Carrying the Sheikh's Heir(36)

                He was angry. Or tormented. She wasn’t sure which, and it alarmed her. She sat up and wrapped her arms around her knees, trying to hide herself.

                “Thank you, Sheridan,” he said, his voice so courteous and calm. And cold. Sheridan shivered at the frost in his tone. He bent down a moment and then straightened, laying her nightgown and underwear on the bed at her feet. “Get dressed and I will escort you back to your room.”

                * * *

                Rashid was up at dawn. He’d tossed and turned for the past couple of hours in a bed that still smelled like the woman he’d shared it with. The corners of his mouth turned down in a frown as his stomach twisted with guilt.

                But why should that be? He enjoyed sex as well as the next man. He’d only ever loved one woman with his heart, but he’d loved many women in the physical way. He was not a monk and he hadn’t been celibate for the past five years. It had taken him over a year to take a woman to his bed again, but he’d done so.

                Sex with Sheridan Sloane was nothing out of the ordinary for him. And yet it was. Because she might be carrying his child, and though he’d been so focused and intent on her body, on tasting her and enjoying her, he hadn’t expected the gravity of that fact to hit him with such a jolt after he’d found his pleasure in her body.

                He’d bedded the woman who could be pregnant with his heir. A woman he didn’t love, but who he would have to take as his wife if she was.

                Still, he should be happy he’d finally released some of this pent-up tension. He was not. He was strangely restless. Keyed up.

                Ready to explore Sheridan’s creamy skin and secret recesses again and again.

                That was the part that unnerved him. The sex had been pretty spectacular, hot and exciting and intense, and he’d been utterly focused on it, lost in it.

                But then it was over and they’d lain there together, breathing hard, her heart throbbing against his own—and he’d wanted to escape. He didn’t understand how he could be so cold and unemotional one minute and so gutted the next.

                She’d gutted him. Sex with her had gotten into his head in a way that sex with other women did not—and he didn’t like it one bit. So he’d risen and gone to get her robe from the terrace while she dressed. When he’d come back, he’d handed it to her silently. It had been cold from being outdoors, but she’d put it on anyway and belted it tight.

                Then he’d escorted her back to her quarters because he hadn’t been certain she could find her way alone. She hadn’t spoken on the walk back down the corridors. He’d stopped in front of the door to the women’s quarters, vowing to himself to station a guard there at night in the future instead of outside the entrance to the private wing.

                There was another way to her rooms, through his own, but he’d refused to use it. It would be too easy to go through that entry again if he started now, so he simply didn’t.

                She’d hesitated at the door as if she wanted to say something to him, but he’d put his hands in her hair and held her face up for his kiss. To silence her. To end any awkwardness.

                When she’d been rubbery and clinging to him, when his body was beginning to respond with fresh heat that he knew would ignite into a fire at any moment, he’d let her go, striding away without another word.

                Her reaction had been a very resounding door slam. But it was for the best, really. He had too much to do, too many things to worry about, and no time to navigate the mire of repeatedly bedding a woman who might be carrying his heir. A woman who might soon be his wife.