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Reaching her, he tucked one braid that kept falling out of its clip behind her ear. “Your hairstyle is... enchanting.”
Yana laughed, trying to cover up the heat she felt at his casual touch. “Only a dad can come up with such compliments for his five-year-old’s handiwork.”
His brows rose. “You let Zara do your hair?”
She nodded.
“Ouch. She gives me head massages and I know how painful those can be. Somehow, I managed to talk her down to once a month.” He watched her with that intense scrutiny. “I finally told her that her poor little papa will lose all his hair if she continued in that vein.”
Instantly, her gaze moved to his thick, wavy hair. The gray at his temples had only added to the appeal of the blasted man. Her fingers itched to sink in and tug and stroke, until he was putty in her hands. “I see no risk of that.”
“You look...delicious enough to eat.” He took her hand in his. A casual touch but his fingers were rough against her soft ones, and Yana felt the contact deep in her core. “No, not just eat. Devour.”
She stumbled, a helpless longing slithering through her, as if he was a sneaky snake charmer determined to wrest out all her secrets. His palm at the small of her bare back was a warm, steady weight.
He hesitated, just for a second, and then took a look at her bare back. Yana smiled. She knew she looked good most days in most outfits. Her beauty had long ago lost any personal meaning to her, if there ever had been any. It had become a tool—even a weapon to wield if Diana had had her way, a means to earn a livelihood, something to oil and feed and care for so that it ran smoothly. For a long time she’d even felt a strange dispassionate apathy toward it because she’d thought it had led her to make bad decisions, starting with this very man.
But hating oneself—one’s body, one’s mind, one’s weaknesses—she’d learned was one of those toxic traits that hollowed one out. She’d always thought her little sister Nush was the most perfect, achingly loveliest, woman and yet Nush, she knew, thought she looked odd and weird, just because she didn’t conform to some arbitrary beauty standard.
So Yana had learned to at least respect her body, her looks, her face, even if what she showed the world wasn’t exactly what she felt inside. But tonight... Tonight sheer pleasure fluttered and tightened low in her belly when Nasir looked at her. She reveled in the soft grunt of his exhale, in the stunned expression that had come over his face when she’d walked in, in the way his long fingers danced tantalizingly over her bare back.
Already, she felt drunk on pleasure.
“That dress should come with a warning label.” There it was again—a husky timbre to his voice that he made no effort to hide.
“It was our unanimous choice for tonight. Huma’s and mine.”
“No wonder she was so eager to dress you. You look sublime in it.”
“All these compliments... You make me wonder what the price is going to be.” Instantly, she wished she could take back the words. She wanted to enjoy tonight, didn’t want to dilute it with acrimony and accusations about the past. And yet, she was the one who’d gone there.
“There is a price,” he said with the smoothness that made her feel like a gauche idiot. Her temper had always gotten the better of her. And she’d never been more aware of the fact than when she was with him, enveloped in his cool control and stoic rationale. “I wish for you to simply enjoy the evening.”
Shocked, she darted a look at him. Found him staring back at her. Swallowing, she nodded. Something in her responded to his offer of truce. “I’ll try. Believe it or not, the last couple of years haven’t left me a lot of time or energy for living in the moment, or any kind of enjoyment, for that matter.”
She wanted to smack her forehead with the heel of her hand. Apparently, she couldn’t do artificial banter. Either she went too far with her anger or too deep with her confidences.
His fingers tightened over hers. “Come, let me introduce you to this rowdy crowd. Stick to me, and you’ll be safe.”
When he patted her on the back of her hand, it made her giggle.
His gaze dipped to her mouth, an eager frenzy to it, as if he wanted to taste her smile. “What is so funny?”
“You? Rowdy crowd?” She taunted him, even as she wondered exactly how he would introduce her.
A new swarm of butterflies took flight in her tummy. Who would he say she was? Zara’s extra nanny? His ex-wife’s BFF? His problematic, once-upon-a-time stepsister he couldn’t wait to be rid of? His employee? Or a woman forever in his debt?
Her nerves jangled as he nudged her toward the grand table in the center of the vast room. As if he had beckoned them, his friends moved up from their various lounging positions across the room.
He didn’t let go of her hand or loosen his grip around her waist. If she wasn’t so nervous at the prospect of meeting his intimate friends, she’d have called his hold of her possessive.
“This is Yana, a close family friend. She’s doing me an enormous favor by helping Zara settle down here after the last year.”
A close family friend...
She liked the sound of that less than she should. Actually, she loathed it for how...sensible and correct it sounded. How it hovered in the space between them—a label, a barrier, the drawing of a line that shouldn’t be crossed. And every inch of her rebelled at that boundary and she wondered if she’d ever be cured of this madness. Of wanting to be more to a man who’d never really seen her as a woman.
CHAPTER NINE
