Darker Side of Desire & the Sheikh's Pregnant Prisoner(43)

“I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Hmm?” he said absentmindedly, his gaze lingering on her neck. She fought to sit still under the scrutiny.

“If his chopper hadn’t been caught in that desert sandstorm and led to his death, Tariq would have been captured and…executed. Under my order.

“If he were here, I would pick up a gun and shoot him again for what he did to Behraat, for what he did to…” He flexed his fingers as though he could feel the gun in his hand. “Do you still feel sorry for me?”

Guilt and grief reverberated in each word he spoke. She held on to his gaze steadily while her insides quivered. He didn’t want her sympathy, in fact, his words were tinged with warning.

She ran a hand over her tummy, more to distract him than to calm herself. “I’m actually wondering how I’d explain all this family history to the baby without sounding like we’re a couple of nutcases, y’know? Murdering father, untrustworthy mother…”

A light came on in those golden eyes, chasing away the shadows. His grin tugged at her. “We have annihilated any chance of normality the poor child had, yes?”

She laughed, the tightness in her chest loosening. They could hate each other all they wanted, but they shared a bond through this child. And it filled her with immense joy and sadness. “Definitely. But then normal is overrated, don’t you think?”

She loved it when she could laugh with him like this, when she could bring that warm light to his eyes.

“Is there anything I can do to help, Zafir?”

That gaze, amused and fiery, jerked to hers and she instantly wanted to snatch her words back. He turned his neck this way and that. “Work those magical fingers over my neck.”

The last time she had touched him for that so-called massage… Casablanca had been forgotten, their pizza had gotten cold…

The same knowledge glittered in his languorous gaze, stoked over her, a whisper of sinful promises and sensual delights. She ran a hand over her neck, feeling wound up pretty tight.

“Find yourself a damn masseuse, Zafir. Isn’t Behraat crawling with women ready to serve His Royal Highness?”

He grinned. His uncut hair falling over his forehead, he looked like a carefree rogue. But he wasn’t. The more she learned of him, the more she realized that New York had been a taste of the forbidden for both her and him.

“I did have two proposals of marriage this past week from the fathers of two beautiful, young, traditional Behraati girls. Every man’s dream.”

And just like that, any goodwill she had cultivated vanished, the very thought of Zafir with his bride scouring her in a place she desperately wanted to erase.

She leveled a breezy smile at him while she felt brittle inside. “They sound perfect for you, Zafir.

“Women ready to do your bidding without a word of protest, ready to please you in bed when you want to get laid, willing to fade into the background when you forget their existence,” she said bitchily, offering up a silent apology to the women in question, “why not take one of them up on their offer and let me be?”

He was next to her in two seconds, his rock-hard thigh wedged sinfully against hers.

She strove to hold herself still, but with his hand behind her, she had nowhere to go on the couch.

He pushed a lock of hair from her forehead, the simple touch evoking a fierce need within her. His breath caressed her lips, the scent of him, rich musk breathing under exotic sandalwood, drugged the very air she breathed.

“It would make life easy for me. But I don’t want any of them.” His hands kneaded the stiff muscles in her shoulders turning them into liquid mush. “I want you, the one I shouldn’t want. The High Council fears it right, I think.”

“What do they fear?”

“That somehow you have bewitched me.”

She closed her eyes to shut out the image of him, digging deep within herself to find the strength to fight. There was none.

Only memories lingered, memories that shifted and shaped themselves into coherence now. As though she needed to look through this lens to understand the full significance of her relationship with Zafir.

She caught his hand with hers, intending to push him away, instead, he linked his fingers with hers, the little hairs on his forearm rubbing against hers.

Her gaze drifted downward to the bulge in his trousers and she was on instant, incinerating fire. “You ignored me for three weeks. You’re stressed again now and you want sex. Just like in New York.” There it was, the common denominator. “So you decided to pay me a visit. Like I was a hooker who knows your special needs. Like you were a junkie and I your fix.”

A growl fell from his mouth. “You’re determined to cheapen yourself, aren’t you?”

She shrugged. “Calling it like I see it.”

Gripping her arms, he forced her to look at him. “Yes, every time, I received news about another atrocity committed by Tariq, every time I felt rage run feral in my veins, every time I thought I would die a little more inside if I didn’t seize Behraat from him, every time I thought I wouldn’t see my father again… I came to you…

“I came to you and I lost myself in you until my sanity was back, until I had control over myself again, until that powerless rage cleared.

“But it was not cheap.”

Hoarse and powerful, his words demolished her fragile defenses in one fell swoop. “Zafir,” she protested, sinking sinuously deep into his spell.

One long finger traced the seam of her lower lip, pressed it, sending fresh shivers spewing into her skin. He lifted her toward him until she sat astride him. The soft silk of his trousers or her cotton leggings were no barrier to the hard length of his arousal fitting so perfectly against her core.

She was like putty in his arms, her will nonexistent.

A whimper wrenched from her and he caught it with his mouth, his lean frame shuddering around her.

If he had used that honed body to seduce her, if he had used those skillful hands to wrench her response, she would have resisted him, somehow. But instead, his gaze blazing with such depth of hunger, he pulled her down to meet his mouth.

Jagged and desperate, his words were a lash against her senses. “Do not deny us this, Lauren…”

It was the closest he’d ever come to saying please and the most she would ever amount to in his life.

She turned away at the last second, need and agony twisted together into a rope that bound her to him.

He dragged his mouth against her throat, open and searing, infusing her skin with delirious need, whispering words she couldn’t understand. Sharp, spiraling pleasure forked through her lower belly.

Ripped of even a semblance of sanity or control, she moved up over him in an age-old instinct, rubbing the crease of her aching core against his hardness. One large hand stayed on her hip, kneading possessively while the other cupped her breast.

Wet heat from his roving mouth branded the skin at her neck, her nipple tightening boldly against his palm.

Shivering and shaking, she sank her fingers into his hair, draped herself over him like a clinging vine.

“Too long, I’ve needed this for too long, habeebti…”

Then he was whispering words of reverent praise into the valley of her breasts, his hands running over her arms in soothing strokes as if she was a filly he had to calm and then he was sinking his hands under her blouse, and his big, rough palm came to rest on her not-so-flat-anymore midriff…

And the world froze. Their gazes collided while their breaths huffed noisily around them.

Heavy and abrasive, the weight of his palm scorched her. “Your body is…” he sounded stunned as his gaze ate her up “…different already?”

Lauren jerked back so hard that she fell out of his lap, onto the floor. The edge of the coffee table hit the back of her head and she gasped as pain thudded through the back of her head and to the front.

And then she was scrambling away from him, so afraid that he would catch her, so afraid that she had no defense left. So afraid that he would want no more from her than sex, that he would never give more of himself to her, that one day, he would be done with her and walk away.

And to wonder why he had, it would become the vicious cycle of her life.

But there had been such longing in his gaze when he had gentled his hand on her abdomen, such a deep hunger in that unguarded moment.

It was like handing her a grenade in the middle of a war.

If she had to admit defeat, if she had to give in, she would make sure he paid a price, too.

Yes, something inside her roared.

Make him pay for your surrender.

* * *

His obsession with her was becoming dangerous, Zafir realized as he panted hard. The scent of her swirled around him like a net, ensnaring his senses, obliterating rationality.

Swollen and pink, her mouth was tempting enough to give his soul over. Her breasts fell and rose fast, her lithe body bristling with emotion.

She looked like a wild deer, cornered but defiant.

All he’d wanted was to bury himself in her willing body, escape the relentless fury, the powerless grief that continued to ravage him as he sat by his father.

All he’d wanted while the politics and power plays continued around him was her. Only this sensuous creature that pierced the loneliness, the only one who had seen the real him. And wanted him.

“Come back here, Lauren,” he said smoothly. “I want to confirm you’re not hurt,” he said, gritting his jaw when she stepped back again.