For a moment an image of Lora flashed through the Sheikh’s mind, but he closed his eyes and willed it away. Slowly he felt his resolve firm itself within him, and he took long breaths as he considered his next move. He could never forgive Marissa. He could never love her. But he could marry her and make the right decision for his kingdom. He could get sex on the side as and when he needed. Perhaps he would even enjoy betraying Marissa, he thought as he felt a darkness move within him as if simply making the decision was changing him, twisting him, turning him into a different man.
As for love . . . ya Allah, it was perhaps the one luxury that a king had to give up. And who knew . . . maybe it was something that did not exist, a myth that the common people chose to believe just to make it through their days. Certainly Lora believed in some impossible fairytale of love and romance, and look at where it had landed her!
And then the Sheikh burst into laughter, a strange, hollow laugh that echoed off the dark walls of his empty bedroom, a bedroom that he knew would always be empty in a way once he married Marissa.
“Look at where we have all landed,” he said aloud, laughing at the sandstone walls. “Marissa, myself, Lora, and her ex-husband! How twisted is this? How can fate be such a joker, such a sadist, such a brutal mistress? Who out of all of us is truly happy right now? What went wrong three years ago?”
The Sheikh was still laughing as he went back to his bed and lay upon the sheets, his green eyes wide and wild, his mind swirling as he slipped into a waking dream. But this dream was not of voices from the past or scenes from three years ago. It was a dream of a child, a child with green eyes and brown hair, light brown skin and a beautiful smile. Her smile. Lora’s smile.
The Sheikh turned on his side as the dream overtook his senses, and soon he realized he was wide awake, his mind alert even though the image of that child stayed vivid and bright. Was he finally going insane? Was the disease that took his father’s life beginning to manifest itself by destroying his brain first?
For some reason he thought of Lora’s friend Carmen once again. That odd look in her sharp eyes, like she was hiding something. What could she be hiding, Amir thought. And why?
One thought led to another, and the Sheikh was taken back to that encounter with Lora. He’d come inside her, deep inside her, emptying himself into her depths. The instinct to finish inside her had been strong that night, almost animalistic. Animals know by instinct when the female is at peak fertility, do they not? So was it possible that the one encounter . . .
Ya Allah, of course it was possible, he realized as he sat up straight in bed. It only takes one encounter to create a child. It could happen the first time or the twentieth time—both scenarios have exactly the same probability of occurring!
So was it possible that Carmen suspected her friend might get pregnant from that one encounter? Certainly Amir knew that many close friends find that their cycles match up over time, and so Carmen would know if Lora was at peak fertility.
The Sheikh’s vision blurred as he was taken back to that moment three years ago when he found out Marissa had aborted their child without telling him. And now he was on his feet again, shaking his head. There was no way he would allow that to happen again. He had no idea what Lora would do if she was indeed pregnant, but he could not take the chance. He would not take the chance. Fate be damned, he was taking control.
A moment later he was on the phone to the United States. “Abdul Hameed? It is Sheikh Amir of Johaar. We met when you were Sheikh Nasser’s head of security. I understand you are running a private security outfit in the United States now. Yes? Good. I need you to check on something for me. Check on someone for me.”
22
“When was your last checkup?” the woman in scrubs asked as Lora shifted on the examination table and took a breath.
“You mean like a regular medical checkup? Or—”
The woman glanced at the form Lora had filled out in the waiting area of Planned Parenthood and then looked up. “Either. You had a child six months ago. So you should have had a post-delivery checkup recently. And you’re pregnant, so you should have—”
“OK, look, can we just get this done,” Lora said. “I thought the whole point of Planned Parenthood was that you don’t ask any questions and don’t pressure us!”
The woman turned bright red, concern flashing across her face as she looked toward the door like she was hoping someone else would come in and take over. She was young, with nine zits and not a wrinkle in sight.
Immediately Lora realized the pressure was coming from inside, from her own conflict. This poor girl had done nothing but ask perfectly reasonable, routine questions. Oh, God, was she doing the right thing?! Was it right to do this without telling the Sheikh? Was it right to do it at all?! Oh, God, she should just tell him, shouldn’t she?
But then what? What if he wanted nothing to do with her? What if he wanted everything to do with her? What if he suspected she’d gotten knocked up to trap him? What if he confirmed what she feared most of all: That she was just a whore looking for a payout?
Because that’s what you are, came the whisper from her overactive conscience. How dare you fantasize about living in a Palace, surrounded by attendants, breastfeeding two children from two different men, living a life of leisure and luxury! Gold-digger! Harlot! You haven’t earned that life, and so don’t you dare reach for it or you’ll pay the price! Maybe something horrible will happen to one of your children! Maybe something horrible will happen to you, or to Amir! And speaking of Amir, what makes you think he wants anything more from you than what he got that night? You couldn’t even keep a man like Mark interested for more than three years, could ya? Why the hell would a rich, handsome, billionaire Sheikh who’s got European Barbie-doll princesses spreading their legs for him want to keep coming home to you?! You’re used up. Spent. If you tell him about his child, maybe you get another child-support check every month. Whoop-de-doo! Two checks from two baby-daddies! What a princess you’ve turned out to be!
But what if he does find out about this, Lora thought as she watched the girl in scrubs mumble something about the doctor being on her way and leave the room. What if he finds out next month, next year, ten years from now? What if . . .
“OK stop!” she said aloud in the empty room. “You’ve gone over all this a hundred times. You haven’t answered Carmen’s calls and texts in a month, and she doesn’t know you’re pregnant for sure. She can have her theories, but she can’t know for sure unless I tell her. And since I haven’t told her, no one knows. I can get this done and it’ll be like it never happened. I can stop driving myself insane and move on with my life. Amir is certainly moving on with his, isn’t he?”
She thought back to the news articles she’d read about the rumors of Amir and Marissa getting back together. It made sense, she thought. A king should marry a real princess—not a delusional divorcee who dreams of being a princess. The decision is made, she told herself. It’s done. My decision, and his. Even if he knew, he’d probably be glad she was taking care of things quietly and not causing any drama for him and his new queen-to-be.
Lora had almost calmed herself down when she heard a sound at the window behind her. She was on the ground floor of the building, and she ignored it at first, thinking it must be someone parking a car outside or whatever. But the sound came again, and finally she turned and almost fell off the examination table when she saw two dark, burly men with beards climbing through the window like it was perfectly normal behavior at Planned Parenthood.
She opened her mouth to scream, but the bigger man grabbed her and clamped his massive paw over her nose and mouth. She bit down, feeling his flesh break between her teeth as he grunted in pain, his grip loosening but not enough for her to scream.
“Please do not resist, Miss Langhorne. It is not what you think,” he whispered, his accent heavy with a Middle-Eastern lilt. “Sheikh Amir has sent us.
He would like to provide some input before you make this decision.”
23
“So you’re just going to hold me prisoner until . . . until what?” Lora said to the two men standing in her living room and staring down at her.
The larger man looked at his watch and grunted. Then he examined his palm, where Lora had bitten him, glancing up at her and shaking his head, muttering something in Arabic as he did it.
“I’m sorry about that,” Lora said, blinking and looking over at Damascus for a moment. The boy was fast asleep. Perhaps he was used to drama by now.
“It is no matter. I cannot fault a woman for trying to defend herself. It is no matter.” He looked at his watch again. “The Sheikh will be here in three hours.”
“Three hours? Isn’t he like ten-thousand miles away?”
“Sheikh Amir was in London on business when we alerted him to the situation. He boarded his private jet immediately, instructing us to prevent the procedure from happening until he arrived.”
Lora took a breath, shaking her head as she let the facts settle. But it was hard to settle down when the adrenaline was pumping through her veins, an excitement that made it hard to sit still and wait. It took her a moment to realize that hell, she was excited! And it took another moment for her to admit that hell, she liked being excited like this!
But still the doubts about what Amir wanted swirled through her mind as she passed the time. She checked on the peacefully sleeping Damascus and offered the men something to eat. Then she excused herself and hurried to the bedroom, feverishly checking herself in the mirror, those doubts rising up again when she saw the dark circles under her eyes from the stress of the past few weeks. She wrinkled her nose up when she realized she’d been perspiring and her deodorant was wearing off.
“Shit,” she muttered as she whipped off her loose blue top and sniffed her armpits. “I should shower.” She glanced at the clock. She had plenty of time. She put her top back on and poked her head out into the living room to check on Damascus, but he was still asleep, safe in his crib. The two men were eating Cheetos and scrolling through their phones. They looked harmless suddenly, protective even—like the Sheikh was somehow already watching over her and her son.
Stop falling back into that Cinderella fantasy, she told herself as she quickly undressed and stepped into the shower. But as the warm water rolled down her heavy breasts and the soap lathered around her crotch and buttocks, Lora couldn’t help herself. Soon she was deep in her fantasy, the rising steam in the shower stall making it seem like she was allowed to let herself go a little, to perhaps dream her dream one last time, with no one looking, no one to judge her, not even herself.
Oh, God, what’s wrong with me, she wondered as she felt her fingers slide between her legs. Why am I having such a hard time with this? Wouldn’t any sane woman just get on the phone and call up the billionaire who got her pregnant and talk it out? What am I so afraid of? That he’ll reject me? Or that he won’t?!
She could feel her wetness begin to flow even as Carmen’s words came back to her: Every woman is part whore and part princess. The trick is to embrace both parts of your femininity, to balance them both . . . to find a man who’ll bring both those sides of you into balance.
Oh, God, that’s it, isn’t it, she thought as she touched her nipples, gasping as they hardened between her fingers. That kiss three years ago, the feelings I had after that, Mark cheating on me, my decision to travel back to Johaar, that night with the Sheikh . . . all of it is me trying to balance these two sides of my womanhood, isn’t it? I’ve always had the dream of that fairytale wedding, that beautiful, supportive marriage, that wholesome family life with kids and dogs and birthday parties and PTA meetings. But at the same time I’ve always tried to reject the other part of my womanhood, the part that wants to be loved, to be taken, to just be . . . fucked.
“Fucked like a whore,” she whispered in the privacy of her bathroom, sliding her fingers into her cunt as she shuddered, tears rolling down her cheeks as she felt herself open up. “Like a whore.”
“Not like a whore,” came the voice through the steam, and Lora whipped around in the cramped shower stall, crashing into his hard, naked body before she even realized what the hell was happening. “Like a queen. Like my queen.”
24
She didn’t ask any questions as she felt the Sheikh’s lips smother hers in the steam-filled shower stall of the little house on the outskirts of New Orleans, Louisiana. She didn’t ask why, when, who, what, which, or how. She was already too far gone, perhaps beside herself with emotion, maybe exhaustion, certainly arousal. She’d started the day at an abortion clinic, been abducted through the window, and was now naked in her bathroom with the Sheikh himself. It made complete sense. Of course it did.
“Those men,” she whispered, her modesty sticking its nose in and reminding her that there were still two strangers in her living room.
“They are gone,” growled the Sheikh as he kissed her neck. “And so is Damascus.”
“What?” she said, pulling away, her eyes wide.
The Sheikh grinned, his green eyes lighting up, his smile broad and beautiful, with perfect white teeth flashing through his dark red lips, those lips that had started all of this. “I had your friend Carmen meet me here and pick him up. It is just the two of us tonight. The Sheikh and his woman.” He paused, grasping her by her wet, matted hair and pulling closer, those green eyes sparkling as the hot water rained down on them. “A woman who cannot be trusted alone with my unborn child, it seems. A woman who will need to be watched constantly, around the clock, twenty-four hours a day.”
It took a moment for Lora to process it all: The two men sent away; Carmen summoned to be babysitter for the night; the Sheikh naked and hard, his fist in her hair, his cock pressing against her wet skin.
“Your child . . . Amir, I . . . I don’t think I would have. I mean, I’m not sure I would have been able to do it. I don’t know what I was thinking. I don’t even know who I am!”
“You are a woman carrying the heir of Johaar,” he whispered, turning her and pulling her into him, placing his hands on her belly and pressing gently as his cock pushed against her rear crack from behind.
“Is that why you want me? Because I’m carrying your child?” she whispered, moving against him as she felt his hands move up along the round of her belly, slowing cupping her breasts.
“No,” he growled as he gathered her heavy breasts in his hands and squeezed so hard she gasped out loud. “I wanted you from the moment I saw you in that yellow sundress, walking through my palace like you owned it. I want you for you, but the child is a very good excuse for me to come here and claim you, don’t you think?”
“Oh, so now our child is just a means to an end? You’re using our unborn baby to get to me? Despicable!” Lora muttered, smiling as she felt her nipples harden into tight points from the way he was pinching and pulling at them.
The Sheikh whipped her around again, pushing her up against the tiled wall of the shower and drawing close. His cock pressed against her mound as he stepped to her, and he smiled and shrugged. “I do not have a problem admitting my own selfishness, and I feel no shame in going after what I want.”
“Oh, and you’re implying that I do?”
“Of course. Shame is the reason for this ridiculous behavior. Shame is what took you to that abortion clinic today. Shame, guilt, and some ridiculous notion that you have done something wrong. That we have done something wrong!” He took a breath. “And I felt it too at first. Or at least I understood why you felt it, which is why I let you go. But I will not make that mistake again.”
Lora took a breath as she felt the Sheikh caress her warm, wet cheek and lean in for a kiss. “What if this is a mistake,” she said, blinking and breaking the eye contact.
“We are not a mistake,” the Sheikh whispered, cupping her face with his big hands
and making her look up at him. Then he ran his hands down along her body, his fingers tracing their way along her breasts, palms pressing against her belly. “This is not a mistake.”
Lora tilted her head back and laughed. “Of course it’s a mistake! Getting pregnant after one night together? It’s the definition of a mistake!”
The Sheikh grinned. “Then we need to start redefining some things for you, I think, Miss Lora Langhorne.”
“Oh, really. Like what?”
The Sheikh turned the shower off, and suddenly it was quiet, nothing but the haze of steam and the warmth of their bodies to fill her senses. “Like your definition of what it is to be a woman,” he said. Then, after a long pause, during which he looked her up and down in a way that made her tremble, he whispered. “What it is to be a queen. A princess. A whore.”
“What?” she gasped.
“That is it, isn’t it? Yes, Miss Lora the Librarian? It all makes sense now. All those years of burying your nose in books, reading fantasies and fabrications and stories written mostly by lonely, chauvinistic men with outdated ideas of what it means to be woman, what makes her honorable, and what makes her . . . not.”
Lora snorted. “OK, you’re telling me about chauvinistic men with outdated ideas? What the hell was that kiss three years ago? What the hell was that Sheikh’s Privilege nonsense?”
Privilege for the Sheikh: A Royal Billionaire Romance Novel (Curves for Sheikhs Series Book 12) Page 12
