A Secret Birthright

by Olivia Gates

  She would have preferred it if he’d been enraged and outraged that she’d lied to him all this time. At least those would have been emotions, something to make her hope anything he’d felt for her survived, even if wounded. But he’d just turned off, as if he’d never felt a thing, not even on a physical level.

  He hadn’t even suspected her motives for hiding the truth. Didn’t doubt she could be hiding even more. He’d just accepted her announced reasons, then proceeded to trust her with the sum total of his life and achievements.

  But that wasn’t for her, as he kept pointing out. That was for Hesham’s woman, for Ryan’s mother.

  He was now probably putting on a show for those present, so they’d spread news of their marriage’s authenticity. All for Hesham’s memory, for Ryan’s future.

  None of it was for her.

  And if he knew the whole truth, she’d lose even the crumbs he’d been forced to give her.

  Tranquil waves frothed on the shore, erasing the names Fareed kept inscribing in the sand.

  Gwen. Ryan. Gwen. Ryan.

  He felt as if his world had emptied of anything but them.

  It had been a week since they’d come here. He’d been away only to go the center for a few hours a day. When he returned, he hadn’t been able to stay away from either of them all their waking hours. He had nothing but those. Longing for her kept him up nights, his mind and body on fire. He’d only slake it inside her, in her passion. And that was forever gone, too.

  He might have survived it if he hadn’t known what it was like with her, the pleasures that had enslaved his brother before him.…

  His thoughts convulsed on a torrent of regret. Jealousy and guilt were slowly poisoning him. And he could do nothing but let the emotions corrode him.

  But at least his objective had been secured. He’d called every favor he was owed worldwide, had thrown money and influence at every obstacle in his path, and he’d gotten Ryan’s adoption finalized. Gwen had been stunned when he’d told her in the morning.

  Then this afternoon, she’d come out of the villa for the first time with Ryan, followed him as he’d paced the beach.

  What had followed had been an unexpected torment, a simulation of the times they’d spent together as the family he’d thought they’d been forging. A glimpse of what might never, probably would never be. But then, whatever spontaneity and warmth he’d thought they’d shared had had probably been both of them responding to Ryan’s delighted discovery of his surroundings, his tireless demand that they join him in frolicking in the sand and sea. Left to her own devices, she’d probably avoid him for life.

  She would have.

  Suddenly her scent carried to him even over the tanginess of the open sea. He braced himself, hating his weakness, the molten steel of ever-present desire that poured into his heart and loins.

  “Ryan is finally sand-free.”

  He turned at her breathless declaration. She seemed to be floating to him in a full-length dress the sunlit color of her hair. It molded to her, accentuating her willowy splendor as if made for her. Seemed he could translate his obsessive knowledge of her every dip and curve and swell to ultra-precise fit. It was one of the dresses he’d had delivered for her because she’d left her belongings in his mansion. He’d never thought he could buy a woman clothes. Visualizing, fitting and buying them for her could turn into an addiction. As everything concerning her had.

  She stopped before him, her skin and hair reflecting the radiance of the setting sun, her eyes the endlessness of the sky. Her warmth enveloped him, her hesitant smile pierced his vitals.

  Then she reached out, almost touched him.

  He wouldn’t be able to resist such a brutal test. If she touched him, he’d drag her to the sand and take her. And she’d beg him to do everything to her. Then after the mindlessness of abandon, she’d sink into that misery that had so baffled him, that he now understood. He couldn’t survive that of all things.

  He caught her hand in midair, his jaw, his whole being rigid fighting the need to drag her by that supple hand, crush her beneath his aching flesh, ride her.

  He hurt. Inside and out.

  She pulled her hand away, her smile as shaky. “You have sand in your hair. Ryan bathed us both in it.”

  He gestured to her glowing cleanliness. “You’re sand-free.”

  “Took a lot of heavy-duty scrubbing. The sand here is incredibly fine, like powdered gold.”

  He bit back a groan as the images and sensation bombarded him. He could almost feel his hands running down the smoothness of her slippery body as he lathered her, kneaded her under a steady jet of warm wetness, as he drove inside her tight, fluid heat, over and over until she climaxed around him, singed him with her pleasure. Then he would rinse her, caress and fondle her, whisper to her how she felt around him, what more he’d do to her as he brought her down from the pinnacle of pleasure, had her simmering for the next ride.…

  He exhaled forcibly, trying to expel the encroaching madness. “I’m glad Ryan enjoys the beach. Activities on the sand and in the sea are the best natural form of physiotherapy for him.”

  She bit her lower lip, made him feel she’d sunk those white teeth in his own, in his heart. “I never even took him to the pool. I was afraid to expose him to physical stress because I had no way of knowing if I’d be harming him. So it was his first exposure to the sea, and as you saw, he went berserk with delight.”

  He had been as thrilled as he could be in his condition with Ryan’s joy. “We’ll come here as often as possible, then.”

  She gave him such a look, hesitant, anxious, as if asking him what was to become of them, what kind of life they’d have.

  What did she expect? They’d come here, they’d be together everywhere, where he’d be Ryan’s father and her parenting partner, but never again her lover. They’d never be a real husband and wife and just a simulation of a family.

  B’Ellahi, why was she here? Trying to smile and make small talk and shake sand out of his hair? Did she think he could be her easy companion now as he shared Ryan’s upbringing?

  Or was she considering resuming their intimacies because they were now married, for worse or worst?

  Would he want this, if this were what she was after?

  No. He’d either have all or none of her, couldn’t share…

  “Fareed, there’s something I need…I have to confess to you.”

  His focus sharpened on her. Her incandescent beauty was now gilded by the lights emanating from the villa. The spasm of sheer love he felt for her, the enormity of it, suddenly crystallized one irrefutable fact.

  He was wrong. He had been wrong. About everything he’d felt or thought since he’d found out she’d been Hesham’s woman.

  What she had been didn’t matter. What she was did.

  She was the woman he’d loved on sight, the only one who’d ever aroused his unadulterated desire, possessed his unqualified trust and admiration. She had been a selfless lover to his brother, then as sacrificing a mother to Ryan. She’d been the best thing that had ever happened to him, too, his life’s first absolute intimacy. And he had been willing to give up anything, risk anything for her. His assets, his peace of mind, his hopes, his life. He now realized he could give up even more. He would.

  He’d give up his jealousy, that Hesham had loved her first. His guilt over loving her when Hesham no longer could. His anguish over surviving when Hesham was no longer there.

  But maybe she was already meeting him halfway. With this confession she wanted to make. He gestured for her to go ahead.

  “You didn’t question the reasons I stated for hiding Ryan’s paternity…” She stopped, her agitation mounting.

  He had to spare her. “There was nothing to question. You were doing what Hesham would have wanted you to do. He lived in fear of our father finding him and spoiling his life and yours. He clearly knew what Emad did, that our father was looking for him, not in the way I thought, out of anger. When he knew he’d die
, he knew if he ever found you, you could lose Ryan to the man who almost destroyed him. My siblings and I were lucky because we had our mothers, whom everyone called the lioness, the Amazon and the harpy, to fend for us. But Hesham didn’t. His mother died giving birth to him.”

  Her gaze wavered. “Hesham said your father never let anyone mention her to him as he grew up.”

  Fareed exhaled another of his frustrations with his father. “It was whispered around the kingdom that she couldn’t withstand him, being this artistic, ethereal creature. It did seem that our father was so furious with her for being different from what he’d wanted, then for dying, that he banned any mention of her. When he realized Hesham was turning out like her, he did everything to force him into the mold he thought acceptable for a son of his. Hesham was right to fear our father and to instill that fear in you. If Ryan had fallen into his hands, he would have suffered an even worse fate because Hesham at least had us, older siblings who’d done all we could to temper his autocratic upbringing. So I understand that you had to hide the truth with all you had. I only wish you’d trusted me. At least, trusted Hesham’s decision to entrust your and Ryan’s futures to me.”

  She grabbed his forearm, urgency emanating from her. “I trusted you with Ryan’s life, with both our lives when I came to the land I feared most on the strength of nothing but my belief in you. But it’s more complicated than you think. And when we…we…”

  “Became lovers?” He placed his hand on top of hers before she could retract it. “I can see how this made you feel more trapped. But after I was furious with Emad when he revealed the truth, then told my father, I can’t be more thankful to him now. Like we say here, assa an takraho shai wa hwa khayronn lakom.”

  She nodded. “You may hate something and it’s for your best.”

  He smiled. “I’ll never stop being impressed by how good your Arabic is. Hesham taught you well.”

  She blushed. Blushed. With pleasure at his praise. And at the ease with which he now referred to Hesham, and the beauty of the relationship she’d shared with him?

  Then her color deepened to distress again. “But Emad didn’t find out the full truth. And when you know it, you won’t find acceptable excuses for my half truths.”

  He took her by the shoulders. “No, Gwen, whatever you hid, I’m on your side, and only on your side, always.”

  The tears gathered in her eyes slipped down the velvet of her cheeks as she nodded. “Hesham said your father told him his life story when he was fifteen. He said he married three women, one after the other for political and tribal obligations, had children from each, sometimes almost simultaneously.” Fareed knew well the story of his father and his four wives and ten children. He had a feeling she’d tell him things he didn’t know. “But he didn’t love any of them.”

  “It was mutual, I assure you.”

  Gwen winced. “Yes. Then he met Hesham’s mother and they fell in love on sight.” Fareed’s jaw dropped. That he surely didn’t know. He believed his father was love-proof, let alone to the on-sight variety. “But even if his marriages were to serve the kingdom, she wouldn’t be a fourth wife. So he divorced his wives wholesale, and dealt with the catastrophic political fallout.”

  He was only six when this happened. He still remembered the upheavals. “My mother and the other two women say it was the best day of their lives when they finally got rid of him.”

  She nodded. “It was how he convinced Hesham’s mother to marry him. She feared if he could divorce the mothers of his children so easily, that she couldn’t trust him. So he let her interview them and they told her it was what they longed for, how they, like him, had felt trapped in the marriages, that he’d never loved anyone but her in his life. He pledged only death would part them.

  “Their marriage was deliriously happy, and when she got pregnant, he told her he’d love her child the most of his children. But she died, and he almost went insane. He at first hated the son he blamed for killing his love. Then as Hesham grew up and he saw her in him, he transferred all his love and expectations and obsessions to him. He ordered no one to mention her because it made him crazy with grief.”

  Fareed felt more disoriented than when his father’s guard had struck him. “And it seems I will keep finding that I know nothing about those I considered my closest people.”

  She shut her eyes. “Th-there’s more. Much more.”

  “Then arjooki, please, tell me everything.”

  She drew in a shaky breath. “What nobody knew is that a few years after Hesham’s mother’s death, her tribe, the royal family of Durrah, invoked an ancient Jizaanian law. That if a king married more than one woman, the sons of his highest-ranking wife would succeed him to the throne, with no respect to age. Since Hesham’s mother was a pureblood princess, that made Hesham the crown prince.”

  He stared at her, beyond flabbergasted.

  This…this…explained so much. Yet was totally inexplicable.

  Not that he considered disbelieving her for a second.

  But he had to ask. “Kaif? How could my father hide something like this? How is that not common knowledge?”

  “Your father pledged to Hesham’s maternal relatives that Hesham would be his crown prince. On one condition—that they reveal this to no one until he prepared his kingdom and his other sons, especially the one who lived his life believing he was his heir, for the change in succession. But most important, until he prepared Hesham for the role he’d be required to fill. They agreed, in a binding blood oath. The king told Hesham when he turned fifteen and your oldest brother, although still in confidence. Hesham said Abbas was sorry for him, if relieved for himself. He didn’t relish being crown prince.”

  Fareed could believe that. Abbas was a swashbuckling, extreme-sport-loving, corporate-raiding daredevil. He dreaded the day he’d have to give up the wildness and freedom of his existence to step into their father’s shoes. He always said, only half-jokingly, that the day of his joloos on the throne he’d turn the kingdom into a democracy and be on his way.

  But it was making more sense by the second, explaining the infuriating enigma of his father.

  “So this was why Father pressured Hesham to that extent. He was trying to turn him into the crown prince he knew he wasn’t equipped to become.”

  “Yes, and this was why he so objected to…to…”

  “To his choosing you. He must have had some pureblood royal bride lined up for him, too. This does explain why he reacted so viciously to Hesham’s news that he was marrying you.”

  “But even with Hesham gone, Ryan…”

  “Wait, Hesham meant Ryan’s name the way I pronounce it, the Arabic version, didn’t he? But he picked it because it worked in your culture, too, with a different meaning.”

  She nodded, her urgency heightening at what she considered unimportant now. “What I was saying is that Ryan might still be considered the king’s first-in-line heir. And this is why he might never give up trying to get custody of him.”

  He ran his hands down his face. “Ya Ullah. I see how your fear of our father is a thousand times what I believed it should be. But you no longer have to worry. Even a king’s claim to his rightful heir wouldn’t trump our combined custody.”

  “You might be wrong…”

  His raised hand silenced her. Ominous thunder was approaching from the darkness that had engulfed the sea.

  A helicopter. He would bet his center it was carrying his father. This had to be Emad’s doing.

  His fury crested as he turned to Gwen. “Go inside, please. I’ll deal with this.”

  “Fareed, let me tell you first…”

  But he was already running to meet the helicopter as it landed, needing to end this before it started. And to end Gwen’s worries once and for all.

  The moment his father stepped out of the helicopter that, to Fareed’s fury, Emad was piloting, Fareed blocked his way.

  “Father, go back where you came from. Gwen told me everything. And it’s over. Ry
an will never be in your custody.”

  Challenge flared in his father’s eyes. “I’m surprised you even think your ‘adoption’ is a deterrent. Our laws don’t sanction adoption, just fostering, and adopting him according to another culture’s laws means nothing.”

  “The deterrent is not only that Ryan has the Aal Zaafer name through me, not Hesham. It is that I’ll give up my Jizaanian nationality if it will make my adoption binding anywhere in the world, starting with here. But most of all it is that I, a man of equal status to you and superior wealth, am married to Ryan’s mother.”

  The king only transferred his gaze behind him. Gwen had followed him, was almost plastered to his back.

  Then, without taking his eyes off her, his father said, “That is not your greatest weapon but your greatest weakness, Fareed. Gwen isn’t Ryan’s mother. She’s his aunt.”

  Thirteen

  Fareed heard his father’s declaration. He understood the words. He couldn’t make any sense of them.

  Still looking at Gwen, his father addressed her this time, “It was your sister, Marilyn, who was Hesham’s woman.”

  After all these months, Fareed had a full name for Hesham’s Lyn. Marilyn. Not Gwendolyn.

  He turned, no longer of his own volition, but under her agitation’s compulsion.

  She was looking at him, and only at him, her eyes flooded with imploring. Certainty was instantaneous, absolute.

  She wasn’t Hesham’s woman. Wasn’t Ryan’s mother.

  They would register. The import and impact of this knowledge. They would crash on him and rewrite his existence. But not now.

  Now only one thing mattered.

  He turned to his father. “It makes no difference. Ryan is Gwen’s and you’re not getting him.”