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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?
Rage shot to another zenith as he looked down into her drenched eyes. Then, to his further fury, her anguish fractured his grip on his convictions.
As their eyes meshed, all he could think of was that this was no act. This wasn’t someone afraid for her income. This was someone who feared something far worse than death.
Could it be true? She’d conceived Mennah for an ulterior motive, but she now loved her? And that much?
He could take her—his—daughter from her as easily as taking a toy from an infant. Considering what she’d done to him, he should at least entertain retribution. The thought only scorched him with mortification.
She had to be some sort of witch.
But then, all he’d meant when he’d declared she couldn’t fight him was that she couldn’t deny him his right to his daughter. She’d taken his words to their worst possible conclusion. That was in keeping with the fear she claimed had driven her to run away. So could he believe that had really been the reason she’d run?
Laa, b’Ellahi. He couldn’t. He knew the truth.
Still, whatever her motives then, for some maddening reason, against a hundred insisting he shouldn’t, he believed her fear now. Worse, he had no desire to see her so anguished. Though he had every right to hurt her, he didn’t want to. Not this way.
Damning himself for a fool a thousand times for feeling he should kneel and beg her forgiveness for making her feel this way he rasped, “I won’t take her away. Now stop crying.”
Among the crashing in her head, the detonations tearing apart her chest, Carmen heard him say, “I won’t take her away.”
Suddenly there was silence. And darkness.
From a timeless void, sounds returned. Blood drumming in her ears to a sluggish rhythm. Another set of heartbeats booming there. Slow, steady, powerful. Coming from the living granite wall her ear was pressed against.
The rest of her senses coalesced. Smell, soaking in the scent of virility and vigor. Touch, transmitting the luxury of cashmere and silk and power. Orientation, placing her in his embrace, her head on his chest, her breasts molded against his upper abdomen, his arms around her back, her thighs. Then her sight focused on the fierceness drawing his winged eyebrows together, chiseling his features deeper, clouding the translucence of his golden eyes.
Such intent. He was carrying her to yet another session of delirium and ecstasy. The tension that had started to gather in her limbs melted into the enervation of expectation, her body readying itself for his onslaught, his possession …
But as each of his strides transmitted their effortless power to her bones, realization seeped through, until everything crashed back into her awareness.
This wasn’t the past. He wasn’t carrying her to his bed, or anywhere else where he’d ravish her with pleasure. This was now. In the oppressive present.
She might have imagined the words he’d said pledging he wouldn’t take Mennah from her.
She convulsed in his arms from the resurrected dread. His scowl deepened, and his hold firmed as he shouldered open her bedroom door. “Be still. You passed out.”
“Put me down. I’m all right now.”
“I’ll put you down on your bed. B’Ellahi, quit struggling.”
She shook her head, crushing his lapels in spastic fingers. “You said you w-won’t …?”
He didn’t answer her amputated question, deposited her on her bed with utmost care, leaning over her with arms flanking her head. His eyes swept down her length as they’d always done, as if he were struggling with the decision about which part of her to ravish first.
When he had her quaking, he swept back up to her eyes, drawled, “I won’t take Mennah away from you, Carmen. I’m not the monster you insist on painting me.”
“I never thought you were a monster.”
“No? The man you claim to think would have forced you to abort your baby, or would take her from you to banish her somewhere, make her live her life unknown and illegitimate so he’d secure his position? If this isn’t a monster, what is?”
“I’m sorry, Farooq. So sorry.” She clung to his forearms as he began to withdraw, desperate to make him understand. He extricated himself as if from slime. She shuddered. “I was so afraid … it was too huge, I couldn’t afford a margin of error, could only consider worst-case scenarios. I was afraid you’d think I’d lied on purpose, meaning to compromise you. I didn’t know you long enough to know how you’d react to perceived betrayals or threats. And then it wasn’t about you, or me. It was about her. Everything is about her. She’s everything to me. Everything.”
Emotions she couldn’t define blasted from his eyes, flaying her. It was a minute before he had mercy on her. He wrenched his gaze away, razing her single bed, her room, instead. She felt him wrestling his temper under control and began to realize the depth of his affront, his fury.
Everything he’d said was the opposite of what she’d imagined. It shriveled her to know she’d taken extreme actions that had hurt him on so many levels …
No. They had hurt him on only one level—where Mennah was concerned. He suffered anger that she’d hid the baby, offense that she’d dared fear him concerning any child, even one conceived without his will and knowledge. What they’d shared was not worth mentioning except to reference her exit act, which he’d made clear had been so pathetic he’d seen right through it.
Suddenly a gurgle tore through the silence. One of the sounds Carmen lived to hear. Mennah’s. As if she was right between them.
Farooq stiffened, his eyes slamming back to hers for a moment of incomprehension. The sounds continued, the cooing and burbling with which Mennah entertained herself upon waking up. Astonishment invaded his eyes as they fell on the miniature receiver buckled on Carmen’s waistband. Then he murmured, clearly not to her, his deepest baritone soft with amazement, “Ya Ullah, she’s awake …”
He exploded to his feet and toward the nursery right next door. Strength flooded Carmen’s limbs and she flew after him, catching his arm as his hand gripped the door handle.
“Let me go in first.”
His gaze burned down on her for a moment, accentuated by Mennah’s happy babblings emanating from the receiver and through the door. The feel of his muscles flexing in her grasp screamed down her nerves.
He turned away, a shake of his arm making her hands fall away like shedded leaves, making her believe he’d disregard her request.
He stared sightlessly at the door for one more moment then exhaled heavily. “Zain. Fine. Again I ask you to show me my daughter, Carmen. I hope you won’t faint again to put it off.”
Her body heat shot up another notch, this time not with awareness. “You think I was pretending?”
A growl rumbled from his gut, impatience made into sound. “Does it matter what I think?” Before she cried out a denial he ground on, “Laaken Laa … no, I don’t think even you can pretend such a dead faint. Now quit stalling.”
“Great,” she grumbled. “To be exonerated from a con, only because you think my acting abilities aren’t up to pulling it off. And I’m not stalling. You think I’d leave her alone for long even to thwart you? Now, can you move aside? I’ll call you in when …”
He seemed to expand, blocking her way like a barricade. “I’m letting you walk in ahead, not alone. Don’t test my patience anymore, Carmen.”
“Or you’ll do what?” she bristled.
He raised both eyebrows. “So, the falling-apart act is over and now comes … what? The hellcat one?”
She exhaled forcibly, letting out some of her tension. She couldn’t walk into Mennah’s nursery seething. “Who’s wasting time now? Now move out of my way so I can go to my daughter. She’s content to lie in her crib yammering to herself when she wakes up, but I never leave her alone for more than a few minutes.”
He gave a theatrical gesture, inviting her to precede him.
She opened the door a crack.
“You make her sleep in the dark!”
The hiss lodged between her shoulder blades. She closed the door, glared up at him. “You have a problem with that?”
His scowl was spectacular. “You should leave a night-light on. She’ll get scared if she wakes up in pitch-black like that.”
Her lips twisted. “And this is your expert opinion as an experienced dad?” Again the growl rumbled from in his gut, softer, no doubt because he feared Mennah might hear. She challenged him again. “Does she sound scared to you?”
His jaw muscles clenched in what she could only describe as grudging concession.
