Tariq grimaced furiously, his dark brown eyes burning with his anger and perhaps even a hint of betrayal. He’d always cared for Chalah, always watched out for her whenever she returned to the province. To have her do something like this, without warning them, would have struck him in one of the few vulnerable areas he had.

“Hell, Abram, you know both of them, your guess is about as good as mine. Besides, you know that little hellion as well as I do.” He growled as his arms crossed over his chest and his jaw clenched with his attempt at control. “Let’s say she sounded sincere in her offer to help as well as her worry. Enough so that she had Paige fooled until she showed her that device.” Disgust filled his voice. “She had Paige convinced.” He pushed his fingers through his thick, dark brown hair. “Of something. Hell, I would have believed her if I hadn’t known she was bugged.”

Yeah, it was damned hard to lose trust in someone he had known all his life, protected, and taken care of.

“Is she coming back?” He breathed out roughly.

Jafar wouldn’t be satisfied with the information he would have heard, what little Tariq had allowed past the jammer. He would have to try again.

He didn’t need this. They didn’t need it. Chalah was as wild as the wind and just as unpredictable, but she had never been a danger until now.

That danger was forced. She hadn’t done it willingly, but still, she had done it before warning them. That was a deal breaker in the trust department.

“If she comes back, Jafar will be escorting her, and to be honest, I can’t assure you Paige will have the self-control not to confront Jafar. Remember, she doesn’t know him like this, in the setting he was raised in. If she attempts to berate him, he could have her arrested and sent to the Matawa in the next province. Which is what I’m beginning to fear they intend to do with us the minute you give your vow to the monarch’s emissary.”

It was no more than Abram suspected himself.

Hell, he didn’t suspect it, he knew it. It was one of the reasons he knew he had to get the hell out of there before the emissary showed up.

“Hell, at the very least, he could punish her himself, or Azir could,” Tariq bit out as he continued. “Either way, it would end in bloodshed.”

If either of them dared to touch Paige, then bloodshed would be the very least of their worries.

He had to find his contact, and that wasn’t an easy chore when combined with the need to sleep and to leave Tariq there with her while he fought against the bond he knew would come when he took her.

And that was the overwhelming reason why he was the one out there searching for the contact rather than Tariq. That bond that he could feel growing night by night as he lay next to her naked body while she slept. Without moving, without speaking, she was invading a part of him that he had always managed to keep her from invading before.

She was like lightning, and there was nothing he could do to tame her, nothing he could do to keep her from burning into his soul if he gave her the chance.

Already, she was burning through his control and inciting a hunger inside him unlike anything any other woman could have touched.

He was so fucking hard and horny he was in agony. The past three days and nights had been hell.

As soon as she fell asleep he had to drag his ass out of the bed and do what he could to work their way out of an impossible situation. When he was done, when he couldn’t go without sleep any longer, only then did he send Tariq out. then, he was left with her, sleeping beside her, feeling her against him, her delicate limbs entwined with his as they lay together.

What should have been accomplished quickly if he and Tariq worked together was taking twice the time and had become twice as dangerous. And much of the danger stemmed from the fact that he couldn’t keep his mind off her enough to ensure he wasn’t making mistakes.

All he could think about was fucking Paige until he had to cover her mouth to muffle her screams of pleasure. Or of holding her, controlling the movements of her body as he watched Tariq take her. Watched his cock slide slow and easy up her sensitive, tight pussy, or better yet—

His entire body tensed with a brutal, unrelenting hunger.

Or watching Tariq stretch the tight, small entrance of her ass, pushing inside her with the heavy breadth of his cock as she tried to scream from a pleasure that she knew how to distinguish from pain. A pleasure that engaged every sense, that left her focused on nothing but the submission of the act, the feel of a man’s dick pounding inside her body in a way that forced home the knowledge that she was taken. That they trusted each other just as deeply.

The sight of it had been incredible in the past, Abram knew. Sharing a woman with another man was to be able to experience his lover’s pleasure as he couldn’t do in any other way.

To allow him to watch her being taken. To see the primal, possessive clasp of her flesh as it stretched and took the invader pumping inside her.

The need for it was growing. The hunger for it was tearing at him even as he fought it, to delay it until he could get her out of Saudi Arabia.

Now, Jafar thought he could mess with Abram’s life further, with his happiness, by involving his sister and garnering evidence that he and Tariq were involved in sexual indecency?

If Jafar and Azir took their suspicions to the Matawa, the religious police, with the audio proof of admission from Paige, then even the king wouldn’t be able to save them. And for that, Abram would have to kill Azir and Jafar both.

He looked around Tariq’s suite, aware of the other man watching him carefully. He fought to push back the fury that was becoming harder to tame with each successive day.

“I expect Jafar to bring her back, Abram,” Tariq revealed. “He obviously has no problem with using her however he can.”

“If he brings Chalah back tomorrow, then we’ll deal with it. We can’t let him see either of us in the room with Paige though, and by all appearances both of us have to be staying in your suite. Tomorrow, he’ll be aware that we’re both there if he shows up at the door again.”

Tariq teed, his eyes narrowing at the declaration and the knowledge that Abram had reach his limit. It was in his voice, in the tension building inside him.

They had known each other too long perhaps, shared too many lovers in the past. They knew the signs the other showed, and could gauge interest as well as that point where it couldn’t be ignored any longer.

He wasn’t hiding well either, Abram knew. The hunger for her was tearing him apart inside as he tried to give Paige and Tariq the room he felt they needed for Paige to become closer to the man he had picked as his third. Hoping, a part of him terrified, that she would find in Tariq whatever emotion it was that she was searching for in Abram.

Could he handle it?

Could he handle it if she didn’t?

God help him, she was his greatest weakness and he couldn’t seem to find a way to protect himself should the unthinkable happen.

“Is she ready?” he finally asked Tariq when nothing else was said.

Surprise filled Tariq’s eyes. “Ready in what way?”

Surely his cousin couldn’t be surprised by the question, or unaware why Abram had been leaving them both here, naked, in the bed together, each morning.

“For you?” Abram paused, his brow arching sarcastically. “For both of us? Why do you think I’ve busted my ass the past nights to do the work of two men? So you can catch up on your nightly beauty sleep, Prince Mustafa?”

He’d left them there alone for a reason. To allow Paige to acclimate herself to the man she would call lover as well. He sure as hell hadn’t left the two of them alone together for his mental health, because the knowledge of it had nearly corroded the last of his control.