The Sheikh's Secret Baby: Nothing stays hidden forever ...

by Clare Connelly

  “Are you on birth control?” He demanded, pushing up to look at her again.

  She nodded. After she’d stopped nursing Michael, her cycle had never returned to its regular self. She’d gone on oral contraceptives to make it more manageable.

  He ran his hands over her body, allowing himself to feel every single inch of her. And then, he took her, entering her with one swift, guttural cry. She bucked against him, hard, her eyes wide and her skin pierced with perspiration despite the cold desert night beyond the palace.

  He had come home.

  He was where he should always be.

  Her muscles squeezed around his length, welcoming him. Her arms wrapped around his middle and he moved fast, pushing her towards climax effortlessly. He knew her body almost better than he knew his own. He had been the first man to possess her. He would never forget the ways in which she liked to be sent wild.

  He kissed her as he moved, his tongue simulating the thrusts of his body. He drowned her senses with his body, and he felt her shake as she reached orgasm. Still he kissed and tormented her; he was not finished and nor was she. He wanted to please her again and again.

  Finally, when she was almost insane with the strength of pleasure coursing through her veins, he let go of the tight control he kept on himself. He shouted into the room as he felt his reason for being crystallise in his mind. He stilled over her and enjoyed the sensation; he had never felt anything like it except for the last time he’d been with her.

  Only afterwards, when his breath had returned to normal, and he dipped his head forward to kiss her, did he realise that her face was completely wet. He pushed up to get a better view of her. She was crying. Sobbing now quite freely. Her eyes were squeezed shut but tears were rolling out of them swiftly.

  And in that moment, Ki knew what it was to swing from happiness to despair in the space of a single second.

  It was a stunningly sharp sense of grief and regret.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “Abi, wait,” he put an arm out to still her, when she would have attempted to push away from him.

  Her body was wracked with silent tears.

  “What for?” She demanded, unable to look at him. “You’ve got what you wanted. What more is there to say or do?”

  Horror was a pit in his chest. “Many things,” he assured her. “You wanted that too. I know you did.”

  She sobbed loudly now. “Yes, I did. I shouldn’t have, but I did.”

  It was something. A reason for some relief. But not enough. “Stay tonight. Stay with me.”

  “Here?” She demanded, dashing her tears away. “In the room for palace whores?”

  His face blanched. What the hell had he been thinking, bringing her to this room and then throwing it in her face? Had he been trying to distress her by throwing her status in her face?

  “No,” he denied hoarsely. “In my room. Stay with me. It is one night.”

  She shook her head. Too much had happened already that never should have been allowed. She’d wanted memories and all she’d done was remind herself of the agony of their impossibility. “I have to go. My flight is in the morning.”

  “Your … your flight?” The panic inside of him was growing. “You can’t leave already.”

  “I have to,” she pushed at his chest so that she could stand up from the bed. Muscles that had long since been forgotten were aching inside of her now.

  “I need to know more about you. Your life.”

  “To what end?” She whispered, pulling her lacy underwear on. Had she chosen them because she’d hoped this might happen? Had the possibility of intimacy been at the back of her mind even when she’d been coming to tell him about their son? How she hated herself for this weakness! “Nothing good can come of that. You’re better to forget all about me. You’re getting married.” And now the tears began to flow faster and her breathing became laboured. She held a hand to her chest and spun away from him. “Please just … give me … what I came for … and let me go.”

  He stared at her back, shaking as it was from the force of her tears, and he longed to comfort her. “Your money?” He said darkly, his whole chest squeezing.

  She nodded. “And I need my passport. Your henchmen took it when I came through security.”

  He might have smiled at her description under different circumstances. “What do you need it for?”

  She bit down on her lip. The admission she’d carried on her shoulders and in her heart died on her tongue. We have a son, and he’s very, very sick. How could she tell him the truth? The man who’d taught her about love and desire and left her for his country and his fiancé? The man who had a country at his feet and all the power of his military and his wealth? The man who thought so little of her that he could bring her to a room designed purely for sex with disposable women?

  “Abigail?”

  She startled. “It’s nothing. It’s … not your problem.”

  “It is a very specific amount,” he pointed out slowly. “You are obviously desperate for it.” Desperate enough to sleep with a man she no longer wanted anything to do with, he thought angrily. “So what is it?” He stood up and moved to stand in front of her. “Are you in danger? Are you in trouble?”

  “No.” She stalked away from him and lifted her dress off the ground with fingers that shook. She pulled it on without a bra. She didn’t want to waste time or dignity re-hooking it behind her back.

  “Abi, tell me,” he implored.

  “I can’t,” she whispered. She had come to Delani with every intention of breaking the bonds of secrecy that had kept Michael safe and out of the public eye. But it was no longer necessary. If she had the money for the operation then Kiral never needed to know that he had a son on the other side of the planet.

  He compressed his lips. What options did he have?

  “I cannot give you such a sum without knowing what it is for,” he said.

  Her eyes widened. “What?” Her words were flooded with disbelief. “What are you talking about? We had a deal.”

  “A deal? My God, Abi! Do you think I would ever enter into an arrangement to pay a woman for sex? Do you think I would pay you for sex?”

  “But you did! That’s exactly what you agreed to. I trusted you,” she said numbly, wrapping her hands around her waist and staring at him. Her face was pale, except where his stubble had left a rash against her cheek and décolletage.

  “You shouldn’t have,” he said simply, hating himself almost as much as she surely did.

  Indignation merged with despair. A solution had been so close she could almost have reached out and grasped it with both hands. “Please, Ki, please don’t do this.”

  “I want to help you,” he insisted slowly. “I would give you twice that amount if you needed it, without a moment’s thought. So long as I know you are not in greater danger. If you are in some kind of legal trouble, for instance, perhaps I am better to intervene. Or if someone is blackmailing you, my security forces may well be able to act on your behalf.”

  “Like that wouldn’t raise questions about us that you don’t want to face!”

  He compressed his lips. “Wiring two hundred thousand dollars to you will raise those same questions, believe me. So? What am I getting into, Abi? What trouble are you in?’

  “It’s nothing like that,” she said quickly. “There’s nothing you can do except give me money.” A line furrowed between her brows as she pulled a face of deep concentration. “Just loan me the money. I will work for the rest of my life to pay you back.”

  Frustration crashed over him. “I do not need you to pay me back.”

  “What do you need then?”

  “To know you are safe! I am getting married in a week. And I am prepared to do so, and to be faithful to my wife. I must marry and she and I must have an heir. But I will never be truly content unless I know you are safe.”

  An heir. Oh, God. It was a nightmare. What he needed most in the world was something she could give him – a ready-made
descendant. She shook her head. “I can’t tell you.” Her voice quivered when she spoke. “I wish it was as easy as that. But … if I tell you, I will never be safe and I will never be happy.”

  “You’re speaking in riddles. None of this makes sense.”

  “I know. But it’s how it has to be. If you have ever cared for me at all, Ki, you’ll let me go.”

  Let me go. Three words that perfectly described the one thing he wasn’t sure he had the strength to do. Not again.

  “I have lived a privileged life. I have everything I could ever want. But in those thirty one years, I have lived only a fraction of them. That month I spent with you was …”

  “Please, don’t,” she said with a shake of her head. “It shouldn’t have happened. I thought you were … like me. If I had known you were royalty … and engaged to a princess … do you think I would have gone near you?”

  He sighed. “I don’t know if either you or I had any real choice, do you?”

  She had believed it was destiny too. Then. When life had seemed a lot more simple and sublime.

  “Let me go,” she repeated stoically.

  It was what he had to do, but it was the hardest task he could fathom. There was a caveman instinct inside of him. He wanted to forbid her from leaving. To tell his security to hold her passport. He wanted to give her anything and everything if only she would agree to stay - his secret lover, locked in a luxurious tower, always his.

  She was dangerous to him.

  She uncivilised him.

  She made him feel things he wasn’t proud of.

  She was right to want to leave.

  “I will walk you back to your things,” he said finally with a supreme effort, pulling his clothes on quickly. He had played with fire, and he had been burned.

  He straightened his shirt and then turned his attention to her.

  “You look as though you have come straight from my bed,” he said with a smile that made her stomach roll. It would be the last time she saw him. The last time, certainly, that she saw him like this. And her heart was breaking all over again. She felt sickened by the knowledge, and saddened beyond bearing. She had loved him so much. And now? It was there, swirling through her; that same love that had driven her wild the first time they met was beating hard and fast in her chest.

  She pinched her cheeks then pulled her hair back into a bun, clipping it with an elastic she wore around her wrist. She knew that she had to escape but the idea of leaving him made her weak.

  Her handbag was still in the Eflianan room where she’d spent hours waiting for him. They walked in silence down the long hallway. Again the men sharpened their guns to attention. Again, Abi flinched.

  Her phone was ringing when they got to the room and, out of habit, Abi broke into a run to reach it. Without looking in Ki’s direction, she fished it from her bag and swiped it to answer.

  “Mum? What is it? What’s happened?”

  Ki was instantly watchful. Something in Abigail’s bearing had changed completely. She was alert and attentive. And the feelings he’d once had for her now made a symbiotic concern dip in his gut.

  As her mother spoke, Abi sank down into the chair she’d been sleeping in only an hour or so earlier.

  “I don’t understand. He was fine before I left.” There was a beat of silence as Abi nodded robotically. “When?” She looked at her wristwatch. “When was he admitted? What was his blood pressure? Which doctor is on call? No, he’s no good. You have to get Doctor Edrich. Mum, is he awake? Is he sweating?” She nodded a few times and then squeezed her eyes shut. “Do you have Bear? He needs Bear.”

  Ki was frozen to the spot. Though he couldn’t understand what was happening, he understood on some level that it was phenomenally important.

  She disconnected the call and stood jerkily. “I have to go.”

  “What is it? Is it your father?”

  She shook her head. Her voice was hollow. She was gathering her things, pulling her bag sharply over her shoulder. “You know I don’t speak to my father.”

  He nodded. So that hadn’t changed. She was still carrying that grudge, even against the man who’d given her life.

  “Oh, God. I need to get home. I need to get home immediately.”

  Her heart was racing. Her mind was reeling. She had taken Michael to the doctor only the day earlier. The day she’d flown to Delani, she’d had him checked out. Only the fact he had seemed in relatively good health had given her the confidence to leave him. But his condition, as always, had turned on a dime.

  “Abigail.” Kiral put his hands on her shoulders. “Tell me immediately what is troubling you. I will fix it. With all the power at my disposal I will fix it.”

  She sucked in a deep breath. Even in pregnancy she had known that Michael would be born with a heart problem. She had carried this burden on her shoulders for such a long time.

  The temptation to share it was great; even with this man who would forever change the course of her life. In the years to come, she would wonder if she had lost her senses completely, but in that moment, she needed someone to take over. She wanted someone - desperately - to help her. To make the decisions that she was finding impossible.

  Her fingers were shaking and her eyes were skittish. “It’s our son. He’s in hospital.”

  * * *

  The eyes that stared back at him were his. The skin, likewise, shone with the colour of his kin. His hair was dark and flopped forward over his small forehead.

  He was weak.

  He was small.

  But there was no doubt in Kiral’s mind that this child was his.

  He stood, an imposing, silent force in the corner of the room.

  “Man.” The little boy croaked, his eyes looking suspiciously towards Kiral.

  “Shhh,” Abi whispered, running her fingers over his cheeks and down to his chest. Ki watched, his piercing stare missing nothing. This scene was not new. They had done this before.

  How many times had Abigail raced their child to hospital, while he had been oblivious to the boy’s very existence, on the other side of the world? How many times had she sat like this, hunched over his small frame, worrying about his future, his weak heart, and chosen not to involve Ki? How many times had she made that decision again and again?

  A movement beside Abi called his attention. The mother, Annette. Abi had spoken fondly of her in the past. But Ki had no patience with her either. Annette had been complicit in this secrecy; she was as guilty of this deception as Abigail. He could never forgive either of them.

  Abi had withheld his heir. His child. His flesh and blood. Worse, she had condemned the boy to a childhood of poor health when Ki could have provided the best medical care in the world.

  The door squeaked when it opened and Abigail stood abruptly. She ran her hands down the front of her dress. The same dress he’d pulled from her body when their son had been struggling to breathe. Guilt flushed him.

  “Doctor Edrich.” The relief in her voice was obvious. “What is it?”

  The man was young. What could he possibly know? How could Abigail think this adolescent was the best doctor for their son? “The same as last time. Abi, we have to do the operation. And soon.”

  Ki noticed the way the doctor put one hand on Abigail’s elbow and another on Michael’s leg. Ancient, archaic jealousy slammed through him.

  Abigail nodded. Her eyes blinked unwillingly towards Ki. “Yes. I’ve been able to secure the money. You can do it as soon as the surgeon is available.”

  Ki’s heart turned over in his chest. The money had been for this. Their son. A momentary shard of guilt punctured his heart. He had blackmailed the woman he had once loved into his bed so that she could pay for lifesaving surgery. He might have felt more guilt were it not for the overwhelming sense of anger he was nursing towards her. How much he had already missed because of her decision!

  “We must speak privately,” he said, addressing the room in the commanding manner that was instinctive to him. />
  Abigail shook her head. “It’s not the time.”

  He was not used to being ignored. Even by Abi, he felt it to be unacceptable. “I was addressing this doctor, and not you.”

  Abigail’s eyes furrowed together. “Ki, you don’t know what’s going on here.”

  “Abigail,” he said her name slowly. “I have no intention of being sidelined from any more decisions regarding my son. It is blatantly obvious to me that you have erred again and again. I will not allow my heir to be put in danger for another moment.”

  “I …” Indignation coloured her cheeks. “He’s more than just your heir. He’s a boy. A beautiful, sweet little boy.”

  “Yes, and he’s my boy.”

  “As he is mine,” she snapped, rubbing her temples. “He’s not a pawn in your political landscape. All that matters now is that he gets this operation.”

  “Don’t you dare act as though you have been prioritizing the child in this. Do you believe I would not have moved heaven and earth for this child if I’d known about him? Do you think I would have left him to suffer like this? You kept him from me out of your own selfish …”

  “I did what I thought was best!” She retorted, but her words lacked conviction.

  “Best for you.” His words were scathing and all the more so for they reinforced her own fears.

  “Now, just wait a minute,” Annette stood from the chair and came to stand beside Abigail. Her voice was low and carefully calm. “You have no right to speak like that. You have no idea what this has been like for any of us.” She turned to Abi. “You can’t argue in front of Mikey. It’s not good for him.”

  “No.” Abigail nodded, her cheeks flaming with mortification at the argument they’d unleashed in front of these spectators. She tilted her head to address Doctor Edrich. “When can surgery be scheduled?”

  “Stop.” Kiral spoke and the three of them turned as one. “There is to be no surgery until I have been consulted.”

  “Damn it,” Abi stomped her foot and her eyes stung with unshed tears.

  “Doctor, I am this boy’s father. I will not give consent until you and I have spoken privately. Do you understand what I am saying?”