woman on Zair al Ruyi’s arm and former tabloid staple Hunter Grant.

  Once in the car, he sat back and made a few more calls to the usual people—the sultan’s primary aide for the daily update on his brother Azhil’s bad rulings and uncertain temper, his other liaison in the palace in Ruyi for the unofficial political mutterings from the regime’s enemies back home—as the car swept them away from the mad glitter of Cannes and up into the relative safety of the hills.

  He finally put his mobile away when the car pulled into the long drive that took its time winding around to the sprawling villa he used when he was in the South of France, as befit the ambassador to and half brother of the great Azhil, Sultan of Ruyi. The car stopped at the foot of the curved steps that led to the massive carved entryway, but Nora didn’t move. Zair’s driver opened the passenger door, letting in a cool night breeze that danced around the interior, scented with rosemary and a hint of salt from the sea far below.

  And Nora sat like a statue beside him, mute despair etched all over her lovely face.

  Zair was certain, then, that whatever she’d been doing on that yacht, she’d never done it before. As certain as he was that she’d never do it again. Not if he had anything to say about it.