The Sheikh's Forbidden Mistress Read online

  Barakaa kissed her then, as he slid into her. He made sure he could take her mind off the process of adjusting by caressing her lips with his own, by tasting her tongue again and again, by squeezing her ass, and reveling in the curves of a real woman. Finally, once he was as fully into her as he could go—enjoying the tight warmth of her channel—Barakaa moved his hips. She mewled, just like the kitten she was, and gamely moved her hips up to meet his, her core greedily gobbling up everything he gave her.

  They were joined then, two bodies moving frantically, her veins surely as heated as his own. They kissed and grabbed and thrust, both so desperate to feel every inch of the other. At least, he was desperate to feel every inch of her, to know they were lovers together. The tightness in his testicles was growing even more intense, and he knew he was close to coming, which was good because he was afraid the heat racing through him was going to melt his veins.

  He came then, when he thought he could no longer sustain that frantic, hungered tempo any longer. Shooting his seed deep inside her, Barakaa realized he’d never felt more connected to anyone than he did to her right now.

  Her own climax came shortly after and he felt the heat bubble over in his veins again, even as her inner muscles worked over him.

  “God, Barakaa!”

  She collapsed on top of him panting and, playfully, he kissed her temple and grinned down at her. “No, just me love, but I’m better than most sterile gods anyway.”

  Chapter Ten

  The trip to Abu Dhabi had been a revelation, but now she was back at work after ten days off from both the injury she’d sustained, as well as the clandestine trip. Barakaa’d come back to work the Wednesday before but, for appearances, Trudy had insisted she wait until the next Monday to make it less obvious that they’d been away together. Besides, the concussion had left her dizzy for several days and it was a legitimate excuse for her to be away. They planned to claim she needed an extended rest period, so that Tahan Oil Subsidiaries could avoid the workers’ comp charges or the potential law suit.

  It wasn’t even that far from the truth.

  Still, when she came back to work, she wore her evil eye necklace. If anyone asked, she’d lie and say she felt well enough to go to the markets. People would assume it was costume jewelry. She was a poor intern, after all. There was no way she’d be able to afford real gold for herself on her salary. It was like a secret symbol between them. That insignia called out to her sheikh and told him that she was gladly his.

  Whistling as she entered the office, she accepted a boisterous hug and a kiss on each cheek from Mr. Kaiyam.

  “You look fantastic! I’m so glad the rest has helped with the concussion,” he said, winking at her.

  Oh, so Omar knew, but, then again, he’d acted almost like a fairy godfather for both of them. Why wouldn’t he know?

  “I know. I had the most amazing rest, and then felt better this weekend, so I went to the markets,” she said, pointing to the cerulean stone around her throat. “Isn’t this to die for?”

  He nodded and hugged her once more before adding. “I feel in my bones, my dear, that this will bring you the best luck. Perhaps it already has.”

  “Well, it would be hard to have worse luck than a concussion after almost being crushed.”

  “I’m glad you weren’t, child,” he said. “Now, I have the final best bidder contract on my desk. I’d love a second eye on it. Get to it as soon as you can. Welcome back to the work load.”

  She brought a hand to her chest and faked a pout. “I come back from being ill and you’re ready for me to go back to the grindstone.”

  “No perks,” he said, and she nodded.

  No, that’s true, no favors, and I need to get back to everything. I need to prove what I can do with the ten weeks I have left.

  “Great, I just had a long commute over and have to take care of some things,” she added, heading to the bathroom. A bucket of coffee to get her started this morning had not been her friend.

  She was cleaning up at the sinks, after attending to business, when Fairuza slid up to her. The other woman was always so professional, so put together. Her dark hair was swept up in an efficient bun and she towered over Trudy on her stilettos. She was everything Trudy wasn’t—slim, powerful, and already entrenched at the company.

  “So, Trudy, you’re back to work. It’s good you weren’t crushed.”

  Her tone implied that it was good in the same way one would say it was good it wasn’t raining. It was clear that Trudy’s imminent death wouldn’t have bothered Fairuza all that much.

  “Thanks. I…I need to get back to work.”

  Fairuza shocked her by reaching for the necklace. “I’m sure that Barakaa can wait.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Of course you do,” she said, holding up her right wrist. From it hung a bangled bracelet with a royal blue evil eye engraved on it. “He got this for me in Morocco when we first started our arrangement four years ago. For a while it’s fun, you know? That you can be on his arm or warming his bed when he needs it. We were together for so very long.”

  Trudy’s throat felt like it was closing up, and her tongue felt too big for her mouth, as if words just wouldn’t come. Finally, she croaked out, “What?”

  “You heard me. I know. And the office will soon, I’ll make sure of it. I don’t know why, but he’s clearly moved on to you for whatever reason. Maybe he wants a bit of thick American for a while, something different as a kink.”

  Those words landed against her like a physical blow and Trudy stepped back from the sink, her tears pooling in her eyes. “I…”

  Fairuza seemed to lean in for the kill. “He’ll grow tired of you soon, you American cow, and come back to me where he belongs. Then you’ll be the laughing stock of the office, the laughing stock of Dubai. I’d run if I were you because tomorrow I’ll make things miserable for you and that’s a promise.”

  * * *

  I don’t understand.”

  “Sir, I don’t quite either. Yesterday, she ran out of the bathroom and said she’d been vomiting and had to see the doctor to make sure it wasn’t a further side effect,” Omar began. “Then she emailed me about six o’clock this morning to say she was quitting. I sent a team to her apartment, but she was already gone. I tried calling but she must be on a plane back to America, because her apartment was cleared out.”

  Barakaa’s head was spinning. He’d tried to contact her yesterday to make sure the doctors had signed off on her health, but now he was just reeling. How could she have fled Dubai so fast after what they’d shared? The love they’d made together just on Saturday at her apartment and all the plans they’d made to keep things on the down low at work? How could any of this be happening?

  “What?”

  “Sir, I’ll have a team go to Oklahoma as soon as I can, find a way to urge her back, if you’d like. There must be an explanation. She was positively floating before she got sick yesterday,” Omar said. “I’ve seen her and how happy she was. Something got to her.”

  Someone, more likely.

  He realized it like a bolt of lightning. It was unclear how Fairuza had figured out about their vacation tryst, since only Omar and Nadula—his most loyal servants—had known.

  “Send in Fairuza, now!”

  Omar scurried out and soon that rancid bitch was before him, her face screwed up in a haughty look that he wished he could wipe from her face.

  “Well, darling, if you needed a morning quickie on the desk,” she purred. “Then all you had to do was ask.”

  Lunging across the desk, he grabbed her by both wrists. “That’s not what I want, and you damn well know that much.”

  “Well, why should you care? Way I heard it, the American went home. She couldn’t handle it if a certain birdie torpedoed her reputation.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I was thinking of her. She and I haven’t”—”

  Fairuza twisted free of him and started to pace. “Yo
u have a vein in your temple that throbs when you lie, it’s a tell. But it’s obvious when she wears the symbol that you once gave me. Maybe you need a new playbook,” she said, pointing to her wrist. “You take her to Morocco too?”

  “That’s none of your business,” he said, surging to his feet. “You signed a non-disclosure agreement on all affairs within these walls, and with all this scheming you should be terminated. If you try to spread any rumors, you’d be sued into oblivion.”

  “I still work here,” she purred.

  “Not anymore, Fairuza, get your ass out.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Six weeks.

  He’d tried to call her since then, and she’d struggled to find a new internship. It was back into the rat race and her scope was smaller now that she was only focusing on American based and grown companies. She wanted nothing to do with anything in the Middle East. Everything in the whole region was too painful, and reminded her she was just another assistant that Sheikh Tahan had seduced and probably laughed at.

  So she’d screened his calls, and deleted every email. She wanted nothing to do with him. He’d spent time trying to convince her he was an angel, when clearly he was the devil who’d almost strangled a man, some voracious satyr who would dump her to get back with the beautiful Fairuza. She never wanted to be like that, and the fact that she’d given her most precious of gifts to him made her spend her nights crying.

  She wore exhaustion like a heavy shroud from which she couldn’t escape.

  This afternoon, she was excited about a job interview, a chance with Tulsa Oil Conglomerates. It had been a company about to slide into bankruptcy until it was recently bought out by a mystery financier. Everyone assumed it was just acquired to be torn down and sold off into its parts, but now it was actually being rehabilitated and there were a ton of beginning engineer positions available. She’d made it to the second round interviews, and she had a promising feeling that she could make it, that she could land not just an internship, but a job with a company in the same town as Sonia.

  Sonia was now holding up a pink box and shaking her head at her.

  “You have to know.”

  “I’m not that late,” she countered, hugging the toilet from her latest ralphing session. “Besides, the stress could account for both things. It’s been completely crappy since I got back,” she said, bursting into tears, thinking again on all she’d lost when she’d realized who Barakaa really was.

  Her cousin sat beside her and stroked her hair. “Sweetheart, you have to know. Then you have choices.”

  “Never…if I am…” she said, her voice hiccupping.

  “Then you’ll know. You need to get the right care and vitamins if you are, and tell Sheikh Tahan.”

  She snorted. “With what a player he is, he probably has illegitimate children everywhere. I can’t.”

  “Then just take the test, sweetie, you know I’ll be there with anything you need,” she promised, hugging Trudy close to her. “Whatever comes, there’s always a kickass Aunt Sonia around. I care about you, and I’ll take care of you.”

  “First, I am going to land this job. Second, I’m not pregnant, I guarantee it.”

  * * *

  Fuck.

  Even as she smiled and spoke as eloquently as she could at the final round interview, her thoughts were anywhere but on petroleum engineering. They kept circling back to the two pink lines on the indicator this morning.

  Fuck.

  It was a word she’d never used, still too prim to think of curses. Then she’d screamed quite a few of them making love to Barakaa. At least she had been making love. He might have been an expert liar, but she was making love to him, bearing her heart and everything else for the man she cared about. Currently, though, she wanted to cry, curl into a ball, and curse everything. As big a comfort as Sonia tried to be, Trudy couldn’t imagine condemning her child to live apart from their father.

  But he wouldn’t want her now. The only reason he was calling was about control, about the games he’d always been playing with her. He’d never want her once she was massively pregnant; he’d never want to be dragged down into everything a child entailed when he could just keep hopping from woman to woman as easily as he breathed.

  “Well, I think we’ve seen everything we have to see here,” Mr. Miller said, standing.

  She hurried to stand up, too, and desperately hoped she hadn’t said anything foolish or accidentally mentioned anything about the pregnancy weighing on her mind. “Oh, I understand.”

  His face burst into a beaming grin and he reached out and took her hand. “Miss Yoder, welcome to our team.”

  “Really?” Considering all the other horrible things in her life, it’s the best news she could possibly have heard. She’d have a job, and way to care for the baby—the one she and Sonia want, even if his or her father is a rat bastard. “Thank you, Mr. Miller. Thank you!”

  “You should go to see our senior partner; he’s the benefactor who helped with his angel investments to save the firm. Once he saw your stats, he insisted we hire you. Though I have to say, you’ve been very articulate in all your interviews and your references were glowing.”

  “Thank you,” she said, frowning and rubbing at her stomach. She had a gnawing feeling that had nothing to do with the morning sickness that had long since passed for today. “Senior partner?”

  “New and more of a silent once, but he insisted he meet you. I’ll take you to his office, miss.”

  She gulped and followed Mr. Miller. Trudy had a haunting suspicion about exactly who this mysterious benefactor was, but she hoped she was being paranoid. Just because Barakaa was invading her thoughts, just because their child was growing inside her…it couldn’t be. He couldn’t be the senior partner, that investment angel who had saved the conglomerate.

  Could he?

  * * *

  She was as beautiful as she was every time he saw her, but her eyes didn’t just blaze with fury when Trudy spied him; he saw something perturbed and deeply worried in her gaze.

  “Leave us,” he said, urging Miller away.

  The unctuous, balding man did as he was told, shutting the door behind himself, and shutting them both in together. He had hoped she’d be overjoyed to see him, or that she’d at least walk closer to him. Instead, it was clear that his lioness had fully found her claws. Those indigo eyes were fully aflame.

  “Is this some kind of sick joke? I know you want to control everything, but this is my life! You can’t just…was the interview even real? Was any of this even real? Did you just want to set this all up to humiliate me?”

  “No,” he offered.

  Can’t you just be less stubborn for once, kitten?

  “Then, what?” she asked, crossing her arms over her chest. “What is this?”

  “I bought the conglomerate about four weeks ago when it became clear you’d never talk to me. I don’t control hiring here.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “I don’t, but Omar and I both put in personal references for you and, of course, Mr. Miller couldn’t resist.”

  “Why did you do that? Was it all more of your damn games?”

  “No, it was because you lost the internship due to my idiocy, and I was trying to make things right by helping you. This is a small purchase for us, and I only see bottom line numbers mostly every quarter. Miller controls it, and I’m not directly your boss. It’s not like at TOS at all.”

  “But why come here to see me?” she asked, stepping toward him and dropping her arms. He wondered if Trudy had realized how much more open she was acting.

  “I came here to see you because I love you,” he replied striding across the conference room and taking her head in both his hands. She fought against him for only a moment, but stilled once he kissed her, his tongue penetrating and domineering, just as he was. He needed her to feel what he felt for her, to know in her bones what a liar Fairuza was. As he pulled back, he stroked her cheek. “Fairuza lied. It’s all she knows how
to do.”

  “Didn’t seem like it. I saw the bracelet.”

  “Once, we were lovers, but we were never in love. Then, when we were bored, we agreed to be associates with benefits. She’s a good lover, that’s true…”

  Trudy tried to pull away, but he grabbed her by the wrist. “I see how good she must be,” she snapped.

  “No, you don’t. It was about power and manipulation and we’ve never been exclusive. We take different lovers, but then I met you and you’re all I want.”

  “How can I trust that?”

  He laughed, long and hard and kissed her again. “Kitten, I spent five hundred million dollars on a company just to try and rectify the internship you lost and help you start your career, even if I can never have you. I also fired Fairuza and forced her to honor a non-disclosure agreement that will permanently keep her from ruining your reputation.”

  “You did?” he saw hope in her eyes for the first time since she entered the office. Trudy touched her lips, as if only now noticing the toe-curling kisses he’d given her. “For me?”

  Hugging her tightly, he reveled in the feel of her warm body, flush against his and even curvier than he remembered.

  “Everything’s for you. I love you, Trudy Yoder, and I always will.”

  Looking up at him, she grinned, her expression as beatific as ever. “I love you too, and so will our child.”

  He blinked; sure he’d heard her wrong. There was no way…but then they hadn’t exactly been careful in the pool, and it only took one time, didn’t it?

  “Really?” he asked, stepping apart from her just enough to be able to touch her still flat belly and the life they’d created between them.

  “I’d never lie about that,” she said “I just found out today, and I had no idea how to tell you. I…I wasn’t going to because I was scared you wouldn’t care about an illegitimate child or that I was just another notch on your belt.”

  His nostrils flared with anger. Firing was too good for Fairuza, he’d have to make her hurt financially for the pain she’d caused Trudy and their child. “I’d never feel that way. You’re special to me, kitten, and you always will be. Both of you will be,” he said, picking her up and spinning him. “I couldn’t be happier.”