Pregnant by the Sheikh Read online

  Yeah. She knew exactly how he was feeling. She felt satiated in ways she couldn’t have imagined, in perfect peace for the first time in her life.

  His lips moved against her forehead. “I trust your two-hour sleep was recharging?”

  “Two hours!” She struggled to prop herself over his chest, her hair raining down on it.

  His own hair was fanned around his head over a pillow the exact same color of his eyes, making him look like a black-maned lion instead of the sleek, gleaming panther he usually was. She almost collapsed on top of him again.

  “Anything to add, besides incredulity at the length of time you were asleep? Although you already said yes, I’m still anxious to know if I delivered on my big promises.”

  She pulled a face at him, combing her fingers through the luxury of his hair. “If you’d delivered any more, I would have expired. I did for those two hours.”

  “I did, too.”

  “You did?”

  “I lasted long enough to not crush you beneath me, then all I know is I woke up ten minutes ago to find two hours have passed. Another all-time first.”

  “This never happened to you?”

  “You’re the first thing to ever knock me out. And without even trying. I’m starting to worry what you’ll do to me when you do try.” He shifted, brought her to her side facing him, kissed her deeply, leisurely, then whispered into her lips, “This was, hands down, the best thing that has ever happened to me. You are.”

  She suckled the tongue rubbing against hers, caressed the muscled back rippling with mind-boggling power beneath her fingers, disbelief still reverberating inside her. That she’d found him. That he’d wanted her. That they’d shared all this, a lifetime’s worth of events and emotions, in only twenty-four hours. Dare she expect more and even better in the days and weeks to come?

  She smiled into his kiss. “Same here. Word for word.”

  He pulled back to look at her, his own smile bliss and bedevilment at once as he pressed her flush against him, driving his intact arousal between her thighs. “Not letter for letter?”

  “You’re too greedy, sir.”

  “I’m not.” As her eyebrow rose in challenge, he kept a straight face as he elaborated, “I’m insatiable.”

  She laughed. It was such a delight to be exposed once again to that unexpected and unusual sense of humor that was the exact thing to tickle hers.

  She wiggled against his erection. “I have rock-solid proof to this claim.”

  He turned her on her back with a growl before he suddenly stopped. “Have you told your father everything?”

  “Since I had no details, I preferred to say nothing.”

  “So you disappeared from your so-called engagement party, let them all go insane wondering what happened to you, without a word of explanation?”

  “Yep, that’s it in a nutshell.”

  His lips suddenly spread into one of those smiles that gave her severe arrhythmia. “I said you were perfection.”

  She grinned back. “I’m not going to keep saying look who’s talking. I’ll record it so you can play it back whenever needed.”

  He guffawed, his first full-fledged laugh that she’d heard. Or it might be his first ever, since he looked very surprised, as if it had never happened before.

  Yeah, right. He’d lived forty years without laughing from the heart even once?

  No matter what, he was laughing from the heart now. She adored the ease and humor that flowed between them, when in her experience, postsex had always been tense and almost hostile. But that had been post–disappointing sex. She’d never known what post-earth-shattering sex was like. Till now.

  Before he continued his earlier thought that had been interrupted, she held him off for one more question. “You haven’t told me what you do intend.”

  He rose on extended arms. Seriousness replaced the mischievous passion in his eyes. “Tell your father to say nothing to Hassan and fly back to Zafrana. We’ll meet him there, where I’ll convene with him and his cabinet to get the details of the kingdom’s problems and debts. I have an idea already, since I spent the past night and day investigating the situation. I expect to set things in motion immediately. Once I do, we’ll go to Saraya and disabuse Hassan of his having the upper hand and the title of your fiancé.”

  Her heart tightening, she stared at him in dismay.

  Seeming to realize her distress, his gaze filled with concern. “Are you okay? Are you feeling any pain?”

  She shook her head, bit her lip. “Don’t get me wrong. I appreciate what you’re doing beyond words. I really want this mess over with and Zafrana out of danger. But I really hoped I didn’t have to go back again.”

  His expression cleared then heated, seduction in one lethal package. “But it won’t be the same when you go this time.” He bore down on her. “This time you’ll be with me.”

  “You expect to carry on our...affair there? You want to kick up a region-wide scandal?”

  “I care nothing what others think, as you know, but for your and your family’s sake, there won’t be a whiff of scandal. I know how to keep a secret.”

  Still worried, she murmured, “I bet you can.”

  “Leave everything to me and just concentrate on being totally free, on taking everything you want with me.”

  When he put it that way, how could she object?

  He stabbed his fingers into the hair at her nape, tethering her to the mattress by it, making her gasp then open wide for him, lips and legs. “Say yes, ya jenani.”

  Unable and unwilling to say anything else, she cried out, “Yes!” as he plunged inside her.

  And all through the night, she said an inordinate amount of yeses to just about everything, every apprehension evaporating in the conflagration that consumed her body and soul.

  Six

  “Are your sisters to be trusted?”

  Jen watched Numair’s lips move, and the constant urge to capture them, lose herself in their pleasure and possession, almost overwhelmed her again.

  She had heard him, understood the individual words, yet couldn’t come up with a collective meaning for his question. Her mind’s processing powers were busy catapulting back in time to what those lips had been doing to her for the past three days. Day and night and in between. Up till fifteen minutes ago when her sisters had come on board his private jet now sitting on the tarmac.

  After that first night in her apartment, he’d taken her back to his suite at The Plaza, and they hadn’t left it. They’d done nothing but feast on each other, each time better than the one before it. They’d made love in so many ways she’d never known possible, ways she hadn’t dreamed of or thought would be pleasurable. Not until she’d done them with him. She’d been right beyond her wildest dreams. The incredible being known as Numair was the one man to teach her all there was to know about passion, the one who could plumb her sensual potential. And then some.

  He was standing before her, perfection and beyond in a casual black suit and a shirt one hue darker than his eyes. She’d picked it for him, loving how it made his eyes even more incandescent. He was exuding vitality and virility and that all-out hunger that only seemed to increase in his eyes, in his vibe. It made her feel wanted, cherished, limitless.

  He now quirked a dense eyebrow as if to prod her... The eyebrow she’d indulged in tracing with her lips and fingers and nibbling with her teeth...

  “Jenan?”

  “Huh?” was all she finally said.

  “I was asking if I can do this...” He cast a quick glance over her head, then scooped her up into the bedroom of his plane, closing the door and pressing her against it. He bore down on her with his bulk and arousal, sank onto her lips. When he raised his head, she was wound around him, arms and legs. His gaze was satisfaction itself as he vie
wed her blatant arousal and completed his question. “In front of them, and trust them not to out us to the whole world?”

  Landing with a thud from euphoria back to reality, she unclamped him from her limbs and found ground again. “I would usually say el serr fe beir, or ‘the secret is in a well’ with them. But then nothing is usual about you. Or us. You are such a huge deal, they’ve had their jaws on the floor since they’ve seen you in close quarters. They’re bursting at the seams with curiosity about the nature of our relationship and they’ve already asked me the same question in a hundred different ways, and none of my half-truths have satisfied them. I expect they’re going to work on you now in their quest for the truth.”

  After taking another brief kiss as if he couldn’t stop himself, he said, “How about we appease them, take them into our confidence?”

  She licked his lingering taste off her lips before chewing on her lower one. “I usually trust them with anything, but then I never had any secrets for them to keep. They’re so used to flaunting my news in everyone’s face. I’m sure they’ll want to brag about you, and I don’t want to put them to such a test. Even if they promise to keep our secret and mean it, you, as you very well know, are too much. You would make anyone break their rules and do things that are totally out of character.”

  “Anyone, but not you.”

  She giggled. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “I’m doing no such thing. You’re following every rule you forged for yourself, taking what you believe is right for you without consideration of society’s restrictions. Everything you’re doing with me is perfectly in character for you. You’re enterprising, direct, fearless and a precise judge of character. You knew at once I’m the one for you, and you didn’t waste time in empty maneuvers, just took what you want and need.”

  “When you put it that way, you almost make it sound as if I knew what I was doing.”

  “You did. You do.” After another deep, drowning kiss, he raised his head, ran a coveting finger from her cheek down to the cleavage hidden by her demure, floor-length russet dress. “So will we or won’t we?”

  “Now that I think of it, with the way they both live online, if we don’t want this shared with a few million of their close friends on social media, you won’t only be unable to haul me and devour me like you just did, you’ll also have to keep your hands to yourself completely.”

  A thundercloud of a frown came over his face. “Fifteen hours without touching you at all? That’s not even a possibility. I only look like a superman.”

  She poked him playfully, found his usually rock-hard abs the consistency of steel. “Relax, or you might snap something. Consider it a chance to find out if abstinence is as good for the soul as it’s always advertised.”

  “Who says I have one?”

  She laughed, gave him an exuberant hug. “Since it’s something most people are supposed to have, you probably don’t, since you can’t possibly have something so mundane. Come to think of it, if you don’t have a soul, it must be superfluous, since you’re perfect just the way you are.”

  Before he could pounce on her again, she slid through his arms, opened the door and rushed out of the bedroom.

  All she wanted was to drag him down on that king-size bed and continue their intimacies. But she half expected her sisters to barge in looking for them. And for answers to their burning curiosities.

  In truth, she wished she could tell them, to have it all out in the open. But it was unheard of for a woman from her region to announce that she had a lover. The only accepted relationship was marriage, or the engagement leading to it. Anything else had to be done in secret and never admitted, or it had to look like the accepted cultural format. Her society took hypocrisy so far that it accepted that people who wanted to have a one-night stand or were even paying for sexual favors to resort to katb el ketab, or literally “writing the book of matrimony,” then divorcing as soon as the next day. That was all right with the so-called conservative society. But adults who wanted to be together without social subterfuge? They were punished and persecuted.

  No wonder she’d never wanted to come back.

  But then if it ever came to a worst-case scenario, she figured Numair was so powerful that even the collective venom of society wouldn’t be able to touch her, or her family. He wouldn’t let it. Not that she wanted to let it come to that.

  He followed her, his tension bombarding her back. It heightened to full blast when Fayza and Zeena’s voices rose from the conference/entertainment area they’d been exploring with the flight attendants since coming on board.

  She tossed him a teasing smile over her shoulder. “Think of the appetite we’ll work up by the time we arrive in Zafrana. I can’t wait to see the hideaway you’ve arranged for us there.”

  His lips compressed in a severe line. “I’ll tell your sisters we’re not taking them with us, that another of my jets will fly them back to Zafrana.”

  Her smile widened before it faltered then disappeared. “You’re serious!”

  “Fifteen hours without touching you is beyond serious.”

  She gaped at him. “What excuse could you possibly give for not taking them with us now?”

  “That we’ve had a change of plans and will make long layovers for business purposes in places where they can’t go sightseeing or shopping. I’ll make them grab gratefully for the direct flight home I’ll offer.”

  “Are you always ready with a convincing story like that?”

  His stony scowl told her his mind was made up and wouldn’t budge. She still had to try to budge it.

  She exhaled. “I really want you to have some time with my sisters, as I doubt you’ll see them again alone for any length of time. Put up with the no touching for a few hours, and I’m sure they’ll fall asleep at one point. You know I’ll race you to bed then. We’ll have your flight attendants standing sentry to alert us when they wake up.”

  His gorgeous lips twisted. “Then what? You’ll explode from my arms, jump into your clothes and rush out to pretend you’ve been out here all along?”

  “No, you’ll do that.” She met his returning scowl with a devilish grin. “You’ll pretend you volunteered your room to me.”

  “You want me to tear myself from your arms because of your sisters, and go out to them? Aren’t you afraid I’ll eat them?”

  She whooped with laughter. “Nah, they’re too skinny and cute, and you’re used to crunching overfed monsters. You’re drafted into service because you can dress far faster than me.”

  “Only if you’re okay with me going out to them in only my pants.”

  “I sure am not,” she exclaimed, her insides tightening yet again at envisioning the sight of him half-naked. “I want their ovaries intact!”

  “What ovaries? They’re kids.”

  It again delighted her that he continued to prove he was nothing like other men. She’d seen how men of all ages looked at her gorgeous sisters, caring nothing that they were lusting after girls still in their teens, the age of their daughters or even granddaughters. No matter how they attempted to mask their sexual assessment and coveting, it was always there in their eyes, especially on that first exposure to her sisters’ intense natural beauty.

  There’d been nothing but neutrality in Numair’s eyes and vibe. He considered them just people, who happened to be females, very, very young ones. And it wasn’t because he could be old enough to be their father.

  Numair didn’t define himself according to such trivialities as age, but rather experience, abilities, impact. And in those, he’d sure amassed far more than dozens of successful, influential men his age. He was a man who’d seen and done and fought and triumphed over so much, his soul, or whatever he had that stood for one, was jaded and ancient. And it made him the be-all and end-all of her fantasies, those she already had or was still forming.
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  She sighed, running her hands down the chest she’d just imagined naked. “Oh, Numair, you’d endanger any female alive, age notwithstanding. But we will fly my sisters home, and you will not scare them now, nor storm out half-naked and eat them because they woke up and interrupted us.”

  “How about we get our sentries to stall them until both of us can go out and play this charade for their benefit?”

  Intensely pleased he’d started negotiating, she shook her head. “It has to be only you for a very obvious reason. Being made of steel, you don’t show the aftereffects of our lovemaking. Apart from not turning into a swollen mass like I do, your hair just falls into this silky swathe no matter how much I mess it up. I need ten minutes minimum to get my hair into a semblance of order.”

  “Or maybe I can just lace your sisters’ food with a sedative and have them sleep throughout the flight.”

  She guffawed. “Don’t mess with such stuff. I might be the one who ends up ingesting the sleeping curse, and then where would you be?”

  “In Frustrationland.” He exhaled heavily. “Fine. We’ll do it your way. But if they don’t sleep...”

  “They will, they will. They spend half their lives sleeping like cats.” At his resigned mutter, she took one of his hands to her lips before placing it on her heart. “Cheer up. This will work beautifully, you’ll see.”

  That incredible emerald of his eyes, what she could look into forever, seemed to catch fire. “Anything with you works beyond beautifully. It’s why I’m in such a state.”

  Scalding joy surged from her depths to drench every nerve ending. It was beyond incredible that he felt as uncontrollably passionate about her as she did about him. Those early days of exquisite intensity were indescribable. And though she didn’t hope things would remain on this level, this time of pure passion was worth anything. It would be unforgettable, and she’d cherish it forever.

  He gathered her to his hard length, as if he really couldn’t withstand not touching her for more than minutes. “I want more of you constantly. I feel vicious toward anything that can deprive me of you even temporarily.”