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

He growled a laugh. “Accidentally? Really? But no matter how or why you got pregnant, I don’t care. I don’t care how my daughter was conceived, I don’t care who conceived her, not even if it’s you. She’s mine. And I want her.”

Her reaction to that was spectacular.

Springing from the entryway, she advanced on him like a lioness ready to defend her cub to the death.

“No,” she growled. There was no other way to describe it. She growled. “She’s not yours. She’s mine. Mine.”

He frowned. This felt too real.

But no more real than what he felt. He, too, felt like baring his fangs in demand of the daughter who’d been kept from him. His body bunched with the elemental instinct, its fire spitting through eyes slitting on fury and challenge.

“You want to fight me for her?” he snarled. “Do I need to tell you that nobody wins in any kind of battle with me, that your chances of winning anything against me are below nonexistent?”

The contortion of horror and desperation that crumpled her expression did something similar behind his breastbone.

Ya Ullah, how did she do that?

She sagged back against the door as if the knowledge of his unstoppable power sank inside her, draining her of hers.

At last she rasped, “Why are you doing this?”

Could defeat have a sound? If it did, this must be it.

“I told you. I want my daughter.” He paused, unsure what he wanted to say or do anymore. Her essence was seeping through him, dissolving his resolve, rearranging his thoughts, rewriting her character in his mind again. He ground his teeth against the weakening. “And I will have her.”

And the eyes that had been brimming with tears gushed.

He’d seen her tears before. When he’d drawn out her torment before he’d ended it, shattering her with releases so fierce she’d wept with them. Now, seeing new tears pouring from eyes so crimsoned he feared they might seep blood at any moment, he could no longer dispute her state.

Whatever the reason behind her anguish, it was real, profound. She was more terrified, more desperate now than if she believed he intended to end her life.

He stared at her, an overwhelming need rising, to soothe away the pain he’d caused her. He curled his fists against the urge.

“Please … understand … I o-only hid my pregnancy b-because I was s-scared you’d make me terminate it!”

Her words detonated inside him, the belief that it was all an act erased in the blast. All he heard was the accusation, all he believed was that she’d believed it.

“You thought I would ask you to kill an unborn child? My unborn child? And you think you know anything about my culture or me? And when she was born, what did you fear? That I’d bury her alive like my land’s barbarians of old?”

“No.” Her cry was engulfed by shearing sobs. She still talked through them. “All I thought was you—you might fear her existence, might think her a threat to your honor, your status … And I wasn’t risking it. I would do anything—anything—to keep her from harm.”

“And you thought I’d harm her? You saw me fighting to bring relief to millions of children and thought I’d harm my own?”

B’Ellahi, what was he saying? He was playing the part she’d shoved him into with all the oblivious fervor of the past. He was answering her as if he believed concern for her baby and true fear of his reactions had been the reasons behind her disappearance.

“B’haggej’Jaheem—by Hell, I thought you’d come up with better than that. Or maybe you didn’t give it much thought since you were sure this confrontation would never come to pass.”

She shook her head, sending her tears splashing everywhere. A few fell on his hands, felt as if they’d burned him to the bone.

“But why do you want her?” And if he’d thought she’d given defeat sound, she now gave desperation tone and texture. “Don’t Judarians value only male sons? What is a daughter to a prince like you who surely wants only heirs?”

“So, first you dare to imply that I might have gotten rid of her for being born at all, and now that I’d discard her for being born female.”

She spread her hands in a helpless gesture, a lost gesture, beseeching his understanding, his mercy.

He had neither to give. “Enough of that.”

She again threw herself in his path, but was shaking so hard she couldn’t even cling. “I didn’t dream you’d want her … please …”

He looked down at her, struggling with the need to slake the accumulation of hunger in that body that had deprived him of finding pleasure elsewhere. He’d been unable to contemplate marrying another after she’d walked out on him, even as a damage-control measure when Tareq had rushed out and married the first woman to accept him. Instead, Farooq had decided to expose Tareq’s ineligibility to rise to the succession once and for all, had asked his king, who couldn’t go back on the marriage-criteria decree, to stall everyone until he furnished irrefutable proof of Tareq’s perversions and crimes.

He was close to gaining that proof, but now he’d found Carmen and Mennah—and they were the fastest route to securing the succession. Not that he would let Tareq go unpunished. Or Carmen, either. But he wouldn’t touch her. Not yet.

Putting her away was harder than anything he’d ever had to do. Then he strode through the entrance she’d been guarding, went deeper into the apartment, felt her stumbling behind him, her tremors buzzing through his flesh, her sobs constricting his lungs.

He ignored the feelings, stopped before the door that he just knew had his daughter on the other side. Then he turned.

“Show me my daughter, Carmen.”

He had no idea why he asked her permission when he never asked anyone’s, gave her that consideration when she’d shown him none. Worst of all, he had no idea why he’d done it so … gently.

That was for his daughter, he told himself. He didn’t want to enter her room, her life, with anger polluting those first magical moments. Children picked up on moods, deciphered tension between adults. And he wasn’t poisoning her mood or introducing fear and anxiety in her life for any reason, was even willing to make peace with her mother, if only around her, for her sake.

“Stop crying. I won’t have my daughter see me for the first time with her mother weeping beside me. She’d forever link me with your pain.”

“A-and she’d be right … you’re destroying me.”

He grimaced his distaste at her exaggeration. “Cut the melodrama, Carmen. Or are you willing to risk scarring her impressionable psyche just to paint me black in her mind?”

“No, no … I’d never … never …” She almost fell at his feet, forced him to take her full weight, his hands around her rib cage, so close to the breasts that were now shuddering with emotion, that had once shuddered in his palms, beneath his chest in ecstasy. She raised rabid eyes to his and wailed, “Don’t take my daughter away … I’d die without her.!”

Three

Farooq stared down at Carmen for a stunned moment.

He had heard about the power of tears before, had had them shed for his benefit on countless occasions, by both women and men. The only power they’d held over him was that of testing the limits of his goodwill. But her tears …

Ya Ullah, hada mostaheel—it was impossible the way they affected him, the way her outburst had.

She thought he intended to take her baby away.

It was only in this moment that he realized he’d stormed in here not knowing what he intended.

He’d gotten the intel sixteen hours ago, had been on his fastest jet within an hour, had spent the time on the nonstop transcontinental, transatlantic haul seething with realizations and convictions. Some of the latter had been of how an exploitative mother didn’t deserve to keep her child.

He now realized those thoughts had colored the way he’d stated his intention of having his daughter, making it sound as if he’d snatch her away from Carmen.

He believed that drastic action should be reserved for women who were a danger to their offspring. But, couldn’t he equate a mother who used her daughter to maintain a luxurious lifestyle with an alcoholic or a drug addict?