The Billionaire's Innocent - Part 3

Billionaires who can look, but shouldn’t touch!

In Part Three of The Billionaire’s Innocent, Prince Zair can’t risk telling Nora the truth. Right now he needs Nora to believe he’s a monster, capable of the horrendous things she’s heard about. Even if it makes her hate him. Too many lives are at stake—including hers. He just has to pretend a little while longer and hope Nora will understand…

Caitlin Crews

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To Maisey and Katharine for being such wonderful companions on the Fifth Avenue/Forbidden journey! I couldn’t admire you both more!

And to Flo Nicoll, my wonderful editor, who took the mess I handed her and made it sing.

The Forbidden Series

Billionaires who can look, but shouldn’t touch!

The Billionaire’s Innocent

Part Three

Nora Grant thought she could trust Zair al Ruyi, thought that he was the same man she fell in love with when she was a teenager, but horrible questions keep popping up—all leading back to her best friend’s disappearance. Zair can’t risk telling Nora what he’s really up to, or how his half brother Azhil, the Sultan of Ruyi, might have been involved with Jason Treffen in a worldwide sex trafficking operation. Right now he needs Nora to believe he’s a monster, capable of the horrendous things she’s heard about. Even if it makes her hate him. Too many lives are at stake—including hers. He just has to pretend a little while longer and hope Nora will understand…

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

ZAIR AL RUYI wanted her to think the worst of him. So it shouldn’t have felt like a red-hot poker through the chest—like the worst kind of betrayal—that she did.

“Will we get to the truth this time?” he asked. He put the wineglass down and then leaned against the rail, shifting so he was closer to her.

Nora Grant, who had always believed the best of him. It stunned him to realize that he’d imagined she always would.

“I’m not the one who’s been concealing the truth,” Nora said, her voice thick, but she swayed toward him anyway, as though her body trusted him no matter what came out of her mouth. “I’ve told you everything. All you’ve done is talk about obedience and make me trail around after you like a dog on a leash.”

“Why did you come here, to Cannes? Into this grim little world?” he asked her, making no attempt to modify his tone. “What on earth would make you put yourself at risk like this?”

Her eyes glittered with emotion. “I told you—”

“Yes, of course.” He moved so he was trapping her at the rail, a hand on either side of her hips and his face too close to hers. He didn’t touch her. He didn’t need to touch her—not when he could see the fine little tremors that moved over her skin. Not when he could smell her perfume and the warm heat of her arousal beneath it. Not when he could see the way she melted toward him, then yanked herself back. “This epic friendship of yours, the likes of which the world has never seen before or since. I am fond indeed of my friends, Nora. And if I suspected they were caught up in something like this, I would contact the authorities. I would not prance into the middle of this cesspool with absolutely nothing to protect me.”

“That might not have been my smartest move,” she acknowledged. “But you don’t understand.”

“Tell me, then, what I need to know,” he encouraged her, but his voice was a dark thing and he could see it move through her and tangle inside her. He could see the misery and the longing transform her lovely face. “Tell me why.”

“Harlow is the best friend I’ve ever had,” she whispered. “Do you know what it’s like to meet someone and feel like they instantly become family? So much so that it’s inconceivable that they weren’t always there? She isn’t just a college friend, Zair. She’s like a sister to me.”

He held her gaze for a long moment and then slowly shook his head. Nora swallowed, hard.

“Try again,” he said. He saw unshed tears glimmer in her eyes, and she raised her hands up as if to push him away—but only held them there, in fists, and didn’t touch him. Her blue eyes filled with misery.

“It’s my fault,” she whispered, spitting out the words as if they were poisoned.

Zair didn’t question the impulse to gather her to him, pulling her into his arms and ignoring those fierce fists, hard against his chest. He didn’t question that thing in him that made him bring her close, made him bend down so her face was buried in his neck, so she could whisper all her guilt and panic and fear into something hard and strong like his shoulder, which could take it.

“My life is so hollow,” she told him, told that dark little pocket of space. She rested her forehead against him and her lips barely moved, but he heard her. He could be her confessional. He could give her absolution, if nothing else. “It’s a constant battle between expectations and pointlessness and none of it