Page 68 of Just a Bit Captivated

“Go,” Aiden croaked out louder.“This isn’t real. It’ll pass. I don’t need you. Stop ruining my life.”He wasn’t sure who he was trying to convince, but it seemed he sounded far more convincing than he felt.

Zain’s expression closed off.

He gave Aiden a long look before giving a clipped nod and turning away.

A horrible, gurgling noise tore from Aiden’s throat as he watched Zain go.His throat hurt, his heart hurt, his very soul hurt. He felt like an old man who had taken a beating.He wanted to run after Zain and beg him to stay, and damn the entire world.

His mother’s arms tightened around him.“Shh, darling,” she said, kissing his head.“You did the right thing, sweetie. You have closure now. You can forget him and move on.”

As Zain disappeared out of his sight, Aiden clung to his mom and wept.

Interlude III

This isn’t real. It’ll pass. I don’t need you.

Zain took a swig from his bottle of Scotch, staring unseeingly at the brightly illuminated city. It was nearly dawn already.

He felt bone-tired, but he knew that going to bed would be useless. He couldn’t sleep, and the demon of a cat wasn’t even the reason.

The hour was too early to be drinking.To be fair, there was no hour appropriate for drinking for any decent Muslim.

But then again, he wasn’t a decent Muslim, hadn’t been for years. In decades. There was already a place reserved for him in hell; Zain had made peace with it a long time ago. A decent Muslim wouldn’t spend a year in a sordid relationship with another man—or at least would feel guiltier about it. A decent Muslim would touch his own wife. A decent Muslim would be performing a dawn prayer right now instead of getting drunk.

A plaintive meow snapped him out of his grim thoughts. He glared at the cat rubbing against his ankle.

“Go away,” Zain bit off in English. He shouldn’t even be still using English for its sake. He should have thrown the cat out instead of bringing it with him when he had relocated to the city.

The cat didn’t obey, of course. It was Aiden’s fault. He’d spoiled it rotten, conditioning it to his constant touch and warmth. Of course it was now miserable.

Zain glared at the cat’s hazel eyes.“Go. Away. Or I’ll kick you.”

The cat rubbed against his ankle again, meowing.

“Stop being pathetic,” he told it harshly.“If he wanted you, he would have taken you with him when he left.”

He still remembered finding the blasted cat by a puddle of blood when he’d entered the house. His heart had about stopped before he registered that the blood—and the body—wasn’t Aiden’s. He remembered feeling profoundrelief,as if it was totally fine that all of his staff had been murdered as long as Aiden wasn’t one of the victims. It had been hard to care about his employees’ deaths compared to Aiden missing. The latter should have been trivial compared to the former, but it was the other way around for him.

Did that make him a monster?Probably.

Zain had no delusions about his morals. He’d done some things that didn’t skirt the boundaries of ethical conduct so much as trample all over them. But he’d never considered himself a bad man, either. Just a regular flawed human being. A regular kind of asshole, as Aiden would say, smiling at him fondly.

The toxic longing that twisted up his insides at the mere memory of Aiden’s warm smile made Zain grimace and bring the bottle back to his lips.

Damn it. It seemed he wasn’t drunk enough yet for the alcohol to dull this bullshit, this idiotic yearning he didn’t seem able to eradicate, no matter how many months it had been.

This isn’t real. It’ll pass. I don’t need you.

Zain threw the bottle away in disgust.

He watched dispassionately as the bottle fell until he could no longer see it from the penthouse. Hopefully he hadn’t killed someone with it.It would be funny—and somewhat ironic—if he ended up in jail for that, after behaving like a sodomite for a year.

Running a hand over his unshaven jaw, Zain stared blankly at the Dubai skyline.

This was useless.

Utterly useless.

This pathetic behavior wasn’t him. In fact, it was everything he despised. He was behaving little better than his father had around his mother’s death: he drank too much, he neglected his business, he obsessed over the loss of one person and neglected all the others in his life. Had he paid any attention to his family, Gadiel wouldn’t have run off with the fucking bodyguard Zain had hired to keep him in line. The only sins Zain hadn’t committed compared to his father were beating his sons and sleeping around. The former was impossible for lack of any sons. As for the latter, he couldn’t summon a flicker of interest in fucking someone who wasn’t Aiden, his own wife included.He didn’t want anyone other than Aiden.

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