24
She didn’t ask any questions as she felt the Sheikh’s lips smother hers in the steam-filled shower stall of the little house on the outskirts of New Orleans, Louisiana. She didn’t ask why, when, who, what, which, or how. She was already too far gone, perhaps beside herself with emotion, maybe exhaustion, certainly arousal. She’d started the day at an abortion clinic, been abducted through the window, and was now naked in her bathroom with the Sheikh himself. It made complete sense. Of course it did.
“Those men,” she whispered, her modesty sticking its nose in and reminding her that there were still two strangers in her living room.
“They are gone,” growled the Sheikh as he kissed her neck. “And so is Damascus.”
“What?” she said, pulling away, her eyes wide.
The Sheikh grinned, his green eyes lighting up, his smile broad and beautiful, with perfect white teeth flashing through his dark red lips, those lips that had started all of this. “I had your friend Carmen meet me here and pick him up. It is just the two of us tonight. The Sheikh and his woman.” He paused, grasping her by her wet, matted hair and pulling closer, those green eyes sparkling as the hot water rained down on them. “A woman who cannot be trusted alone with my unborn child, it seems. A woman who will need to be watched constantly, around the clock, twenty-four hours a day.”
It took a moment for Lora to process it all: The two men sent away; Carmen summoned to be babysitter for the night; the Sheikh naked and hard, his fist in her hair, his cock pressing against her wet skin.
“Your child . . . Amir, I . . . I don’t think I would have. I mean, I’m not sure I would have been able to do it. I don’t know what I was thinking. I don’t even know who I am!”
“You are a woman carrying the heir of Johaar,” he whispered, turning her and pulling her into him, placing his hands on her belly and pressing gently as his cock pushed against her rear crack from behind.
“Is that why you want me? Because I’m carrying your child?” she whispered, moving against him as she felt his hands move up along the round of her belly, slowing cupping her breasts.
“No,” he growled as he gathered her heavy breasts in his hands and squeezed so hard she gasped out loud. “I wanted you from the moment I saw you in that yellow sundress, walking through my palace like you owned it. I want you for you, but the child is a very good excuse for me to come here and claim you, don’t you think?”
“Oh, so now our child is just a means to an end? You’re using our unborn baby to get to me? Despicable!” Lora muttered, smiling as she felt her nipples harden into tight points from the way he was pinching and pulling at them.
The Sheikh whipped her around again, pushing her up against the tiled wall of the shower and drawing close. His cock pressed against her mound as he stepped to her, and he smiled and shrugged. “I do not have a problem admitting my own selfishness, and I feel no shame in going after what I want.”
“Oh, and you’re implying that I do?”
“Of course. Shame is the reason for this ridiculous behavior. Shame is what took you to that abortion clinic today. Shame, guilt, and some ridiculous notion that you have done something wrong. That we have done something wrong!” He took a breath. “And I felt it too at first. Or at least I understood why you felt it, which is why I let you go. But I will not make that mistake again.”
Lora took a breath as she felt the Sheikh caress her warm, wet cheek and lean in for a kiss. “What if this is a mistake,” she said, blinking and breaking the eye contact.
“We are not a mistake,” the Sheikh whispered, cupping her face with his big hands and making her look up at him. Then he ran his hands down along her body, his fingers tracing their way along her breasts, palms pressing against her belly. “This is not a mistake.”
Lora tilted her head back and laughed. “Of course it’s a mistake! Getting pregnant after one night together? It’s the definition of a mistake!”
The Sheikh grinned. “Then we need to start redefining some things for you, I think, Miss Lora Langhorne.”
“Oh, really. Like what?”
The Sheikh turned the shower off, and suddenly it was quiet, nothing but the haze of steam and the warmth of their bodies to fill her senses. “Like your definition of what it is to be a woman,” he said. Then, after a long pause, during which he looked her up and down in a way that made her tremble, he whispered. “What it is to be a queen. A princess. A whore.”
“What?” she gasped.
“That is it, isn’t it? Yes, Miss Lora the Librarian? It all makes sense now. All those years of burying your nose in books, reading fantasies and fabrications and stories written mostly by lonely, chauvinistic men with outdated ideas of what it means to be woman, what makes her honorable, and what makes her . . . not.”
Lora snorted. “OK, you’re telling me about chauvinistic men with outdated ideas? What the hell was that kiss three years ago? What the hell was that Sheikh’s Privilege nonsense?”
The Sheikh grinned and shook his head. “Fine. But what about your reaction to all of that? I take responsibility for my own actions, yes. But you must take responsibility for yours.”
“And what were my actions?” Lora whispered, realizing that her arousal had been creeping steadily upwards even as she felt the Sheikh’s hardness mount until the tip of his cock was up past her belly-button, he was so damned erect.
“To deny what you felt with that first kiss,” the Sheikh whispered as he touched his lips to hers for a moment and then drew back. “To react to that denial by rushing into a marriage you knew was wrong,” he whispered as he kissed her again. “And then, when you heard I paid off Mark so he’d walk out of your life, you walked out of my life because you were . . .”
“Because I was what?” Lora said, backing up against the wall and glancing down at him, gasping when she saw his glistening shaft standing ramrod-straight under the soft yellow light of her shower stall. The water dripped in heavy beads down his muscled chest and abdomen, and his thick black hair was wet and slicked back, his heavy stubble dark and matted.
He kissed her again, the kiss almost unconscious as she responded and then backed away. “Because you were afraid of what it meant. You were not sure what I paid for, not sure if you owed me something.”
Lora blinked. He was right and she knew it, but she didn’t give a damn right now. This felt natural, the two of them naked and wet, with steam curling in the air around them, soft light and shadows highlighting her curves and his contours. Suddenly all those thoughts of that money and what Amir was actually buying with it seemed frivolous, meaningless, almost laughable. It was like her body knew what it wanted, and this was it. He was it. The father of her child. The man of her dreams. Now all she had to do was allow herself to dream that dream again, even after she’d been through a hell of a marriage.
“And what did you pay for?” she asked, slowly reaching down and tracing her finger along his shaft, gasping as she felt him shudder and watched him get so erect she wondered if he’d explode just from the delicate roll of her fingers. “What do I owe you?”
“Do not tease me, woman,” the Sheikh growled, his body hardening as he slid his hand behind her neck and slowly grasped her hair from behind. “I am trying to have a conversation here.”
“Oh, really. So talk,” she whispered, her tongue darting out as she felt a devilish energy whip through her. She tightened her grasp on his cock, holding him firmly and smiling wide. The air was warm and comfortable, and she felt secure in her familiar bathroom, hidden away from the world, from judgment—perhaps even from her own judgment.
What if, she thought as she slowly began to jerk the Sheikh’s thick foreskin back and forth as he arched his neck back and groaned in pleasure. What if I just open myself up to that fear, that childish fear that I’m a whore for everything I’ve done with Amir, everything from that first kiss, that night in Johaar, the millions he paid to Mark to buy my freedom, and the fact that I’m carrying his illegitimate child. What if I just embrace it, face that fear. If I’m so damned terrified of being a whore, then maybe I should just say to hell with it and embrace it. Perhaps Carmen was right. Perhaps every woman really is both whore and princess, harlot and queen, saint and seductress.
So she smiled that devilish smile once more, and then Lora Langhorne, that modest librarian with her head in the clouds, went down on her knees in the bathroom stall and lined up the head of the Sheikh’s massive cock with her trembling lips.
Then she gently massaged his heavy balls, stroked his long, glistening brown shaft with her red-painted fingernails, and took him into her mouth. All the way. All the damned way.