The Desert Lord's Baby Read Free Page A

they’d shared, only for more betrayal to tear at him when he’d seen her getting into his cousin Tareq’s car. It even eclipsed what he’d felt when he’d confronted Tareq and discovered why she’d really left.
    His cousin and arch nemesis had confessed that he’d sent Carmen to seduce Farooq, to get pregnant and create a scandal large enough to stop Farooq’s rise to the succession. Tareq had snickered that their uncle’s latest decree had thrown a sabot in the cogs of his treachery, turning a pregnancy into an asset, not a liability, forcing him to order Carmen to leave, going back to the drawing board to think of something else to eliminate Farooq from the running.
    It had all made sense to Farooq then. From the moment he’d seen her to the moment she’d walked out on him.
    Or he’d thought it had.
    It had been only hours ago that he’d learned the full truth.
    Another tidal wave of emotion crashed over him.
    Ya Ullah— he’d never struggled for control, had never even contemplated its loss. He’d been born in control, of himself before others. His urges and desires were his to command, never the other way around. Then there was Carmen.
    He’d lost control with his first sight of her, had lost his discretion while drowning in her pleasures, had almost lost his restraint upon her desertion.
    Now he was a hairsbreadth from losing his reason.
    And it was her doing yet again.
    He leaned his forehead on the door, forced inhalations into his spastic lungs, order into his frenzied thoughts, willing the blinding seizure to pass.
    It took minutes and the nosiness of two neighbors to bring him down. He regained at least enough control to settle a semblance of composure over the chaos, smothering it. Enough to make him reach a resolution.
    He’d never let her affect him that deeply again. Ever.
    He’d go in, take what he wanted. As he always did.
    He straightened, set his teeth with great precision and almost drove his finger through her doorbell.
     
    Carmen jerked up from watching Mennah sleep. The bell!
    Though it almost never rang, she’d been waiting for her super to come fix the short-circuit in the laundry room. He’d said within the next two days. Four days ago.
    But it was the way the bell rang that had made her jump. It had almost…bellowed, for lack of a better description. Maybe it was about to give, too, and that sound was its dying throes?
    Sighing, she checked Mennah’s monitor and the wireless receiver clipped to her jeans’ waist. On her way to the door, she smoothed her hands over her hair but gave up in midmotion with a huff. A disheveled greeter was what her super got for coming unannounced, catching a single mother with a dozen chores behind her and a shower still in her future.
    Fixing a smile on her lips, intending her greeting to be thanks for his arrival if no thanks for his delay, she opened the door.
    Her heart didn’t stop immediately.
    It went on with its rhythm for a moment, the kind that simulated hours, before it lost the blood it needed to keep on pumping. The blood now shooting to her head, pooling in her legs. Then it stopped.
    And everything else hurtled, screeched, into consciousness.
    Denial, dread, desperation.
    She’d changed her career to work from home, had relocated to the other side of the continent, had still remained scared that he’d find her. But he hadn’t, and eventually she’d believed he hadn’t tried, or hadn’t been able to.
    But he had found her. Was on her doorstep. Farooq.
    Filling her doorway. Blocking out existence.
    She found herself slumped against the door, her fingers almost breaking off with the force with which they clutched it. Some instinct must have remained functioning, saving her from crashing to the ground. Some auxiliary power must be fueling her continued grip on consciousness.
    “Save it.”
    That was all he said as he pushed past her, walking into her apartment as if he owned it. And his voice…
    This wasn’t the voice etched