But that was only his secondary worry. His main one was focused on Jenan. The foreboding that had been building inside him had crystallized during Richard’s visit.
At first, he hadn’t thought a day would come when he’d regret not being honest about why he’d wanted an heir.
But if he put the rest of his plan into action, she’d realize his early purpose. He had no doubt the totally honest woman that she was, who’d accepted his declared reasons in good faith, would feel betrayed and used. Now he didn’t know how to rectify his initial mistake.
His only hope was that she wasn’t already pregnant.
Which was probably too much to hope for after their weeks of unprotected lovemaking.
But she must have been checking regularly, and if she’d said nothing, it was possible she wasn’t yet pregnant. If she wasn’t, he didn’t want her to get pregnant anymore. He didn’t want a child to complicate matters between them more than they already were, to make her more prone to being vulnerable and inconsolable when the truth came out.
But he wouldn’t know where to go from here until he asked her, knew for certain if she was or wasn’t pregnant.
Coming to that conclusion, he closed his eyes again and did something he’d never done before.
He prayed. To whatever was out there and might listen. He prayed that she wasn’t pregnant, that he’d be granted a second chance to make this right.
* * *
Jen watched Numair prowling toward her in the mirror as she brushed her hair in long, leisurely strokes, imagining herself stroking his magnificent body.
Not that she needed imagining. He’d given her absolute freedom to do whatever she wished to him and she’d been losing her mind all over him, doing everything she’d ever dreamed of with that body of his. And he’d been doing everything she’d known about, and many, many things she hadn’t known about, with hers. To both their complete and supreme ecstasy.
He now came to tower over her from behind, his eyes flaring and subsiding like glowing emeralds, snaring her eyes in their reflection. In her mind she only saw a sequence of events that had happened so many times during the past six delirious weeks. Numair picking her up, making her feel weightless, thrilling her yet again with all the power this man of hers possessed. And how he used it all to worship and pleasure her!
Then his hands descended on her shoulders, and she shuddered in anticipation, though she knew she shouldn’t be inviting another session of passion. She’d told her father she’d be back in the palace in an hour to give him proof Zafrana’s debts, and his mess, had been wiped clean. Thanks to Numair.
But surely her father could wait a few hours longer...
“Have you...checked?”
Numair’s quiet question felt like a slap of icy water across her heated body and fantasies.
There wasn’t any use wondering what he was asking about. His meaning was totally clear. And her instant mortification had an equally known origin.
For she hadn’t checked.
She’d been avoiding doing so. She hadn’t wanted to make sure if she was pregnant, even now that her period was late. He might have insisted that wanting her had come first, and still did, but she feared that becoming pregnant would destroy their intimacy, not solidify it.
She also believed he’d insisted on marriage early on in order to give his heir the legitimacy she now suspected he’d never had. He’d always avoided talking much about his past, but she was now convinced the facts he made known were nothing but a fabrication, that he’d never had a family, and that his childhood had been too terrible to share.
She wanted to do anything at all to make it up to him, to give him everything he wanted and needed, yet she couldn’t bear that he’d marry her for any other reason but for her.
And there was another concern. Though he’d been deluging her in his passion and consideration, she still felt him holding back...so much. Not knowing what he was hiding of himself, of his past, she couldn’t chart the future.
That was why she dreaded changing the present. And her pregnancy would blow that up big-time.
Instead of saying she hadn’t checked, she said, “There’s nothing yet.”
And it was as if a dagger drove into her heart.
That flare in his eyes. That convulsive squeeze of her shoulders. That shudder that emanated from his body and reverberated in her own.
He was relieved.
That she wasn’t pregnant.
The magnitude of his relief had almost rocked him off his feet. If he hadn’t grabbed her shoulders so hard, she thought he might have even slumped to his knees.
His reaction was so startling, so incongruous with everything she’d believed up till this point, about him and about what he wanted. She felt beyond shocked.