The Desert Lord's Love-Child: The Desert Lord's Baby

His cynical pout was proof of her deductions. He still prodded, “Waste some more, just for me. Tell me your version of the ‘truth.'”

“What do you care about my ‘version’ when you already know everything about me since the day I was born, Farooq? You’re probably in possession of details I don’t even remember or know.”

“And how am I supposed to possess that omniscient knowledge of your life?”

“C’mon, Farooq. Your intelligence machine must provide you with a phonebook-thick dossier on everyone who comes within a hundred feet of you.”

“That’s true. But I don’t have one on you.”

He didn’t? But he must have … oh. Oh. A sarcastic huff escaped her. “That’s right. My life would fill two pages. Double spaced.”

He clicked his tongue. “That’s not a version of the truth, that’s an outright lie, Carmen. The things I found out about you from talking to you, from taking you, would fill a book. I was wrong about the content of the book, but whatever the truth is, it’d still fill a book. But neither book would contain the most basic data about you, what you never divulged. And for some reason, it didn’t matter and I didn’t have you investigated.” She knew the reason, all right. Because she hadn’t mattered. “Then I did, but you’d erased your existence so well, I came up with only your professional portfolio, address—and a photo.” His palm pressed over his heart, like hers had done minutes ago. Was that where the photo was? “Of you and Mennah.”

Her eyes remained prisoner to the telling gesture, her own heart battering itself against her ribs, even when she wasn’t sure what it told her.

It was his claim that he knew nothing about her that slowed her heartbeats. Could it be?

She had used methods learned in the circles where people erased their pasts or reinvented themselves for safety and second chances, first to cover up parts of her past to escape the heartache, then to remain hidden with Mennah forever. But she hadn’t thought her cover-up tactics would be so effective that he wouldn’t find out everything about her if he put his mind to it.

But then he probably hadn’t; had only tried to find her, not find out about her. Trailing someone wasn’t the same as researching them. Yes. That had to be it.

She sighed. “Well, what you came up with was enough. You found me, found out what I ran to hide. Anyway, I never tried to hide who I am from you, so you do know everything that counts.”

“Really?” He mimicked her recent irony. “Beyond knowing what you can do, in your job, in bed …” The way he said that, in such menace-coated sensuality, made her snicker. He raised one eyebrow. “So glad you find me funny. Even when I’m not trying to be.”

Her earlier outburst rippled to the surface, her facial muscles hurting under its renewed onslaught. “It is hilarious, hearing you refer to me as some sort of femme fatale.”

“They don’t come any more fatal, Carmen.”

She looked around, looked back at him, pointed to herself in open mockery. “You’re talking about me? Boy, now that’s a parallel universe version of the truth. A Bizzaro world one. Whom have you been talking to? Someone I turned down and he decided to paint me as a black widow? To justify his failure as he propagates tales of his lucky escape? One thing’s for sure. You didn’t get this from my ex. Apart from him, you’re the only man who was in a position to comment on my so-called sexual powers, and you both certainly …”

Her voice trailed off. What was it with those attacks of truthfulness? Had she misplaced her discretion during the months she’d barely talked to another adult?

It was futile to kick herself over it now, anyway. She’d already said too much. The whole truth and nothing but.

Now his eyes were glinting with things that sent goose bumps cascading through her like a storm through a wheat field.

Before she could theorize what those things were, impassiveness blanked his gaze, neutralized his voice. “You’re telling me I’m one of only two men in your life?”

His ego relished that, did it? So what? She was only expanding it from planetary to stellar proportions. Nothing mere mortals could tell the difference between.

“I am telling you that,” she ground out. “And you know what, you’re not only the second, you’re the last.”

He sat forward, coming closer like a tide that would overwhelm her if she didn’t back away. “Of course I’m the last.”

She didn’t. “You are, because even if I wasn’t off men after you and my ex, I’d never expose Mennah to a strange man.”

He stilled, intensifying the menace in the calmness of his next words. “You’re likening me to your ex-husband?”

She didn’t care. “And it’s blasphemy to liken your highness to anyone? Well, considering he’s a mommy’s—and daddy’s—boy with loads of unearned wealth and power, the similarities are plenty. If this arouses your royal fury, it sure isn’t worse than practically calling me a liar, a fraud and an all-round whore.”

Farooq was lost for words for the first time. Ever.

Not because he found none to answer her insults with. What struck him mute was Carmen’s allegation that he was the only man, besides the husband she’d married too early, she’d been intimate with. In effect, her only lover. The claim had flowed from her with the impetus of a statement of fact, had lodged into him with the force of an ax in the gut. Of the truth.

Could he believe it? She’d been Tareq’s mole, but not his plaything? She hadn’t been anybody else’s? Her abandon in his arms had been just for him, as his had been just for her? Discounting the ex-husband she spoke of now without continuing emotional attachment, with disdain even, he’d been, no matter the reason, her first, and as she vowed, her last passionate involvement?

Everything in him insisted that was the truth. That she’d told him many truths today.

But she’d done so only up to a point. He could feel her hiding things. Major things. Her deal with Tareq, no doubt. And fool that he was, he didn’t want to corner her into a confession.

He didn’t want to hear it. Not anymore.

With each moment near her, he believed more and more that it hadn’t been as sinister as he’d believed on her side, that she hadn’t realized the scope of the damage she’d been sent to do. That maybe Tareq had even convinced her she’d be serving a greater good by toppling him from the succession.

If this was true, maybe Tareq had caught her at her lowest ebb, and she’d made an out-of-character decision. But once she’d succumbed to their affinity, to the pleasure they’d shared, seen him for what he was and Tareq’s lies for what they were, she’d forgotten her mission. But she’d gotten pregnant and Tareq had changed the rules, and she’d panicked, feared retribution from all sides, feared for Mennah for real, had fled, hidden …

Or maybe he was looking for ways out for her because he was falling under her spell again.

And he was. Instead of the cold loathing he’d believed would be his only reaction to her, he was mesmerized by everything about her, reveling in her company, unable to get enough of her wit, her outspokenness and contentiousness and defiance, all so in contrast with the vulnerability she strove to hide. Then came her physical effect. She’d had him hard and aching within minutes of seeing her again. It was all he could do now not to drag her to the floor and just have her. Just take her again. And again.

He would have her. Would take her. Just not now.

He’d wait. For their wedding night.

As for the truth, whatever it was, there was nothing to be gained by ripping open festering wounds. It wasn’t as if he needed to have this resolved. It was all pointless now that he’d won. Now that the throne of Judar was safe from falling into Tareq’s hands. Now that she’d fallen into his. For as long as he deemed to hold her there.

And now he could turn to her taunt.

She dared imply he and her ex had unearned wealth and power in common? Was that how she viewed him? When she must know of the global enterprises he’d built from the ground up, multiplying his kingdom’s wealth? After she’d seen for herself a six-week sample of his life as peacemaker and relief-bringer?

No. She’d meant it as the worst insult she could think of.

But even if she’d qualified it as retaliation, he’d make her pay for it. Make her beg. For the chance to atone. For the end of torment. For the pleasure he knew, just knew, beyond doubt, only he had ever brought her, could ever bring her.

His equilibrium regained, his mind ordered and made up once more, he challenged her, “So you take exception to my … assumptions. What others could I have when I know nothing about you beyond what your actions led me to believe?”

She seemed to shrink in her seat. “There isn’t much to know. I was born to Ella and Aaron McArthur, a megawealthy businessman and his ex-P.A. second wife. Their marriage fell apart and I lived with my mother and her assortment of … strange men, until she died, then moved in with my father and his fourth wife till the day I turned eighteen. On acquiring my first boyfriend, whom I eventually married, a year later, my father, who hadn’t checked to see if I was still alive since I moved out, popped back in my life all eagerness and blessings. Turned out the marriage was part of a coveted merger. When it turned out I wasn’t the asset they all thought I would be, both the marriage and the merger were dissolved and my father moved to Japan with his fifth wife. When I was twenty-five, my mother’s estate became mine—her accumulated alimony and divorce settlement from my father, plus what she got from her ‘sponsors.’ It was a bundle, the fortune you intimated I got from a ‘sponsor’ of my own. I bought the apartment, put the rest for Mennah in a trust fund, since I earn enough to support us both in comfort. See, I overestimated the complexity of my life. That’s one page, triple-spaced.”

Farooq stared at her, thoughts rearranging, long-entrenched ones being forced out, new questions rushing at him.

She’d been born then had been married into money. But she’d implied her father hadn’t supported her after she’d moved out, that her ex-husband had divorced her without compensation. Was that why she’d accepted Tareq’s mission? Had she gotten so used to the good life her mother and her “sponsors” followed by her father and her ex’s wealthy family had provided that she couldn’t bear to wait months till she claimed her inheritance?

That no longer felt like enough of a motive. Or a motive at all. Not with her disinterest in anything material while she’d been with him replaying in his mind, another manifestation that had the conviction, the texture of truth.

So it hadn’t been about money after all? Had it been maybe a reckless lashing out after all the major relationships in her life had failed or ended, throwing herself into something dangerous, maybe even self-destructive? She could have easily been throwing herself into an abyss when she’d thrown herself in his arms. She’d had no way of knowing he’d turn out to be a civilized or even sane human being, let alone the lavish lover he’d been with her. He could have been a monster who lived to collect slaves, or to abuse beauties and maim them before snuffing out their lives.

Suddenly he was incensed. Far more so than he’d ever been. At her for endangering herself that way. Whether her goal had been financial gain or temporary rebellion or oblivion.