“You are sick,” she said, pushing his groping paws away from her breasts and stumbling out of bed and heading to the door. “We’re both going to hell. You know that, don’t you? We’re both going to hell.”
“I was going there anyway,” he grunted, leaning over and smacking her butt just before she got her nightgown all the way over her ass. “So I am in fact better off with you at my side.”
She laughed and reached for the door, but the Sheikh had gotten hold of her gown and was holding her back. She swatted at his grasp, but he pulled her close and lifted up her dress again.
“Where is it?” he said, pushing her buttocks apart and then smacking her again on her rump, harder this time. “It is to be worn at all waking hours.”
“Let me go. I need to—”
The Sheikh sighed, still holding her as he reached for the bedside table drawer. “No matter. It is time to move to the next size, anyway. Come. This has been waiting for you. Come.”
She slapped his hand away and went to the door, but just before opening it she stopped and took a long breath, her head leaning against the door. Then slowly she said, in the most nonchalant tone she could find: “Mommy will be there in a minute, Sage. Wait in the kitchen and think about what you want for breakfast, OK?”
Irene waited until she heard Sage scamper off, and then she turned, slowly, like a schoolgirl in trouble, a mommy in trouble, her face red, her eyes darting all over the place. Carefully she walked back to the Sheikh, her breathing heavy and labored by the time she got to the bed, turned around, and bent forward.
“Yes, Mommy will be there in a minute,” Daddy whispered from behind her as he gently pried her large asscheeks apart and circled her anus with his wet fingers until she was relaxed and ready. He fingered her slowly and lovingly, and with a gentle grunt to make sure she was ready, he carefully slid the second of the three plugs into her as she shuddered and her eyes went wide.
“Oh, God, Bilaal,” she whispered as he kissed her left buttcheek and then pulled her gown over the rounds of her ass. “This is so wrong.”
“Since we are going to hell anyway, we may as well enjoy the ride, my sweet queen. Besides, it is not for long,” he said as she gingerly walked to the door. “You will no longer need it soon.”
But before that time arrived, another deadline popped up, because the universe had other plans for this family. Plans that arrived almost a month early.
39
ONE MONTH BEFORE THE BABY IS SUPPOSEDLY DUE
“How can the baby be coming now?” he shouted. “It has only been eight months since you got pregnant! Is it premature? Is it because of the hard sex? Is the child at risk? Are you at risk?! Ya Allah, the Range Rover in the garage is fueled and charged, but we have no time to drive to the nearest hospital! It is almost six hours from here. I will call for an airlift.”
“I don’t know what’s happening. All I know is it’s coming now, and that I am not being airlifted out of here like some beached whale!” Irene shrieked, clutching her belly as the pain shot through her along every pathway, sending her mind spinning. She started the rapid breathing that she knew would calm her down, and she leaned against her husband as he came again to her and cradled her. “In fact I’m not going anywhere. My water broke in the middle of the night, Bilaal. The baby is coming, and it’s coming now. It’s coming here.”
The Sheikh lost all color in his face, and Irene thought he might in fact pass out. But he was her king, and he stayed alert and in control, though clearly he was still thinking about that helicopter airlifting her out like she was a horse with a broken leg.
“No airlift,” she rasped at him.
“Then I will call in a team of professionals,” he said, looking towards the table at the far end, where an emergency satellite phone was charged and ready. He looked back at her, like he didn’t want to let go but somehow needed to get to that phone.
“There’s no goddamn time,” she said, grabbing his throat and pulling his face down level with hers. “The baby is coming now. Right goddamn now. You’re going to have to help me.”
The Sheikh’s eyes went wide as the sun. “Of course I will help you. I will help you by getting the best help money can buy. I will have them parachute down, if need be. Just hold on, my love. It will only take—”
“There’s no holding on!” she howled. “You’re gonna have to do it, Bilaal. You’re going to have to deliver our baby.”
40
“You’re going to have to deliver our baby, Bilaal.”
He knew she was right just by looking at her. Her face was contorted in pain, swollen with discomfort. She was already gasping as she did that rapid-fire breathing, and he grabbed a pillow and shoved it behind her lower back as she leaned against the wooden headboard of their bed. He put another pillow under her knees, and she appeared to get some relief as she leaned back and continued to breathe hard.
“Women have given birth without hospitals and doctors for millions of years,” Irene said through her measured breaths. “We’ve lived off the grid for almost a year. We can do this.”
“Easy for you to say,” said the Sheikh, kneeling on the bed beside her, his hands bent at the elbows, palms upturned like he was waiting to catch a falling baby.
“Um, excuse me?” she snorted, her eyes wide as she glared at him and then looked down at herself. “I think I’ve got the hard part here.”
The Sheikh frowned and pulled at his beard so hard he could feel sharp stabs of pain all over his face. The pain was good, he thought. Clarifying. Now if only he could get some damn clarity on how to deliver a baby.
“Bathtub,” Irene gasped, blowing out as she exhaled, her hands on her belly, her eyes wide and bugged out. “Fill it with warm water, and help me there.”
The Sheikh blinked and then immediately took action, racing to the bathroom and placing the stopper, running both hot water taps at full blast, testing the temperature to make sure it wouldn’t scald her. He ran back out to Irene, but she waved him away like she needed a bit of physical space.
“Check on Sage,” she groaned. “Then come back to me.”
The Sheikh nodded and raced to the door, calling his son’s name until the boy replied from the living room. He seemed alive. Good enough. Now back to the wife. Ya Allah, what was he thinking by listening to her! He should be calling the goddamn paramedics, the Navy SEALS, and the United Nations to help his wife!
“I am back, my love,” he said, rushing back to her side and stroking her hair gently. She was sweating, and the Sheikh grabbed a clean towel and mopped her brow, dabbed her cheeks, all the while stroking her hair.
“That feels nice,” she muttered as she tried to tilt her head back and look at him. “Keep doing that. I think we have some time.”
“How much time?” the Sheikh asked, glancing over at that phone on the far table. Why had he not already called every emergency number in North America right now?! Was he mad?
“Not enough time for that,” she said, smiling weakly and reaching for his wrist, as if she could physically stop him. “Please, Bilaal. Just do what I say, and we’ll be fine. Come on. Breathe with me. In. Out. In. Out.”
The Sheikh started to breathe in time with his wife, and they stayed like that for almost twenty minutes, silently matching one another breath for breath. A strange calm fell over them, and the Sheikh exhaled smoothly and then glanced down at his smiling wife.
“You knew that you had gotten pregnant a month before you told me. You lied to me. Yes?”
She nodded without hesitation, without losing that smile, without forsaking that sense of calm that was enveloping them in the midst of the chaos. “Yes,” she said.
“Why?”
Irene sighed, but she stayed quiet.
“Speak, Irene! Why?” He paused, the color draining from his face and then rushing back in. “By God, did you want to ha
ve the baby here? So that . . . so that you’d be able to convince me to stay longer? Stay away from the world longer? Was that your plan?”
Irene closed her eyes and held his arm firmly. She kissed his hand, and then looked into his eyes. “Yes. Because I knew what going back meant, Bilaal. I knew it from the beginning. I knew it would mean murder, because I didn’t think I would be able to stop you from killing that other brother once we went back to the world. So I thought the only chance I had was for us to never go back to the outside world, which meant that I had to make sure to have the baby here, as a surprise. This way you wouldn’t have time to call for help or take me to a hospital. Then once the baby was here, there would be no fixed deadline to return, since we wouldn't need a hospital. This way maybe we do stay here for a while longer. Maybe forever.” Her expression softened, and tears welled in her bloodshot eyes. “If we don’t go back, then perhaps you would never need to kill another man. Everyone gets to live. That’s how this gets sorted out using love instead of violence. Do you see?”
The Sheikh shook his head like a dog in the rain. He blinked hard and tried to make sense of what she’d just said. “I see that you are a convoluted, twisted, ridiculous woman. You risked your own life and the life of our unborn child for a chance to save the life of a man you’ve never met and probably will never meet. A man who in all likelihood deserves to die a horrible, painful death for even thinking about doing anything to my niece. That is not love, Irene. It is lunacy. It is madness.”
“Love is madness!” Irene shouted, digging her nails into his forearm so hard it drew blood. “Look at everything that’s happened in our lives over the last four years! It was love that caused all of this! Love in its many forms! It was your love for Dan that brought you to Wyoming. It was my love for my horse that brought me riding out in the rain where I found you. It was sexual love that brought our bodies together that night. It was your fatherly love that brought you back to me and your son. It was protective love for your niece that made you decide to disappear from the world even though you knew it would cause her sorrow.” She touched his face, and he felt the love surge through him like her fingers were charged with the divine spirit. “And it is the complex, wonderful love of man, woman, and child that’s going to see us through this, Bilaal. The most fundamental of all human emotion: the love that holds a family together.”
“Mommy,” came the cry from outside the bedroom door, and the Sheikh immediately turned and prepared to have Sage go back out to the living room. But Irene pulled on his arm and shook her head.
“No,” she said. “Bring him in. I’ll need him too. My daughter will be born in the presence of our entire family. Bring him in, Bilaal. And do it quick, because it’s time.” She gasped and jerked as her eyes went wide and then shut tight as she winced. “Oh, God, it’s time.”
41
The child was born in water, and she came out smooth and easy, head-first like she knew the way, like she couldn’t wait to see her family. Perhaps she already knew them. She cried and sneezed when the Sheikh lifted her out of the warm waters of the bathtub and looked upon her face. She cried again as Irene held out her arms and took the little one close to her warm breast. Then she gurgled and nestled into her mother and lay there, face red and puckered, skin shining like the first day of spring.
“Hi,” said Sage from where he’d been standing, near the bathtub, patting his mother on the head as she gasped and pushed his sister out into the Sheikh’s waiting arms. They’d explained what was happening, treating the whole thing as something normal and natural, and Sage had remained calm throughout. “I’m Sage. What’s your name?”
“River,” said Irene, kissing her daughter and then beckoning for Sage to kiss her too. “She was born in water, and her name is River.”
“River,” said Sage.
“River,” said the Sheikh, grinning wide, partly in relief, partly in joy, fully in love.
In love with mother, son, and new daughter.
In love with his family.
42
ONE MONTH LATER
“She is still my family, Irene,” shouted the Sheikh. “I must go back to her. And that means I must take care of business before I emerge. Yes, I was swayed by your talk of compassion and love, but the real world does not wait around for problems to be solved by love and compassion. The real world, Irene. I want to forget about it too, but I cannot. Neither can you. We are a part of it and will always be a part of it. It is time to face reality, and the reality is that one more death will bring peace to my family.”
Irene rocked back and forth on the bed as River quietly fed at her breast, and she looked up at the Sheikh and nodded. She was exhausted from trying to change him. Everything she’d tried seemed to work for a while and then give way to his mantra of “kill the problem and the problem is dead so there is no longer a problem.”
“Do what you want,” she said sweetly. “As your highness wishes. Who am I to question your infinite wisdom. If you really believe one more death will bring peace to your family, then I am done arguing. I have nothing more. If what we’ve been through over the past year hasn’t changed you, then nothing will. If being a father twice over has not awakened you to the fact that ultimately you are more selfish and short-sighted than even—”
“Selfish and short-sighted!” bellowed the Sheikh, and little River bit down hard on Irene’s nipple as she suckled. Irene winced, but did not cry out and did not pull her breast away, like she did whenever River bit too hard otherwise. “Me? Ya Allah, how dare you even suggest such a thing! My life has been lived for other people! For my dead wife. My orphaned niece. My kingdom and the war against terror. Now my new wife and children. And you dare accuse me of—”
“Bilaal,” she said, closing her eyes and taking a breath. “I’m not accusing you of anything. You are selfish because you want to indulge the anger in you and resort to violence. And you are short-sighted if you think that killing this other brother will bring peace to you.”
“Of course it will bring peace to me to know that my niece will be safe forever, that you and I and our babies can live in the open, in Khiyani, Wyoming, Disneyland—anywhere we want—without fearing that some . . .” He trailed off as he said it, frowning and narrowing his eyes as if his mind had gotten ahead of his tongue and alerted him to the trap Irene had set.
“Without fearing that some . . . what, Bilaal? That someone else will try to kidnap your children or murder your niece? That these two brothers might have ten cousins? That you will then want to wipe out those cousins? What if three of the ten cousins have children? Will you drown them like unwanted kittens so they don’t grow up and seek revenge?” She laughed, but not at him. For him she had nothing but gentle compassion, a deep belief that this man was fundamentally good, supremely strong, a man whose children she was proud to bear. He just needed some help. Help only she could give. Help that a man so powerful and proud might never accept. “Oh, Bilaal, I know you understand the pattern, because it is the same game of revenge and murder that plays out over generations in wars. You see the effects of it in your world as a Middle Eastern king. You fight the effects of it in the world you inhabit in the shadows. In a way you are right that you do live for other people, and the tragedy has been that you’re so focused on the outside world, that you’ve become blind to the fact that you’re allowing this neverending cycle of violence to destroy all the love in your own life.”
The Sheikh stayed silent, his eyes closed, his fists clenched. When he looked at her Irene was stunned at the vulnerability betrayed by those green eyes that could go to cold stone in a heartbeat.
“So what do I do, Irene,” he whispered, his voice shaking in a way that made Irene want to burst into tears and hug this beast of a man. “Of course I understand the pattern. Of course I see the consequences of my actions. But what can I do to stop the cycle? I still worry that the families or friends of the thirteen men
I killed will someday return the favor. What can I do, Irene? It is too late for me to choose a new path.”
“You already have chosen a new path, Bilaal,” she whispered as she touched her suckling daughter’s silky hair and held her hand out to her husband. “And you’re not walking down this path alone. We’re with you. All of us. We’re yours. All yours. And where you lead, we will follow. That’s all I have to say. You make your choice, and I will follow, with our children in tow.”
The Sheikh knitted his eyebrows and cocked his head. “What do you mean?”
“I mean,” Irene said, blinking hard as the words came so fast she could barely keep up. Yes, she thought. This was the answer, wasn’t it. Instead of arguing and fighting, just give in and see what your husband does. “I’m not going to leave you no matter what. I’m your wife, and I’m going to stay your wife even if you kill a hundred more men, burn their wives, and drown their children. If we have to live the rest of our lives in fortresses surrounded by armed guards, then so be it. If our children grow up always looking over their shoulders, then that is the price we will pay. You choose, Bilaal. You choose.”
43
“You choose, Bilaal.”
The Sheikh stared at her, wondering if she was supremely brilliant or devilishly manipulative. Two months ago she’d threatened to take his children and walk away from him if he executed a man for reasons that still seemed vaguely justified to him. And now she was saying she’d stay with him even if he killed a hundred men and their pet goats?
“What choice do I have?” he growled.
Irene took a breath and moved River from one breast to the other. When she looked up at him, he saw the truth in her eyes. She loved him. She loved him in a pure, innocent way, not unlike the judgment-free love he’d seen in the eyes of his baby daughter when she looked up at him and gurgled in joy. He still disagreed with her on the matter of the other brother, but by now he could not deny that she was sincere in why she wanted him to promise not to do it. It wasn’t because Irene was some soft-hearted damsel who fainted at the thought of a man being killed—by Allah, she’d killed a man herself! No, she was fighting him because she loved him, because she wanted to save him, because she wanted him to save himself.
Shelter for the Sheikh: A Royal Billionaire Romance Novel (Curves for Sheikhs Series Book 9) Page 15
