She made him want to be a better man, to risk things he didn’t possess while his duty chained him, forever weighed on his soul. She made him wonder and speculate about, for the first time, life outside of being the sheikh’s favorite orphan, beyond Rashid’s son, beyond Behraat even.
She made him want to reach for the impossible.
“I need your fidelity, Zafir. I’ll face anything if you—”
His breath shuddered out of him. This was a promise he could give and keep with no effort. He wanted no other woman like he wanted her. Once they were married, he would have Behraat, he would have the woman he wanted with an insanity and he would have his child.
For once in his life, he would have everything he could ever want. As long as he could forget that it was all built on a very small lie.
“I have not touched another woman since I came to your apartment that night, Lauren. And I will not touch another ever again.” He didn’t like that she needed his reassurance in it. That she didn’t know what kind of man he was.
But like she had rightly said, he hadn’t let her know him.
He saw the relief in her gaze and traced her cheeks with his knuckles.
A warm smile curved her lush mouth. Stepping onto her toes, she anchored herself on his shoulders and pressed her mouth to his stubbled cheek. The effect of that soft mouth was instantaneous—a searing brand.
Her words whispered at his ear felt like both a blessing and a curse, a vow that he felt to his very soul. “Then yes. I’ll marry you, Zafir.” She smiled against his cheek. “And I’ll try, to the best of my ability, to be an…interesting wife.”
Laughter bubbled up out of his chest. His hands sunk into her hair, he turned her to him.
The minx was laughing. Tightening his fingers, he buried his mouth in her neck and licked the fluttering pulse. Just the way that drove her crazy.
She smelled like sun and desert and warmth and desire, all rolled into one.
Too weak to resist, he pulled her to him until every inch of her thrummed against him. Hard and insistent, his erection pressed against her belly. “I see that you’re not promising to be a biddable wife.”
Her low gasp, the way her hands sank into his hair, his control barely held on. “That would be a lie, wouldn’t it? We both know I won’t be a good little wife. And I’d hate to start our marriage with lies.”
He jerked up and released her. Her smile dimmed and he shuttered his expression.
With light movements, he touched her lips, pressed a quick kiss to her cheek and wished her good-night.
He’d almost stepped out when she called his name.
A frown tied her brow and wariness clouded her dark eyes. And in that moment, Zafir knew he was taking a momentous step, one he could never erase. A strange kind of weight settled on his chest.
“You’re leaving?”
“I promised myself I would never make you feel cheap ever again. That means staying out of your bed until you’re my wife and I have every right under the desert sun to be there.”
He left without waiting for her response. Little time, he had very little time to get over this strange anxiety in his gut.
Little time to indulge in the foolish notion that he was committing a wrong.
He was marrying a woman carrying his child and bringing his country together again. He should be celebrating with a primal roar.
CHAPTER NINE
A MERE TWO weeks later, in which she saw her fiancé one single time for the space of one measly hour, Lauren Hamby married Zafir ibn Rashid Al Masood, the High Sheikh of Behraat in an outrageously extravagant but traditional ceremony in the great hall of the Behraati palace with guests ranging from distinguished state members from all over the world to stone-faced, bearded High Council members who wore their disapproval like a shield to any number of Behraatis, all of whom viewed her with a tangible curiosity.
The flowing, turquoise creation made of satiny silk that had been picked for her fell to her ankles in a traditional, not-hugging fit and hid her bump quite well. For which she would be forever grateful.
“The Sheikh of Behraat, Lauren? What about your scorn for a life that’s only about ambition and power? In the face of that lifestyle, you’ve forgotten your petty complaints?” her mother had said over the phone, throwing Lauren’s old words back in her face.
“It’s not like that, Mom,” she had said, for her own benefit as much as her mother’s.
Then she heard the muted whisper of her father’s voice and then her mother was saying, “Wait, he’s marrying you because you got pregnant? Did you get the nikah contract checked out by a lawyer, Lauren? If he marries another woman later, because, believe me, these fantastic cross-cultural marriages burn out in a blaze as soon as the lust dies down…and their council, whatever it’s called in Behraat, will want a Behraati sheikha, what does your child get? If he’s a boy, is he going to be named heir?” She had continued in that vein while Lauren had felt nauseous.
Nothing about what her feelings for Zafir were or his for her, if he treated her well or if Lauren wanted her mom by her side for the first time in years.
Of course, they were too busy on diplomatic assignment to attend the wedding even though she told them of Zafir’s offer to fly them back and forth within days in his private jet. And even after years of hardening herself against their disinterest, it still hurt that when the wedding organizer inquired about her family and friends attending, Lauren had nothing to say.
It had been the same evening that she had seen him in the ensuing two weeks. And he had brought the very contract that her mother had gone on and on about, for her to sign.
Too stunned to string two words together, she had stared at him. And he had replied that it was a tradition.
Once the lawyer had begun explaining what it entailed—allowance money, enough for Lauren and three generations after her to live quite comfortably—and she had gotten over her shock, she had abruptly stopped him and requested that he leave.
Zafir, who’d been sitting in a corner of the room, his attention on the tablet in his hand, had jerked his head up, his gaze pinning her to the spot.
“You’re not well?”
At her silence, he had walked to her. Tension had tightened the skin over his cheekbones. “Lauren?”
She had no idea why she’d mentioned it at all. Only that it had been eating away at her since her conversation with her mother.
Only that there was this infinitesimal, gnawing ache in the pit of her stomach every time she found herself alone. Nerves, she had told herself. The very landscape of her life was changing, on top of the usual pregnancy hormones, Farrah had said when she had betrayed her worries.
“My mother asked if we were including anything about custody and such stuff…in the contract,” she had said, her heart in her throat.
Sunlight filtered in through the high, vaulted ceilings, the stained glass puncturing it into a myriad of colors. And yet, Zafir was like the cold frost in the middle of it. “What other such stuff?”
Perfectly courteous his question might have been but there had been such a dangerous, almost forbidding quality to his gaze then. A hardness that had forcefully reminded her of how ruthless he could be when he set his mind to it. As if the seductive, easy charm he had worn that day in the desert had been a mask.
As if she had suddenly morphed into that stranger who was only good for one thing again in his life.
“I don’t know,” she had mumbled, her own words leaving a bad taste in her mouth. “Stuff like what would happen to my…” A muscle tightened in his cheek, she splayed a hand on her belly, seeking reassurance from the tiny life inside her, “—our child if you married again and had children by another woman. About where we would live and…”
“Are you saying you need these…” his mouth curled with disgust, “clauses included in the contract? That you wish to discuss such…things?”
Distant and distrustful, this version of Zafir made her feel as if she didn’t know him at all, as if she was, once again, risking everything for this man. There was nothing of the man who had asked her so tenderly to marry him.
But she was the one who had started the…horrible discussion.
“I…just…”
The tension in the room became so thick that she couldn’t even breathe, couldn’t even get her thoughts to cohere. Couldn’t understand why she was pushing this when it hurt her just as much as it disgusted him.
Though he stood close enough now to touch her, he very carefully didn’t, which was a lash enough, because, even in anger, he’d always touched her. “If you require these things written in a contract, then there is—”
“No,” she had finally said, finding the very thought of him with another woman bile-inducing. “I want trust. I want respect. I…hate thinking about it like this.”
The hardness had relented in his gaze. “I’ll not begin it by putting threatening terms and conditional clauses, with the assumption that it will fail. I intend for this marriage to last forever. This is the only time we will talk about such things, Lauren. Do you understand?”
Tears that had threatened all week had finally spilled over onto her cheeks.
Relief, shame, fear—too many emotions squeezed her chest tight. But she met his gaze square. “Yes. But if your council doesn’t accept me and they force you to marry a Behraati girl…”