“No, I don’t.” His stare was clear and hard.
She felt it then. The sizzling connection coursing between them. A connection of heat and blood. A connection of destiny. It hadn’t disappeared or lost any of its intensity. Alex was acutely aware of him as a man, and knew he still felt the same brilliant attraction to her. But this time there was so much more. And he knew it, too. She lifted her hand.
He moved away. “She was searching your room. What was she looking for?”
Alex was disappointed. Her palm fell to her side. “I don’t know.”
“I don’t trust her,” Blackwell said.
“Neither do I.” Alex wet her lips. It was late, the night dark and silent, and she and Xavier were alone—for the first time since he had returned. Possibilities filled Alex’s head. They had been separated for almost a year. But this night could be theirs.
“Why?” he asked.
She forced aside the overwhelming urge to lose herself in his arms. “She hates me. She has already threatened to find out what I am hiding, to expose me to Jebal. She wants to destroy me.”
Blackwell regarded her with his diamond-hard black gaze. “And what are you hiding, Alexandra?”
She did not reply. She forgot about the intimacy of the moment. Her mind raced.
“Let us start at the beginning.” His fists found his waist. “We all know you were never married to a British diplomat named Thornton. Why did you lie?”
Alex sat down. “When they brought me here, a woman examined me. Jebal knew I wasn’t a virgin. Given that fact, I had to think of a way to keep him out of my bed. Pretending that I was newly widowed and grieving seemed perfect. He gave me a year to mourn.”
“That was clever,” Blackwell agreed. Then he surprised her by asking, “Who was he? Your lover?”
Alex told him about Todd. She told him the truth, except for the fact that her love affair had taken place 192 years in the future.
“I’m Sorry,” Blackwell said. Very softly.
Alex was breathless, her gaze on his face. “It doesn’t matter anymore,” she finally said, slowly rising to her feet. She moved toward him. Aware that he tensed.
But this time he did not move away. Alex halted in front of him and laid her hands on his hard, bare chest. He shuddered, his eyes widening slightly. She relished the feel of his skin, stretched tightly over impossibly hard muscle. “Xavier,” she whispered. “How I have missed you.”
He reached up and caught her wrists. Emotion and desire surging forth so hotly, so brightly, so powerfully inside of her that Alex’s knees buckled; she could barely stand up. “Why? Why have you missed me?” he demanded.
“You must know by now.”
His gaze roamed her face. “What we have shared, it was only a physical act, nothing more.”
Had he thrown ice water in her face, he couldn’t have shocked her more. “That’s not true!” she cried.
“It is true.” He released her wrists and stalked away from her. Not facing her, he said, “How are my men?”
Alex couldn’t believe that he did not feel any love for her. That his interest was only in passion, in sex. The night they had sabotaged thePearltogether, he had protected her instead of exposing her and destroying her. She stared at his back. He was denying it. Perhaps even to himself. He had to be in love with her. Either that or the past two years spent in captivity in Tripoli were an incredible travesty.
“My men?” he demanded, turning.
“They labor in the quarries,” she managed.
“How many live?”
She hesitated. “Five of your crew have died.”
A shadow crosed his face and filled his eyes. He slumped abruptly on the bed.
Alex moved swiftly to him, sitting beside him, hurting for him now, her own anxiety and indignation forgotten. Her arm pressed his shoulder, her hip his thigh. “Xavier, we must escape, you and I, immediately.”
He did not reply.
