Carrying the Sheikh's Baby Page 11

  Zane turned, his naked chest gleaming in the torchlight, his breathing rough as he looked at her at last. Then he lifted his hand, and cupped her cheek. ‘Damn it, Catherine, don’t say stuff like that.’

  She leaned into his palm. ‘Why not, if it’s the truth?’

  ‘You’re leaving yourself defenceless. Don’t you get that? You’ve already given me too much. You need to protect yourself. I’m not a kind man, or a good one.’

  Yes, you are, or why would you care whether I’d been insulted by your brother?

  His gaze sank to her abdomen. ‘If you turn out to be pregnant, if anyone discovers you were a virgin...you’ll be forced to marry me. And I won’t do a damn thing to protect you. Because I’m as ruthless as my father was.’

  She shook her head. ‘But I’m not pregnant. And no one’s going to discover I was a virgin. And it’s just the two of us here...’ She moistened her lips, gratified when his gaze shifted to her mouth, and his pupils darkened to black. ‘Maybe we should view Kasim’s trick as a gift. Rather than an insult.’

  She didn’t want to create even more friction between the two men. But she wasn’t being selfless now, she was being selfish.

  Why couldn’t they have one more night? As long as they were careful.

  She could smell soap on him and the scent of leather, and feel her heart pounding in strong, steady thuds.

  Taking his hand in hers, she placed it over her breast. The nipple pebbled instantly through the transparent robe.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he asked, attempting to tug his hand away.

  ‘I want you tonight, Zane. If we can enjoy each other without risking pregnancy, why don’t we?’

  They both wanted this. Why should they deny it?

  His palm caressed her nipple, the calluses teasing the sensitive tip into a hard peak. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes, I am.’ She’d never been more sure about anything in her life. Their first time had been a result of incendiary sexual chemistry. But this felt more intimate, more honest. She wanted to own her desire for him. To finally expel all the guilt she’d felt about her mother’s actions.

  Grunting, he captured her other breast.

  The surge of relief was almost as huge as the surge of excitement when his thumbs circled the engorged peaks.

  ‘I’m still going to kill Kasim,’ he muttered, but then he bent to lift her into his arms.

  He carried her to the bed and dropped her on the pile of pillows, then climbed up and caged her in. The robe had fallen open to reveal one breast; he fastened hungry lips to the responsive peak. She bucked, a ragged moan issuing from her lips at the drawing sensation in her core. The sound of rending silk tore through the staggered sound of their breathing as he ripped the robe apart and laid her bare.

  Her body trembled with sensation, her throat closing on emotion as she plunged her fingers into his hair and he pressed the heel of his palm between her legs. He watched her, his blue gaze wild, feral, as he eased first one finger, then two into her sex.

  ‘You’re still so tight,’ he murmured. ‘I don’t want to hurt you.’

  ‘You won’t,’ she said. ‘What should I do?’ she asked.

  ‘How much did you see, earlier?’ he said, working her swollen flesh and finding the stiff nub at the top of her sex with his thumb.

  ‘Everything,’ she said, her voice hoarse with longing as she moved against the tantalising caress.

  He huffed a laugh, then took her hand and placed it on the thick erection. ‘Hold me,’ he said.

  She curled her fingers around him and caressed him in tentative strokes, rejoicing as the firm flesh leapt and throbbed against her palm.

  ‘Slow down, or I’m not going to last long.’ He groaned, pressing his face into her hair.

  They lay together, teasing, tempting, torturing, learning each other’s responses, learning just where and how to touch to bring joy.

  She cried out, lifting up to meet the thick thrust of his fingers, desperate to feel that final oblivion. Her nails scored the ruined skin of his back as he rocked into her hand and he massaged the walls of her sex with his touch, nudging a place so deep inside she panted in desperation.

  She clung to the high wide plain of pleasure, her fingers slipping on his sweat-slicked skin as he forced her over that final edge.

  The wave of pleasure broke over her, and she heard him shout out against her neck, then tense as his seed splashed against her belly.

  She lay for what felt like hours, holding his head against her neck, running her fingers through his hair. Trying to pull back the emotions unleashed by their coupling and bury them deep.

  Just sex. Only sex. Don’t go there. You can’t afford to make this more than that.

  Eventually Zane raised his head. ‘Maybe I won’t kill Kasim after all.’

  She smiled, or tried to, the pulse of emotion making it hard for her to speak.

  She felt cold and strangely bereft as he levered himself off the bed and walked back over to the copper tub. The torchlight limed the smooth muscular line of his body and flickered over the scars—which seemed as much a part of him as the proud tilt of his head, and the powerful bunch of his biceps.

  He returned with a wet cloth and proceeded to wipe his seed off her belly. Then he delved between her legs, gently cleaning the oversensitive folds. She lay patiently, letting him take care of her, her whole body shuddering, as she tried not to make too much of his tenderness.

  Zane was a conscientious and pragmatic man. He probably treated Pegasus the same way after a hard ride, she thought, then winced at the realisation she’d just managed to compare herself to his horse. But the foolish thought had the desired effect, locking the unnecessary emotions back where they belonged when he threw the cloth away and climbed into the bed with her.

  He dragged her into his arms, and held her close. He didn’t say anything, but she felt the intimacy of what they’d shared like a heavy blanket, binding them together as she listened to his breathing in the semi-darkness.

  ‘Did your father give you those terrible scars, Zane?’ she murmured, unable to hold back the need to know any longer. Maybe the connection she felt to him was all an illusion, brought on by sexual chemistry, an exhausting journey and the very slim possibility that they might well have a shared future neither of them had planned for. But she felt it nonetheless.

  Whatever happened tomorrow, tonight, in this tent, in this desert, they were just two lonely people, and she wanted to know everything she could about him—and how he had become such a strong, indomitable ruler from such difficult beginnings.

  His chest rose and fell in a heavy sigh as his fingers played with her hair. ‘He didn’t do it himself. He ordered his bodyguards to discipline me for trying to run away. But he always watched.’

  Her fingers stilled on his chest. The chilling picture he painted dispelling the last of the afterglow.

  ‘Zane?’ She shifted so she could see his face, harsh and drawn in the half-light. ‘I’m so sorry. That’s horrific.’ She imagined the violent marks that covered his back and buttocks and realised he must have been punished—or disciplined—like that more than once. What must it have been like for him? A boy torn away from everything and everyone he knew to live in a strange land, at the mercy of a man who was the opposite of a loving father?

  ‘Don’t be sorry,’ he said, his thumb touching her cheek and trailing down to press against her pulse. ‘It was a long time ago.’

  ‘But even so, your own father... He was a monster.’

  To her astonishment, Zane shook his head. ‘He wasn’t a monster. He was just a man who had been brought up to believe that everything he wanted should be his by divine right. And when he couldn’t have the one thing he wanted the most, his mind became warped.’ He sighed, the sound so hopeless it made Cat’s heart hurt. ‘Eventually I figured out it wasn’t m
e he wanted to hurt,’ he said, his voice hollow. ‘It was her.’

  ‘Your mother?’ she asked, shocked by the casual revelation.

  He nodded. ‘He kept saying to me, over and over again, that she’d had no reason to leave him. Because he’d loved her more than life itself.’ He huffed out a breath. ‘I didn’t get it back then—how toxic their love for each other was. All I knew was that he’d kidnapped me. And I hated him. So I kept running away, which was pretty damn dumb once I knew the consequences.’

  She heard it then, the guilt in his voice—that made no sense at all. Cradling his cheek, she forced him to look at her. ‘Of course you ran away. You wanted to go home. It certainly doesn’t mean you deserved to be beaten.’

  He covered her hand with his. ‘So fierce,’ he said, his lips tipping up in a wry smile.

  Why was he looking at her like that? As if she’d said something cute?

  ‘I don’t understand why you’re smiling,’ she managed around the boulder of raw emotion in her throat.

  ‘Do you really want to hear my life story?’

  ‘Yes, I do, very much.’

  He seemed surprised by her eagerness so she tried to dial it down. But it was hard with her heart pummelling her chest. Was he finally going to open up to her, at least a little bit?

  ‘Why?’ he asked.

  Because I care about you.

  She stopped herself from blurting out the truth. Whatever was happening between them, she didn’t want to jeopardise it by revealing sentiments he might not return. Sentiments she wasn’t even sure were real.

  Was her fierce compassion for that boy just another by-product of the chemistry they shared?

  ‘You never did give up on the idea of making me the centre of Narabia’s story, did you?’ he said, recalling the conversation they’d had three weeks ago.

  Weeks that now felt like a lifetime. She wasn’t sure she even cared about the project any more. Her desire to know more about that boy and what had shaped him wasn’t about that any more, if it ever had been. But he had given her a way out. A means of getting him to talk about his past without her having to reveal how much she cared. And she couldn’t stop herself from using it.

  ‘I still think it’s the most effective way to tell Narabia’s story, yes,’ she said.

  ‘You really want the story to be that ugly,’ he replied, but she could see he was considering what she’d said. And that in itself felt like progress.

  ‘The truth is sometimes ugly,’ she pointed out, even though it made her feel like a fraud. Wasn’t she hiding the truth about how she was starting to feel about him?

  Not about you, Cat.

  ‘Whatever you tell me,’ she continued, ‘you would have an absolute veto on anything I put in the book. Obviously.’

  And I would never put anything in there that might hurt you.

  She knew she couldn’t say that, even as she lay naked in his arms, her sex still pulsing from the intensity of his lovemaking.

  But as he considered her words, she could feel a heavy weight pushing against her chest. The weight of responsibility and trust. Because they both knew, whatever did or didn’t end up in the book, this would be a big step for him, he would be breaking a silence he’d held for a long time. For her. And that felt huge.

  ‘All right,’ he said at last. He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and tugged her gently off his chest, until she was snuggled against his side—and she couldn’t see his face. Then he began to talk.

  His voice sounded far away in the semi-darkness, the picture he painted of his childhood and adolescence so far removed from where they were now she could imagine it must have seemed to him as if he were describing someone else’s life.

  ‘I didn’t run away when I got here because I wanted to go home so much. My mom wasn’t a regular mom,’ he began. ‘She always liked to party too hard.’ He shifted, his hand settling on her hair, but she bit back the questions already buzzing in her mind like hyperactive bees. She didn’t want to interrupt. And discourage him.

  ‘That only got worse as I got older. We moved out of the nice condo we had in the Hollywood Hills, and eventually ended up in a rundown apartment on Wilshire Boulevard. By the time I was fourteen, I would spend most nights dragging her out of some dive or other. She’d lost her looks, which meant even if she hadn’t got a reputation for being difficult to work with, no one wanted to employ her any more. I had a job at a Korean grocery, but even working most nights after school, I couldn’t keep up the rent payments.’

  The uneasy flow of words cut off as he took several deep breaths; she could hear the guilt in his voice when he continued.

  ‘I knew my old man was a big deal. A sheikh or a king or something. Because when she was really drunk she’d talk about him and Narabia, and the golden palace, about being a queen. How I was his heir and entitled to a fortune. And I’d checked out as much as I could about him online. I didn’t believe all of it, it all seemed too freaky, but I figured even if he only had a bit of dough he could help us out. And by that summer I was desperate. We had tons of fights. I said all sorts of crazy stuff about how I hated her. How I’d be better off without her. I was fourteen and sick of the responsibility. I didn’t want her weighing me down any more. We had a really big fight. I was so mad I poured every drop of liquor she had hidden round the apartment down the drain. She was crying and carrying on, telling me I was as much of a tyrant as my dad. I laughed in her face and said I’d rather live with a tyrant who had money than some broken-down nobody like her.’

  Cat could feel the tension in his body, so she placed her hand on his heart, trying to ease the bitter memories. ‘You don’t have to continue.’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I do.’ He paused, his hand covering hers, his thumb absently caressing the skin as he told her the rest.

  ‘The next morning, she had the mother of all hangovers and a bad case of the DTs. But she was relatively sober for the first time in months, maybe years—she cried, she told me how sorry she was, for...’ He paused, his body tensing. She could hear the deep draw of his breathing as his pain tightened like a vice around her own ribs. ‘For messing everything up,’ he said eventually. ‘But I was still mad. So I left for school without even saying goodbye. My father’s bodyguards snatched me off the street that afternoon and I never saw her again. She was dead two months later—an accidental overdose. My father showed me the newspaper article. And that’s when I stopped trying to run away.’

  He paused, the silence engulfing them both.

  ‘Things got better after that, once I was willing to do what I was told. He wasn’t what you’d call a loving father. But I’ve never had to worry about money again. So I figured I’d got what I wanted. My mom was the one who really suffered. Not me.’

  She lifted her head. His blue eyes met hers, shadowed by shame and remorse.

  Then he frowned. ‘Hey, why are you crying?’ he asked, touching the moisture on her cheek with his thumb. Moisture she hadn’t even known was there.

  She brushed the tear away with her fist, desperately trying to keep it together. Emotion pressed against her throat, making it hard for her to breathe, let alone speak.

  ‘It’s just such a sad story.’ Although it wasn’t a story, it was real. And it hurt her to think he still blamed himself for what had happened to his mother after he’d left. But she didn’t know how to tell him that, without blowing her cover to smithereens.

  ‘I told you it was ugly,’ he said.

  It wasn’t ugly, she thought. It was desperately sad. Whatever had happened to pull his parents apart, to turn what had been a great love into a toxic relationship had left him caught in the middle—through no fault of his own. But she could see simply telling him that wasn’t going to get through to him, because he’d lived with the shame and the guilt of his mother’s death for a very long time.

  ‘Would it be cr
ossing a line if I told you something about myself, Zane?’ she asked, hoping he would give her this opening, because for all her inexperience, and her naivety about relationships, there was one thing she did understand. What it was like to be a child, and blame yourself for something that had always been beyond your control.

  The smile that tugged at his lips made him look so handsome. And so alone. ‘You’re naked in my bed, Catherine. I think we can say we’ve already crossed that line.’

  She nodded, stupidly pleased by the humour in his voice.

  ‘When I was six years old, my mother left my dad for another man. One of the many men she’d had affairs with. We never saw her again. And my father was devastated. It broke him in many ways.’

  Zane’s eyebrows rose up his forehead. Then he lifted his hand, and cupped her cheek. ‘Hell, Catherine, I’m sorry. I didn’t know that.’

  She leaned into the gentle caress. ‘It’s okay. It was a long time ago now.’

  ‘Yes, but... You were so young.’

  And so were you, she wanted to shout at him. But she held back and began to talk instead, so he could understand he wasn’t the only person who had made the mistake of thinking they were responsible for someone else’s choices. That they could fix something—or someone—who had already been broken beyond repair.

  ‘The thing is, Zane, I blamed myself. Because I’d told my dad about the man she was seeing. I didn’t know it was an affair at the time. I just knew this guy was “Mummy’s special friend”, because that’s what she called him when he came to the house when my father was at work. She told me not to tell my father. That it would be our secret. But I told him anyway. They had an enormous fight and then she left. And that’s the last time I ever saw her.’

  And ever since she’d blamed herself, not just for her mother’s departure, but for her father’s pain. Even if she’d never consciously admitted it to herself, the guilt had always been there. Why else would she have found it so hard to ever let herself be physically intimate with a man? Her attraction for Zane had been so overpowering she hadn’t been able to deny it. But she could see now she’d always held herself back from sex because, in some childish, immature corner of her heart, she didn’t want to be like her mother.