Haunted for the Sheikh: A Royal Billionaire Romance Novel (Curves for Sheikhs Series Book 15)

by Annabelle Winters

  “Do you not see?” Hakeem’s mother had said just before she leaped to her death. “We are the demons! And this is hell! Is it not beautiful?”

  So is that the solution? Is that the secret? Is that the answer? Liv thought as the Sheikh twisted her hair in a knot as he pounded harder into her, his cock stretching the walls of her anal canal to their limit. Hakeem and I are no different from Antaraksha? Or rather, Antaraksha is no different from us except that it doesn’t have a body and so yearns to experience life from within us? And so perhaps the way out isn’t about finding the light in myself, but about finding the light in the demon!

  Her mind swirled as she tried to make sense of it all, but Liv couldn’t see her way through. Now the Sheikh was roaring behind her, and suddenly he came inside her, exploding in her depths, filling her with his heat, flooding her with everything he had.

  And then Liv let go. She couldn’t take it. She couldn’t handle it. She just collapsed face down on the floor, crying as she realized she was done. Exhausted. Finished. Wiped out. She’d been taken. She was owned. Possessed. They both were. It was over.

  It was over.

  23

  “Come over here,” she said to the Sheikh. She leaned against the cool walls of the house as the sun came up. She was naked on the floor, legs spread wide, tongue hanging out. They’d been at it all night and into the morning, but still it wasn’t enough. Liv was insatiable, and she called to Hakeem again as she began to finger herself because she simply couldn’t wait.

  “You want more?” he snarled from her left, and she turned and looked up at him. He was naked, bronze, and glistening, his long cock hanging down and still oozing from when he’d come in her mouth as the sun rose in the East. “I think perhaps you are the demon here, Miss Olivia.”

  “Why am I still Miss Olivia, by the way,” she said, crawling over to him and grasping his cock in her right hand, slowly jerking him back and forth as she brought his erection back and made him groan. “I have your kid. Your heir. Your bastard child. Are you gonna make it right or what?”

  “What are you talking about?” the Sheikh growled, grasping her head and pushing it down onto his cock, groaning again as she began to suck him. “Make it right . . . what does that mean?”

  Liv raised her left hand and stuck her ring finger out even as she sucked him harder. She couldn’t believe how crass she was being about it, but if the expression “devil may care” had any meaning, she was sure it applied now. She couldn’t think about anything but the most superficial of pleasures, the most urgent of needs. Sex. Security. That was pretty much it. Love? Whatever. She felt no love for anything and anyone. She just wanted to be fucked.

  “Fuck me,” she said, pulling back from his cock and slapping it twice as the Sheikh laughed and grabbed her by the hair. He tried to force his cock back into her mouth, but she closed her lips tight and shook her head. “Fuck me. I just sucked you off. Don’t be selfish.”

  “I can take you any way I want,” he snarled. “You cannot stop me and you know it. If I want you to suck me, you will suck me. If I want to come on your face, I will do so. If I want to—”

  “Are you going to talk all day or do something with that oversized piece of meat?” she teased, turning from him and going down on her knees, sticking her ass up and spreading in the most vulgar way. “Put it in me. Come on. Put it in me.”

  She closed her eyes and she saw it again, that vision of red and black wings, yellow claws that shone like gold, deep-set eyes that weren’t looking at her because they seemed to be looking from her. The sight didn’t even alarm her anymore. She’d seen it over and over in her orgasms all night, the beast reveling in the most carnal pleasures of the human body.

  Is this what possession is like, Liv wondered. Is this it? A simplistic entity using my body as a vehicle to experience pleasures unavailable to it in its natural form? It matched up with what her parents had told her years ago, that demons were one-dimensional creatures, fixated on some particular emotion or pattern, doomed to repeating that pattern for all eternity. Now that was hell, wasn’t it? Endlessly repeating the same cycle, again and again, over and over, in and out, back and forth.

  So what’s your pattern, Antaraksha, Liv thought as the Sheikh mounted her from behind and began to pump into her immediately, with all the fury of the beast. She smiled and lowered her head as she felt the dark energy surge in her. She could get used to this, she thought in a moment of madness. She could live with this. She could die with this. It was all the same. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered.

  What’s your pattern, your blueprint, your essence, she thought again as the Sheikh pounded into her from behind. The sacrifice of an innocent babe? That’s a bit stereotypical for a demon, ain’t it?

  Is it that stereotypical though, Liv wondered as she frowned and tried to remember her theology. The only real story about sacrificing a son was one of the oldest stories in the book: God asking Abraham to kill his son as a show of faith. That wasn’t Satan. No, Satan was the seducer, the flatterer, the imposter. Satan didn’t threaten anyone. He simply tempted you into choosing to accept him.

  Is that why I’m here, because I gave in to temptation? Liv wondered as she felt the Sheikh push into her. Immediately she was taken back to when they’d first met, in this very house. She’d put on her black skirt, made sure she took the stairs before him so he could stare at her ass. She was the temptation, wasn’t she! And so was he! The Sheikh’s money. His power. His good looks. Strong, healthy genes. They’d seduced each other, tempted each other, possessed each other. Shit, that was no different from the pattern of a demon, was it?!

  Liv’s mind swirled again, and nothing made sense anymore. She was certifiably insane, she was sure of it now. Perhaps there was a gas leak in this old house. Maybe it was swamp fumes from somewhere in the Carolina wilderness.

  “All right,” the Sheikh said as he finished inside her with a grunt, flexing his cock deep inside her vagina and shooting his load into her as he dug his fingers into her sides and buttocks. “I will marry you. Why not.”

  “Well, that’s romantic,” Liv said, going down on her elbows as she felt the Sheikh slide out of her.

  “I am technically down on my knees, you know,” he said, smacking her ass and licking her asshole. “What more can a woman want?”

  “Where’s my ring?” she said, turning around and placing her hands beneath her head as she looked up at him. It all felt so cold and meaningless that Liv couldn’t understand it. It was like she was no longer capable of love.

  “Where is my son?” said the Sheikh.

  “Safe from you,” she answered, and as she said it she felt a sharp twinge behind her eye, like someone had stuck a needle into her but from the inside.

  “I want him. Bring him to me and you will have your ring.”

  Liv sat up and frowned, looking directly at the Sheikh as she felt a chill run through her. It was the first real emotion she’d felt in hours. “Hakeem,” she said slowly. “Listen. We can’t trust ourselves with Caleb right now. There’s something happening, and perhaps it’s our imagination, but maybe . . . just maybe it isn’t.”

  The Sheikh laughed. Then suddenly his expression went blank, his green eyes went dead, and he leaped at her, his big hands closing around her throat so fast Liv almost passed out from shock.

  “Where is he?” the Sheikh asked, his eyes unblinking as he squeezed her throat. “Answer me before you die.”

  “Kill me. I don’t give a fuck. Kill me, and I’ll come back to haunt you forever. Go ahead and kill me!” she snarled even as she felt the pressure behind her eyes as the lack of oxygen made her dizzy.

  Suddenly the Sheikh let go, sitting back on his haunches and shrugging, his face a picture of calmness, as if he hadn’t just tried to murder the mother of his son, the woman he’d just casually agreed to marry.

  “It is no matter,” he s
aid. “It will take me about ten minutes to find out where you live, and I would bet my kingdom that my son will be right there.”

  “No!” Liv screeched as the Sheikh got up to leave. She threw herself at his legs, her weight causing his knees to buckle. “I’ll kill you first.”

  The Sheikh roared as he went down, bracing himself with his powerful arms and spinning around. He grabbed her by the hair and pulled her to him, hurling her to the floor and then crushing her with his weight. Liv tried to struggle but the Sheikh was too heavy, too strong, too in control. Then she closed her eyes and smiled, and when she saw the demon in her mind’s eye flap its black wings, she knew it was there, watching, waiting . . . waiting for her to ask for its power, to offer more of herself in exchange for more of it.

  She was about to do it, about to say yes, take all of me and give me your strength. Perhaps it was madness, perhaps it was stupidity. Or perhaps it was real.

  But then suddenly Liv calmed down, and she opened her eyes and gasped for air.

  “Hakeem,” she said, still gasping for air as she stared at the floorboards, felt the Sheikh’s weight on her back, pressing her naked breasts into the cool wood. “Hakeem, listen. Look. I’ll show him to you. You want to see your son? I’ll show him to you. Just let me up.”

  She felt the Sheikh’s breathing slow, and finally he rolled off her. “You have a picture?” he said, his voice strained but with an undertone of softness that told Liv that neither of them was completely lost, that there was still a way out, a way through.

  “Better than that,” Liv said, crawling to where the Sheikh had tossed her jeans. “Live feed. It’s amazing what you can do with nanny cams, the internet, and a smartphone these days. Here. Give me a sec.”

  She popped open the baby-monitor app connected to the cameras in her apartment and tapped a few times. Then she frowned as a chill came over her. “That’s strange,” she muttered. “Maybe they’re in the bathroom. I don’t have a camera in there. Let’s give it a minute.”

  They gave it a minute, two minutes, ten minutes. Finally Liv couldn’t wait any longer, and she stood in panic, her boobs bouncing as she furiously gathered whatever clothes she could find. “I should have my goddamn head examined for trusting Caleb with a woman I barely know! How could I have been so stupid! I was worried about some demon when I should have been worried about the stranger with my baby! Oh, God, if she’s done anything to him, if she’s—”

  “Who?” said the Sheikh, and when she looked at him she saw that Hakeem already had his pants on and was buttoning up his shirt furiously. His face was twisted in a mix of fear and rage—the expression of a father worried for his son. It would have made Liv’s heart burst with joy if she hadn’t been out of her mind with anxiety.

  “That woman!” Liv shrieked, hopping on one foot as she tried to get her other shoe on. “The one who was my chief attendant when I was at your palace a year ago! The one who I first told that I was pregnant. The one I sent to you with the message that I was carrying your child.”

  The Sheikh stopped buttoning his shirt and looked at her. Then he shook his head. “That cannot be. Her loyalty to me, you, and the House of Ramaan is unquestionable. She would die before she allowed anyone to harm the heir of Ramaan.”

  “Well, no one is quite themselves these days, least of all us, wouldn’t you agree?” Liv shot back, not sure why she was even bothering to argue.

  “So now she is possessed by this demon too?”

  “You were the one who brought up the whole demon possession crap in the first place!” Liv howled, almost throwing her thousand-dollar shoe at the Sheikh’s billion-dollar head.

  “Ah, so now it is crap. So all of us are just insane. Your parents. My mother. Myself. And you.”

  “I don’t know! What does it matter now anyway! There’s only one thing that matters, and that’s Caleb! Where would this witch take her?”

  The Sheikh’s jaw tightened, his brow crinkling up as if he was at a loss for answers. Liv checked for her car keys, and while doing it pulled her phone out again just in case the attendant and Caleb really had been in the bathroom all this while and were now back in the living room. Please let that be the case, she thought, wondering if it counted as a prayer. Please let me see Caleb in his crib and the attendant reading a goddamn magazine by his side.

  But all the cameras showed no movement in any of the rooms, and Liv almost hurled the phone at the walls of that cursed house. Then suddenly she saw something strange at the corner of the screen. She zoomed in and saw that it was a foot. A woman’s foot. The attendant’s foot. It wasn’t moving.

  She felt the Sheikh behind her as she stared at the screen, her head spinning, her mind racing. Had the woman fainted? A heart attack? Suicide, like Hakeem’s mother?

  “Ya Allah,” Hakeem muttered from behind her as he looked at the phone from over her shoulder. “We must get there now. Send the police and ambulance there immediately—they will get there before us.”

  Slowly Liv shook her head as she saw it all so clearly she almost threw up. “It’s too late,” she whispered. “The woman is dead.” Then she turned to the Sheikh, her lips trembling as she looked up into his green eyes, the eyes he shared with his son, the most precious thing in her life. “And we don’t need to go anywhere. They are coming to us. They are coming here.”

  24

  “You are talking like you are crazy, woman! Who?! Who is coming here?!” the Sheikh roared as he stormed toward the door. But he stopped when he looked outside and realized he didn’t have a car. The only car outside was Liv’s red Mustang, and she had the keys. “Give me the car keys. Now.”

  “No,” she whispered, shaking her head, her eyes going wide as she backed away from him. “They’re coming here. I know it. They’re being drawn to this house, just like you were, just like we all were. It started here, and it ends here.”

  “You are bloody insane,” the Sheikh said, taking slow, deliberate steps towards her. “I am sorry I ever met you. Sorry I ever found this house. Sorry I ever . . .”

  “Sorry you ever fucked me? Sorry you ever knocked me up? Sorry you had a child with me?” Liv said, her brown eyes going wide, her red lips twisting in a smile.

  “What are you doing?” he said, trying to control the anger that was boiling up in him from a place that felt so dark, so dangerous, so absurd that he almost choked as he spoke. “What are we doing?! Our son is missing. The woman looking after him might be dead. And we are doing what . . . fighting?! Now give me the damned keys, woman! I command it!”

  “You command nothing, least of all me! You turned your back on me, on us, when you heard I was pregnant. What kind of a man does that? What kind of a king does that?”

  The Sheikh blinked as he felt her words hit him like a hammer. He stumbled backwards, the shock of the realization racking his powerful body, almost bringing him to his knees. Ya Allah, she was right, was she not? He’d wallowed in his own grief and confusion after his mother had killed herself, and in doing so had made a decision—without even really thinking about it—that had let the demon enter him via the doorway of guilt. Guilt in its worst form: The guilt of a man who turned his back on his family. There was no greater evil than a man who did not accept the responsibility of his woman and child, yes? That was the foundation of life in the flesh, was it not? Man, woman, and child. The holy trinity of life on Earth.

  He stumbled again, his eyelids fluttering like wings as he saw flashes of darkness mixed with splinters of light. What was happening? Was this the final stage of possession? Or was this the exorcism?! Perhaps it was neither. Perhaps it was just the final stages of him losing his mind!

  “What is happening to us, to me, to you,” he whispered, forcing his eyes open and reaching out for Liv. “Is this real? Is any of it real?”

  And then she was in his arms, sobbing like a child, her body pressed hard against his as she cried. He wa
s crying too, and he only realized it when he held her close, held her like she was his, his responsibility, his woman, his duty as a man.

  “I don’t know what’s real and what isn’t,” she said, looking up at him, tears rolling down her round cheeks. “All I know is that they believe it’s real, and so we have to believe it’s real too. Because they have our son, and they’re bringing him here. Bringing him to us.”

  “What are you talking about? Who?!” thundered the Sheikh.

  But Liv was shaking in his arms, her eyelids fluttering as she shook her head. “They’ve already killed their own son. Now they’re repeating the pattern. But they won’t kill Caleb themselves. They want us to do it! The demon needs us to do it! That’s the pattern they’re acting out. That’s why they’re going to bring him here!”

  Hakeem took a breath as he remembered what Liv had told him about her ex-boyfriend’s mysterious death in the woods. He gripped her shoulders and shook her as if trying to bring her back to her senses. “Liv. Listen to me. If you believe it is them, then we have to call the police! Who knows where they are taking Caleb, what they are doing with him, to him! What are their names? Where do they live? Ya Allah, speak!”

  “Ask them yourself,” said Liv, looking past him and at the front door. “Because they’re already here. And now we’re going to have to face our demons. We’re going to have to make our choices.”

  25

  “How is this even a choice?” the Sheikh growled, whipping around and seeing an older couple standing at the front door, a three-month old child in the woman’s arms. His son. “I will crush them and take my son back. It is the simplest choice a man can make. Here. I will show you how a man protects his child!”

  Hakeem tried to take a step forward, but he could not. Puzzled, he looked down at his feet, wondering why he’d suddenly lost control of his own body. How was that possible?