Darker Side of Desire & the Sheikh's Pregnant Prisoner(39)
On learning that she’d been scheduled on a privately chartered flight, Lauren had called it a huge wastage of resources. But as Farrah had pointed out with a lingering question in her eyes, the sheikh had decreed that she be sent off in style.
And no one could defy the mighty sheikh’s word.
Whose withdrawal had been absolute and chilling.
When her stomach grumbled, Lauren opened her energy bar and took a bite. After the elaborate, mouthwatering meals of the past week, the granola bar tasted foul in her mouth but she forced herself to chew.
“We’re ready to board you,” announced the flight attendant, carefully shying away his gaze from Lauren.
From gleaming dark wood paneling to supple wide leather seats sitting on priceless Persian rugs constituted the decor. A flat-screen plasma television faced the seats.
Despite the disparity in their lifestyles and cultures, there had been a connection between them from the first moment. A connection that now had a permanent consequence…
Her throat felt thick with an emotion she refused to name.
A woman, dressed in traditional tunic and trousers with her hair concealed in a loose scarf, approached her, a glass of sparkling water in her hand. “Hello, Ms. Hamby,” she said deferentially. “I’m a qualified nurse, so please let me know if you feel faint.”
Had he informed his whole staff that she was incapable of looking after herself? “I’m a nurse too, so I would know,” she added a little sharply.
Sighing, Lauren peered through the window and saw the jagged outline of the capital city set against sprawling desert land in the distance. Turreted domes and spires stood out against the sky and she hungrily clutched the sight to herself.
“Aren’t you leaving?” she asked the woman.
“I accompany you to New York,” she said demurely, “and then, return to Behraat.”
Lauren set her glass on the table so fast that the cold water spilled on her fingers.
This was going too far. She’d decided to tolerate the jet because she didn’t want to draw Zafir’s attention by complaining about it. But she drew the line at wasting a qualified nurse’s time.
She had learned from Farrah that women qualified in the medical field were just not enough for the growing demand in the outlying villages of the city where families still refused to let the women see male doctors.
“Please ask whoever’s in charge to take me back to the commercial airport.”
“But the sheikh himself—”
“If he has a problem with this,” Lauren replied, as she stood up and grabbed her handbag, “he can come see me himself.”
The woman gasped.
“You have your wish, habeebti,” came the sudden, soft reply behind her.
Lauren whirled so fast that she was dizzy.
Zafir. The sheer force of his presence was like a blast of toe-curling heat. Her insides plummeted alarmingly.
“You’re also going to wish,” his tone was silky smooth, like velvet cloaking a knife’s edge as he dismissed the nurse with a flick of his head, “we had never met by the time I’m through with you.”
With that veiled threat, he threw a file at her. The contents scattered with a soft whisper that nevertheless felt like a thudding roar. As though even the flimsy paper didn’t dare disobey his command, a sheet flew toward her.
Goose bumps broke out on her skin. She didn’t need to read the paper to know what it said. The red file with her name in capital letters, the small insignia, the seal of the palace physician, was enough.
“Tongue-tied, Lauren?”
Now his voice rang with power, cold ferocity, absolute disgust. Her stomach churned fiercely, her heart racing far too fast and far too loud.
He knew. God, he knew, and he looked so angry. Why? Why was he so angry?
She picked up the papers from the floor, one by one, her movements slow and shaky, her thoughts in a whirl. Slowly, she stood up and faced him.
A white cotton tunic with a Nehru collar hung carelessly over his broad chest, dark hair on golden brown skin peeking through its opening. The very unassuming, casual way of his dressing only served to emphasize how easily he wore his power.
Molten heat uncoiled low in her belly, as instinctual as her breathing.
He gripped her elbow and pulled her toward him. “Explain that file.”
Was his fury because of the truth she had hidden or the fact that she had dared to? Was that a shadow of hurt beneath his anger?
Doubts piled upon her, weakening her. His nearness wrecked her balance, her mind, compelling little pinpricks of guilt.
No, it had been the hardest decision she’d ever made in her life.
She looked into the sharp planes of his aristocratic face, forced herself to keep her tone light—a herculean task with his gaze peeling layers off her. “It goes something like this. A man and a woman have fantastic, mind-blowing sex thinking they are protected by her pill, but the pill fails because the woman is on antibiotics, annndd…” she made a singsong sound, her throat drying up at the lick of molten fury in his gaze, turning the tawny irises to scorching flames “…a few weeks later, the woman is pregnant. Your basic biology in action.”
A curse fell from his mouth—something she had no hope of understanding except that it was nasty and aimed at her, his long fingers digging into her arm.
“Learn to curb that tongue of yours, ya habeebti, or I’ll put it to a more pleasurable activity next time.”
Something hot and twisty and unbearably achy gripped her lower belly, her cheeks burning up. Their gazes met and held, his meaning clear in the dark heat in it. “I’m not going to acknowledge that with a refusal.”
He laughed then and while it etched gorgeous grooves into his cheeks, it lacked any warmth. The luxurious cabin felt chilly. “You think I cannot command you to do my bidding, Lauren? All that lacked until now was intention on my behalf.”
“You’re trying to frighten me.”
“Try me then, habeebti. Try and see how far I can go when I’m pushed, when I’m denied what’s mine.”
She swallowed and took a deep breath. Angering him was not, had never been, her objective. “How did you find out? Did—”
“No, the dedicated doctor that she is, Farrah kept her silence and faces my wrath.”
Her heart sank to her toes. “I told her this had nothing to do with you, Zafir. Don’t punish her because you’re angry with me.”
“Worry about your own fate.”
Beating down the fear that swamped her, she tried to be rational. “I don’t understand your reaction, Zafir.”
“No? Then let me explain it to you. You found out that you were pregnant with my child, and decided to flee Behraat without a word.” He ran a shaky hand over his face, the starkness of the gesture contrasting sharply with the fury in his words. “And to think I was honoring your wish, that I was being respectful… How dare you hide something so important from me?”
Something so important. Was it?
Suddenly she had springboarded into a category that merited his precious time and attention? That more than anything pierced her, robbing her of her innate decency, turned her bloodthirsty. “Are you so sure that it is yours then, Zafir?”
An icy mask fell over his face, and he loosened his grip on her and thrust her back from him with infinite care. He studied her with a detached coldness that turned the blood in her veins into ice. “No, I don’t know that, do I?”
Plucking the phone from the wall, he barked a command to be connected to Farrah. Ordered a DNA test and slammed the handset into the wall without waiting for a response. It dangled by the cord, back and forth, the rubbery sound of it reverberating in the silence.
Lauren gripped her forehead, all fight deflating out of her. She had pushed him until the veneer of his civility was ripped at her feet. She had no one to blame except herself.
And she wondered, with an instinct she didn’t understand if she had hurt him with her callous words.
Her throat was like sandpaper when she spoke. “It is yours, Zafir.”
His back to her, he remained dangerously silent.
Despite all the disappointments she’d faced, she had never been a spiteful person. She hadn’t intended her departure as a malicious move. She simply refused to let her child endure the same uncertainty, the same gut-wrenching pain of learning that he or she didn’t feature highly in its parents’ life.
“It’s not possible to perform a DNA test so soon in the pregnancy,” she whispered. “I will get one done as soon as it is safe and send you the results.”
When he turned and looked down at her, she realized she was pathetic, imagining things that weren’t possible, still so weak where he was concerned.
Because there was no hurt in his gaze. A smile, if the cruel curve of his mouth could be called that, bared his teeth, the triumphant light in his stance letting butterflies loose into her stomach.
Cold calculation glinted in his gaze, as though he was devising ways to punish her and having fun while doing it. “You’re not going anywhere, not until you give birth to my child. After that, you can disappear into the sands of the desert for all I care.”
* * *
Zafir watched as Lauren paled, held his gaze defiantly, realized he was serious and then fell back into her seat with a soft thud.
Instinct and something else, something shameful and useless and weakening like honor maybe, something the great Rashid Al Masood had taught him when he had been a boy, kicked in, and he found himself shooting out of his seat to help her.