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It would be easier if she was. Easier, but it wouldn’t do much for that thing that still held him in its grip, that he refused to examine any closer.
“I’m only using the proper terminology to describe your role,” he said mildly as he pulled up beside his plane out on the tarmac. “I apologize if you find that insulting.”
“You decided I was a whore the moment you saw me,” she said dismissively. Or he assumed that was what that particular tone meant, having never heard it before. “But virgins and whores are indistinguishable, I hate to tell you.”
“It’s a bit late to claim virginity, I think.”
“Whores don’t have identifying marks to set them apart.” If she’d heard him, she was ignoring him—another new sensation for Rihad. He was beginning to feel each of them like blows. “Purity isn’t a scent or a tattoo. Neither is promiscuity, which is lucky, or most men like you who love to cast stones would reek of it.”
“I am aware of only one case of a virgin birth,” he pointed out as he put the SUV into Park. “Everyone else, I am fairly certain, has gone about it the old-fashioned way. Unless you are on your way to notify the world’s religious leaders of the second coming of Mary? That would explain your hurry.”
“How many people have you slept with?” she asked, sounding unperturbed.
He laughed as much to cover his astonishment at her temerity as anything else. “Are you petitioning to be the next?”
“If you’ve slept with anyone at all and you’re unmarried, you’re a hypocrite.”
“I am widowed.”
A typical female might have apologized for his loss, but this was Sterling McRae, and she was not, he was already far too aware in a variety of increasingly uncomfortable ways, the least bit typical.
“And you’ve never touched a single woman in your whole life save your late wife?”
He should not have brought Tasnim into this. He was furious with himself. And Sterling, of course, correctly interpreted his silence.
“Oh, dear,” she murmured. “It appears you are, in fact, a hypocrite. Perhaps you should judge others a bit less. Or perhaps you’re no more than one of those charming throwbacks who think chastity only matters when it’s a woman’s.”
“The world has turned on its ear, clearly,” Rihad said in a kind of wonder, as much to the tarmac as to her, and he told himself that what surged in him then was relief that this was over. This strange interlude as a man people addressed with such stunning disrespect. “I am being lectured to by a blonde American parasite who has lived off of weak and foolish men her entire adult life. Thank God we have arrived.”
He turned in his seat, so he saw the way she jolted then, as if she hadn’t noticed the SUV had come to a stop. She looked around in confusion, then those blue eyes of hers slammed back to his.
“What is this? Where are we?”
“This is an airport,” Rihad told her, in that same patronizing, lecturing way she’d ordered him not to use his mobile as they’d driven out of Manhattan. “And that is a plane. My plane.”
She went so white he thought she might topple over where she sat. Her hands moved over the round swell of her belly, as if she was trying to protect the child within from him, and he hated that there was some part of him that admired her for so futile a gesture.
“Who are you?” she whispered.
He suspected she knew. But he took immense satisfaction in angling closer, so he could see every faint tremor on those sinful lips. Every shiver that moved across her skin. Every dawning moment of horrified recognition in her deep blue gaze.
“I am Rihad al Bakri,” he told her, and felt a harsh surge of victory as her gaze went dark. “If that is truly my brother’s child you carry, it is my heir. And I’m afraid that means it—and you—are now my problem to solve.”
CHAPTER THREE (#u29777196-8057-5d26-908e-fffe18eaa948)
THE SUV SEEMED to close in around her, her heart was a rapid throb in her throat and it was only another well-timed kick from the baby that broke through the panic. Sterling rubbed a hand over her belly and tried to calm herself.
He won’t hurt you. He can’t. If this is the heir to his kingdom, you’ve never been safer in all your life.
The man she should have realized wasn’t the slightest bit subservient to anyone threw open the driver’s door and climbed out of the SUV, then slammed it shut behind him. She could hear the sound of that voice of his outside on the tarmac, the spate of Arabic words like some kind of rough incantation, some terrible spell that he was casting over the whole of the private airfield. His men. Her.
And she couldn’t seem to do anything but sit there, frozen in place, obeying him by default. She stared at the back of the seat he’d vacated and tried to convince herself that despite the panic stampeding through her veins, she really was safe.
She had to be safe, because this baby had to be safe.
But the truth was, there was more than a small part of her that was still holding out hope that this was all a terrible nightmare from which she’d bolt awake at any minute. That Omar would be there, alive and well, with that wry smile of his at the ready and exactly the right words to tease away any lingering darkness. He’d tell her none of this could possibly have happened. That it never would.
And this would be a convoluted, nonsensical story she’d tell him over a long, lazy breakfast out on their wraparound terrace with views of New York City stretching in all directions as if it really was the center of the world, until they both laughed so hard they made themselves nearly sick.
God, what she would do to wake up and find out this was all a bad dream, that Omar had never gotten in that car in France, that it had never spun out of control on its way back into Paris—
But the door beside her opened abruptly then and Rihad stood there before her.
Because, of course, it was him. Rihad. The sheikh. The king. The more-feared-than-respected ruler of his fiercely contested little country on the Persian Gulf. The older brother who had consistently made Omar feel as if he was a failure, despite how much Omar had looked up to him. As if he was less than Rihad somehow. As if the deepest truths of who he’d been had to be hidden away, lied about, concealed where no one could see them—especially not the brother who should have loved him unconditionally.
Omar had loved him, despite everything. Sterling had not been similarly handicapped.
“There has been no mention of this pregnancy in any of the papers,” Rihad said in his dark, authoritative way. “No hint.”
“Guess why?” she suggested, hoping all the pain she’d like to inflict on him was evident in her voice. “Guess who we didn’t want to know?”
“You were both fools.”
Sterling glared at Rihad as the light wrapped around him and made him look something like celestial. How had she managed to convince herself this man was merely a driver? He fairly oozed power from every pore. He was the physical embodiment of ruthlessness no matter how the summer sunlight loved him and licked over the planes and valleys of his fascinating face. He exuded ruthless masculinity and total authority in equal measure, and she’d thrown herself directly into his hands.
He stared down at her, that mouth of his in a sardonic curl, his dark gold gaze bright and hot and infinitely disturbing, until Sterling thought she might not be able to breathe normally again. Ever.
“I believe this is the part where a good driver helps a fine, upstanding lady such as yourself from the vehicle,” he said in that smooth way of his, like silk and yet with all that steely harshness beneath it. “Without any commentary involving terms she might or might not like.”
“I think you mean insults, not terms.”
“I think it’s time to get out of the car.”
Then he held out his hand and there was no pretending it was anything but a royal command.
“I’m not getting on that plane,” Sterling told him.
Very carefully and precisely, as if perfect diction might save her here. Save her from him. As if anything could.
“It was not a request.”
She could see then how much he’d been acting the part of the supposed servant before, because he wasn’t bothering with that any longer. He was a stern column of inimitable power, his will like a living thing coiled tight around both of them and the whole damned airfield besides, and she couldn’t understand why he’d played that game with her in the first place. This was not a man who pretended anything, ever, she understood at a glance. Because he didn’t need to pretend. This was a man who took what he wanted as he wanted it, the end.
But she was not going to let him take her. Not without a fight.
“Perhaps you’re misunderstanding me, Rihad,” she said, deliberately using his first name to underscore how little she respected him.
She felt the ripple of that impertinence move through him and then beyond him, through the line of his men, where they stood in a loose ring around him and the SUV, protection and defense. The disapproval washed back over her from all sides, but the gleam in Rihad’s dark gold gaze merely edged over into something more shrewd as he considered her.
As if she was an animal in a trap, she thought, and he was deciding how best to put her out of her misery. That was not a restful notion.
Sterling pushed on. “I would rather die than go anywhere with you.”
He leaned toward her in the open wedge between the door and the body of the SUV and every single nerve inside of her went wild. Sharp and hot and alert—something so much like pain it very nearly toppled her before she realized it wasn’t really pain at all. Merely an exquisite reaction—pure sensation, storming all over her—that she didn’t recognize and didn’t know what to do with.
It was almost impossible to keep herself from reacting, from throwing herself backward across the wide backseat and scrambling for safety—not that there was any available to her, she understood in a shattering instant. Not really. This man might not hurt her, physically, not as long as she was pregnant with the heir to his kingdom—but then, there were worse things.
She’d seen so many of them firsthand.
“Please believe me,” Rihad said softly then, so softly, though, that it only made her understand on a deep, visceral level how truly lethal he was. “I would arrange that if I could.”
“How charming,” she breathed, trying desperately not to sound as panicked as she felt. “I love threats.”
He smiled. “I would have done so years ago if I’d believed for one second that it would ever come to this. But let me assure you, any interest I appear to have in you is about the child you carry, not you. Never you.”
“This is Omar’s child,” she snapped back at him, struggling to keep her jangling, shimmering reaction to him to herself. “And since he is gone, that makes the baby my responsibility, not yours.”
“That is where you are wrong,” Rihad told her, his tone as merciless as that harsh look on his forbidding face. “If that child is indeed my brother’s—”
“Of course it is!” Sterling threw at him.
And only realized once she had said it that it was hardly strategic to tell him so. If he thought the child was someone else’s, if she could have convinced him of that, he might have let her go. Something in that dangerous dark gold gleam in his gaze told her he’d reached the same conclusion.
“Then, as I have explained, it is potentially next in line to rule my country.” He shrugged. “Your wishes would be of less than no importance to me at any time, but in a situation such as this? Which affects the whole of my country and its future?”
He didn’t have to finish the thought. That hard, sardonic twist to his lush mouth did it for him.
She tried again. She had no choice. “I refuse to go anywhere with you.”
“Get out of the car, Sterling,” he ordered her, steel and warning, and there was nothing but sheer power in his gaze. It rolled through her like fire. Or perhaps that was her name in his mouth while he looked at her like that. “Or I will take you out of it myself. And I rather doubt you will enjoy that.”
“Wow.” Sterling let out a small, brittle laugh. “This has been quite a morning for exploring the dimensions of your character, hasn’t it?”
“Hear this now,” he replied, his voice a hoarse kind of softness that made her shiver, his gaze dark and so powerful as it held fast to hers. “There is nothing I wouldn’t do for my country. Nothing at all.”
“How heroic.” But she was far more shaken by that than she should have been, when it wasn’t even any kind of direct threat. “I think we both know the truth is less noble. You’re nothing but a reactionary Neanderthal who is never challenged, never questioned, never forced to face the consequences of his actions.”
“You appear to have your al Bakri brothers confused,” Rihad replied with a certain soft menace that made her think she’d landed a blow. “I am not the renowned playboy who lived a life of leisure and debauchery. That was Omar. I am the one who cleaned up his messes. Again and again and again.”
She wanted to scream. Throw things. But she only curled her hands into fists and glared. “I take it you mean me. I am the mess.”
“You are not a mess, Sterling.” He sounded kind, but she could see that look in his gaze, and she knew better. “You are a toxic spill. You corrupt and you destroy, and you have been doing it for over a decade. What you did to my brother was bad enough. It appalls me to think you will have your claws sunk deep in the next generation of al Bakris.” His perfect lips firmed. “But I am a man of duty, not desire. Which means as much as I would prefer to pretend you and whatever child you carry do not exist, I cannot.”
She couldn’t breathe for a moment. It was almost too much. It threw her back in time to that terrible house in Iowa and the foster parents who had believed that she was nothing but their personal punching bag. Worthless and dirtied, somehow, by her own tragic history. And their contempt. For a moment she almost tipped back over into all that darkness—but then she caught his gaze again, so bright and hard at once, and it bolstered her. It lifted her.
Because she’d survived far worse than this man and like hell would she slide back into that headspace after a few mean words.
“Oh, no,” she murmured icily. “You might get this toxic spill all over your sheikhdom. What then?”
“You’ll find I am not so easily led astray,” he said, his voice as low as hers had been, but layered with a kind of dark heat she could feel within her. Making her too warm in all kinds of places she didn’t understand. “And I’ve had a lifetime of preparation. You’re merely one more disaster it falls to me to handle.”
“And then, oddly, you wonder why I don’t want to go anywhere with you.” She squared her shoulders. “I’m not afraid of you, Rihad.”
And the strange thing was, she wasn’t. He made her anxious, yes—panicky about the future. But that wasn’t the same thing as afraid. She didn’t know what to make of that. It didn’t make any sense.
“Go ahead,” Rihad suggested, those disturbingly bright eyes of his tearing into her, seeing far too much. “Fight me if you like. Scream loud enough to draw down the sun. Kick and scratch and hurl invective as it pleases you.” He shrugged almost lazily, and Sterling’s throat felt tight, while far to the south, parts of her she’d always largely ignored bloomed with a mad heat. “But this will still end the same way, no matter what you do. What is Omar’s belongs to Bakri. And what is Bakri’s is mine. And I will do what I must to protect what is mine, Sterling, even if it means I must kidnap you to accomplish it.”
He straightened then, though his gaze never shifted from hers, and Sterling couldn’t tell if that lump in her throat was panic or tears or something a good deal more like fate.
Don’t be absurd, she snapped at herself, but that sensation of foreboding snaked down her back all the same.
“But by all means,” he said, daring her in that soft way that danced along her limbs and made her skin prickle with warning, and something much warmer, “try me.”
Sterling opted to decline that offer with as much icy silence as she could muster. She also ignored his offered hand, but she pushed herself out of the SUV and onto the tarmac anyway, because she’d always been a realist at heart. Oh, her years with Omar had tempted her to surrender to optimism, but deep down she’d always known better. She’d always known what lurked down there beneath the happiest-seeming moments. She’d always assumed, on some level, that it would all end badly.
So she stood on her own two feet in front of this terrible man and she made the command decision to keep playing her role. Sterling McRae, rich man’s whore. Toxic spill, no less. Coveted by many, captured by none save Omar. She’d gotten very good at it. She reached up and unclipped her strawberry blond hair, shaking her head to send it tumbling down around her shoulders. She shifted position so that her breasts were thrust out and saw the very male response in his eyes.
All men were the same after all, even when a woman was as far along as she was. Even kings.
“How long will you be kidnapping me for?” she asked, so very politely.
“Ah, Sterling,” he replied in the same tone, though his look was far darker, and she had to fight back a betraying sort of flush when he shifted, the lean power of his body too obvious, too close. “Haven’t you guessed yet how this must end?”
She eyed him with sheer dislike. “You dropping dead where you stand, if there is a God.”
He shook his head at her. “You can always take to prayer, if you feel it will help. It won’t change what must happen, but perhaps you’ll approach it all with some measure of serenity.”
“Is that what you call this? ‘Serenity’?”
His fine, dark brows lifted. “I call it duty. I doubt you’d recognize it if you tripped over it.”
“Says the man who already married a stranger on command once and thought that made him virtuous,” she snapped, the past he’d thrown in Omar’s face so often coming back to her then in a burst. “I’m more afraid of tripping over your ego than your duty.”
“You don’t know anything about my first marriage,” Rihad told her with a lethal, vicious edge in his voice. “Not one single thing.”
“I know that expecting Omar to make the same sacrifice was hideous,” she said crisply, as if she wasn’t the least bit shaken. Though still...not afraid of him, somehow. “And you can tell yourself any stories you want about me and my past and whatever else, but I had nothing to do with it. I was the only thing in his life he liked.”
“Sterling.”
His face was closed down then, granite and bone. Utterly forbidding.
“If this is where you bore me with self-serving lies about your idyllic arranged first marriage, I think I’ll pass.” She eyed him. “I’m not as big a fan of stories as you seem to be.”
“It is my second marriage that should concern you, not my first.”
She stared back at him. Then she understood, in a terrible rush that felt like a tide coming in, crashing over her and rolling her into the undertow, then sweeping her far out to sea. All in that instant.
“Do I know the lucky bride?” Sterling asked, her voice as sharp as the razor-edged smile she aimed at him. “I’d like to convey my condolences.”
