The Desert Lord's Love-Child
It took minutes and the nosiness of two neighbors to bring him down. He regained at least enough control to settle a semblance of composure over the chaos, smothering it. Enough to make him reach a resolution.
He’d never let her affect him that deeply again. Ever.
He’d go in, take what he wanted. As he always did.
He straightened, set his teeth with great precision and almost drove his finger through her doorbell.
Carmen jerked up from watching Mennah sleep. The bell!
Though it almost never rang, she’d been waiting for her super to come fix the short-circuit in the laundry room. He’d said within the next two days. Four days ago.
But it was the way the bell rang that had made her jump. It had almost … bellowed, for lack of a better description. Maybe it was about to give, too, and that sound was its dying throes?
Sighing, she checked Mennah’s monitor and the wireless receiver clipped to her jeans’ waist. On her way to the door, she smoothed her hands over her hair but gave up in midmotion with a huff. A disheveled greeter was what her super got for coming unannounced, catching a single mother with a dozen chores behind her and a shower still in her future.
Fixing a smile on her lips, intending her greeting to be thanks for his arrival if no thanks for his delay, she opened the door.
Her heart didn’t stop immediately.
It went on with its rhythm for a moment, the kind that simulated hours, before it lost the blood it needed to keep on pumping. The blood now shooting to her head, pooling in her legs. Then it stopped.
And everything else hurtled, screeched, into consciousness.
Denial, dread, desperation.
She’d changed her career to work from home, had relocated to the other side of the continent, had still remained scared that he’d find her. But he hadn’t, and eventually she’d believed he hadn’t tried, or hadn’t been able to.
But he had found her. Was on her doorstep. Farooq.
Filling her doorway. Blocking out existence.
She found herself slumped against the door, her fingers almost breaking off with the force with which they clutched it. Some instinct must have remained functioning, saving her from crashing to the ground. Some auxiliary power must be fueling her continued grip on consciousness.
“Save it.”
That was all he said as he pushed past her, walking into her apartment as if he owned it. And his voice …
This wasn’t the voice etched in her memory. The voice that echoed in every moment’s silence, haunting her, whispering seduction, rumbling arousal, roaring completion, always charged with emotion. This voice contained as much life as a voice simulation program.
God, what was he doing here?
No. She didn’t care what he was doing here. She didn’t care that her insides were crumbling under the avalanche of emotion the sight of him had triggered.
She had to get rid of him. Fast.
She had to regain control first, of her coherence, to think of something to say, of her volition, to be able to say it.
She leaned against the door she didn’t remember closing, feeling as if the least tremor would shatter the tension keeping her upright. She watched his powerful strides take him into the formal living room, felt him shrinking it, converging all light on him like a spotlight in the dark.
And even through her shock and panic, everything inside her devoured each line of his juggernaut’s body, even bigger and taller than she remembered, the sculpted suit worshipping it from the daunting breadth of shoulders, to the sparseness of waist and hips, to the formidable power of thighs and endless legs.
Memory was a sadistic master, lashing open festering wounds with images and sensations, of those shoulders dominating her, those hips thrusting her to a frenzy, those thighs and legs encompassing her in the aftermath of madness.
She tore her gaze and memories away, choking on longing. Then he turned, and everything in her piled up with the brunt of his beauty, the rawness of her still-burning love.
His heavy-lidded gaze documented her reaction before he raised both eyebrows, a movement rich in nonchalance and imperiousness. “Finished with your latest act, or shall I wait until you’ve delivered the full performance?”
It wasn’t only his voice that was different. This wasn’t the Farooq she remembered. This wasn’t even the hostile stranger she’d walked out on. That man had been seething with harshness, with emotion. This man was even more forbidding, as he eyed her with the clinical coldness of a scientist dealing with inanimate matter.
His lips pursed as if he were assessing a defective product. He finally gave a slight shake of his awesome head, lips twisting on his unfavorable verdict. “As an unbiased viewer, I must tell you, your acting abilities are slipping. Exaggeration is not your friend.”
Before she could even process his dispassionate comment, let alone find words to answer it, he relieved her of his focus, cast his gaze around her space.
She could see his connoisseur’s mind adding up the worth of every square foot, every piece of furniture, brush stroke and decorative article and felt defensive. Though she’d made this place chic and cheery, it could well be derelict compared to the opulence he was used to. Which was a stupid thing to feel and think.
She had to make him leave. Now. Before Mennah woke up. Before he saw the childproofing she’d begun installing.
He finally returned those empty eyes to hers as he walked back toward her. She watched him cross the distance between them with the fatalism of someone about to be hit by a train.
“It cost a bundle, this place,” he murmured. “I would have wondered how you afforded it. If I didn’t already know.”
She almost blurted out “What do you mean by that?”
She didn’t. She couldn’t locate her voice. Her heart had long invaded her throat. She could barely breathe enough to keep from passing out. And his indifference and disparagement were encasing her in frost, hurrying her descent. Everything was taking on a surreal tinge. She began to hope this was a scenario out of her Farooq-starved imagination.
Then he was within touching distance. And she had to prove to herself he was—or wasn’t—really here.
She reached out a trembling hand, half expecting her fingertips to encounter a mirage. Instead they feathered over black-silk-covered flesh, the layered sensations of softness and steel, heat and hardness. Her fingers pressed into him, shudders engulfing her, like an electrocution victim unable to break the deadly circuit.
And she saw it, in his eyes. A response, blasting away the ice, mushrooming like a nuclear cloud before the wave of annihilation followed. Before he clamped onto her intruding hand.
A moan punched out of her as he squeezed awareness from her flesh and bones. Then, with scary precision, he removed her hand from his chest, let it drop like a soiled tissue.
With his eyes empty again, he half turned, raising his head as if sniffing for an oncoming storm.
“Hmm … filet mignon with mushroom sauce?” He turned his eyes to her. They weren’t back to impassivity at all, the harshness she’d seen in them that night in his penthouse polluting the amber. “Expecting a guest? Or is it a sponsor?” She gaped at him. His voice dipped into an abrasive bass. “I hope you’ve had enough of the shocked routine and will contribute to what started as a monologue and is now bordering on a soliloquy.”
Contribute. He wanted her to contribute. She had exactly four words to contribute. The sum total of what was left of her mind.
“Why are you here?”
Something feral flashed in the depths of his wolflike eyes. “So, you deem to end the mute show. If only to put on the dumb one.”
Each word was a lash on her rawness. “Please … stop.”
He inclined his head, a predator at leisure, his prey cornered, with all the time in the world to torment it. “Stop what? Critiquing your below par performance? You have only yourself to blame for that. It seems you haven’t been honing your craft of late.”
“Please … I don’t understand.”
“More acts, Carmen? Don’t you know the key to a successful acting career, especially an offstage one, is sticking with your strengths? My advice: never try the particular roles you just churned up for my benefit again. They neither suit nor work.”
“For God’s sake, stop talking in riddles. Why are you here?”
He raised an eyebrow. “Intent on dramatizing to the end, aren’t you? Or are you just intent on testing the limits of my patience? The reason I’m here is self-evident.”
She shook her head. “Not to me. So please, drop your act and just say what you came here to say, and then—please—leave me alone.”
He seemed to expand like a thundercloud about to hurtle down destruction, a beam of the day’s dying sun striking a solar flare of rage in the gold of his eyes.
“I once told you that I have my fill of games. I thought you had enough intelligence not to join the would-be manipulators who swarm around me. At least not to try the same trick twice. Evidently I’ve overestimated your IQ. This will be the last time I take part in one of your games, so savor it while you can. Try another at your peril.” He inclined his head at her, sent her heart slamming in her chest. “You want me to pretend I don’t know that you know why I’m here? Zain. Fine.” He gave a pause laden with the irony of someone about to deliver something redundant, the disgust of being forced to play an offensive game of make-believe.
Then he drawled, smooth and sharp as a razor, “I am here for my daughter.”
Two
Farooq’s words shot through Carmen, pulverizing the framework holding her heart in place. Yet something kept her on her feet and conscious. Probably hope that she was hallucinating. “W-what did you say?”
He exhaled, the icy armor not back in place, the underlying volcano seething through the cracks. “Spare me further theatrics. You had my daughter. You have my daughter. I am here for her.”
He knows about Mennah.
How could he know about her?
He somehow did, had said … said …
I am here for my daughter.
What did that mean? Here for her … how? It couldn’t mean what it sounded like. It couldn’t mean he … he …
He wanted to take Mennah away from her.
The ground softened. An abyss yawned beneath, pulled at her …
But no. No. Not even he could take a baby away from her mother. This wasn’t Judar, where he was the law. This was America.
But how did he find out? Had he had her investigated, found out she’d had a baby, done the math and come to the conclusion Mennah might be his? Why would he want her even if he realized she was? He couldn’t consider her anything but a disastrous mistake.
That first night he’d had no protection, and even in the inferno of arousal, he would have stopped if she hadn’t assured him she was safe. She’d been certain she was. She’d had a dozen reports from as many specialists declaring her infertile.
He’d told her in blatant detail how he wanted to invade her, feel his flesh inside hers without barriers, to pour himself inside her. It had sent her up in flames in his arms …
Stop. Stop. She couldn’t let those memories assault her now. He hadn’t been risking repercussions, had believed her assurances. That was why she’d known his reaction would be violent if he found out about her pregnancy. He would have looked upon it as an ultimate breach of the trust he didn’t give easily. Most important, she couldn’t have projected how damaging it would be to him, a prince in line to the throne of one of the world’s most conservative and richest oil states, to have an illegitimate child.
Suddenly her heart nearly fired out of her ribs.
Could he be here to make sure Mennah disappeared, so she’d never compromise his position?
Out of her mind with dread, she asked, “What makes you even think my daughter can be yours?”
His answering stare was long and pitiless, lava coursing beneath the dark, hard surface.
Then he dipped one hand inside his jacket, as if he were extracting a gun.
Next moment she wished he had pulled one out, had shot her straight through the heart with it.
He pulled out a photo instead. Of Mennah.
A photo of Mennah sitting in strange surroundings. Holding an unfamiliar toy. Wearing unknown clothes. Mennah was laughing at the camera, secure, pleased, knowing how to please.
Mennah was only like that around her.
In the few times she’d seen other people, she’d clung to Carmen, fearful, tearful. If someone had managed to get her alone …
Was she losing her mind? How could she be wondering that?
She’d never left Mennah alone, except when she was sound asleep in her crib, like now. She’d diverted her career to work from home so she could be with her daughter at all times.
How had he gotten his hands on Mennah?
“I—I’ve never left Mennah. When—how did you get the chance to—to—”
“I didn’t.” His voice slashed across her babbling. “This isn’t a photo of your … of my daughter. This is a photo of my sister, Jala, at Mennah’s age. Mennah is also my feminine replica at that age. That Mennah is mine is indisputable. So let’s drop the hysterics and get to the point of all this.”
“Wh-what is that?”
“That I’ll never forgive you for keeping her from me.”
Farooq’s gaze clung to Carmen as she flinched as if at the lash of a whip, his fascination beyond his control.
But that was an improvement on what had happened when she’d opened her door with that smile ready on her lips. Everything had stilled then. Thought, heartbeats. Time itself had seemed to stop.
Then it had hit a screeching reverse, catapulting him to the moment he’d first laid eyes on her in that conference hall a year and a half ago.
As a tycoon and a prince, he had the world’s most spectacular beauties flaunting their assets and practicing seduction for his benefit. His attention had to be worked for extensively, was held with utmost effort for periods never surpassing days.
Then she’d come forward, hesitant, prim, and his focus had been captured and his lust aroused, effortlessly. Absolutely. A surge of something he’d never entertained feeling—possessiveness—had followed.
He’d wanted to banish every male around, shield her from their eyes and thoughts. Not that she’d been inviting attention. No doubt as part of her plan to stand out.
Apart from her aloofness, she’d been smothered in a navy skirt suit from neck to mid-calf, when all the women around her had worn skirts riding up their thighs and blouses opened on deep cleavages.
Her closed expression and concealing clothes had made him more eager to tear through them. He’d seen himself stripping her of that guarded look, those offending coverings, arranging her on that conference table, spreading her for his pleasure and hers, her reserve melting as she begged for his pleasuring, writhed for his domination …
It must have been the response she’d counted on. That the mystique of her reticence in manner and dress would rouse the hunter lying dormant inside him. And it had worked. Spectacularly.
For the first time ever, he’d been fazed, couldn’t account for his violent response. Unlike many men of his culture, he didn’t prefer fair-skinned, light-eyed women, certainly never redheads.
But she’d approached him like a wary gazelle, her equal attraction and alarm blazing in those heaven-colored eyes, had put that supple hand in his and everything about her had become everything he craved. Her face and body had become the sum total of his fantasies, every feature and line the source of his hunger, the fuel for his pleasure.
He would have done anything to have her in his bed. And when by the end of the night he’d had her there, he couldn’t let it end, had offered what he’d never offered any woman. Three months. In the private space he never let anyone breach. With every minute, he’d wanted her for longer. He’d even entertained forever.
Then she’d walked out.
Ever since, he’d been trying to wipe her taste from his mouth, the memory of her from his psyche, to reacquire a taste for other brands of beauty, build tolerance for another’s touch.
After each dismal failure he’d damned her, damned his addiction more. And here he was, renewing his exposure.
She’d opened the door, and it had been as if everything he’d learned since she’d revealed her true face had been erased, and she was again the woman he’d run back to that night, intending to offer forever.
It had taken her spectacular reaction to seeing him to jog him out of his amnesic haze. To fire his memory of when she’d done the unprecedented. The unimaginable. Thrown his desire back in his face. Been the one to walk out.
He’d pretended interest in his surroundings to tear his senses away, only for everything about her new home to send his fury cresting, proof of her crimes against him.
Had this place been stripped of even a coat of paint, it would still cost a fortune, with its location in an elite building in an upmarket neighborhood of one of the most expensive cities in the world, New York. The fortune she’d made being Tareq’s mole.
Tareq had planted her in his life at the perfect time. During his taxing world tour, as he’d fought for his goals on all fronts, amidst Tareq’s escalating efforts to discredit him.
He’d thought her a godsend. Instead she’d been sent by a devil. A devil whose evil had backfired.
With Farooq’s father dead—of a broken heart, Farooq was convinced, just a year after Farooq’s mother had died from a long illness—Tareq had thought that, as the king’s oldest nephew, he’d succeed Farooq’s father as crown prince. Tareq’s own father had died of a heart attack when they were all quite young, leaving Tareq his only heir and the oldest of the royal cousins.
But, knowing that Tareq favored certain unkingly, depraved activities, their uncle the king had at first said he’d reserve the crown prince title for his own son. A son he could only have if he took a second wife. When he couldn’t bring himself to take another wife, he’d then said he’d name his heir according to merit, not age, with the implication clear to all that he meant Farooq and would soon officially name him crown prince. Tareq had then launched into non-stop plotting to overrule the king’s decree.
During Farooq’s tour, Tareq had suddenly started talking as if he’d secured the succession, bragging that he’d be the first king who never married. Farooq guessed he’d said that to gain the support of the enemies of the royal house of Aal Masood by intimating that they would therefore get a turn to rule after him. He now realized that Tareq had also thought his plot with Carmen had been about to bear fruit, creating an illegitimate, half-western heir for Farooq and eliminating him from favor.
But Tareq’s assertions had only given the king ammunition to overcome the reluctance of the members of the Tribune of Elders—the king’s council—who had resisted bypassing Tareq for Farooq. With Tareq adding contempt for the Aal Masoods’ future to his depravities, the king knew that all Farooq needed to do to drive the last nail in Tareq’s coffin was to overcome his own reluctance to marry. Didn’t he have a woman he’d consider marrying? his uncle had asked.
Farooq hadn’t even hesitated. He had a woman. Carmen.
And his king had issued the decree. The heir who married and produced the first child would succeed to the throne.
And Tareq had ordered Carmen to leave the very next day.
During their confrontation, Tareq had thanked his lucky stars that Carmen hadn’t conceived, casting aspersions on Farooq’s virility and fertility. Sixteen hours ago, Farooq had realized she’d left because she had conceived, the child that would have snuffed her employer’s dying hopes.
She couldn’t have known what she’d lost when she’d run out on him. But he still didn’t know why she hadn’t stayed to use the child as a bargaining chip, had taken Tareq’s offer instead. Even if she’d shown Farooq the face of a woman he could never marry, he’d been in addiction’s merciless grip, would have given her light years beyond what she had now.
Had she thought he’d sate himself, wreak vengeance on her then discard her with nothing? Or did her subservience to Tareq mix greed with fear? Or even lust …?
His thoughts boiled in an uproar of revulsion.
Thinking of her in Tareq’s filthy arms, succumbing to his sadism and perversions … Bile rose up to his throat.
But the sick image of her as his cousin’s tool and whore, and her own words as she’d left him, clashed with everything radiating from her now….
No. He’d never believe anything he sensed about her again. He could still barely believe how totally he’d been taken in, how seamlessly she’d acted her part. It had been a virtuoso performance, the guilelessness, the spontaneity, the unbridled responses, the perpetual hunger, the total pleasure in him, in and out of bed.
But all that faking had borne something real. A daughter. And he’d missed so much. The miracle of her birth and every precious moment of the first nine months of her life.
And if it had been up to Carmen, he would have never found out about her. She would have grown up fatherless.
But among all Carmen’s crimes, what most enraged him had been that touch.
She’d touched him as if to ascertain he was really there. And that touch had almost made him drag her to the floor, tear her out of her clothes and bury himself inside her.
Now he relished repaying her for shredding his control yet again, seeing her with her composure shattered.
Oh, yes. That was real. She must be frantic, thinking her cash cow had run dry. Now that Farooq had learned of Mennah’s existence, Tareq would stop paying for her luxurious lifestyle.
Seething with colliding emotions, he inclined his head at her. “Nothing to say, I see. That’s very wise of you.”
She gulped. “H-how did you find out?”
He wouldn’t have. Ever. If he’d stuck to his oath never to seek her out. But instead of fading away, her memory had burned hotter each day, and the need for closure had almost driven him mad.
It had taken months, even with the endless resources at his fingertips, to find her. His best people had finally gotten him the basics—an address, a resume … and a photograph. Of Carmen and a baby. A baby recognizable on sight as his.
That photograph now burned a rectangle its size over his heart, though he’d chosen to show Carmen Jala’s photo instead, to cut things short. He’d expected her to contest his paternity.
Pursing his lips, he pushed past her. “I find out anything I want. Now, I’ll see my daughter.”
“No.” She grabbed him, aborting his stride toward the hall leading to the bedrooms. Her touch, though frantic, still sent a bolt of arousal through him. He added his unwilling response to her transgressions, looked down at her hands in disgust, at her, at himself. She removed them, took a step backward. “She’s sleeping.”
“So? Fathers walk in on their sleeping daughters all the time. You’ve taken nine months of my daughter’s life away from me. I’m not letting you take one more minute.”
She jumped into his path again, her color dangerous, her chest heaving. “I’ll let you see her only if—if you promise—”
He slashed his hand, cutting off her wobbling words. “Nobody lets me do anything, let alone you. I do what I see fit. And everyone obeys.”
He took another step and she threw herself at him, imprinting him with her lushness. His body roared even through the fury.
He gritted his teeth. “Get out of my way, Carmen. You’re not coming between me and my flesh and blood again.”
She clung, gasped, “I didn’t—”