“We will complete the pattern. Give the demon a child’s life, not its death!”
It had sounded so ridiculous at first, but now as the Sheikh pounded into her from behind Liv decided it made complete sense—or at least as much sense as anything else had over the past two years . . . or over her entire damned life! The child of two exorcists?! Her ex-boyfriend murdered by his own parents?! Knocked up by a Middle-Eastern king who’d disappeared on her twice and was now back just to knock her up again?!
She frowned as she heard the Sheikh mutter in Arabic from behind her, his fingers digging into the soft flesh of her ass as he rammed into her again and again. What was going to happen when he was done, she suddenly wondered? Was he going to fill her with his seed and disappear once again? Sure, he’d send her another check. Maybe buy her a house if she asked. Pay for the kids’ education and everything else too. But where would it leave her? Where did she want it to leave her? Did she want this man in her life, in her arms, in her heart?
Maybe that’s the final test, she thought as she felt the Sheikh seize up behind her, his cock flexing and expanding against her inner walls to the point where she almost gagged from how stretched she felt. In all of this, can you find love? Was there ever love? Will there ever be love? I love my Caleb and I’ll love any children I have. But will I ever love the father? Will he ever love me? Do either of us even care? Are we already “possessed” to the point where our bodies are simply vehicles to give the demon what it wants: Lust, pleasure, and children? Are we no better than animals?
The Sheikh roared as he exploded in her just as that final thought filled Liv with a dread that almost made her pass out, and suddenly her world went dark as she felt her own orgasm come wailing in like a runaway train with its headlights out. She could feel the Sheikh’s semen shoot against the darkest corners of her vagina, and as she fell flat on the carpet while Hakeem finished inside her, she knew this wasn’t over. There was more to come. Perhaps even the worst of it.
30
SEVERAL MONTHS LATER
“You’re going to lose the child,” the doctor said, shaking his head and raising his eyebrows as he looked down at her through his reading glasses. “The umbilical cord is wrapped around its neck, and it’s too early for a C-section. An abortion is the safest option.”
“Safest for whom?” Liv shot back, blinking furiously as she stared at the doctor. She wanted to kill him, came the thought out of nowhere. Kill him before he killed her child.
“For you, of course. There’s nothing we can do for the child, Ms. O’Reilly. It’s too early for a C-section. The chances of a baby this premature surviving are—”
“Let me worry about the chances. I’m not losing this child, and if you can’t figure this out, I’ll find a doctor who can.”
The doctor took a breath and leaned back in his leather chair. “Look,” he said, his tone so condescending it made Liv want to either throw up or bash his damned head in, “perhaps we should discuss this with the father as well. Let’s set up a time—”
“Time?! My child is being throttled in my womb and you want to set up a goddamn meeting?!”
The doctor’s eyes went wide for a moment and then he lowered his voice and smiled. “Well, you understand that in the womb the child isn’t breathing air. It gets oxygen through the amniotic fluid. It’s just that as it grows, the cord will tighten around its neck, restricting its brain development. And that could lead to—”
Liv just closed her eyes as the doctor droned on. The baby’s father? Suddenly she couldn’t even remember when she’d last seen Hakeem! And now she couldn’t understand what was happening in her life, whether she’d brought this on herself or whether she was being played by the Sheikh. Or a demon. Or God. Or the ghosts from a haunted house. Or this doctor that she hoped would die a horribly painful death.
What have I missed, she asked herself as she silently stood from her chair before the doctor had even finished his spiel. She turned her back on him as she heard him call her name: “Miss O’Reilly? Miss O’Reilly?”
Miss O’Reilly, she thought with a smile as she walked out the door, one hand on her pregnant belly, the other hand reaching for her phone. She checked her messages to see if the babysitter had called or texted while her phone was off. Nothing, and she sighed and put the phone away as she headed out to the parking lot.
And then she saw him. He was leaning against her red Mustang, arms folded across his massive chest, face twisted in a self-satisfied smile that sent a chill through Liv.
Oh, God, it’s him, she thought as she got closer and saw how smooth the Sheikh’s skin looked in the sun. He’s the demon! He’s the one who convinced me having another child was the answer, and now he’s going to take that child! What have I done?!
Her mind swirled as the past three years came rushing back to her in a burst of realization: When had all of this started? Who really owned that house before it landed on her list to sell? Why was this man stepping in and out of her life, appearing and disappearing like he didn’t really exist? Was there even a kingdom of Ramaan? Had she actually been there? Was all of it a dream? Was she going to open her eyes and find out that she was a paraplegic and her entire life was just an hallucination from the drugs?
“Sorry for being late,” the Sheikh said, tapping his oversized watch and raising an eyebrow. “But my watch stopped on the way, and I missed my flight.”
Liv took a breath as she stared into his eyes. “So your private jet took off without you? Your pilots aren’t very bright, are they?”
Hakeem shrugged. “So hard to find good help these days. What did the doctor say?”
Liv gritted her teeth as she felt a dizziness rush through her. “He said everything’s fine. Nothing to worry about. Everything’s just fine,” she said.
The Sheikh grinned. “Really? Because that is not what he told me on the phone less than thirty seconds ago. In fact he said the child was a lost cause, and his mother was endangering her own life by not agreeing to an abortion.”
“What?” said Liv, staring in shock at Hakeem. “He can’t tell you that! It’s confidential information! You have no right!”
“I am the child’s father,” said the Sheikh. “I am also your husband. I have every right.”
Now Liv was certain she was dreaming. “Sure. All right. This is a dream, and now I’m going to get into my red Mustang and drive away into the clouds. Seeya. Out of my way, please.”
The Sheikh moved so she could pull open her car door, and as she ducked down to get in, she heard him laugh.
But the laugh seemed to come from far away, and when she frowned and turned back toward him, the sun was gone and Liv realized she was back in that house, at the top of the stairs, swinging her ass as the Sheikh looked up at her from the empty living room.
She could feel her breath stop, feel time stop, feel her goddamn heart stop. Then her eyes flicked open and she saw the sun again. But it wasn’t the sun. It was a light. A bright light. The light of an operating room. She could see faces in surgical masks. Nurses, doctors, and a handsome face with concerned green eyes.
“Stay calm. Breathe, Liv! Breath, my love! Almost there! We are almost there!” came his voice through the chaos.
What.
The.
Hell.
Lost time, came the thought as she realized she was in an operating room, and they were delivering her child. Somehow she managed to raise her left hand, and she saw a ring on it the size of Jupiter, the diamond staring at her as if to remind her that she was most certainly dreaming.
Then she heard its cry, the cry of a child, new life, healthy new life.
And she just closed her eyes and passed out.
31
“I don’t understand,” Liv said, cradling her newborn and staring at the oversized computer screen. “That’s not real. That didn’t happen. How could that have
happened without me remembering any of it?!”
“I do not remember it either,” said the Sheikh, his own eyes riveted on the screen as the two of them watched the head cleric of Ramaan perform the nikaah ceremony in front of a crowd of thousands in the middle of a sunny Arabian afternoon.
“That’s us,” Liv said, squinting at the computer screen. “Getting married. And that’s Caleb sitting right there next to us. Hakeem, what in bloody hell is happening?!”
“Lost time,” said the Sheikh, glancing at his watch as if to check if it was still running. “Months of it, Liv. Like what I experienced for three days in that house. Except this lasted for months.”
“Months . . .” Liv said, glancing down at her newborn daughter who was gently suckling at her left breast. She touched her daughter’s soft cheek, ran her finger along the skin of her neck. “But the pregnancy, our child . . . that isn’t surprising. That doesn’t shock me. Not like this . . .”
The Sheikh drew close, and now Caleb was with them too, the four of them huddled together in the Presidential Suite of the Raleigh Hilton. “Do you actually remember the pregnancy? Or is it just that in whatever state we were in during that period of lost time you still knew you were pregnant?”
Liv closed her eyes and shook her head. Once more she glanced at her daughter. “Hakeem,” she said softly. “I had this dream . . . hallucination . . . vision—whatever you wanna call it—of that doctor saying Cassie was going to . . . would have to be . . .” Liv stopped short of saying the words, knowing Caleb was old enough to understand at least some of it. And she didn’t want Caleb to know that Mommy was crazy. Not yet, at least.
Hakeem just shook his head and drew even closer. “Cassie is fine. Caleb is fine.” Then he looked into her eyes and smiled. “And we are fine. You and me. Together. We have found our way back, Liv. Back to the Garden of Eden.”
Liv closed her eyes and shook her head. “I need to make sense of this,” she said through gritted teeth. “How do I make sense of it?”
“Depends what you mean by making sense of it,” said the Sheikh. “There is one option. We do not leave for Ramaan until tomorrow evening. Our attendants can watch the children tonight.”
Liv frowned again. “I don’t understand. Where are we going?”
“You know where,” said Hakeem, standing and summoning a female attendant. He said something to her in Arabic, and she bowed her head and waited.
“The house?” Liv said. “That house again? What answers are we going to find in that hellhole?”
Hakeem shrugged. “You have a better idea? One year of lost time. Now we are married with two children. Did we overcome whatever happened in that house or were we overtaken by it, possessed so completely that we are calmly living life as one family. Husband, wife, kids, and demon.”
“Demon,” repeated three-year-old Caleb, grinning at his father and then looking up at Liv, who glared at the Sheikh.
“All right. It’s bedtime, my little demon,” she said, forcing a big smile and planting an even bigger kiss on her son’s forehead. Then she waited for Cassie to finish feeding, and when she was done Liv carefully placed her in the crib and nodded to the attendant, who took her place by the child’s side.
Twenty minutes later Liv and the Sheikh were on the road. The sun had set, and by the time they pulled off the highway and onto the country road leading to the house it was full dark outside.
“Watch out!” Liv shouted as two big headlights suddenly appeared on the road in front of them.
The Sheikh cursed as he pulled the black Range Rover over to the side and waited for the truck to pass. It was a dump-truck, and it was the first of a train of several vehicles that included a bulldozer and a crane with what looked like a wrecking ball attached to its arm.
“What in Allah’s name . . .” the Sheikh muttered when there was finally enough of a break in traffic for him to pull back on the road and speed his way down toward the driveway of the house.
But the house was obscured in a cloud of dust, and the Sheikh pulled up beside a man in a hard-hat writing something on a clipboard. “What happened here?” he asked. “What is the meaning of this?”
The man glanced up from his clipboard and shrugged. “Termites, I guess. Critters had eaten their way through the goddamn foundation of the place. The owner decided to have it razed. We just got done. You two shouldn’t get any closer without a dust mask.”
“I am the owner and I will get as close as I want,” said the Sheikh, stepping out of the car and staring at the cloud of dust where the house had once stood. “Let me see that work order.”
The man hesitated, but the Sheikh spoke with such authority that the guy didn’t have a chance. He just nodded and handed over the clipboard. The Sheikh glanced over it and grunted, handing it back to the man and turning to Liv.
“Termites,” he said with a grin. “Termites.”
32
Liv looked down from the airplane window and gasped at the sight of the shining capital city of Ramaan, its domes and minarets sparkling like diamonds in the sun. It was hard to believe she’d lived here for nine months and didn’t remember any of it.
She hadn’t slept in over twenty-four hours. The Sheikh hadn’t either. How could they? It was like they’d awoken from a year-long slumber to find out they were married with two children!
And this is a problem how, Liv asked herself, almost giggling when she faced the fact that she was a queen, married to a king, with two beautiful, healthy babies in her arms. Holy shit, she’d just woken up from a nightmare to discover she was living a dream! She’d just stepped out of hell to find herself in heaven!
“So you think your plan worked?” she’d asked the Sheikh earlier in the flight when the kids were both asleep and the attendants weren’t close enough to overhear. “Your harebrained scheme of tricking the demon with a technicality, defeating it with semantics?”
“You want a child’s life, we will give you a child’s life,” the Sheikh said, raising an eyebrow and shaking his head. He glanced over at his sleeping daughter and shook his head again. “It is the only explanation, yes? After all, both of us emerged from that phase of lost time the moment Cassie was born. Her arrival released us from whatever had us in its grip. We are free.”
Liv had taken a breath and turned back to the window. She did feel free, but something still bothered her. It was only when she thought back to something else her parents had told her did she understand what it was:
“Once a person has been possessed, they will never truly be free of danger, even after a successful exorcism. The demon was never alive, and so it cannot be killed. It is simply evicted from the premises, but it waits in the shadows, watching for an opening, waiting for you to make a choice that gives it another chance at occupying the body and soul it enjoyed using during the possession. The demon is not bound by time, and so it can wait forever. Which means that you have to be extra careful about every choice, big or small. You have to always choose love, life, and joy. Even when things get tough. Especially when things get tough!”
Always choose love, life, and joy, Liv thought as she glanced over at the Sheikh and her sleeping children as the plane slowly descended toward her kingdom in the golden sands of Arabia. And you have to make those choices every day, every moment, at every juncture in your life. Even when things get tough. Especially when things get tough.
Hell, that’s marriage, ain’t it, Liv thought with a smile. It’s easy when you’re young and in love. But as time goes on there will be crises, there will be moments of doubt, there will be hard times, tough times. And those are the times when the demon sits up and watches closely, waiting for you to make a choice that gives it another shot. So no, we’ll never be free, but in a way that’s a beautiful thing, isn’t it? Now we know the stakes, and we know we control our world with our choices.
We can always tell if we’ve made the right c
hoices just by looking at the world we’ve created, the life we’ve created, the people around us, Liv thought as she glanced at her husband and her two children.
And hell, right now it seems like we’re on the right path.
God help us stay on it.
Always and forever.
∞
EPILOGUE
The demon stretched its red and gold wings and licked its gnarled snout with its long black tongue. It gazed down at its clawed feet, nails digging into the rubble of that old house. Its red eyes were sightless, its focus on that couple living their lives in the sunny kingdom of Ramaan. It knew they had won for now, but it would keep watch on them, just in case they slipped and gave it another chance to enter them, another chance to experience life in the flesh, enjoy the pleasures of life as a human.
They have no idea what they are, the demon thought as it spread its wings and glanced up at the heavens. They have no idea what they have. Not until they make the choice to step away from that beauty. Not until they lose their link with divinity.
And when they do, I will be there.
I will be there, just like I always have.
Just like I always will.
Happy Halloween, you little Gods, you carriers of the divine.
Happy Halloween . . . ;)
∞
THE FORBIDDEN SCENES
Are you a member of my Private List? You know, as hot as my novels are, the folks on my list get bonus scenes that are so hot, so secret, so forbidden that we couldn't possibly include them in the main novels available to the innocent, unsuspecting public!
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Haunted for the Sheikh: A Royal Billionaire Romance Novel (Curves for Sheikhs Series Book 15) Page 14
