“I won’t be willing this time, Zafir.”
His hand curling around her nape, he pulled her closer. Languorous heat exploded as he whispered the words at the corner of her mouth. “I shall ensure you surrender that very will and I shall enjoy taking it from you.”
A soundless scream left her mouth, a sliver snaking down Lauren’s spine. Even then, instead of protest, she said “And then?”
“And then, it’s only a matter of time before the fire between us burns out.” Resignation danced in his gaze as he stepped back from her. “You will be one of the ex-mistresses of the Sheikh of Behraat, languishing somewhere in the palace and the woman who bore his first child.”
* * *
For days after he had left Lauren at the airstrip—barely containing his ragged temper, because he was sure, for all his threats, he would have despised himself for the rest of his life if he had taken her right there while he turned into exactly the monster she thought him to be—he hadn’t been able to concentrate on any of the numerous tasks awaiting his attention.
“It is yours, Zafir.”
Much as he despised what she had intended, he didn’t need a DNA test to know she spoke truth.
Once he had acknowledged that beneath his simmering anger came the realization that ate away at him—mind and heart and soul.
His child would be a bastard, just like him, if he didn’t marry her.
His child would question his place in society, in the royal hierarchy, would know that keening gnawing of rejection, just like Zafir had known for years.
At his desk, he opened the file Farrah had given him that morning and looked at the pregnancy report.
Lauren would hate it, he knew instinctively, to be tied to him. She would hate a life of traditions and customs, hate the curbed freedom in the spotlight and personal sacrifices. The depth of her pain about her childhood had been a revelation in so many ways.
She would hate to bend to his will in and out of the bedroom, taking a third or fourth or tenth place in his life, to limit herself to the narrow confines of being his wife, the mother of his children.
Because Lauren demanded just as fiercely as she gave, something he should have realized long ago.
What stunned him to the depth of his core was how perversely amenable he was to the idea of making her his wife, of conquering that infuriatingly strong will of hers, of reveling in her thrilling sexuality night after night, of having someone in his life whose passions and strength and will ran as deep as his.
But he was not just Zafir.
He was Zafir Al Masood.
With the High Council still bitter about his rule and the perceived instability of the royal house in the minds of his people, Lauren was the last woman he could marry, the worst choice for his sheikha.
Which meant his child would be born out of wedlock and face everything it ensued. Just as he had because his mother had been his father’s mistress.
With a growl that ripped out of him, he grabbed the priceless, gold-embossed seal of generations of Al Masoods and threw it at the wall.
The weight of Behraat pressed at him from all sides. For a man who was supposed to be powerful, at that moment he felt anything but.
His life was not his own. It had never been.
CHAPTER SIX
LAUREN DIDN’T SEE Zafir again over the next three weeks.
Only a hazy recollection remained of how she had arrived at the palace again.
His ruthless words, the press of those hard thighs against hers, the caressing heat of his words against her skin...that she remembered with a vivid intensity and with an alarming frequency.
Maybe if she had something to do other than being his pampered, very pregnant captive. Even her leave of absence at the clinic had been handled with super efficiency at the request of the sheikh’s administrative office.
She had never been so well looked after, not even when she had been a child.
There was a woman whose primary duty was to help her bathe—a fact she had learned when said woman had walked into the bath one day while Lauren was lounging in the tub, after which Lauren never forgot to lock the door behind her—a personal chef and a nutritionist who stopped by every morning asking after her appetite, a yoga instructor—which Farrah had informed her had been difficult to find, but Zafir remembered that she did yoga—and then, there was Farrah checking on her every evening, though she always seemed exhausted.
And even with the very minimal understanding she was trying to gain of Arabic—because her child was going to be half Arab—she grasped one thing.
They all knew that she was carrying the child of the High Sheikh of Behraat. The numerous staff that waited on her hand and foot was perfectly courteous, but she saw the curiosity in their eyes. Caught the word Nikah bandied about.