Darker Side of Desire & the Sheikh's Pregnant Prisoner(42)

Except he hadn’t played with her, despite the threats he had made. God, how much more twisted and perverse could she get about him?

The tightening of Farrah’s mouth was enough to confirm Lauren’s suspicions. “No one who has seen Zafir with you would assume anything, but…” Sighing, Farrah looked at her. “The Zafir I know would never take away a woman’s freedom. If you’d known Tariq, you would see how different Zafir is, especially, when it comes to women.”

But only she’d hidden an important truth from him.

Lauren slid down into the velvet recliner. Little niggles of doubt shaking her will lose.

Had she fallen into the very trap she had been intent on avoiding? Put herself first and not her child? Had she reacted only out of hurt and jealousy?

Had Zafir been right, after all?

Burying her head in her hands, she groaned. It had been wrong to take away his right to know.

She had to apologize, make him understand she had never meant to cut him out of the child’s life. She had to swallow her insecurities, move past her vulnerability when it came to him.

And accept that Zafir wanted to be a part of her child’s life. Much as she wished she never had to lay eyes on him ever again.

* * *

That evening, Lauren felt refreshed after a brisk walk in the lush private gardens, sealed off from the outer world by an eight-foot red brick wall.

Two guards always flanked her, even over the little distance she went. And she didn’t believe it was for protection as Farrah had tried to convince her, as if Lauren was of value to anyone.

More like surveillance, because His Royal Highness didn’t trust her.

She entered the sitting area and stilled.

Zafir was lounging on the velvet-lined couch, his head tilted back and his eyes closed.

She pulled the tall twin doors that weighed a ton with a vicious tug, intending to slam them but holding on to her frustration took more than she had.

Her heart beating noticeably faster at his mere presence, she studied him greedily. The setting sun behind him cast an orange glow that lovingly caressed the angles and planes of his face. His long legs sprawled out carelessly in front of him drawing her attention to the sinewy strength of his thighs. A white dress shirt, with gold cuff links and unbuttoned halfway emphasized that raw masculinity of his arms. The leanly muscled expanse of bronzed chest underneath sent tingles to places she’d rather not think about in his presence.

The more she saw Zafir in his natural element, the more she couldn’t believe that he’d been attracted to her in the first place.

She wasn’t plain-looking, she admitted that much. But he…he was magnificently masculine, starkly sensual, like the harshly beautiful elements of the very desert had come together to mold him. Even in that dormant state, a pulse of energy radiated from him.

“Are you quite done with your perusal, habeebti?”

Husky, low, his voice touched her skin like a charge of electricity. To occupy her hands, she unwound the silk scarf she had wrapped around her neck.

“I’ve been rendered mute that you remember my existence.”

Her hands not quite steady, she poured herself a glass of water.

The water slid down her throat coolly. She pressed the glass to her face and groaned, hoping he would put down the heat in her cheeks to the weather.

His gaze flew open and traveled over her with a thorough possessiveness that wound her up even tighter. Hands clasped behind his head, the action pulling his shirt tighter across his chest, the dark shadow of his skin was a visual feast.

“Farrah was right, you did miss me. If I had known you were so hungry for the sight of me, I would have come sooner.”

Her mouth fell open and she just stared, unable to even mumble a token retort. Even seething with the knowledge that he was turning her life upside down, she was starved for the sight of him.

She walked around the couch to the opposite side, needing the distance between them. Extremely conscious, she tugged the flimsy edge of her sheer yellow cotton blouse.

Which was absolutely the wrong thing to do, because his smoldering gaze moved slowly over her mouth to her throat and her chest.

He tilted forward suddenly with a contained violence. She jerked back instantly and the back of her knees hit the couch. “What are you walking around in?”

She remained resolutely mute.

“No snarky response?” he goaded, and she had a feeling he was looking for a fight. Or something else, a voice whispered, stretching her nerves unbearably tight. For all his smooth tone, there was an edge of something darker at play.

“I…was too hot,” she replied softly, striving to rid her voice of that mutinous tone. “The guards, they barely look at me, much as they’re equally fascinated and disgusted by what I represent within these palace walls.”

He leveled a look of pure disbelief at her. But she would behave like an adult if it killed her, she decided. “All of Behraat is fascinated with you right now, and plotting about how best to use you to damage me.”

“Am I in danger then?”

Hard and unrelenting, his gaze held hers. “Yes. But the only kind that would actually get to you is from me.”

“Even my love for this baby won’t make it tolerable to be confined to these palace walls for the rest of my life, Zafir. I need—”

“I don’t have any other role for you.” Which is why I walked out, his unsaid explanation fluttered in the silence between them.

There it was, the answer to the question that had plagued her since he had locked her up.

“I’m not asking for one.” Throat thick with something she couldn’t even name, she looked at her hands. “I wasn’t supposed to be in Behraat, I wasn’t supposed to know your real identity and I definitely wasn’t supposed to get pregnant, was I?”

“No, you were not.” The statement was matter-of-fact, no bitterness, no regret, no blame. She wished she had his flair for that acceptance.

“I had control over this attraction when you devoured me with those big eyes on that night in the ER. Or that minute the next morning when I kissed you at the end of your shift. Or the next night when I returned to your apartment after I dropped off Huma and you opened the door and invited me in. Or when I, even knowing what awaited me, came back to you again and again. Not now.”

“Easy for you to accept it, because nothing changes in your life.”

“Believe that if it helps you hate me.” His head fell back against the couch, and his eyes closed again. “Don’t drive that fruit knife into me while I rest. It will plunge Behraat into chaos.”

“I’ll control my murderous urges for now,” she quipped, noting the blue shadows under his eyes, the gaunt look to his features.

He was king of the palace and he wanted to rest here?

Sighing, she uncoiled her legs to move away from him.

Instantly, his hand shot out and clasped her wrist. Streaks of heat from his thumb on her veins. “No, stay.

“I like having you next to me, your heart beating rapidly, your nerves stretched to the hilt, your head saying no and your body saying yes, while you wonder whether I will touch you or not, kiss you or not. Whether this will be the day when you surrender your will to me.

“It relaxes me, unlike the myriad delights the palace offers.”

A gasp escaped her, half outraged, half laughing. “You’re a sadist.”

“Hmm.”

She settled back against the chaise, her hand trapped still in his.

“Maybe keeping a helpless, pregnant woman captive—” A bark of disbelieving laughter escaped him and it was a dart shot straight to her heart “—is haunting you at night and you can’t sleep?” Her hand reached out to push a lock of hair from his forehead.

Only when she saw her pale fingers against the backdrop of that high forehead did she realize what she was doing. Snatching it back, she fisted it in her lap. “You look awful.” And because she couldn’t bear for him to think she was concerned, she added, “Is the world not bowing and scraping enough to Your Highness?”

Uncomfortable silence lingered as he slowly opened his eyes. Studied her. She saw him hesitate and then sigh. A wealth of emotion reverberated in that soft exhale. “It’s more likely due to a couple of nights spent by my comatose father’s bed because the doctors think he might have moved a finger.”

Lauren finally identified the emotion radiating from him.

Grief.

He was grieving and he’d come to her. Somehow, Lauren couldn’t stop thinking they were connected, couldn’t stop her mind from jumping to a thousand different conclusions. Curiosity trampled her every effort to keep him at a distance, shattered the safety net of her hatred.

“Every couple of weeks, I’m told that consciousness is within his grasp. So I wait by his bedside to tell him that my brother, his firstborn, is dead, so that I can push him that last step to his death, and put both of us out of our misery.”

The pain in his voice gutted Lauren, the resignation in it so unlike the man she knew.

“I’m the man who ordered the death of his brother so that he can rule Behraat.”

Those words slammed into her. How easily she had buried her head in her own fears and insecurities, how egotistic to believe that she was the center of his world?

His father was in a coma, his brother recently dead…to take up the rule of Behraat in such a volatile climate, she couldn’t imagine what he was going through.