The Billionaire's Surprise Babies

by Sophia Lynn

  Her thoughts swayed back and forth on the matter, until she felt like she was being tugged apart. She was strong and independent. She liked serving Rakim. Both things were true, but she didn't know how that could be.

  She was still trying to make heads or tails of it when she turned and yelped with surprise. For such a big man, Rakim could move smoothly and quietly when he wanted to. She had had her back to the room to get down some important volumes, and when she had turned back, Rakim was standing right behind her.

  "It's all right," he said soothingly. "I'm not going to hurt you."

  "I didn't think you would," she said a little uncertainly.

  She almost protested when he took the books she had away from her grasp, laying them carefully aside before taking her hand.

  "What are you doing?"

  "What I want to do," he said easily. "It is, after all, my prerogative as sheikh."

  She was mystified by the answer, but he brought her back to his chair, settling her down in it.

  "Now I do not think you have been out of the library to eat yet today," he said.

  She started to protest, saying that she had had a granola bar in her room, but then he was lifting a morsel of cheese and bringing it to her lips. In surprise, she opened her mouth, and he slid it in, his warm fingers brushing against her lips in a way that was unmistakably sensual.

  "Oh..." she murmured.

  The cheese was surprisingly sweet and salty, redolent with the flavors of apple and some sharp herb that was close to dill. It was delicious. Growing up as poor as she had, Anna craved strong flavors, and she allowed her eyelashes to flutter shut as she savored the way the cheese practically melted in her mouth.

  When she opened her eyes again, Rakim was gazing at her, and this time, he was doing it without the amusement that had been there before.

  "Has anyone ever told you before that you are beautiful?" he asked, his tone so neutral that she could barely find a meaning behind it.

  "Of course not," she said, straightening with a self-conscious laugh. "I'm not beautiful at all."

  He frowned briefly at that, but he shook his head.

  "No matter. If you look so lovely for a mere bit of cheese, I suppose that I will have to ply you with more treats. Here, try this cracker."

  Anna knew that she should protest, get back to work and put this strange man out of her mind, but she couldn't. She told herself that it was because he was her boss and that it would have been career suicide to try to deny him, but deep in her heart, she knew that that wasn't the case. There was a strange pleasure to simply being still and allowing him to hand feed her, and she leaned into it.

  After a few more bites of cheese and crackers, Anna straightened up guiltily.

  "I'm sorry, I don't know what I am doing," she murmured. "I need to go back to work."

  To her relief, he merely nodded, going back to his book, and she hurried away.

  Surely it was her imagination that made he feel as if his eyes were heavy on her back.

  Chapter Four

  Two weeks later, Anna wasn't sure whether she was coming or going, and it was all Rakim's fault. It seemed as if at any point, she might turn around and find him behind her, smiling at her with that wicked grin of his, making her feel all hot and flushed all over again.

  It had started with the cheese and crackers from the kitchen, but it certainly hadn’t stopped there. From what she could tell, he was in town to take some kind of break, and he seemed to have nothing better to do than to find her and chat with her.

  When he had left the first day, all had seemed well, until he had turned back to her before he left the library.

  "I am interested in reading something light tomorrow," he said. "In either Arabic or English, either will be fine."

  A part of her wanted to tell him that that was certainly not her job, and that simply looking up good options on the Internet might give him better results, but she had held her tongue.

  After she finished her work for the day, she browsed some of the shelves she had addressed a few days before. There, she found a few works that she knew would suit him, and laid them on the table next to what had become Rakim's chair.

  This is a very, very strange thing to enjoy, she thought to herself, but when Rakim came in the next afternoon and smiled at her choices, she felt herself warm with pleasure. There was something strangely satisfying about it, and when he commended her choice, she had to do her best not to blush with pleasure.

  Everything in her head told her to be very wary of Rakim. He was her boss, who seemed to have very little idea what proper boundaries were. And now that she was listening for them, there was gossip everywhere about what a playboy he was, how he would chase women in the city or allow himself to be chased.

  However, that was hard to remember when he was sitting and reading in the library, oftentimes a book that she had selected for him. Sometimes, there was something almost domestic about the afternoons when she worked and he read.

  Then there were the other days.

  Even if Rakim wasn't reading, he would spend time in the library. Sometimes he would sit at one of the long tables with work from the city laid out in front of him. Anna would go about her work, and in the background she would hear him speaking in rapid-fire Arabic, gesturing into the air emphatically to make his point. More than once she wondered why he did not simply return to the capital if it was so important, but of course it was not her place to say.

  After one intense call, he laid his phone down on the table so sharply that if it had been an old-fashioned landline, he would surely have slammed it.

  Anna typically tried to be out of the way when he was in such a bad mood, but today she had been entering information about a particularly curious volume into her computer. She jumped when he laid his phone down, and of course that meant that she looked up just in time to catch his eye.

  His eyes...they look like they're on fire, she thought.

  "Do you have anything to say to me right now?" he demanded, and she stuttered a little, unsure about what the right reply should be.

  Before she could even get the wit to respond, he had pushed away from his work, stalking over to where she sat. Anna froze, but it wasn't terror that poured through her. It was something much warmer, and if she had time to think about it, she would have called it anticipation. Rakim pulled her up from her chair smoothly and spun her around so she was backed against the table. Then he fell upon her like a pack of wolves taking down its prey. His hands were everywhere, but his mouth was on hers. She could feel the teeth behind his kiss even as he was careful not to hurt her. The kiss was a wild and needy thing, pinning her in place even as it inflamed her. She could feel the warmth of his body against hers, feel how much stronger he was than she.

  Instead of trying to squirm away, however, Anna simply draped her arms around his waist, kissing him back as best she could. She was never someone who did anything by halves, and right now, she could sense that there was something he needed from her. Even if she didn't quite understand what that was, she wanted to give it to him.

  The kiss went from an almost bruising intensity to something quieter and deeper. It was almost as if her touch and her kiss had gentled him and brought him to heel.

  Just as that thought occurred, however, he drew back a little. The irritation had melted from his expression, leaving him with a slightly rueful grin.

  "By all the stars in heaven, you are a temptation," he murmured, brushing her blond hair back from her flushed face.

  "What are you talking about?" she asked, still more than a little breathless, and something about the way she asked that made him laugh.

  "Such a sweet thing," was all he would say, but when he returned to his work, he was a great deal more cheerful.

  Some days, Rakim was perfectly casual and polite, but Anna was finding more and more that those days were disappointing.

  It seemed that it didn't matter what he was doing; as soon as he made his way into the library, s
he couldn't keep her eyes from him. She hoped that she was fairly subtle about it, but she could guess from his occasional amused looks that she was not. More than once, she found herself looking up right into his eyes, and when he smiled, it felt as if everything was warm in her world.

  It didn't help that he was starting to extend his commands outside of the library, either. One afternoon, just as he was leaving, he turned to her.

  "I am going to be unable to come to the library tomorrow, I am afraid," he said. "Too much business is going to keep me away. Bring some books to my apartments tonight around eight. If you don't know where I sleep, I am sure that someone could direct you there."

  He was gone before she could protest, but her cheeks were pink from imagining herself asking a passing staff member where she could find the sheikh after hours. Rakim was known for being familiar and friendly with his staff, but she couldn't imagine that there was really any good way to take a librarian serving the lord of the manor after dark.

  He was on her mind all day. It took her more than an hour to find the right selection of books for him, and she tried not to worry about the fact that it was eating into her regular work time. After all, if he asked her to do this, wasn't it work?

  By eight, she had a small armful of books that she thought would serve well enough, and she made her way to his apartments. The royal quarters of the sheikh had their own wing in the palace, and in the evening, when the servants were mostly in their own quarters or back in town where they lived, the hall was silent except for her footfalls.

  For some reason, Anna's mind went to the harems of the seventeenth-century sheikhs, where whole palace compounds were constructed to keep them away from all men except for the sheikh. When they were summoned, they would walk in hallways that were only treated by women who were walking to please the most important man in their lives. Anna mused on it; she did not think that she would like to be part of an enormous network of women who were intended to please one man, but if she could be a harem of one, perhaps that would not be so bad at all.

  Her first knock on Rakim's door was gentle, so much so that she didn't hear a responding motion or noise from within. She realized that she was shaking a little, and she took a deep breath before knocking more firmly. This one got a response, and just a few seconds later, the door opened to reveal Rakim's half-naked body.

  It was clear that he had just emerged from the shower. His dark hair was damp, and there were droplets of water beaded on his bare chest and shoulders. Below, he only wore a pair of drawstring linen trousers, colorless and soft from age.

  Anna felt like she was frozen with a dozen different urges all at once. On one hand, she wanted to do the polite thing and avert her eyes until he was properly dressed. Obviously, she had interrupted him while he was showering. On the other hand, she wanted to come closer to him, to give in to her curiosity about how his skin would feel when she ran her hands along his flanks. She wanted to know how that water might taste when she tongued one droplet and then another.

  Of course, all of that was unacceptable, and she realized in a split second that she needed to get out of there before she did something truly offensive.

  "I think you'll like these books," she managed to get out. "Some of them are very highly recommended, and others are choices that I loved. I think we have similar tastes. I mean, I think that we have similar tastes in reading, not...not in anything else. I mean..."

  She couldn't bear to look up into his eyes. She knew that she would find him laughing at her, and she knew that she couldn't stand that right now.

  Instead, Anna shoved her armload of books towards his chest, waiting just long enough for him to take them before she dashed off. Her blood was pounding in her ears, and she knew that her face was likely bright red, and as she ran, she couldn't help but think that she was being a fool.

  He's going to want to know why you ran. He's going to come and talk about it with you tomorrow, and he's going to laugh, she thought, and she could scarcely bear it.

  When she was back in the safety of the library, Anna made herself take several deep breaths.

  It's not so bad, she tried to reassure herself. Everything is fine. I didn't say anything or do anything wrong. I just ran off as if someone had told me that my house was on fire. Nope. Nothing wrong there. I can tell him something, I suppose, and that will be that.

  She didn't sound all that convincing to herself, but it was the only way she could keep herself calm. She climbed into bed that night, still trying to reassure herself, but when she fell asleep, it was to a dream of Rakim rising out of a deep pool of blue water, his head tilted slightly to one side as he asked her what was wrong, why was she running, and how could she drop all those books...

  ***

  If I was smart, I would end the game now, Rakim thought, setting the books aside.

  He had to admit, it had been a strange seduction. Part of it was because he wasn't sure that he had ever had a woman who could not simply be had when he snapped his fingers. He had had so many women who were drawn in by his looks or his money that having one who only looked at him and sighed wistfully when she thought he wasn't paying attention was almost strange.

  The other part of it was the fact that Anna was fascinating. She didn't seem to realize that he watched her nearly as much as she watched him, or that she was, in her own way, stunningly beautiful.

  He had been being honest, if slightly cutting when he said that his tastes usually veered towards a different type of woman. She wasn't tall with lush curves and a fall of dark hair. She wasn't even the icy Nordic blonde that he sometimes favored.

  Instead, she was small and slight, quiet as a whisper but quick as a whip. Somehow, whenever he was in the same room with her, he couldn't help but gaze at her, as if she was some magical creature from another world, here only to visit.

  He had laughed at himself for his attraction to her, but as time had gone on, it had become less like a laughing matter and more like something that was embedded deep in his bones. She was a beautiful woman, and without any games, he wanted her.

  Of course, if he was going to have her, he needed to make sure that she stopped running from him.

  Rakim had thought that the game might end tonight, and he would be able to bring her into his bed where they would make love. He stirred at the idea, of laying her out on his dark sheets, seeing the pearly shine of her skin against the silk. It was all too easy to imagine what she would look like flushed with passion, and how her beautiful green eyes would darken with need for what he was giving to her.

  Then she had run, and he was damned if he knew why. Rakim was a man who prided himself on being able to read people, women in particular, and she had shown evidence of wanting him. Instead of giving in to what they both wanted, however, she had given him an armful of books as if they were some kind of prize, and simply run.

  It seemed that if he wanted to seduce her, he would have to change his tack a little.

  He shook his head, and with a slightly wry grin, reached for the book on the top of the stack she had procured for him. Well, she did have very good taste in books, after all.

  Chapter Five

  When Anna awoke the next day, she felt more than a little nervous. She told herself that there was no reason to be foolish. She might have acted silly the night before, but there had really been no harm done. It wasn't like she had offended Rakim, and it wasn't as if she had said anything ridiculous.

  She had...simply fled like a deer being chased by hounds. That was not necessarily a normal thing to do, but it wasn't terrible. She could recover from this.

  If she let herself think about it too long, she would freeze. She knew that. Instead, Anna made herself get up and get to work. These days, she had been dressing a little better because Rakim was so often in the library, but he had said that he would be busy. Instead of the dresses she had been wearing, she chose a fraying cardigan over a tank top, dark slightly tattered jeans and a pair of ballet flats. It was as good an outf
it as any for when she needed to pull down ancient tomes and get a generation's worth of dust knocked down on herself anyway.

  She entered the library when there was still a trace of gray dawn in the sky, and got to work without even going to find herself any breakfast. It was good to get a reminder of what she was doing here, and to remember that this was the work that she was good at. She tried not to dwell on the fact that nothing had changed since she was in grade school. She had always been the girl who wanted to help out in the library rather than go to the dance, only now that a boy was interested in her, she didn't know what to do.

  From the depths of her mind, something rose up, a voice that had been awake and moving ever since the first day when she had kicked Rakim out of the library.

  Well, what do you want to do? the voice asked her.

  It wasn't a question that she had ever really asked herself, at least not when it came to men. She had spent so much time being the shy one standing back from all the fun. Now when this question was asked, she was left high and dry without an answer.

  For a moment, she blushed as brightly as if Rakim had been teasing her, but then she decided that she was not going to be shamed in her own thoughts. What did she want?

  The answer appeared slowly but steadily, and it began with touching Rakim. She wanted nothing more than to run her hands over him, to see how he might move in response to her touch. She wanted him to touch her, and she wanted to see what he would make of the shudders that ran through her body sometimes when she caught his eye. She wanted the peace that came when she performed a task that he asked her to perform and she did it well, and she wanted her breath to catch like it did when he absently grazed her cheek with his knuckle.