The Desert Lord's Love-Child. Оливия Гейтс

Not that she’d been inviting attention. No doubt as part of her plan to stand out.

      Apart from her aloofness, she’d been smothered in a navy skirt suit from neck to mid-calf, when all the women around her had worn skirts riding up their thighs and blouses opened on deep cleavages.

      Her closed expression and concealing clothes had made him more eager to tear through them. He’d seen himself stripping her of that guarded look, those offending coverings, arranging her on that conference table, spreading her for his pleasure and hers, her reserve melting as she begged for his pleasuring, writhed for his domination …

      It must have been the response she’d counted on. That the mystique of her reticence in manner and dress would rouse the hunter lying dormant inside him. And it had worked. Spectacularly.

      For the first time ever, he’d been fazed, couldn’t account for his violent response. Unlike many men of his culture, he didn’t prefer fair-skinned, light-eyed women, certainly never redheads.

      But she’d approached him like a wary gazelle, her equal attraction and alarm blazing in those heaven-colored eyes, had put that supple hand in his and everything about her had become everything he craved. Her face and body had become the sum total of his fantasies, every feature and line the source of his hunger, the fuel for his pleasure.

      He would have done anything to have her in his bed. And when by the end of the night he’d had her there, he couldn’t let it end, had offered what he’d never offered any woman. Three months. In the private space he never let anyone breach. With every minute, he’d wanted her for longer. He’d even entertained forever.

      Then she’d walked out.

      Ever since, he’d been trying to wipe her taste from his mouth, the memory of her from his psyche, to reacquire a taste for other brands of beauty, build tolerance for another’s touch.

      After each dismal failure he’d damned her, damned his addiction more. And here he was, renewing his exposure.

      She’d opened the door, and it had been as if everything he’d learned since she’d revealed her true face had been erased, and she was again the woman he’d run back to that night, intending to offer forever.

      It had taken her spectacular reaction to seeing him to jog him out of his amnesic haze. To fire his memory of when she’d done the unprecedented. The unimaginable. Thrown his desire back in his face. Been the one to walk out.

      He’d pretended interest in his surroundings to tear his senses away, only for everything about her new home to send his fury cresting, proof of her crimes against him.

      Had this place been stripped of even a coat of paint, it would still cost a fortune, with its location in an elite building in an upmarket neighborhood of one of the most expensive cities in the world, New York. The fortune she’d made being Tareq’s mole.

      Tareq had planted her in his life at the perfect time. During his taxing world tour, as he’d fought for his goals on all fronts, amidst Tareq’s escalating efforts to discredit him.

      He’d thought her a godsend. Instead she’d been sent by a devil. A devil whose evil had backfired.

      With Farooq’s father dead—of a broken heart, Farooq was convinced, just a year after Farooq’s mother had died from a long illness—Tareq had thought that, as the king’s oldest nephew, he’d succeed Farooq’s father as crown prince. Tareq’s own father had died of a heart attack when they were all quite young, leaving Tareq his only heir and the oldest of the royal cousins.

      But, knowing that Tareq favored certain unkingly, depraved activities, their uncle the king had at first said he’d reserve the crown prince title for his own son. A son he could only have if he took a second wife. When he couldn’t bring himself to take another wife, he’d then said he’d name his heir according to merit, not age, with the implication clear to all that he meant Farooq and would soon officially name him crown prince. Tareq had then launched into non-stop plotting to overrule the king’s decree.

      During Farooq’s tour, Tareq had suddenly started talking as if he’d secured the succession, bragging that he’d be the first king who never married. Farooq guessed he’d said that to gain the support of the enemies of the royal house of Aal Masood by intimating that they would therefore get a turn to rule after him. He now realized that Tareq had also thought his plot with Carmen had been about to bear fruit, creating an illegitimate, half-western heir for Farooq and eliminating him from favor.

      But Tareq’s assertions had only given the king ammunition to overcome the reluctance of the members of the Tribune of Elders—the king’s council—who had resisted bypassing Tareq for Farooq. With Tareq adding contempt for the Aal Masoods’ future to his depravities, the king knew that all Farooq needed to do to drive the last nail in Tareq’s coffin was to overcome his own reluctance to marry. Didn’t he have a woman he’d consider marrying? his uncle had asked.

      Farooq hadn’t even hesitated. He had a woman. Carmen.

      And his king had issued the decree. The heir who married and produced the first child would succeed to the throne.

      And Tareq had ordered Carmen to leave the very next day.

      During their confrontation, Tareq had thanked his lucky stars that Carmen hadn’t conceived, casting aspersions on Farooq’s virility and fertility. Sixteen hours ago, Farooq had realized she’d left because she had conceived, the child that would have snuffed her employer’s dying hopes.

      She couldn’t have known what she’d lost when she’d run out on him. But he still didn’t know why she hadn’t stayed to use the child as a bargaining chip, had taken Tareq’s offer instead. Even if she’d shown Farooq the face of a woman he could never marry, he’d been in addiction’s merciless grip, would have given her light years beyond what she had now.

      Had she thought he’d sate himself, wreak vengeance on her then discard her with nothing? Or did her subservience to Tareq mix greed with fear? Or even lust …?

      His thoughts boiled in an uproar of revulsion.

      Thinking of her in Tareq’s filthy arms, succumbing to his sadism and perversions … Bile rose up to his throat.

      But the sick image of her as his cousin’s tool and whore, and her own words as she’d left him, clashed with everything radiating from her now….

      No. He’d never believe anything he sensed about her again. He could still barely believe how totally he’d been taken in, how seamlessly she’d acted her part. It had been a virtuoso performance, the guilelessness, the spontaneity, the unbridled responses, the perpetual hunger, the total pleasure in him, in and out of bed.

      But all that faking had borne something real. A daughter. And he’d missed so much. The miracle of her birth and every precious moment of the first nine months of her life.

      And if it had been up to Carmen, he would have never found out about her. She would have grown up fatherless.

      But among all Carmen’s crimes, what most enraged him had been that touch.

      She’d touched him as if to ascertain he was really there. And that touch had almost made him drag her to the floor, tear her out of her clothes and bury himself inside her.

      Now he relished repaying her for shredding his control yet again, seeing her with her composure shattered.

      Oh, yes. That was real. She must be frantic, thinking her cash cow had run dry. Now that Farooq had learned of Mennah’s existence, Tareq would stop paying for her luxurious lifestyle.

      Seething with colliding emotions, he inclined his head at her. “Nothing to say, I see. That’s very wise of you.”

      She gulped. “H-how did you find out?”

      He wouldn’t have. Ever. If he’d stuck to his oath never to seek her out. But instead of fading away, her memory had burned hotter each day, and the need for closure had almost driven him mad.

      It had taken months,