LITMIR.BIZ

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chest heaving. “I’ll let you see her only if—if you promise—”

      He slashed his hand, cutting off her wobbling words. “Nobody lets me do anything, let alone you. I do what I see fit. And everyone obeys.”

      He took another step and she threw herself at him, imprinting him with her lushness. His body roared even through the fury.

      He gritted his teeth. “Get out of my way, Carmen. You’re not coming between me and my flesh and blood again.”

      She clung, gasped, “I didn’t—”

      “You didn’t?” He held her away with fingers that even now luxuriated in the feel of her resilient flesh, longed to run all over her. “What else do you call what you did?”

      A sob rattled deep inside her, made him want to clamp his lips on hers, plunge inside her fragrant warmth, plunder her until he’d extracted it, and her perfidious soul with it. Instead he relinquished his hold on her, unhooked her frantic fingers from his flesh with utmost control, put her away. She stumbled back, ended up plastered to the hall entrance, her eyes, those luminous pieces of his kingdom’s summer skies, welling with terrible emotions. Emotions he knew she didn’t have.

      His anger spiked. “What do you call keeping her a secret? Or trying to deny my paternity now?”

      “Please, stop.” She spread her arms over the entry when he moved, intending to brush her aside. “I did it because I know that, in your culture, illegitimacy remains your deepest entrenched stigma and that to a prince like you, having a lover bear you an illegitimate child would be an irreparable scandal …”

      He looked down into her eyes. Ya Ullah, how could they be so guileless? So potent? How could lies be so undetectable?

      “So you are an expert on my culture and my status?” he grated. “And you left, and left me in the dark that I’d fathered a daughter, to observe the demands of both?”

      She nodded, shook her head, at a total loss. “Oh God, please.” She paused, then panted, “How could I have told you I was pregnant? When I told you it couldn’t happen?”

      He gave a shrug. “Just like any woman who gets pregnant after such protestations would have. That it just happened. I’m sure the statistical failure of contraceptive measures has come to the rescue of countless women in your position.” Those ruby lips trembled on what he knew would be another ultra sincere-sounding protest. Before he closed them with his own, he plowed on, “And then I’m well aware of the facts of life, and if I’d wanted to be positive I didn’t impregnate you, I would have handled protection myself, not left it up to you and your assurances of safety. But I didn’t.”

      And how well he remembered why he hadn’t.

      That first night, by the end of their dinner, he’d been in agony. But he’d been willing, for the first time in his life, to wait for a woman. He’d wanted the perfection to continue, had wanted to give her time, give himself more of her, without the intimacies he’d been burning for. The unprecedented feelings of closeness and rapport, the sheer delight in everything about her had been incredible enough; he would have savored them without fulfillment of the carnal promise indefinitely. He’d resolved to end the night with a kiss and no more. Then she’d sabotaged his intentions, pulverized his expectations.

      She’d offered herself with such a mixture of shyness, passion and resolve that he’d almost refused. She’d aroused in him what he’d never felt toward a female outside his family. Tenderness, protectiveness. She’d seemed in an agony of embarrassment at her demand, yet in the grips of a hunger she couldn’t control. She’d tremulously told him she knew she’d be a one-night stand for him but she had to have it, would settle for any taste of him.

      He’d had her in his quarters without realizing how, had too late remembered protection, had been loath to send for it. He’d told her he’d still pleasure her, and she could pleasure him, if she wanted. She’d clung to him, said she was safe, in every way.

      He hadn’t even questioned her honesty, his relief sweeping. He’d wanted her to be his first. The first woman he experienced to the fullness of intimacy, his flesh driving in hers, feeling the heat and moistness of her need for him, without barriers. The first woman he poured himself into. And all through the magical six weeks he’d done that, had each glorious time abandoned himself inside her in the throes of completion. And trust.

      His lips twisted in disgust, at what even memories did to him. “I didn’t,” he repeated. “So whatever blame there is, I share it in equal measure. Not that the word blame applies anywhere in the conception of a child. Certainly not my child.”

      She crumpled against the entryway, as if from a blow, and hiccupped, “I—I had no way of knowing you could have felt this way. You didn’t want me beyond those three months and I thought you couldn’t possibly want the baby I accidentally got pregnant with …”

      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.”

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