Sold To The Sheikh: His Indecent Proposal (An Interracial Sheikh Romance Novel)
Page 11
“First, I stopped because I wanted to sort of… save myself…for the sperm collections,” he said, blushing slightly. “Then I felt bad about having sex with anyone while you had to stay celibate… and then…” he smiled, one of the most genuine, beautiful smiles Mia had ever seen on his face. “I couldn’t even think of having sex with anyone but you—and I thought that I would never get the chance, but the idea of anyone else was just…” he shrugged, shaking his head.
“So then, let’s take it slow?” Mia felt suddenly shy, worried that she had somehow lost whatever kind of skill she might have had in the months she had been without experience.
“As slow as you want,” Rami told her, reaching out to take her hand in his as the elevator came to a stop. They both hurried down the hall towards the door to his apartment, and Mia almost giggled, giddy at the prospect of being alone with Rami, of seeing him without all of his expensive clothes—although, on this one occasion in all the months she’d known him, he wasn’t in something she recognized to be designer. He was dressed like any guy off the street, but still looked like himself: still handsome, still kind, still beautiful and familiar, even without the tailored clothes and shined shoes.
The door closed behind them and Rami swung Mia into his arms, kissing her once again. His hands wandered all over her body, and Mia felt herself becoming more and more aroused, her skin heating up and her heart beating faster and faster in her chest. She thought that she might not be able to remain upright if Rami’s strong arms left her, if his lean, muscled body moved even slightly; Mia clung to Rami as if for life itself, losing herself in the kiss, uncaring of how long they stood there. Rami broke away from her lips and looked into her eyes. “I’m in love with you, Mia, do you know that?” Mia blinked, stunned and momentarily too aroused to process what he had said. When his words filtered through the haze of desire that filled her mind, Mia smiled, relaxing against him almost bonelessly.
“I think I’m in love with you, too,” she admitted. Rami kissed her again and Mia made no move at all to stop him as he began to lead her away from the foyer of his apartment and towards the bedroom.
* * *
The next morning, Mia woke up in Rami’s arms, warm and comfortable, her body still tingling from the pleasure of their lovemaking. She could feel a lingering soreness deep down between her hips, but the ache was sweet; she couldn’t imagine any pain she could have enjoyed more. “How are you this fine morning?” Mia smiled, turning over to face Rami. “I think this is probably the most comfortable bed I’ve ever been in,” she said, stretching against his body under the sheets. Rami chuckled.
“It should be, it cost enough,” Rami told her. He pulled her closer to him and brushed his lips along her temple. “I’m hoping—if this is not too much too soon—that you’re going to spend a lot more time in this bed.” Mia snorted.
“I want to take it slow,” she said, considering. “I don’t…want to just—start out basically living here or something like that.”
“But a few nights a week? Maybe?” Rami looked into her eyes hopefully. Mia laughed.
“You must have been really deprived,” she said, poking him in the ribs playfully. “If you’re this bowled over after last night.” Rami kissed her lightly on the lips, his hands beginning to wander over her body with more than just playful intentions.
“Or maybe you’re just that great in bed,” Rami suggested. “On top of being patient, kind, conscientious…” Rami kissed softly along the column of her throat, and Mia felt her desire reawakening under the heat of Rami’s touches.
“I’m still a little sore,” she said apologetically. “We’ll have to…go slow this time, if we do it again.”
Rami smiled against her lips. “I will go so slow with you,” Rami murmured, covering her body and claiming her lips. Mia found that it was just as easy to fall into his rhythm and flow, as it had been the night before.
TWELVE
“Are you sure you’re okay, Mia?” Rami spoke from the doorway as Mia sat on the bathroom floor, slumped over the toilet for the third time that morning.
“Do I look okay?” Her voice came out harsher than she intended, but she felt so exhausted that she couldn’t make herself apologize for it. “I feel like someone dropped a damn boulder on me and told me to swim upstream.”
“I think you should see Dr. Farber,” Rami said firmly. Mia groaned, another wave of nausea washing through her.
“I think I need to see an exorcist,” she told him, hanging her head over the toilet bowl.
“Wait, wait,” Rami cried.
Mia swallowed, turning her head to look at Rami, hearing the excitement in his voice. “What? Make it fast, I’m going to puke again in like, a minute.” Rami came into the bathroom proper, sinking down onto his knees next to her.
“Think about it for just a second,” he told her, his voice almost shaking. “You’ve been sick every morning this week. You’re better in the afternoons. You’re tired all the time, and yesterday you cried over that Petco commercial.”
“That commercial is so sad though!” Mia frowned in irritation, even as the import of Rami’s words began to sink in. He was right; she was only sick in the mornings, she was exhausted, and felt as if any little thing might make her cry.
Mia’s mouth fell open and she stared at Rami. “I think…I think I have a pregnancy test in my purse,” she said quickly.
“You carry one around in your purse?” Rami shook his head in amazement at her. “You really have been dedicated to giving me a kid.”
“It’s from before,” Mia said. She hadn’t given any further thought to becoming pregnant once she and Rami’s relationship had become something that went far deeper than business. They had decided after their first night together that they would wait the full two months before talking to Dr. Farber again about starting IVF once more. Now—if Rami’s suspicion was correct—they might have a reason to call her sooner that they’d expected.
Rami stood quickly and left the bathroom. Mia sat up, put down the seat and flushed the toilet to dispose of the last of the evidence of her illness. Either she had completely taken care of the nausea with her vomiting or the excitement of possibly being pregnant was enough to suppress the sickness. As she struggled to get up onto her feet, before sinking down to perch on the edge of Rami’s bathtub, she realized she no longer felt the dreadful lurch in her stomach.
Rami returned after a moment, holding a slim box that bore the logo of one of the most sensitive pregnancy tests on the market. He opened it and spilled the contents out onto the countertop, looking at Mia. “Have you already peed this morning?” Mia tilted her head to the side, giving him a long look.
“I am not doing this in front of you,” she said.
“I have seen every inch of your body,” Rami argued. “And now you’re getting squeamish about peeing in front of me?”
“Yes! That’s—that’s completely different!” Mia blushed, looking away.
Rami could see Mia wasn’t about to change her mind. “Okay, fine, but as soon as you start the timer, you’re going to let me in, right?” Mia grinned. One thing had improved immeasurably since they had become boyfriend and girlfriend, rather than just being a client and a contractor: she won far more arguments.
“I’ll let you in as soon as I’m ready,” Mia said, gesturing for him to leave. Rami looked for a second as though he might resist, then turned on his heel and left, closing the bathroom door behind him. Mia suspected that he would be waiting just on the other side, but if he could deal with hearing her using the toilet, that was fine by her.
Mia had taken so many pregnancy tests over the course of her partnership with Rami that she didn’t need to read the directions, but to help steady her sudden burst of nerves at the prospect of finally being pregnant, Mia forced herself to read them anyway. She took a deep breath and picked up the collection cup, moving to the toilet once more. Instead of hanging over it, she sat down and followed the instructions on the slip.
Proving her suspicion, Rami came through the door less than a second after she announced the start of the timer. “If that test isn’t positive we are taking you straight to the hospital to see someone,” he told her firmly.
“If that test is negative I will let you take me anywhere that promises to make me stop puking in the mornings,” Mia agreed. She sat once more on the edge of the tub while they waited for the minutes to tick down, feeling somehow more anxious than she had with any of the previous tests. “It would be kind of funny if it was positive,” she said, smiling slightly.
“Why would it be funny? It was kind of the reason we got together.”
“Because, you big dope, we haven’t even been trying to get pregnant. All that time and money spent on drugs and treatments and you end up knocking me up from purely recreational sex.” Rami stared at her for a moment and then laughed out loud, leaning against the wall.
“When you put it that way, yes. Very funny.” He shook his head. “All this time and all it would have taken was convincing you to sleep with me a few times. Who’d have thought?”
“We don’t know that it’s positive yet,” Mia said, feeling anxious again. She had been so sure, so many times over the course of their attempts, that she would finally be pregnant; now that she was showing actual symptoms, she couldn’t quite let herself believe it was possible.
Rami’s phone alarm beeped, and Mia jumped up from her seat on the edge of the tub, hurrying to the counter before Rami could get there. She looked down at the applicator and the answer, printed in black and white on the result window, nearly made her fall to her knees. Pregnant. “Oh. Oh. Oh, my God.” She turned and reached for Rami, sagging against him in relief. “We’re—I’m—Oh my God, Rami, I’m pregnant.” Rami’s arms wrapped around her and he brought her closer to him, holding her tight, unable to find the words to express his emotions. For a long time, Mia could do nothing but stand there, letting him support her as a torrent of shock, joy and relief washed through her.
THIRTEEN
Despite her initial relief at the fact that she was, in fact, capable of becoming pregnant, within hours of discovering that it had finally happened, Mia began to wonder what the next step with Rami would be.
“So there’s one thing that I am kind of…perplexed about,” Mia said to him the next morning, as they sat on the couch having a light brunch together.
“What’s that, sweetheart?” Rami set his coffee cup down, turning all of his attention onto her.
“So—obviously you still want to have the baby, right?”
“Of course I do!” Rami nodded fervently.
Mia pressed her lips together. “Well…as you know, originally, the plan had been for me to…to give the baby to you when it was born, right? And for us to go our separate ways.” Rami waited for Mia to say more, looking at her intently. “So I guess what I mean is, when that happens, what are we going to do about…us?”
“Oh. Yeah, that is a very good question,” Rami said, reaching out to pull her closer to him on the couch. “Well,” he began, taking a deep breath and exhaling. “If you’re interested in being the child’s mother…we could raise him or her together.”
“We’ve only been together for a couple of weeks,” Mia pointed out. “Do you think we can do this together? I know you were thinking of raising the baby on your own.”
“I can’t think of anything better,” Rami told her, smiling. “It can’t help but be even better for the baby to have both a father and a mother that loves it, right? And between the two of us—you know how to give our child all the love in the world, and I can make that he or she never wants for anything. It will be ideal, won’t it?” Mia couldn’t help but agree. She didn’t hesitate as Rami brought her mouth up to his, kissing her hungrily as his hands took her cup and set it aside next to his. Mia’s clothes fell away and she was more than happy to spend the next few hours continuing to celebrate their accomplishment in finally getting pregnant.
Some time later, in the afternoon, Rami reached for his phone. “Who in the world are you calling?” Mia asked him, watching from the bed where they had spent the past few hours making love.
“Dr. Farber,” Rami said with a little grin. “I assume you still want to see her, right?”
Mia laughed. “I wonder if she’ll find it as funny as we do that after all that stress, strain, discomfort and money, you knocked me up the old fashioned way?”
“If she has any sense at all,” Rami said, holding the phone to his ear while he waited for the call to connect, “she’ll laugh her ass off.” Mia turned onto her side, stroking her hand over her abdomen. She could barely believe she was actually pregnant. She remembered what her mother had said to her, months before, just when she and Rami had agreed to start the IVF and Mia had started to become anxious about their lack of progress; even if Mia wasn’t able to conceive artificially, she might find she was able to the “natural” way.
“We have to tell my mom soon,” Mia told Rami. He nodded, and Mia watched as he convinced the receptionist at the office to put him on the line with Dr. Farber.
“I’ll hold,” Rami said agreeably. Mia feasted her eyes on him, clad in only his pajama pants. He was even more gorgeous underneath his expensive clothes than she had imagined, and every time they made love together she realized more and more just how lucky she was to have him. “Hello! Dr. Farber. I have some interesting news for you.”
Mia curled up as Rami delivered the news, giggling irrepressibly at the doctor’s victorious shriek—which could be heard even several feet away. Once the doctor had congratulated the two of them on finally achieving their goal, Rami was transferred back to the front desk to schedule the first ultrasound session and fetal checkup. He was barely off the phone before he was in bed with Mia again, holding her close to him. “Don’t even tell me you want to go again already,” Mia said playfully.
“It’s not like I can make you more pregnant at this point,” Rami pointed out. “But I know you need your rest. Do you feel like eating something finally?”
“Now that you mention it, I am starving to death. How dare you deprive me of food!”
Rami slipped out of the bed quickly. “You are going to stay right there, and I am going to cook you whatever you want to eat. Or if you want something I can’t make, we can order in.” He grinned.
“This is what the rest of my pregnancy is going to be like, isn’t it?”
Rami nodded. “I might even get you an assistant, or—what’s it called? A doula?” Mia laughed, shaking her head and burying her face against Rami’s pillows for a moment until she was able to catch her breath.
“Just make me breakfast and I’ll stop complaining,” she told him.
FOURTEEN
Mia’s first scheduled check-up was the six-week ultrasound, and by the time it rolled around she still had not told her mother that she was pregnant. Dr. Farber had advised the two of them to wait until at least the twelve week milestone before making an announcement, as miscarriages were more frequent up until that point, but Mia’s gut feeling was that if everything looked okay at the appointment, they would announce it sooner; maybe even right afterward.
Just as they had so many times before, Mia and Rami waited patiently for their appointment—although now they were sitting in a different waiting room.
“You know, if I’d known I was going to be spending so much time hanging out in waiting rooms when you asked me to have your baby, I would have told you to take you hundred thousand a month and walk away,” Mia told Rami.
“You could have negotiated for more!” Rami pointed out. “And anyway, now you’ve got any money you want at your disposal.”
Mia rolled her eyes. “Not in payments; it’s still your money.” Rami grinned at her as
if he was enjoying a private joke, but Mia couldn’t get him to tell her what was so funny.