Dangerous Pleasure

Book 0: Bound Hearts

by Lora Leigh

Genres: Erotic & Steamy Romance

Synopsis

Get lost in Dangerous Pleasure, the explosive Bound Hearts novel by #1 New York Times bestselling author Lora Leigh.

He was determined to satisfy her every need. . .

Abram Mustafa faces the test of his life and his heart when his terrorist father kidnaps Paige Galbraithe, the one woman who has always been able to touch Abram’s soul. With Paige’s life now in danger, Abram knows that his plans for escape from the only home he has ever known have suddenly become more imperative than ever. . .

Paige has always wondered if the dark, cool, and mysterious Abram el Hamid Mustafa is hiding a wicked side—one that will allow her to explore the kind of pleasure she has dreamed of. But when she is kidnapped by his father, she finds that she must trust Abram with more than her fantasies. Paige must trust him with her life…and her heart. Will secret, dangerous desires bind Abram and Paige together as the forces surrounding them try to tear them apart?

Release date: July 5, 2011

Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

Print pages: 304

Sample

1


EIGHT YEARS LATER

He was home. Finally.
Paige Galbraithe moved from the chaise positioned next to the balcony doors of her bedroom and stared at the lights that swept over the lawn.
The limousine moved with an almost stealthy slowness along the curved, oak-bordered drive. The lights swept over the landscaping like a cat burglar's penlight as the car neared the garage. The bright gleam disappeared into the three-story mansion Khalid owned in the heart of the exclusive section of Alexandria, Virginia, designed as Squire Point.
After ten days captivity in her brother's home, the rat had finally shown up. It was about time. She was rather sick of cooling her heels in the luxurious comfort of her brother's home rather than in her own apartment.
Collecting the silk robe she had left lying on the back of the chaise, Paige pulled it on quickly, covering the ankle-length, matching deep-violet gown she wore. Anger and determination made her movements jerky.
Ten days. She had waited ten days to confront him.
He wouldn't answer his cell phone—his fiancée Marty was running interference—but still, her brother wasn't talking to her. Marty assured her daily that she would get to tear a strip off his hide in person, and each day, he was a no-show.
"Relax for a while, Paige…"
"Khalid will call soon…"
"You'll have explanations when Khalid arrives…"
Even her parents refused to tell her what she needed to know, what she demanded each time they called to see how she was doing.
She was fed up with it. She was twenty-five years old; she wasn't a teenager. She was Khalid's sister, not some damned prisoner he could control. She was easy to work with, and she considered herself a very understanding person. But her patience had begun wearing thin a week ago.
Belting the robe furiously as she turned on her heel, Paige stalked across the bedroom and eased open the door before stepping into the hall. Moving to the stairs she stopped and waited, listening carefully.
She wasn't about to let him think that she was still awake and waiting on him. He'd been slipping into the house after he was certain she was asleep, doing whatever he did, then slipping back out before she awoke.
The damned coward.
Abdul, or Abbie as she called him, his Saudi manservant, was always abjectly apologetic that he hadn't awakened her before Khalid left, as she had asked him to do. He had a million excuses, but she knew the truth. Khalid was his boss, and Khalid wasn't about to face her until she simply left him no choice.
They were working together—Abbie, Marty, Khalid's security team, and even Khalid himself—to keep her in place and completely in the dark as to why she was suddenly being held in what her brother called "protective custody." Even the U.S. marshal service wasn't this damned diligent.
Even her parents were refusing to help her. Her mother's fear for her only daughter, her "baby" as she called her, had Marilyn Galbraithe going along with whatever her son had cooked up this time.
And that son hadn't even given his sister the courtesy of facing her and giving her a clue as to how long this would last, if there was an end in sight, or the details involving the danger she was facing.
She had a good idea. After all, she was well aware of the fact that his brother, Ayid, had finally played his final hand and attempted to murder Khalid and his fiancée, Marty, less than a month before. Just as Ayid's twin, Aman, had gone after Abram in D.C. as he waited in a hotel to meet with FBI Director Zack Jennings and the Homeland Security Director to declare his U.S. citizenship based on his mother's status as an American citizen.
Instead, Khalid had killed Ayid, and Abram had killed his youngest brother, Aman. Though, to keep Abram's defection to the U.S. a secret, Khalid had taken the blame for both deaths.
She suspected this was why she was placed in isolation in the monstrous mansion her brother now owned. The mansion that same father, Azir Mustafa, had bought for him.
She wanted to hear it from him, though. She wanted to know exactly why Azir Mustafa thought threatening her was going to gain him anything. And she wanted to know why the hell Khalid thought that destroying the life she was building for herself was going to help.
She'd been all but imprisoned by her overprotective parents for far too many years. Her mother had been so terrified Paige would be kidnapped or taken, that she would disappear as had once happened to her, that she had kept Paige always in sight.
Bodyguards. Security-enhanced private schools. Private tutors. She'd been so overprotected she had nearly smothered to death.
Escaping had taken every ounce of strength she had, because she loved her parents. Because even in their attempts to ensure her safety, she had always been aware of their love for her. Just as she had been of the nightmares they suffered from a past haunted by the horror of her mother's kidnapping, forced marriage and rapes at the hands of a monster. That monster had been the father of her half-brother's and the father of the man she couldn't push out of her mind or her fantasies.
"Stay away from me." His eyes blazing with black fury and none of the sexual satisfaction he should have felt after spilling himself only moments before into the lover he had shared with his cousin, Tariq. Only moments before he came to her. "For both our sakes, Paige, stay the fuck away from me!"
That had been eight years ago. Eight years since he had buried his lips and tongue between her thighs and threw her into an ecstasy she still hadn't felt again. Not before and not since. Eight years since he had fucked her with his tongue yet, he had never even kissed her.
In those years she had taken a lover, she had finished college, and she had begun a career that she enjoyed. But still, there was a regret that lay inside her like a weight. The regret that came with so many "what might have been's."
Moving from her room to the stairs, she waited. Standing back from the steps just far enough that he couldn't see her, Paige peeked into the shadows below as he moved to the second floor, turned, and a few seconds later, she heard the door to his suite close.
Her lips tightened into a hard smile.
Ten days. It was ten days too long and she was damned tired of waiting, of being patient and fighting to understand why her parents and her brother had to live in fear of the day that Azir Mustafa or one of his family members would come after her.
Moving quietly, swiftly, she made her way to the second floor and the door of the master suite.
No lights shone from beneath the door, but that didn't mean anything. She'd seen Khalid move in the dark as though he were born to it.
His brother, Abram navigated it as though he owned it though.
She shook that thought away. She was not going to think about Abram tonight. She was not going to allow the rest of her night to be as restless as her days had been with the fantasies and the memory of those stolen moments in her bedroom all those years ago.
This was the reason she refused to settle back and relax while she was here. It was the reason why she pushed herself to the point of exhaustion each night after work. To keep low the fires of arousal from building any higher.
Thinking of Abram was always a mistake. And desiring him showed a complete lack of judgment and had nothing to do with why she was here or why she was getting ready to skin her brother alive.
The worst thing she could do at the moment was allow thoughts of Abram to interfere with her determination to get the answers she needed, and to find a way to balance her family's fears with her own determination to have a life.
She needed a life. Without it, all she could think about, dream about and remember, was Abram and the feel of his lips sucking hard and tight at her clit as his tongue—
She shook away the thought again.
Gripping the doorknob she checked it slowly, quietly. It wasn't locked. He wasn't busy with his fiancée, or having wild monkey sex with her. He was obviously there alone, because she couldn't hear him talking and Marty didn't move as quietly in the dark as Khalid did. Besides, the door to his suite was always locked when they were in it together.
Easing the door forward stealthily, she all but tiptoed as she began to enter the room. Inside was dark, shadows lengthening through the narrow slits between the curtains, providing the barest hint of moonlight. Determination clenched her teeth a second before the door was jerked out of her hand, a manacle wrapped around her wrist, and in the next second she found herself flat against the wall as the door slammed closed.
Fight or flight.
Flight wasn't possible, and for the briefest, shocked second, she had no idea the identity behind the hard, masculine body pressing her into the wall. Calloused and rough, a broad hand covered her lips, muffling her cry as her knee slammed upward, almost but not quite managing to connect and slam her attacker's balls straight to his throat.
Instead, she found her knee blocked by a hard, extremely muscular thigh as it shoved its way between hers, pressed into the juncture and lifted her to her tiptoes. In the same breath she felt her attacker's head bend, strong teeth nipping her ear and drawing a shocked gasp from her throat.
"Hello to you too, hellcat."
She froze.
It had been so long since she had heard his voice. The rich, dark, foreign flavor of it wrapping around her senses and sending a heavy, heated lethargy to settle in the depths of her sex.
Memories washed over her.
His hands, calloused and strong, so dark against her thighs as his black hair, like roughened silk falling over her flesh as his lips moved over her clit. They had surrounded it, sucked it, lit a fire to it that had exploded through her system into an ecstasy she longed to revisit every second of her life.
Abram.
Beneath his palm her lips parted to drag in a hard, heavy breath as her body began to soften, to shape to the harder, stronger contours of his masculine body.
She shouldn't be doing this. He had avoided her for years, slipping in and out of Khalid's home and her life, and she had seen him only briefly, and always in the company of others.
Without volition her hips relaxed, the mound of her pussy pressing against the hard upper leg shoved between her thighs as she felt her breasts harden, her nipples so sensitive they actually ached.
Pleasure skated through her system as her tongue peeked out to touch her lips, to touch his palm. Slightly salty, male, the taste of him exploded against her tongue as he jerked back from her just as suddenly.
Staring up at the darkened shadow of his face, seeing the glitter of his gaze, feeling the heat of his body, Paige found herself, probably for the first time in her life, unable to speak. She couldn't find the words, she couldn't fight past the emotions or the tightening of her throat as she stared back at him.
The need for his touch was a craving she couldn't resist. She couldn't deny it. It was like a drug and she had gone far too long without a fix.
Her lips parted, but no words came out. She couldn't let them, because she was terribly afraid those words would be a plea. That she would beg for things she wasn't certain how to ask for with this man. Things she knew she was probably better off without.
Her body sure as hell knew how to ask though. She was shocked, flushed with heat and had to forcibly keep her hips from rubbing against the hard flesh pressed into the mound of her pussy.
And he knew it. His leg was tense, but each time her hips shifted against the firm muscle she swore he tightened further against her.
And he wasn't letting her go. If anything, he was holding her tighter, perhaps, if she weren't mistaken, his leg was pressing more firmly against the suddenly heated, swollen folds between her thighs. And oh yes, it felt so damned good. That heated, slow rub against her, stroking her clit, sending bursts of incredible sensation ratcheting through her.
She had known over the years that this was coming. At the first opportunity. The moment he touched her, the very second they found themselves hidden from curious gazes. She had known this would happen. That the need and the hunger would rage out of control.
"Why?" squeaky, weak, her voice was nothing as it should have been. It didn't sound determined or confident as it usually did. And it sure as hell didn't sound independent and strong.
Swallowing tightly she tried again.
"Why are you here? Where's Khalid?"
She tightened her fingers against the hold he had on her wrists, though she found herself stopping short of actually straining against his hold. After all, if she protested too loudly, or struggled too much, he might actually let her go.
"Khalid and Marty are with her parents." Deep, dark, she swore she actually trembled as he spoke. "They are completing the plans for your protection."
Her protection? Right now, all she needed protection from was the brilliant heat she was helpless against.
"He should be here." Oh man, she was dying here. She could feel her blood racing, her flesh heating, her clit throbbing harder in demand with each second.
The longer she lay there beneath him, the more she wanted him. The more she wanted the sensations, the pleasure she had only had the briefest taste of eight years before.
"Should he be?" His fingers tightened, then relaxed against her hip a second before his palm cupped it, shifting her, moving her against his thigh. "I think at this moment, it's a very good thing that he isn't here. Wouldn't you say?"
A flash of fire streaked through her pussy, clenched the tightened muscles and almost stole her breath. Pleasure raged through her body, but it was a painful pleasure, an achy, needing-so-much-more sensation type of pleasure that it weakened her knees and had her breathing in roughly.
"He kidnapped me," she breathed out roughly. "I'm going to kick his ass."
"Go right ahead," he murmured. "When he arrives. Until then, I believe it might be time to see if your lips are as soft and as sweet as they appear to be. If they are anywhere as sweet as that hot, luscious little pussy I cannot forget the taste of."
Her entire body clenched in excitement at the declaration.
Then his head lowered.
Paige felt her lashes drift close, lips remaining parted, breath suspended as his lips brushed against the edge of her face, sending a rush of exquisite pleasure washing through her again.
"You're trying to distract me," she accused him roughly. "I'm not going to let you do it. Khalid owes me explanations, Abram."
He owed her. She owed herself. She couldn't let him do this to her or once he was gone, there would be nothing left of her.
"He's protecting you," he stated, though his voice sounded rougher, more strained as his lips moved to her ear, his breath stroking across the shell as he spoke. "You're in danger, Paige, you should have guessed that by now."
In danger of screaming in need. Of begging for his touch. Of whimpering with the painful hunger she couldn't control.
"Guessed what?" She hoped he didn't actually expect her to be able to think at the moment, because it wasn't happening. But she couldn't imagine a single reason why she would be in danger.
Unless it was in danger of dying of arousal. As of this moment, that was definitely a consideration. In all her adult years she had never felt this way with another man, had never ached or lost her breath, or felt on fire as she did now. And never had she been so certain she may lose herself in another person.
"That you're in danger." There was a thread of amusement in his voice now, the knowledge of it sweeping through her with the same force the hunger had swept through her moments before.
Amusement was the last thing she could have felt as he held her, as the thrill of touching him, of being touched by him, held her captivated.
Clenching her teeth she tensed, trying to pull back, to put just a breath between their bodies as she attempted to find her control somewhere in the morass of aching hunger and need assailing her.
Wasn't it just her luck to be so aroused by a man while his own arousal, his own needs, were so obviously distant, just as they had been before. It was the story of her life where Abram was concerned. From the time she'd realized she wanted those devilish, sexy lips of his on her, he'd been either furious or amused by her.
"In danger of killing Khalid perhaps," she forced out. "Would you please let me go now? Get off me, Abram. I'm not in the mood for your games."
He rubbed his cheek against her hair as though considering her request for long moments. "Perhaps, I like you fine as you are," he finally stated. "I like how you feel against me, Paige Eleanora Galbraithe. Do you know how the memory of those very few stolen moments have tormented me?"
"And perhaps I think by now I know better," she whispered hoarsely. "Stop playing with me."
"Ahh, Paige, love, this is far beyond playing. This is the reason why I have fought against your touch. Because I can feel my control going straight to hell just from the simple act of holding you against me. How can I convince you how much I enjoy the feel of you against me?"
How she felt against him? Or the fact that for the barest few moments, she'd been unable to tell him what an ass he was being?
At the moment, he wasn't being his normal, mocking self, but she could sense that beast ready to spring forth. And once it did, their confrontations could turn brutal. His mocking, hers loud. They'd been known to rip at each other for hours, like little children poking at each other to gain dominance.
"I can tell," she said. "You're on the verge of laughing your ass off, Abram. Let me go."
His grip tightened on her wrists for a second as she felt tension hardening his body further. Against her lower stomach his cock felt harder, hotter, his body more insistent as he seemed closer, blanketing her like a sensual, muscular beast.
"Not at you." His voice was suddenly lower, the feel of his heart racing at her breast as he pulled her closer against him with the hand at her hip. "At myself, hellcat. Because no matter how hard I try to pull away from you, I want nothing more than to sink inside you."
The second the words passed his lips they were covering hers. His body shifted, his free hand pulling her farther up his thigh, working it against the swollen folds as her gown pooled around his leg. The silk of her panties saturating with her juices as she strained closer to him. Her clit heated with a fiery intensity. Her pussy clenched, tightened, the muscles ached with a desperation to be filled and every cell in her body sizzled with the need to be touched.
Pleasure rose fast and hard inside her. Heart racing, blood pounding through her system as her lips parted, her head falling back as he possessed her with his kiss.
Every thought of protest flew out the window. Past angers, conflicts, and confrontations were gone. With her wrists secured to the wall, his thigh pressed between hers, and his lips and tongue caressing and owning every pulse of sensuality, he was drowning her. Paige could feel herself weakening into the promise of the remembered ecstasy.
Dominance swirled from him. It was a wave of heat wrapping around her and sinking into her flesh as his lips rubbed and caressed hers. His tongue licked at hers, dipping in, tasting and caressing until Paige found herself arching up to him, moaning for more.
The only place his hands touched her were at her wrists, and again at her hip. The rest of his body stroked her though. His hard chest against her breasts, his thigh pressed between hers.
Each flex of his leg stroked the hard muscle against her pussy, her clit, sending incredible pleasure racing through each nerve ending as she arched to be closer.
She had to get closer to him.
The need for the heat, for the pleasure was rushing through her like a tornado. She was dying for more of him. For another taste of him. His kiss was like an aphrodisiac, spicy and addictive as his lips slanted over hers and he kissed her with a pure, sensual hunger that she couldn't have dreamed existed.
The restraint at her wrists should have made her nervous. No man had ever restrained her. She would have never allowed it until now.
Until Abram.
Until the feel of him against her, until his hands restrained her and his kiss made her like it.
But that didn't mean she was submitting easily. Even amidst the incredible starbursts of pleasure. On a primitive, primal level, Paige could sense the battle that could brew between them. The one that had been shaping for years now.
How dominant he could be.
How submissive she would never allow herself to be.
She nipped at his tongue as he licked over hers again, causing his head to jerk back, his gaze to narrow in the darkness.
"You're playing with fire." There was a growl in his voice that sent a shiver racing up her spine.
"And what are you playing with?" It was all she could do to keep the tremors from her voice, from her fingers as he held them above her head. "I didn't start this, Abram, you did."
"You started this eight years ago, Paige," he rasped. "Eight years and the taste of the sweetest pussy I've had touched my tongue to. You torment me. And now, there is no choice but to anger you in our attempt to ensure your security."
"Do you think you and Khalid can just kidnap me and get the hell away with it? That you can kiss good enough to make up for it?"
She had to force herself not to let a shiver of pleasure race through her body as his fingers moved over her hip before inching closer to her thigh. To where the silk of her gown fell away from her flesh at the point that her knee had bent, lifting to clasp his thigh, to rub herself against him.
She had to fight to maintain her senses, to control the need to sink back into his kiss, to allow him to sink into her, however she could convince him to do it.
But she knew this man. Dominant. Powerful. A force to be reckoned with in a world so different from her own that it may as well be an alien planet.
"Kidnapped you? I?" Amazement filled his voice, and perhaps just a hint of anger. "Had I kidnapped you, hellcat, you would well know it," he finally scoffed, and the anger was readily apparent just as his accent became stronger.
Thankfully, his fingers relaxed. He stepped back slowly before reaching to the side and flipping the lights on as he released her.
For a second, she was blinded. Her eyes snapped closed and when she opened them again a second later, he was halfway across the room and heading for the bar.
For a drink. She was tempted to join him.
He moved like a predator.
Paige watched as he stalked almost lazily across the expensive, pearlesent carpeting to the bar on the other side of the room.
Without turning back, he poured a whiskey from the looks of it, and if she wasn't mistaken, it was Khalid's finest.
His head tilted back as he took a hard drink. Thick, heavy black hair fell nearly to his shoulders, the blue-black strands silky and glistening in the bright overhead light.
"Get out of here before I insult Khalid by fucking you in his bed," he snapped.
"Talk about a mood change." Her eyes rolled as he shot her a hard, half angry look from the corner of his eyes.
"Not nearly enough of a change to keep from fucking my brother's sister."
Paige blinked back at him. "Damn, that sounded almost depraved, Abram. Would you like to rephrase?"
He turned. Male grace and predatory strength. And pulsing, blazing, male lust.
She could feel her pussy creaming, saturating her panties further and sensitizing her clit to the point of painful need.
Just the sight of him was enough to make her ache, to make her crave with a strength and a power that made her knees weak.
He was tall, broad, and muscular. There wasn't an ounce of fat on his six-four frame, or beneath the exceptionally soft white shirt and well-worn jeans.
Finishing the whiskey he sat the glass on the bar behind him, his gaze never leaving hers. She could feel that look through every inch of her body. Sensitized and aching for his touch, her skin felt too tight, constricting as she tried to still the rapid rise and fall of her breasts.
"Rephrasing isn't the only thing I'd like to do, or may attempt to do." The heavy warning in his voice was followed by a heavy-lidded glance along her body.
Hell, she may as well have been naked. Unfortunately, there was a part of her that wished she was naked.
Paige didn't have to look down to see that her nipples were trying to burrow their way through the silk of her gown.
She didn't bother to tug the robe over the swollen curves or even pretend a shame she didn't feel. And it wasn't the first time she'd been forced to face Abram as an independent woman rather than the submissive child he often expected her to portray.
Unfortunately, he was rarely shocked by her anymore.
"And what makes now any different from the past years? There was a time when I would have welcomed your touch, Abram, but now I can't help but be suspicious. What the hell is going on?"
"Besides your determination to acquire that spanking I keep promising you with?" He spoke as though he were serious.
"Promises, promises. My ass stopped tingling in anticipation years ago." She waved the comment away. "That doesn't change the fact that unless you tell Khalid's goons out there to get out of my face and let me go home, I'm going to have every one of you brought up on charges. That wouldn't please your daddy, Abram. Last I heard old man Azir was already pissed because you were refusing to remarry for the sake of a child."
Her ass had stopped tingling in anticipation? Abram nearly came in his damned jeans with that comment. His cock hardened to pure iron, the head throbbed, and if there wasn't pre-cum in his jeans, then he wasn't iron hard.
Paige watched his black eyes flare with renewed lust. A perfectly arched, perfectly male black brow rose lazily. "Are the phones in the house not working?" He all but smirked as he ignored her last comment.
Her lips thinned. "I'm trying to be nice about this, Abram. Don't make me call the authorities."
He waved his hand toward the phone on a nearby desk in invitation. "I didn't kidnap you, Paige. Daniel Conover and his security team did so, at your brother's orders and with FBI Director Zachary Jennings's approval. Would you like to call the authorities now, hellcat?"
She glared back at him irritably. "Stop calling me that.… And it would likely do just as much good to call the cops now as it would to call Khalid," she snapped. "Get me out of here, Abram."
She was desperate. If she had to stay locked up even one day longer she was going to go crazy. There was nothing to do here. No way to focus her energy or to stop fantasizing about this man who seemed intent on dancing through her mind at all hours of the day and night.
If she didn't find a way to return home, to get back to her job—knowing now that Abram was the one slipping into the house at night—then she might end up making the biggest mistake of her life.… begging him to take her to his bed and to finish what he had started eight years before.
"Take me home." She crossed her arms over her breast and stared back at him firmly.
"I can't do that." He shook his head, his expression suddenly somber. "Relax, Paige. Enjoy a nice vacation for a few more weeks—"
"Weeks!" Her eyes widened as amazed disbelief flashed through her and rejection instantly snapped through her mind. "Hell no!" Her hands went to her hips as she confronted him furiously now. "I have a job, Abram. I have a life…"
"Not if you leave here." His tone was suddenly ominous, his expression hardening as though he knew the danger she would face, whatever it may be.
She was damned glad someone knew what was going on, because she sure didn't.
"What the hell do you mean by that?"
She could feel a premonition of danger then, even stronger than what she had felt in the past ten days.
Khalid wouldn't just kidnap her without a reason. A part of her had known that whatever was going on was more than simply a suspicion of danger. It was more than a threat against Khalid and Abram.
Abram moved back to her slowly, his expression flashing with frustration, irritation, before slowly smoothing out to an icy calm that sent a chill of dread racing up her spine.
"Why can't I leave, Abram?" she whispered as she fought the edge of fear threatening to spread through her now. She knew her brother had been having some problems with his and Abram's two younger half-brothers, but surely those problems didn't extend to a threat to her? Besides, weren't they dead now?
"Because your name was found among papers of a certain terrorist, Paige. Until we learn why—" His voice lowered, his expression becoming heavy, sensual, and filled with hunger. "Until we know for certain, you are too precious to risk."
Something flashed in his eyes, something dark and dangerous as his hand lifted, his fingers sliding beneath the shoulder of her robe, the calloused, heated pads of his fingers caressing beneath the silken material.
"Abram." Too precious to risk? He'd said it as though he meant it, as though she were actually precious to him.
And she couldn't let herself believe that. She and Abram had had far too many confrontations over the years to ever believe she was anything more than an irritant, and for the moment, perhaps, a desire.
Focusing on the intimate touch, on the pleasure, was something she eagerly embraced now as she fought to distance herself from the information he had just given her. The knowledge that a terrorist had somehow focused on her.
The question of why raged in the back of her mind as she deliberately forced herself to focus on the desire instead.
She didn't think she wanted to know