The Sheikh's Claim

by Olivia Gates

  The next minutes, as father and son looked at each other in total stillness and silence, were the most tempestuously emotional of her life.

  It felt as if all the months since the day Adam had been conceived were compacted, everything she’d felt and thought and suffered condensing in her heart, almost imploding it.

  Holding in the tremors and tears with all she had, she watched the two people who possessed the lion’s share of her heart and soul and destiny.

  Adam, who was never still while awake, remained motionless, all his faculties trained at that larger-than-life entity who was looking at him as if nothing in the world existed but him. Having been born within an extended family, Adam was used to being around people, to accepting new ones. But he’d never reacted that way to someone new. To anyone. She could see it, sense it. He just knew Jalal was different from anyone else. And it wasn’t because he was the largest man he’d ever seen, or who emitted the most power. She could swear she could feel, almost taste the bond that existed between them. It arced out of each, caught her in the cross fire before it sank into the other, transforming them all forever.

  Suddenly, Jalal moved, fracturing the unbearably poignant moment, and almost her tenuous coordination and consciousness. Her sight blurred as Jalal reached a hand that visibly shook to feather a touch laden with awe down Adam’s cheek.

  “Ya Ullah, ya Lujayn—ya Ullah! Our son!”

  The thick, ragged wonder in his voice, the agonized delight gripping his face, had her heart quivering, her nerves firing haphazardly, each jolt a tiny electrocution.

  She’d never even let herself imagine this moment. She’d refused to paint scenarios of what he’d do, how he’d feel, if he saw Adam when he knew he was his. She’d strangled any thought before it came to life. Because any imagining would have been a shard embedded in her heart, an injury that would have constantly bled and drained her of life and will.

  “Ma ajmalak men subbi. Enta mo’jezah!”

  What a beautiful boy you are. You’re a miracle.

  “Baba?”

  Adam’s chirping voice articulated the word softly, carefully. It detonated in her head and heart, snapped her control. Tears poured, squeezed from her very essence.

  Jalal’s eyes, struck and reddened, tore from Adam to her, their question dazed but clear. She shook her head. She hadn’t told Adam anything. But Adam knew other kids had their babas. He’d recognized Jalal as his.

  A shudder shook through Jalal’s great body, tears filled his wolf eyes as a smile she’d never thought to see trembled on his lips, one of heartbreaking tenderness. “Aih, ya sugheeri, ana Baba.” One finger touched Adam over his heart. “W’enta ebni.”

  Yes, my little one, I’m your father. And you’re my son.

  Then he held out his arms to Adam.

  A whimper escaped her as emotion spiked, twisting her insides. Adam always checked with her, asking her consent in a smile or a verbal encouragement, before he let a new person hold him. He asked for none now, pitched himself into Jalal’s arms.

  A groan of overwhelmed joy and relief rumbled from Jalal as he received Adam’s robust body with care and reverence.

  Adam pointed to himself, said his name, had Jalal repeating it after him before he proceeded to name his articles of clothing. Then examining Jalal with utmost concentration and interest, he pawed his face and triumphantly named his features. Satisfied with his preliminary exploration, he smiled at Jalal shyly, produced his precious pink elephant from his pocket.

  As Jalal accepted it, looking more moved than she had thought possible, she heard Dahab’s voice as if coming from another realm.

  “You should consider yourself privileged beyond imagining. No one, and I mean no one is allowed to even touch Mimi.”

  Smiling with his whole body, Jalal turned to Dahab. “I assure you, I feel far more than that. I feel blessed for the first time in my life, when I in no way deserve to be.” He reached out one of those immaculate hands to her. Adam squeaked out her name. Jalal chuckled. “Thanks for the introduction, ya sugheeri. I certainly see why your aunt was called that.”

  Dahab was Lujayn’s very opposite in coloring, with hair of pure gold, hence her name, and dark chocolate eyes.

  As Jalal shook Dahab’s hand, his eyes warm and his smile warmer, a sick frisson went through Lujayn. In spite of her bravado, Dahab was fluttering under Jalal’s influence, and she was also the most beautiful woman Lujayn had ever seen. What if…

  Jalal swung his gaze back to Adam, looking down in awe at the upturned cherubic face that looked back at him with the same fascination. At length, he let out a ragged exhalation, looked at her for real for the first time today.

  “Ya Ullah, ya Lujayn, what is this miraculous being we managed to have between us? This prodigy who recognized me on sight?” He grinned at Adam, squeezed and tickled him. “So who am I? Who am I, you most wonderful and intelligent tot? Let me hear it again.”

  Adam wriggled his excitement, shrieked his delight. “Baba!”

  “That’s right, you magnificent boy, you! I am Baba Jalal. Can you say that?”

  “Baba Jalal!”

  Jalal’s eyelashes fluttered, as if blinking back tears. “Ya Ullah, I didn’t even think you’d be able to talk at this age.”

  “Oh, he talks.” Dahab chuckled. “All the time. A lot is still in his own language, like ‘bandend’ for balloon, and ‘minkilonti’ for macaroni, but he manages to make you get his drift.”

  “He says fifty-six words, in Arabic and English.” Lujayn realized she’d spoken only when they all looked at her. “Uh…I write down everything he says. It’s beyond his developmental age, which is fifty words at most, in one language....”

  Her voice petered out at the flare of intensity in Jalal’s eyes. Suddenly she found herself tucked into his body with Adam. Before she drew another breath, he took her lips in a scorching, devouring kiss that had blood whooshing in torrents in her head.

  In the periphery of an awareness that overflowed with sensation, whoops and whistles echoed, until he unlocked the seal of their lips and raised his head to smile at their approving and encouraging audience.

  Adam mashed their faces back together. “Kiss, kiss.”

  “Son, your wish is my command.” Jalal chuckled, searing her with another kiss punctuated by the enthusiasm of their son and Dahab.

  He released her seconds before she swooned, passion and mirth setting his eyes on golden fire. “You have to give me that list. And another of his own words.” She nodded numbly as he looked down at Adam who nestled into him contentedly. Pride blazed in his eyes as he turned them back to her. “How can I ever thank you for the priceless treasure of our son, ya’yooni’l feddeyah?”

  She almost said something as inane as “You have a fifty-percent share of his pricelessness, so we’re even.” Only her scrambled speech centers stopped her.

  “Whoa, and he’s verbal and poetic, too!” Dahab whistled again. “Anything you’re not great at, Prince Jalal?”

  “Do you want an alphabetized list? From what I’ve been finding out lately about my mess ups, it might be a good-sized volume.” Jalal raised one formidable eyebrow at Dahab. “And just Jalal. If you don’t want me to call you Sheikha Dahab.”

  Dahab shuddered. “Ugh. Reserve that for Mom and Aunt. I still don’t know how I’ll survive my friends finding out about this little gem of archaic pompousness.”

  Jalal chuckled. “Is being a sheikha such a terrible thing?”

  Dahab quirked her lips at him. “You tell me. How’s being a prince been for you so far?”

  He sobered, exhaled. “Aih. The perks have certainly been far outweighed by the aggravations, enmities and heartaches.”

  “There you go. I’d rather remain plain old Dahab Morgan.”

  Jalal exhaled. “Seems I owe you an apology for outing your family for the nobility they are.”

  “Are you kidding? That’s the best thing that has ever happened to them and I can’t thank you enough on
their behalf. Me, I’ll just deal with it by being as un-sheikha-like as possible.”

  Jalal smiled down at Adam, smoothing his hand in wonder over his silken raven hair and his downy-soft face. Lujayn could swear Adam purred in pleasure. “Tell your aunt she’ll never owe me any thanks. She needs only to ask anything and it’s done. I’m at her command, just as I am at anyone’s who loves you.”

  “Wow. Now I know what Aladdin felt like!”

  As if understanding his aunt’s quip, Adam burst out giggling, took Jalal’s face in his chubby hands and kissed him soundly.

  Jalal squeezed his eyes and groaned, looking as if he’d been punched in the gut with a battering ram of emotion.

  Dahab chuckled at his distressed expression. “Excuse me, Jalal, but you’re behaving as if you’ve never heard a baby laugh before. Or been kissed by one.”

  “I’ve never heard mine laugh or been kissed by him.” Jalal hugged Adam closer to his heart, rubbed his face against his silky hair, kissed the top of his head. Realizing he was being worshipped by this huge man, Adam dived more securely into Jalal’s embrace as if he’d always been there.

  Jalal hugged him and Lujayn tighter, alternated his gaze between their upturned faces, his voice becoming a ragged rasp. “He has your eyes. He has your everything. But he somehow also has mine. He makes us look alike.”

  She gaped at him, then at Adam. Her mouth fell open. He was right. She’d never wanted to see Jalal in Adam, but he was there, in just about everything as he’d said. In the shape of the eyes, the dimples in the cheek, the cleft chin, the hairline, the hair itself. It wasn’t hers as she’d always assumed, had the exact hue and shine and wave of Jalal’s....

  “Now that you’ve put your finger on it, oh yeah!” Dahab exclaimed. “You two suddenly do look alike, when just a second ago I saw nothing in common between you but that fabulous black hair, which on closer inspection isn’t even the same color, after all!”

  Right then, Adam decided they’d had enough introductions and exclamations, tapped Jalal’s shoulder with a commanding “Down.”

  Laughing at Adam’s nonnegotiable order, and still holding her to his side, Jalal bent and put Adam on the ground. Adam darted toward the open veranda doors.

  At the threshold he turned. “Play.”

  Laughing again, Jalal took both her and Dahab by the shoulders. “The little prince has spoken.”

  At that humorous declaration, Lujayn’s heart dropped a handful of beats. She almost stumbled as Jalal led them inside where he had a sumptuous lunch prepared. He insisted that Dahab postpone her date and have the meal with them.

  All through the late lunch, he laughed with Dahab, doted on Lujayn and Adam, and answered Adam’s incessant curiosities and demands for his attention with unending patience and unwavering enjoyment. Lujayn barely ate, or participated, upheaval intensifying as realizations piled up.

  She hadn’t even thought any of this possible. Jalal’s response to Adam, the fluency of interaction between them, that instant bond and mutual appreciation and delight. And it left her in an untenable situation, both retroactively and going forward.

  She had deprived Jalal—both—no, all of them of all that. And she couldn’t see how she could stop doing it from now on.

  The only way she could was if she agreed to Jalal’s earlier proposition. After she left Azmahar, he’d come to them whenever he could, to continue their affair and be Adam’s father. She had to admit, after what had happened between them last night, after today, there was nothing she wanted more from life.

  But that would only be a finite solution. According to her uncle, the throne was almost in Jalal’s bag. Once he became king, he’d need a queen and heirs. Legitimate heirs. Which meant their…arrangement would be temporary. And though their relationship would end when he married, his relationship with Adam wouldn’t. But it would remain clandestine for his throne’s and rightful heirs’ sakes. That might be acceptable now, with Adam so young and unaware, but in a few years? She would never let Adam suffer being an unacknowledged, second-class son.

  But how could she deprive him of his father now, after she’d seen them together, realized what a difference Jalal would make in Adam’s life? While Jalal’s duty to the throne would force him not to acknowledge Adam publicly, he would love him, would want to be his father in every other way that mattered.

  But would that be enough? Could she make the decision for Adam, when whatever she chose would end up hurting him?

  Feeling like she was about to tear down the middle, she barely interacted with the others until Adam napped and Dahab left. And she had nowhere to hide from Jalal’s focus.

  Before he could say anything to make any coherent thought impossible, she spoke up as soon as he returned from seeing Dahab off. “We have to talk.”

  His smile sizzled over her as he came closer. “First let me thank you for not telling your sister what a son of an ex-royal bitch I was with you. I bet if you’d told her half the things I did, instead of acceptance and laughter, she would have ripped my head off. And though I don’t deserve it, you also didn’t influence Adam in any way, either, but let him make up his own mind about me.”

  The lump that now perpetually occupied her throat expanded. “What happened between us remains between us. And I realize I’ve misinterpreted a good chunk of it, anyway.”

  “It still doesn’t change the facts of what happened. So I’m deeply grateful that you didn’t expose my…wrongdoings.”

  Her throat closed completely. “I’d never say anything to anyone, and I’d certainly never try to turn Adam against you.”

  He didn’t stop until he had plastered himself against her.

  “Jalal, please, we need to talk....”

  He pulled her fully against him, “And we will. But before anything, we have to do what all parents must always do.” He hugged her off the ground, buried his face in her neck. “Make love, hard and fast, before our baby wakes up.”

  She stood paralyzed as his hands and lips roamed her, worshipping and accessing all her triggers. She drowned in his kiss, his hunger, her body blossoming under his appreciation and ministrations…then a thought detonated in her mind.

  She pushed out of his arms. “God, how didn’t I think of this?”

  He tried to reach for her again, his hands gentle, his eyes concerned. “What is it?”

  She stumbled away. “I know Dahab will keep our secret, but how didn’t we think of Adam? He’s not about to forget this visit.”

  “I certainly hope he won’t!”

  “But he’ll tell everyone about Baba Jalal,” she exclaimed.

  His face relaxed in such a smile, indulgent and proud. “I certainly hope he would.”

  She shook her head, implications falling into place, each a new blow. “I’ll have to leave Uncle’s home and go live in that hotel until we leave Azmahar so he won’t be exposed to anyone.”

  “There’s no need for any of that. You can tell everyone now.”

  She gaped at him. “You know I can’t do that. One scandal already consumed most of my family’s lives. I won’t cause them another. And it’s out of the question for you, now of all times. With your campaign, the last thing you need is a scandal of the caliber of an illegitimate child.”

  He took her by the shoulders, his face gripped with fierce emotions. “Adam is not any such thing. He is my son and I’ll proclaim him my heir in front of the whole world.”

  She had no answer to that. For what felt like eternity.

  Then she could barely whisper, “Y-you can’t do that.”

  “I can and I will. I have a son and I will be his father, in every way possible.”

  Suddenly a suspicion spread through her like wildfire. She pushed away his hands as if they burned her. “If you’re thinking you can take him from me…”

  He raised both hands as if to ward off a blow, his expression agonized. “Don’t even complete that thought. Ya Ullah, you think I would even consider such a thing?”

>   She shook her head slowly, confusion rising. “It’s just I don’t see how else you’d do all…that.”

  “I will do it the one and only way. We will get married.”

  Ten

  “We can’t do that.”

  Lujayn’s ready rejection hit a bull’s-eye in Jalal’s heart.

  It hadn’t even been an exclamation, but a statement.

  His gaze left hers, moved to that miracle that was their son sleeping so peacefully facedown over his thick, colorful blanket on the floor. Adam felt already integrated into his being, as if he’d been a part of him since long before he’d been born. Like she was. Their presence had turned this place into a home. The intensity with which he wanted to claim them, have them with him, forming the most vital parts of his life, was frightening, exhilarating, transfiguring.

  But he was just beginning to wrap his mind around what Lujayn had suffered, from childhood up till this day. He didn’t have the right to feel bad that her first reaction was to reject the idea of marrying him out of hand, even after she’d made soul-searing love with him last night, and had already borne him Adam.

  He had to put her needs as his first and only priority. From now on, everything would be about her. And Adam. About his family.

  Emptying his face and voice of any emotion that might push her in the wrong direction, he asked, “Any reason why we can’t?”

  “How about every reason?”

  “I can only see we have every reason to get married. Each other, Adam…”

  “We don’t have each other, we just slept together a couple times during the last two years.”

  “I would have been in your bed every night of those two years if you hadn’t told me you hated me. It was why I walked away....”

  “If you respected or valued me, nothing I said would have made you walk away,” she cut him off, her eyes feverish. “But you despised and mistrusted me, when you had no reason to. You felt I betrayed you, but betrayal is when you give something of yourself, and someone takes it and screws you over. You gave me nothing, so what was there to betray? I exercised my right to self-preservation and you came after me, maligning and accusing. And you walked away because you always intended to, never looking back. Then I came here and you wanted to have more no-strings fun. Then you discover Adam and suddenly you want to marry me? I don’t think so.”