“Could we stop talking about this now?”
“You’re acting very repressed,” Sayed said, censure in his tone.
Ding. Ding. Ding. Give that man a prize. “Because I don’t want to talk about this!”
“Last night’s transgressions cannot be ignored.”
Any fleeting sense of romance still lingering in her wary emotions from the night before dissipated then. “I don’t talk about sex.”
“Never?” Sayed’s disbelief was palpable.
“No.”
“But you are twenty-six and your mother died only recently.”
“So?” Where did he think she got her discomfort with the subject from?
“What about friends?” he pressed, like it mattered for some reason she could not fathom.
“I was a scholarship student surrounded by peers who drove Beemers and wore designer jewelry with their school uniforms. I had very few friends, none I would have talked about regarding such a taboo subject.”
Sayed was now looking at her strangely. “Sex is taboo?”
“Yes, which is why I wish we could stop talking about it right now.”
“But last night...”
“Alcohol is apparently very effective at lowering my inhibitions.”
“And in college?” Yusuf asked, still harping right along with his emir on the whole who-had-she-talked-about-sex-to thing.
“What part of ‘taboo subject’ are you not getting?” she demanded with asperity.
He shook his head, his expression pitying.
Which she would not accept. She’d never allowed anyone to pity her and Liyah wasn’t about to start now. “I have hardly been deprived.”
She’d had things a lot more important than sex, or a romantic relationship, to think about. Namely, making Hena proud and proving Liyah’s value as a student and later employee.
“Condoms are not infallible as birth control.” Yusuf’s frown was for both her and Sayed.
Sayed winced in acknowledgment and faced Liyah, his expression too serious. “The fact is, the nondisclosure agreement is the least of our worries right now, habibti.”
“Don’t call me that.” It brought the night before into today where it had no place.
Yusuf sighed and looked very tired all of a sudden. “Miss Amari, you have to face reality. You may well be pregnant with the next heir of Zeena Sahra.”
“No,” she cried before panic had her spinning back into the bathroom and locking the door behind her.
Nausea twisted her stomach, chills rushing up and down Liyah’s arms and legs. She could not be pregnant.
She was not her mother. Liyah had worked so hard to build a life her mother would be proud of. Hena Amari would be devastated by this turn of events.
The knowledge her mother was no longer around to witness Liyah’s fall from grace was no comfort.