And you know what, the Sheikh thought as he glanced at Grace in her naked beauty, brown hair like a gold halo in the sunbeams of the Oklahoma afternoon, this woman would never let me make that choice for her. I know it even though I do not know her favorite goddamn color!
So that is it, he thought in the sudden way all great leaders make the most monumental of decisions. I have decided. I am Sheikh and I will have it all. All but the marriage. She is coming with me, and that is all.
“Purple,” he blurted out.
“What?” she said.
“Your favorite color. It is purple.”
“Um, no. It’s actually green.”
The Sheikh shrugged and nodded. “You are right. We will need a little time to get to know each other. Nine months, shall we say? You can pack tonight, and we leave in the morning. But pack light. In three months you will not fit into these clothes. We will have maternity clothes woven by the royal tailors, and—”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” she said, like she was aghast and amused, perhaps even a bit afraid at how matter-of-factly the Sheikh issued his statements, like this was not a question, perhaps not even a conversation. “I have a job. A career. There’s still a couple of weeks of school left before we break for summer, but even after that I’ve got—”
“Your only job for the next nine months is to carry my child,” he grunted as her eyes went wide in shock.
“OK, this is why we cannot have a real conversation,” she sputtered, blinking with indignation. “I spend every day teaching young girls that their careers come first, their ambitions come first, their dreams and—”
“It is not your dream to have a child?” the Sheikh asked now, narrowing his green eyes as he held her gaze.
Gracie blinked hard and swallowed. “Well, no . . . I mean, that’s not what I meant. I mean, important dreams like careers, and ambitions, and—”
“So the dream to have a child is in your view a lower class of dream? If a girl says her most cherished dream is to bear children and be a wonderful mother, you will shut her down and say that the dream is unworthy of pursuing? That all other dreams must come before that?” The Sheikh sat up straight now, feeling a serene determination driving his voice. In truth he had never consciously deliberated on such things in much depth, but now that his mind was turning to the matters of babies and motherhood, parenting and fatherhood, the words seemed to flow with shocking ease.
Gracie blinked and looked down at her hands for a moment, and the Sheikh could see her jaw set tight. “I don’t want to talk about it,” she said quietly, looking up at him with a vaguely puzzled expression, like she was questioning something, perhaps answering something.
But he waited in silence, and finally she nodded, reaching out and playfully punching his rock-hard chest. “It’s complicated being a woman in today’s America,” she said softly, eyes darting left and right, like she was hoping no one would hear. “It’s important to remember that a woman is more than a goddamn womb with two boobs, and I try to teach that to my girls. I mean, sure, yeah, even though a lot of women have no interest in having kids, most women do at some point feel that need. And no, it’s certainly not a low class dream! I mean, if anything it’s a high . . . the highest . . . it’s . . . God, you’re so . . . so . . . what are you smiling at?!”
“Womb and two boobs.” the Sheikh said, raising an eyebrow.
Gracie turned red. “Well, yeah. What about it?”
The Sheikh shrugged. “Well, I have always been a buttocks man myself,” he said, drawing back and covering his face as she swiped at him. “OK, stop. Stop. You will break my nose! Stop, or I will pick up that ruler again. I am warning you for the last time, woman! Don’t make me pick up that ruler!”
She stopped now, and when the Sheikh lowered his hands he saw her sitting with her knees tucked under her, boobs hanging free, face going red with embarrassment as she glanced at that ruler and then back at the Sheikh.
“You’ll pick up that ruler again?” she said in a low whisper, slowly rising to her knees, spreading her legs, bending forward onto her elbows now. She arched her back down as the Sheikh felt his cock go to full-mast with painful urgency. Then she blinked and took a breath like she was steeling herself for what was coming, what she was bringing on herself, what she was asking for, begging for. “Will you really pick up that ruler again . . . Daddy?”
Ya Allah, the Sheikh thought as he leapt to his feet and grabbed that wooden ruler, standing back up and pacing around the proud American woman on her knees before him, buttocks raised for Daddy, eyes turned towards the King, pussy dripping for the Sheikh. It certainly does seem complicated to be a woman in today’s America!
And as he brought that paddle down hard for a solid first strike that echoed off the classroom walls, the Sheikh reminded himself that it was perhaps equally complicated being a King in today’s Arabia.
20
“It is not that complicated, Zareena. I am a king, and she will submit to my will. Eventually.”
Zareena raised an eyebrow and looked her husband up and down as the Sheikh paced through the living room of the hotel suite.
“Your will? Is that what you call it?” she asked. “Well, at least you have re-submitted to the custom of wearing pants in public buildings.”
The Sheikh frowned, his green eyes narrowing as his brown face darkened with color. “Ya Allah, Habib’s people . . . you have photographs?”
Zareena screeched with laughter, closing her eyes and waving him off. “Oh, please! I am just pushing you, Dhom! It is OK. It is all right. Have your fun. Enjoy her. Allah knows you deserve something with a woman who is not being paid to fuck you.”
The Sheikh’s jaw tightened at the remark, and he narrowed his eyes at Zareena before letting it pass. “She will be paid to carry my child—if you have your way, Zareena.”
“If we have our way, Dhom,” Zareena said, holding her voice steady.
“I have changed my mind, and my way is now different,” Dhom said, his steadiness matching hers as he stopped his pacing and stood with arms folded, looking down at where Zareena lounged on the blue sofa, her black hijab spread like dark wings across the cushion.
“Yes, you told me,” she said, looking away and then back up at him. “You will get this woman to agree to be your wife without a wedding, your spouse without marriage. She will live in the shadows like my faithful Alma. To the world she will be a hired surrogate who now just happens to live in her own chambers in the Royal Palace of Mizra. She will raise her child. Bear more children with you. We will all be one happy family. Ya Allah, some magical condition has somehow replaced your brain with one dumb penis and two clueless testicles. It is a medical miracle.”
“Mock me if you want, Zareena,” the Sheikh said, unmoved and unfazed. “But you do not know this woman like I do.”
“I know what it means to be a woman,” Zareena spat as she looked up at him. “And I will tell you that no woman—certainly not this woman—is going to agree to an arrangement like this.”
“You do not know that.”
“By God, Dhom. OK. You have asked her this already, yes?”
“Yes.”
“And she has said what?”
The Sheikh hesitated and rubbed his stubble. “She will need some time.”
Zareena laughed up at him and shook her head. “So wise. So powerful. And so DUMB!” she cried.
“Excuse me? Zareena, your tone is unacc—”
“Oh, please. Don’t shush me when I am trying to stop you from walking head first into a trap. Dhom, this woman is smart and strong, and—”
“She is honest and she is good. She just needs time.”
“Of course she is honest and good. I would only choose a woman of the strongest character, the deepest resiliency, the best of her breed. But she is still a woman! She cannot out-think her own biology, her own psychol
ogy, her own destiny!”
“I am her destiny!” the Sheikh roared now, spreading his arms out wide and turning away from the Sheikha as he began to furiously pace again.
“Then tell her the truth,” Zareena said sweetly, eyes wide and innocent. “Tell her of every detail. In fact I can tell her, since I know more of the details. Shall we call for the limousine? We can meet her outside the school itself!”
The Sheikh continued to pace, his fists clenching, jaw tightening as if he was holding himself back from saying something he might regret. By God, he is taken by this woman, Zareena thought as she watched her husband pace and rub his jaw, the tension surging through him in the most, the most . . . endearing way!
“Oh, Dhom,” she said as a tear formed at the corner of her left eye. “I yearn to see you happy with a woman, in love with a woman, at peace with a woman, a child, a family. As much as I speak of a woman’s biology, a woman’s needs, a woman’s physical destiny, I know the same needs exist deep in a man’s soul as well. But we chose this path as much as this path chose us, my King. You know it as well as I do, but you are clouded by the needs of your mortality, the longings of your biology, the instinct to claim your mate and raise your flock. That need is real and good, pure and true. But we are not normal people. We do not have the luxury of retiring to private family life. We live in public. We live for the public.”
The Sheikh turned now, his eyes misty, handsome face twisted in anguish. Zareena could see the torment, sense the conflict, feel how the emotion was tearing this stoic beast of a man in two. But he is still proud and willful, stubborn and immovable, she reminded herself. And sadly, the woman he has chosen—the woman we both have chosen—is also proud and stubborn. She may fall in love with him. She may bear his child. She may give herself to him again and again. But without the certainty of that marriage bond, the most human of symbols, she will eventually leave him. She will leave him even if she does not want to leave him. She may not even understand why she does it, but it will happen. Perhaps not in a year. Perhaps not in five years. But it is inevitable. No proud woman can stay true to herself being a mistress in the shadows. She will leave him.
And she will take the child with her.
Now Zareena’s tears evaporated into the dry air, and she was that stoic queen again, the woman who had made the hardest of choices and would continue to make the hardest of choices.
“OK, Dhom,” she said to him now. “She needs time, you say. And you have asked her to accompany you to Mizra, yes?”
The Sheikh nodded. “Yes, but it is too much, too soon for her. She speaks of the job. Lease on her apartment. Something else I cannot remember. All of it easily done away with, in my opinion. But yet—”
Zareena took a breath now. “What does she know of me, Dhom?”
Dhomaar blinked and stopped pacing. “She knows . . . very little. I have only told her of . . . of . . .”
“You have told her that our marriage is an illusion. That we are not romantic or sexual partners, though we are indeed partners for life, like it or not.”
The Sheikh swallowed and nodded.
Zareena nodded, sitting up and crossing her legs on the sofa. “So here is what we do, my king. Here is how you can have it all. Now, you do not want Grace to ever find out that she was selected to be our surrogate. Correct?”
The Sheikh looked past her and then slowly nodded.
“So we will never speak of it. She will never know of it. Here is what I am willing to do for you, my Sheikh. Listen carefully.”
21
The Sheikh exhaled and smiled as he entered his private suite and collapsed onto the king-sized bed as Zareena’s plan swirled through his head.
Ya Allah, he thought. After all these years it is so hard to know what part is real and what is the act, is it not? No matter. Our motives are true, even if the methods are twisted. And of course, as Zareena says, the universe is there behind the scenes, its creatures and coincidences guiding us. So as twisted as the methods may be, perhaps we will get to the right place, the place where destiny lives.
Three weeks, the Sheikh thought as he relaxed and reminded himself to enjoy the next few days just “getting to know” this woman who had stumbled into his life in her red dress, complicating things in the most wonderful, whimsical, worrisome way.
Three weeks, he thought. Three weeks, and then it begins.
22
Three weeks, Gracie told herself as she eyed that unopened pregnancy kit in her medicine cabinet. I’ll wait three weeks before opening that horrendously pink box and finding out if my life is going to change.
She touched the box and then closed the cabinet, walking out into the living room of her one-bedroom apartment in South Tulsa. God, her life had already changed, hadn’t it? It had been almost seventeen days with the Sheikh now. Seventeen incredible days. With a Sheikh. A married Sheikh. A married Sheikh who insisted his wife knew about them and didn’t care because their marriage was a sham. A married Sheikh in a fake marriage who insisted Grace was pregnant with his child. And who wanted Grace to move to some island kingdom and be his . . . sorta kinda wife whom he could never ever actually marry. Was that complicated enough for a woman in today’s America?! Was that complicated enough to check herself into the goddamn psych ward so she could be studied for clues as to why she wasn’t dead from anxiety and insanity?!
Now Gracie frowned away the smile of disbelief and excitement that had been more or less plastered on her face all day these past couple of weeks. She frowned because in her little mental recap of the lesson plan—or rather her life plan from the last two weeks—it seemed like something was missing. Because in all their conversations, the Sheikh had been fairly sketchy about exactly how much Zareena knew. Yes, Dhom told Grace point-blank that Zareena knew about them. But when Gracie asked him the other day about how she’d feel about her having his child, Dhom waved her off, saying they should wait until she knew she was pregnant.
Now that was strange, wasn’t it? After all, it was Dhom who insisted that he had knocked her up that very first night. And God, now she believed it. She really did! So now he was all “scientific” about it when it came to telling his . . . his wife about it? God, it sounded so stupid when she thought it through, didn’t it? Like what kind of a moron just takes some billionaire’s word that his wife’s a lesbian and she’ll be cool with him knocking some other chick up and then bringing her to live with them? Seriously, if a woman told Gracie that, Grace would call them (in her own mind only, of course . . .) a dumb bimbo who gives all women a bad name!
And now as Grace sat there alone in her apartment, some of the manic haze of the magical whirlwind of love and sex that Dhom had spun her up into subsiding, she felt a distant paranoia creep its way in, a feeling like something was off, that she wasn’t seeing the big picture. After all, what wife—lesbian or not—is going to be cool with a husband having a child with someone else? Unless the other woman was a surrogate, of course. And of course you don’t go and stick your cock into a surrogate, do you?
Do you? came the paranoid thought as Grace frowned and touched her stomach. After all, these people were royalty from halfway around the world. They didn’t have children. No heir. Grace had felt weird about asking why, even though she wanted to ask. But she had thought that hey, she already knew Zareena and Dhom didn’t have kids. That was public knowledge. The rest of it wasn’t her business.
Um, yeah, it’s your business if you’re pregnant, she thought now as that paranoia grew larger and larger, a sickening feeling taking over as it dawned on her that here was a king and queen with no heirs, the king seducing some random woman at what was probably a very conducive time in her cycle. And then the queen seems totally chilled about it while the king just hangs out with that random woman, “getting to know her” as he keeps fucking her even while insisting she’s already pregnant?
Am I being played, she wond
ered now as she quickly sat down on the bed and put her head in her hands. I know nothing about this family, nothing about his wife, so little about him! And I’m getting swept up in his whirlwind of seduction, the insane sex, the expensive dinners, this crazy talk of me living with him and our children in his palace.
None of it made sense, of course. And Gracie wanted to cry one moment and laugh the next. It felt like a fairy tale one moment, a horror movie the next. She was convinced he loved her one moment and sure he was playing her the next. She was a proud new mother in the dream, the discarded surrogate in the nightmare.
Finally she couldn’t handle it. She just could not. It had to stop. And there was one way it would stop. One test that would sort it all out, bring some calm into the chaos, give her some room to fucking breathe!
So even though it was just day seventeen and it might be too early, she stormed to the bathroom and ripped open that atrocious pink packaging and pulled out three sticks and took off her panties and peed on the sticks and waited. She waited and stared, looking at the timer on her phone.
Shit, I can’t look, she thought, suddenly closing her eyes and turning away. But she had to look, and when she looked she saw that all of those sticks now had the heads of pixies and goblins and trolls, and they were all squealing and yelling, pointing and howling, screeching and hooting as they plucked at her boobs and poked at her belly and laughed at her fat face and called her a pregnant princess, a knocked-up queen, a stupid bitch whose life had just gotten very, very complicated.
She dropped those sticks and walked out of the bathroom in a dizzying haze, frowning as she thought she heard a sound by the fire escape in the kitchen. Mice? So now I’m a dumb bimbo who’s pregnant. And I have mice in my kitchen. What next? Alien abduction?
Surrogate for the Sheikh: A Royal Billionaire Romance Novel (Curves for Sheikhs Series Book 7) Page 14
