CHAPTER THREE
THE SUV SEEMED to close in around her, her heart was a rapid throb in her throat and it was only another well-timed kick from the baby that broke through the panic. Sterling rubbed a hand over her belly and tried to calm herself.
He won’t hurt you. He can’t. If this is the heir to his kingdom, you’ve never been safer in all your life.
The man she should have realized wasn’t the slightest bit subservient to anyone threw open the driver’s door and climbed out of the SUV, then slammed it shut behind him. She could hear the sound of that voice of his outside on the tarmac, the spate of Arabic words like some kind of rough incantation, some terrible spell that he was casting over the whole of the private airfield. His men. Her.
And she couldn’t seem to do anything but sit there, frozen in place, obeying him by default. She stared at the back of the seat he’d vacated and tried to convince herself that despite the panic stampeding through her veins, she really was safe.
She had to be safe, because this baby had to be safe.
But the truth was, there was more than a small part of her that was still holding out hope that this was all a terrible nightmare from which she’d bolt awake at any minute. That Omar would be there, alive and well, with that wry smile of his at the ready and exactly the right words to tease away any lingering darkness. He’d tell her none of this could possibly have happened. That it never would.
And this would be a convoluted, nonsensical story she’d tell him over a long, lazy breakfast out on their wraparound terrace with views of New York City stretching in all directions as if it really was the center of the world, until they both laughed so hard they made themselves nearly sick.
God, what she would do to wake up and find out this was all a bad dream, that Omar had never gotten in that car in France, that it had never spun out of control on its way back into Paris—
But the door beside her opened abruptly then and Rihad stood there before her.
Because, of course, it was him. Rihad. The sheikh. The king. The more-feared-than-respected ruler of his fiercely contested little country on the Persian Gulf. The older brother who had consistently made Omar feel as if he was a failure, despite how much Omar had looked up to him. As if he was less than Rihad somehow. As if the deepest truths of who he’d been had to be hidden away, lied about, concealed where no one could see them—especially not the brother who should have loved him unconditionally.
Omar had loved him, despite everything. Sterling had not been similarly handicapped.
“There has been no mention of this pregnancy in any of the papers,” Rihad said in his dark, authoritative way. “No hint.”
“Guess why?” she suggested, hoping all the pain she’d like to inflict on him was evident in her voice. “Guess who we didn’t want to know?”
“You were both fools.”
Sterling glared at Rihad as the light wrapped around him and made him look something like celestial. How had she managed to convince herself this man was merely a driver? He fairly oozed power from every pore. He was the physical embodiment of ruthlessness no matter how the summer sunlight loved him and licked over the planes and valleys of his fascinating face. He exuded ruthless masculinity and total authority in equal measure, and she’d thrown herself directly into his hands.
He stared down at her, that mouth of his in a sardonic curl, his dark gold gaze bright and hot and infinitely disturbing, until Sterling thought she might not be able to breathe normally again. Ever.
“I believe this is the part where a good driver helps a fine, upstanding lady such as yourself from the vehicle,” he said in that smooth way of his, like silk and yet with all that steely harshness beneath it. “Without any commentary involving terms she might or might not like.”
“I think you mean insults, not terms.”
“I think it’s time to get out of the car.”
Then he held out his hand and there was no pretending it was anything but a royal command.
“I’m not getting on that plane,” Sterling told him.
Very carefully and precisely, as if perfect diction might save her here. Save her from him. As if anything could.
“It was not a request.”
She could see then how much he’d been acting the part of the supposed servant before, because he wasn’t bothering with that any longer. He was a stern column of inimitable power, his will like a living thing coiled tight around both of them and the whole damned airfield besides, and she couldn’t understand why he’d played that game with her in the first place. This was not a man who pretended anything, ever, she understood at a glance. Because he didn’t need to pretend. This was a man who took what he wanted as he wanted it, the end.
But she was not going to let him take her. Not without a fight.
“Perhaps you’re misunderstanding me, Rihad,” she said, deliberately using his first name to underscore how little she respected him.
She felt the ripple of that impertinence move through him and then beyond him, through the line of his men, where they stood in a loose ring around him and the SUV, protection and defense. The disapproval washed back over her from all sides, but the gleam in Rihad’s dark gold gaze merely edged over into something more shrewd as he considered her.
As if she was an animal in a trap, she thought, and he was deciding how best to put her out of her misery. That was not a restful notion.
Sterling pushed on. “I would rather die than go anywhere with you.”
He leaned toward her in the open wedge between the door and the body of the SUV and every single nerve inside of her went wild. Sharp and hot and alert—something so much like pain it very nearly toppled her before she realized it wasn’t really pain at all. Merely an exquisite reaction—pure sensation, storming all over her—that she didn’t recognize and didn’t know what to do with.
It was almost impossible to keep herself from reacting, from throwing herself backward across the wide backseat and scrambling for safety—not that there was any available to her, she understood in a shattering instant. Not really. This man might not hurt her, physically, not as long as she was pregnant with the heir to his kingdom—but then, there were worse things.
She’d seen so many of them firsthand.
“Please believe me,” Rihad said softly then, so softly, though, that it only made her understand on a deep, visceral level how truly lethal he was. “I would arrange that if I could.”
“How charming,” she breathed, trying desperately not to sound as panicked as she felt. “I love threats.”
He smiled. “I would have done so years ago if I’d believed for one second that it would ever come to this. But let me assure you, any interest I appear to have in you is about the child you carry, not you. Never you.”
“This is Omar’s child,” she snapped back at him, struggling to keep her jangling, shimmering reaction to him to herself. “And since he is gone, that makes the
