Carrying the Sheikh's Baby Read online

  Love would be so much stronger if it grew out of shared intimacy, shared responsibility, rather than some ephemeral notion based on nothing more than an incendiary physical attraction.

  ‘Leave us, Kasia.’

  Cat jerked round to see Zane’s large frame filling the arched doorway of the chamber.

  He no longer wore the full ceremonial robes he’d donned for the marriage ceremony. The sabres, his boots and headdress were gone. His closely cropped hair shone black in the glimmer of candlelight. But he still looked magnificent, the loosely fitted dark trousers covered by an embroidered tunic, which had an open V down the middle, revealing far too much of that impressive chest.

  A new bolt of heat loosened Cat’s already trembling thigh muscles.

  ‘Yes, Your Divine Majesty.’ Kasia bowed deeply, then fled from the chamber, but not before sending Cat a mischievous grin, which reminded her of the grin her friend had sent her once before. The first night she’d slept with Zane.

  Not just Zane any more. Her new husband.

  She pushed a staggered breath out of tight lungs as he walked towards her, his bare feet muffled on the thick silk rugs.

  ‘You look exquisite,’ he murmured as he brushed his thumb against the pulse that was battering her collarbone.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘So do you.’

  He laughed, the deep chuckle disconcerting. She hadn’t meant to say anything amusing.

  ‘I thought that damn ceremony would never end,’ he added. His thumb drifted down to circle the nipple poking against the transparent silk of her robe.

  It tightened painfully, and she gasped. Shocked by the instant arousal, the flood of moisture even his slightest touch could evoke.

  Passion erupted at her core.

  ‘Are they more sensitive?’ he asked, and she nodded.

  Why did her live-wire reactions to this man suddenly feel too extreme, too needy?

  ‘This is a beautiful robe,’ he said, stroking the thin silk, but then he curled his fingers around the lapels and tore it away from her body. ‘But entirely superfluous.’

  The sound of rending fabric filled the chamber, and she jerked in shock. But then her gaze connected with his and she saw the brutal passion, the desperate demand. And desire exploded inside her, sweeping everything before it—doubts, fears, insecurities—until all that was left was the all-consuming need.

  The torn silk whispered over her skin and pooled around her ankles, leaving her stunned and yearning in front of him.

  The desire to cover herself whispered across her mind, but before she managed to gather herself enough to act upon it he bent and lifted her into his arms.

  He carried her into the next room. A large bed stood in the middle of the chamber, the frame decorated with garlands of flowers. The heady perfume seemed to engulf her, but as he laid her down on the soft sheets and she watched him tear off his own clothes nothing in her mind seemed to register except the sight of him.

  All that power, all that passion, was concentrated in the hard lines of his body, the smooth dark skin, the bulge and flex of sinew and muscles, the ragged scars on his back, the powerful jut of his erection.

  He climbed onto the bed and rubbed the heel of his palm against her yearning clitoris. She bucked off the bed. And he traced the slick folds with his fingers, while leaning over her to capture one rigid nipple in his mouth. He suckled hard on the sensitive peak, making her cry out, drawing the brutal orgasm forth as he found the tight nub with his thumb.

  She sobbed, moaned, trying to hold on, trying to hold back. But she felt trapped by her own desires, driven wild by a need that stunned her.

  As she crashed over that final edge, sensation fired through her body like the fireworks she had witnessed earlier. Bright colourful lights, stunning and surreal, rippled through her nerve endings. Before she had a chance to regroup, to recover, he moved to grasp her hips, angle her for his possession, and the huge head of his erection pressed into the swollen folds.

  He felt immense, impaling her too-sensitive flesh, the wide girth stretching her, filling her.

  She clung to his shoulders, the brutal orgasm not allowed to ebb as he set a punishing rhythm. Thrusting deep, then drawing back.

  The orgasm crested again, hurling her back into the maelstrom as he butted a spot deep inside her.

  ‘Come for me again, Catherine.’ His voice, deep and tortured, demanded and she delivered.

  He grew even bigger inside her as she sobbed her surrender.

  He grunted, harsh and long. The moan echoed around the chamber as his seed emptied into her.

  In the afterglow-infused haze, her body struggled to adjust. He withdrew swiftly and moved off her. Then pulled the sheet up over her shaking body.

  Leaning over her, he pressed his lips to her forehead, as he had done the afternoon of the proposal. But this time the kiss felt perfunctory. Especially when he rolled away from her and stood. He began to walk towards the balcony that connected their two suites of rooms.

  ‘Zane, where are you going?’ she said, the brutal urgency of his lovemaking still echoing between her thighs, still making her breasts prickle and pulse.

  She saw his back stiffen, the ragged scars standing out against the smooth skin, the flicker of candlelight making them seem even more grotesque. Even more tragic.

  ‘I’m returning to my own chamber,’ he said, his voice dull and flat and devoid of the warmth she had come to expect.

  She scrambled up in bed, clinging to the sheet, desperate to cover her nakedness, feeling more exposed than she had when he’d ripped away her robe. ‘But aren’t you going to sleep here...with me?’

  He turned back, and those sensual lips lifted in a smile that didn’t reach his eyes.

  Even naked, he looked every inch the Sheikh in that moment and nothing like the man she thought she had agreed to marry.

  ‘I have my own suite of rooms on the other side of the courtyard, Catherine. I prefer to sleep alone.’

  ‘You... You don’t want to be with me,’ she said, her voice thick with tears. What was wrong? Why was he treating her like this? He seemed more distant now than ever.

  Placing a knee on the bed, he cupped her cheek; she leaned into it, the sign of warmth, of tenderness the first one he’d shown her since entering the room.

  ‘Don’t get upset, Catherine,’ he said. ‘We’ll make this work.’ His gaze dipped to her abdomen as he stroked her cheek. ‘For you and me, and the baby.’

  Her breath shuddered out. Thank God, he understood.

  But then his eyes seemed to flatten, the light going out of them. And he drew his hand away. ‘But I’m afraid there’s no room for sentiment in this marriage.’

  Sentiment? What did that even mean? Was he talking about intimacy?

  But before she could get the questions tumbling around in her tired, overwrought mind out of her mouth, he added, ‘I told my advisors to make that abundantly clear. I thought you understood.’

  The horrifying statement had all the things she’d feared, all the things she’d assumed were paranoid delusions, turning to stark, cruel reality.

  He strode away through the arched doorway and out onto the balcony, gloriously naked, his taut body limed by moonlight. As the soft pad of his footsteps disappeared, a sob lodged in her throat.

  For goodness’ sake, get a grip.

  She shoved the panic down.

  He’s new to this too. We can work this out. He just needs to get used to me.

  But still the tears coursed down her cheeks.

  Because even as she reasoned he was only a few rooms away, it felt as if a thousand miles separated them now.

  * * *

  Zane stood under the shower, letting the hot spray ease the wretched regret making his throat ache. But it couldn’t do anything for the despair.

  This marriage
was going to be so much harder than he had anticipated. Keeping his emotions, the foolish rush of need in check—for more than just sex—was going to be torturous. He’d realised it as soon as he’d walked into the bridal chamber and seen Catherine, her expression so open, so hopeful.

  The arousal had been swift and sure as it always was with her. But on the heels of it was the knowledge he could never be what she needed.

  He’d spent the last two weeks trying to establish the distance he needed to make this marriage work, by filling the hours with duties and responsibilities and ensuring his advisors explained to her the parameters of their relationship. But in the space of a few hours, as she’d sat next to him on the podium while the wedding festivities had raged around them, he’d known his feelings weren’t as circumspect as they needed to be. Not when she looked at him like that, with so much tenderness in her eyes.

  From now on he would have to manage the hunger, and find a way to control the intimacy. He couldn’t let her get any closer, or she would discover the man he truly was inside.

  Not a ruler, not a king, not a sheikh, but a scared, lonely boy who had betrayed his own mother to save his own skin.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Three months later

  ZANE WALKED INTO his private quarters with his secretary hovering at his heels. ‘Cancel the Umara mission. I’ve had enough conversations about fertiliser to last me the rest of the month.’

  He ripped off his headdress and handed it to the manservant who was waiting in his dressing chamber.

  Three days and nights. Three days and nights he’d been without her and he felt as if he were about to burst out of his own skin. When the hell was this hunger for her going to end?

  The thought had tortured him for the last three days as he’d sat through endless diplomatic meetings with Prince Alkardi. While he’d listened to interminable garbage about trading treaties and farming rotations with a placid smile on his face while all he’d been able to see or think about was Catherine—her cheeks flushed with passion, her eyes bright with amusement during a state visit they’d done to a local school the day before he’d left. Or that tempting wrinkle of concentration between her brows when she’d spoken to him last week about her idea to set up a women’s congress.

  Three months they had been married and he still hadn’t found the distance he needed to make this marriage work.

  Shooing the secretary away, he marched into the bathing chamber as he pulled his tunic over his head.

  ‘Where’s the Queen?’ he asked as the manservant gathered the tunic. Why wasn’t she here, waiting for him? He had assumed she would be here. Hadn’t he sent word ahead that he had decided to cut his mission short a day early? He felt the prickle of temper at her absence. He’d had plans for this evening, which was why he had raced home. Plans that did not involve soaking in the fragrant pool of steaming water his manservant had prepared for them both all on his own.

  ‘The Queen is on a visit today to the marketplace to publicise the new congress, Your Majesty,’ the young man said, dropping to one knee.

  ‘Send word that I wish to see her,’ he snapped, then regretted the curt, ill-tempered reply when the young man flinched.

  When had he become as impatient and autocratic as his father?

  Thoughts of his father had a new spike of temper festering in the pit of his stomach. He wasn’t a tyrant. He respected women. He respected Catherine, more than he could say, but he had been without her for three days.

  Amir jerked up, poised to dart out of the room.

  ‘And, Amir, there is no need for you to return. Take the rest of the day off. I wish to see the Queen in private.’

  Amir hesitated. ‘You do not need me to help you undress and bathe, Your Excellency?’

  ‘No, I do not,’ he said. Because he intended to ask Catherine to take over that task. The knot in his gut loosened a little as Amir executed a deep bow, then sped out of the room.

  He thrust his fingers through his hair as he walked into the adjoining washroom to the pool chamber. For once he didn’t care if he sounded like a tyrant. A little urgency wouldn’t do Catherine any harm at all.

  He’d treated her well these past three months. He hadn’t made too many demands. He’d supported her in her role as Queen and been considerate of her pregnancy. He had limited himself to coming to her chambers every other night... Thank goodness she had finally stopped requesting he stay with her after they had satisfied the physical urge that would not die.

  But tonight he felt irritable. As if something was bubbling under his skin that had been bubbling for a while. The trip had exacerbated the feeling, had definitely made it more acute, but that feeling had been there for weeks now.

  He sat on the divan and yanked off his boots, then stood to untie the sash around his waist. He kicked off his pants, but as he whipped open the cabinet above the marble vanity to find his razor, he spotted the bottle of pregnancy vitamins she kept there.

  He touched the small bottle with his fingertip and realised that it was nearly empty. The dropping sensation in his stomach twisted in his abdomen. And he cursed under his breath.

  He’d tried not to notice the way her body had changed in the last few months. The nausea had stopped over a month ago, but her breasts had only become more tender, more sensitive, her body more voluptuous as it ripened in pregnancy.

  He rubbed a hand across his jaw, staring blindly at the bottle. And finally forced himself to acknowledge what had been bothering him for the last few weeks.

  The baby. And the fact that it would be impossible to avoid discussing it much longer.

  Catherine was already four months pregnant. Eventually, he would have to stop coming to her bed.

  He braced his hands on the marble unit. Need and desire reverberated through his body.

  He reached down to grasp the base of the painful erection. Closing his eyes, he pumped his fist up and down, feeling the tug on his skin, trying to picture her there, doing it for him.

  He cursed violently and let go, because the image wasn’t enough. He slapped his palms down on the marble. Sickened by his own desperation. The feral need rioting through his veins that only she seemed capable of satisfying.

  This was becoming an obsession. He needed to stop this now. To control this yearning, these urges. It had been a mistake to bring her so closely into his life. To indulge himself to this extent. By doing so he had unleashed a beast. The same beast he had always known was there, and now he was very much afraid he might never be able to control it again.

  He stared at his face in the mirror. And saw the harsh planes and angles of his father’s face. A face that had once haunted him in nightmares. Tension screamed across his shoulder blades, made his buttocks flinch as the skin burned and pulsed with the phantom pain of the whip.

  The erection mercifully began to wilt.

  He was having some kind of weird emotional crisis, that was all, brought on by stress and the enforced celibacy of the last three days. This was about sex. Watching Catherine’s body blossom and her confidence grow as his Queen had been captivating and fascinating and wildly erotic. But once she had the child, once they stopped sleeping together—or rather having sex together—he would be able to return to who he had been before.

  Perhaps he should call a halt now. Make a clean break. Waiting any longer would only make the need worse. He would miss the spectacular sex with a woman he had an undeniable chemistry with. But his inability to be without her for a scant three days proved he had become fixated on her. His emotions had become too close to the surface. He had to re-establish the control that had been so hard-earned when he had first arrived in Narabia.

  Taking a drying cloth off the neatly stacked pile Amir had left for him, he wrapped it around his nakedness.

  ‘Zane?’ Catherine’s voice, urgent and familiar, coming from her own chamber, echoed in his chest. ‘Wher
e are you?’

  ‘Here.’ His voice sounded gruff, not his own as he marched into the pool room to greet her.

  She rushed towards him and threw her arms around his waist. ‘Zane, you’re back a day early,’ she said, bright and eager. Why did it feel so good to know she had missed him too?

  He should pull away, but he couldn’t seem to stop himself wrapping his arms around her shoulders and drawing her flush against his body.

  The blood charged back into his groin as he dropped his cheek to the unruly wisps of hair and drew the scent of her shampoo—chamomile and honey—deep into his lungs.

  ‘Where have you been?’ he said, more harshly than he had intended as the desire tormented him.

  She dropped her head back, tilted her chin up to look into his eyes—and for a moment he saw something flicker there, something wary and unguarded.

  But before he could decipher it, her face stretched back into that bright smile. ‘Kasia and I only just got back from—’

  For once he didn’t care, cutting off the explanation as he scooped her up and she yelped, grasping his shoulders.

  ‘Zane!’

  ‘I hope you’re not wearing panties,’ he demanded, trying to sound playful and amused when all he felt was wild—as the grinding need he hadn’t been able to control pounded back into every pulse point.

  She gripped his shoulders, her surprised chuckle like a whip to his senses as he marched into the pool with her in his arms.

  Within minutes he had wrestled her out of her wet clothes and discarded his. He pressed her back against the mosaic tiles, ripped the offending panties off and then lifted her into his arms to impale her on the thick erection.

  She sobbed, her breasts bobbing in the water, her face glowing with sweat and steam as he drove inside her to the hilt.

  But as he thrust out and back, forcing her towards orgasm, letting the madness, the need overtake him, spurred on by her jagged sobs, frantic to reach that final peak, the terrifying thought kept pushing at the back of his mind that no matter how many times he did this—no matter how many times he watched her shatter around him, felt her massage his length in the throes of her release—it would never be enough.