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

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.