Surrogate for the Sheikh: A Royal Billionaire Romance Novel (Curves for Sheikhs Series Book 7)

by Annabelle Winters

  Dhom had frowned. “Any worth? What do you mean? What are you talking about, Zareena? What matter who the woman is? You doubt my masculine power? Ya Allah, my child will be strong and healthy, wise and powerful regardless of who the mother is! My seed is—”

  “Ayazisi, Dhom. Yes, it is clear you are a bull, a stallion, an Arabian stud of the finest pedigree,” Zareena said, shaking her head in mock exasperation as she stifled her laughter, tried to blink away that look of respect and admiration for Dhom as he stood before his kingdom and proclaimed his seed to be the best in history. “But it is not what I mean. I speak of the political aspect. The strategic aspect.”

  Dhom nodded and rubbed his chin as his sharp mind started to put the pieces into place even as he let Zareena speak.

  “Yes, strategy and foresight. Because if my paranoid delusions do come to fruition and the two of us are killed while the child is still an infant, then . . .” Zareena began to say before trailing off for a moment.

  “Then the child could be in danger. Having an heir would give stability to our government and people, but if we are targets, then certainly an infant would be an easier target.” Dhom rubbed his dark stubble as his green eyes lit up with understanding. “So you are suggesting what? An alliance? The child also brings with it an alliance? An alliance between Mizra and the kingdom from which the surrogate hails?”

  “A blood alliance,” Zareena said quietly as the sun went behind a strangely isolated dark cloud. “If we are playing by the rules of the old world, then we must use the tactics of the old world, where children were important pieces of the puzzle. Alliances between nations forged by shared blood. By combining the bloodlines of two nations.”

  Dhom smiled and shook his head in marvel at the extent to which his wife had thought this through. But by God, it made sense! Certainly the chances of something as absurd as an invasion were low. But if it did happen, having a child with a woman from a powerful kingdom would by default make that kingdom an ally of Mizra. Old world indeed. By God, this woman was an able stateswoman!

  “So we must choose a surrogate from a kingdom that would make a good ally in the case of any threat to our sovereignty,” Dhom said, frowning as he blinked and narrowed his eyes. “What are you thinking? Certainly we can select a surrogate from any of the Arabian nations.”

  Zareena waved him quiet, a scornful look on her face, like she knew Dhom had already thought ahead and he just wanted her to say it. “That is pointless if she is not a princess. All the Arab nations of worth are Sheikhdoms, and unless the child is of royal blood, there will be no allegiance. No, we must look to a democratic nation, a nation that will go to war for even the lowliest of its people if it must!”

  Dhom grinned now, one eyebrow raised as he looked at his cousin. “A democracy. The west? So we go to the top then? Is that what you are saying?”

  Zareena smiled. “Yes, the greatest empire of today’s world. The United States, Dhom. You must find an American surrogate. An American woman who will bear your child, carry our bloodline, secure our kingdom’s future forever. That is where all of this is pointing, Dhom. Allah’s guidance is strong and unwavering, and it has led us here. I believe this is why I was unable to bear your child. The universe twists and turns, but it always leads us to our destiny.”

  “An American surrogate,” Dhom said, nodding his head. “Yes, OK. We can have our lawyers research a list of—”

  Zareena almost spat on the clean sandstone floor of the open verandah. “No!” she shouted. “The future leader of our nation is not going to be born like that! The woman cannot know she is to be a surrogate. Not until she is pregnant.”

  Dhom almost doubled over as he snorted and stared at his cousin. “Are you mad, Zareena? What are you saying? I should . . . what . . . no . . . absolutely not. Think of what you are saying, Zareena! I should court some American woman, date her, tell her I love her, get her pregnant, perhaps even promise marriage so she carries the child to term and then, nine months later say sorry, you are just a vessel for my child? Then what? We write her a check and tell her to hand over the baby? Is that not the plot for the movie the Omen? Are we trying to seed the Antichrist or the future leader of our people?! By God, I have angered some women in the past, yes. But something like this could get me killed faster than a hundred archers on their war-camels! Enough, Zareena. Everything made sense until this. Absolutely not.”

  Zareena sighed and shook her head. “I am not suggesting months of courtship and romance, Dhom. That would be deception, and it would defeat the purpose. No, the conception must occur on the very first meeting.”

  “What? Hah!” Dhom had said, eyes wide in disbelief. “Sex on the first date?” He chuckled. “Ay, now perhaps we are entering the world of Sheikh Dhomaar!” he said, offering a wry smile at his joke.

  Zareena smiled, her eyes narrowing mischievously as she looked at the Sheikh. “I am serious. The woman must be under no illusion that this is anything more than one night of passion with a mysterious, virile, exotic man. Yes, Dhom. You must seduce her on the first meeting. Take her that very night. Fill her with your divine seed, you Arabian stallion. Hah! You can handle that, can you not, my Mizrahi bull?”

  Dhom had roared with laughter, stretching his arms out wide as he stood and faced his kingdom, beating his club-sized fists against his mammoth chest as Zareena laughed along with him, the two of them howling into the blue sky that was slowly fading as the day wore on.

  They laughed it out, but then it was business again, and Dhom settled down and turned to his cousin once more. “Even if I am to agree with this madness, to impregnate a woman on the first try is leaving a lot to chance, is it not? Yes, my power and virility flows strong like the rivers of Babylon, but I cannot deliver if a woman is not ready to receive. Pregnancy is about two people. So am I supposed to run around New York City having sex with countless women until one of them gets pregnant? What if they all get pregnant? What if none of them gets pregnant? It is not that the job wouldn’t be pleasurable,” he grunted, shrugging as Zareena rolled her eyes and made a face. “But so much unprotected sex with unknown women. . . it seems like we are asking for trouble.”

  Zareena shook her head quickly, her expression signaling she had already thought this far—perhaps further even. “It will be one woman. She will not be unknown. And you will seduce her at precisely the right time.”

  Dhom laughed again. “Ay, you are mad, Zareena. So you are saying we will select some American woman? Have her followed? Track her cycle? Then send me in with my cannons blazing just when she is peaking? Is that not cold and calculating—perhaps even more so than just having our lawyers approach surrogates and come up with a list?”

  Zareena shook her head. “You will do none of that. No selection. No stalking. No tracking. That will be my job. Your job is only to be prepared.”

  “Hah!” Dhom said. “I am always prepared, my little cousin. Why, just last month I had the Madam of my Las Vegas club throw up her arms in despair and say that her girls cannot take any more even though they want to! My queen, I am always prepared!”

  “Not like this,” Zareena said. “It will take all of your iron will, my Sheikh. All of it.”

  Dhom frowned as he watched Zareena’s eyes twinkle with a strange look. Not quite satisfaction. Not exactly mischief. More like a challenge. A serious challenge.

  “No,” he muttered as he saw her thin red lips curl up at the corners. “Ya Allah, you cannot be serious.”

  “Six months,” she said. “You will gather your strength for six months. No women. No sex. No orgasm. Not even by your own hand. You will even control your goddamn dreams.”

  “This is a joke,” Dhom snorted. “What is the point? Maybe I hold off for a day or two before. But—”

  “The point is by letting your energy build up, you will be peaking at the same time as the woman I choose,” Zareena said. “The woman will be at peak ferti
lity, and your need will be so raw and primal that neither of you will be able to stop yourselves. The ancient wisdom of the body will take over. The same instinct that leads the alpha beast of the jungle to walk a hundred miles to seek a female in heat. The seduction will be done by the signals your body sends out. The very scents emitting from the heat of her sex will ignite the deepest need of your sex. It will maximize the chance of pregnancy on the first try. It will virtually assure it.” She had paused and taken a soft breath as that glazed look returned to her eyes. “Yes,” she said. “This feels right to me. This feels like the way, the path, the road to our destinies. To your destiny. To our kingdom’s destiny. And to the destiny of this American woman.”

  Dhom had taken a deep breath as he let all of it sink it. It had begun to make some sense in the strangest of ways, like he could feel a calmness in his body. It was as if Zareena was correct. This did feel strangely . . . right! This did feel somehow preordained. Destiny? Or nonsense? Who knew?

  “So you do not want me involved in the search for this woman,” he said finally, drawing another breath of the desert air that seemed to have a new ingredient in it. “You want my meeting with her to be truly spontaneous for both she and I. You want the attraction to be real. The passion to be genuine. The need to be raw and undeniable for both she and I.”

  “Yes,” Zareena said quietly, her eyes softening for a moment as she squeezed his massive upper arm and touched his face affectionately. “And it will be real. I feel it. Whoever she is, she will be the real thing. For one night, at least.”

  Dhom grunted. “OK, Zareena. All right. Let us proceed. I will do my part for my nation, like I have always done.” He looked down at her now, eyes narrowing as he smiled wryly. “But just out of curiosity—since it appears you have thought this through: How are you going to engineer this? You have spies in America now, just like in the bedroom of the blind Sheikh of Kalyan?”

  Zareena laughed. “I do not have spies anywhere. The Kalyan connection is through my woman Alma.” She laughed again before shaking her head and blinking. “As for the United States . . . well, I actually might have spies there, now that I think about it.”

  Dhom raised an eyebrow and leaned in, grinning as he rubbed his large hands together and waited. “Ya Allah, this is bloody exciting! Go on, dear queen! Tell me about your elaborate game of chess, where you control the board and all the pieces!”

  Zareena shrugged, her jaw tight. “Sheikh Nasser’s former Head of Security,” she said softly. “He married an American woman and now runs a private security company in California. He is discreet and reliable. He has the resources, or can find them. I have already laid out my requirements, and he has already come up with a list of women who will be tracked over the next six months.”

  Dhom’s eyes went wide as he stared at Zareena. But of course she had already gotten things in motion. Why should he be surprised? Combine paranoia with “signs from the universe” and perhaps a few hormone injections and there you have it! Ya, Allah, guide me through this mad but certainly intriguing journey!

  “How did he come up with this list?” Dhom said after swallowing hard and deciding to keep the conversation on point.

  Zareena stayed deadpan. “He logged into his wife’s Facebook page. Pulled up all the women who met the criteria I gave him.”

  Dhom snorted, eyes going wider. “And those criteria are?”

  “Between twenty-eight and forty-two. Unmarried. No other children. Not using birth control. No complicating medical history. Low-paying job and no family money. A psychological profile that would make it very unlikely that she would consider an abortion if things got complicated. And a selfless personality that would eventually choose the child’s best interests over her own. Still, it could get complicated unless you follow my instructions to the letter. One night and one night only.”

  “Complicated?” Dhom said with another snort, folding his arms over his chest again. “Like how?”

  “Never mind,” she said quickly. “Just my paranoia, dear cousin. Anyway, these women are being tracked already.” She shrugged. “In three months we will have a picture of their cycles. In six months we will be able to know with virtual certainty when each woman is ovulating. By then some women will have been eliminated from the list. When we have narrowed it down to one woman, Habib will orchestrate an event at which both you and she will be in attendance.” Zareena shrugged again. “And then nature will take its course, my raging bull. The rivers of Babylon can flow again!”

  “Ya Allah,” Dhom muttered, blinking through wide eyes as if he had been staring into the sun. “I feel like nothing more than a gigantic pair of balls in your game of human chess!”

  Zareena laughed. “Trust me, cousin. After six months of restraint, you will indeed be a walking pair of balls!”

  And they both laughed again as the sun finally sank behind the sandstone skyline of Mizra, that gray cloud ambling by in the darkening sky as this king and queen made their plans. They hugged once, still laughing but both feeling something in the air, like their decision had indeed set a chain of events into motion, the destinies of many merging into a peacock swirl of color, space and time shrinking down to that cosmic eye within which the god and goddess dance their ritual dance, the prelude to the divine mating that creates from what it destroys.

  “Who is this former employee of Nasser’s who is married to an American?” the Sheikh asked as they finally strolled back into the palace to prepare to hold court before dining with the ministers.

  “A big hulk of a man who does not speak much,” Zareena said. “Abdul Mohammad Habib. He married an American schoolteacher—though she will know nothing of this plan.”

  “Schoolteacher?”

  “Yes. Jean Baylor is her name.”

  6

  Jean Baylor smiled tersely and touched the back of her neck as Gracie excused herself and slipped into her seat at the round table towards the far corner of the Grand Ballroom.

  “Gracie, this is my husband,” said Jean, holding that terse smile. “He’s actually the one who asked if I had any old friends in Tulsa I wanted to invite to this exclusive gathering! May I present to you Abdul Mohammad Habib of Lihaal.”

  “Habib,” said the gorilla-sized man with the thick beard and the impossibly dark sunglasses that made it seem like he was Stevie Wonder’s evolutionary ancestor—or at least his style guru. “Just Habib.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Habib,” Gracie said, smiling wide but staying seated as she noticed Jean eyeing her up and down. Gracie was sitting with her thighs held tight together, just moments after emerging from behind that curtain with (or rather, without . . .) a torn-in-half pair of panties that Dhomaar had thankfully taken care of (which was only right, considering he was the reason they were now useless). Dhom had stayed behind the curtains so they’d walk out separately, and Gracie had shuffled over to Jean’s table, her face as red as her dress, those thighs clamped together so the Sheikh’s semen wouldn’t run down her legs while she walked!

  Oh, God, this is insane, she had thought as she imagined a million judgmental eyes on her. Ohgod, ohgod, ohgod!

  “Um, Grace,” Jean whispered now, those gray eyes of hers glancing at Gracie’s cleavage so hard that Grace had to fight to not look down to check if her boobs were hanging out or if there were bite marks all over her smooth skin. “Yes, so it’s fine to be casual with my husband, of course—but when I introduce you to the other guests who’ll be joining us at the table, could you rise to greet them? Some of them might be royalty, and it’s just—”

  Habib grunted loudly and swiped at the air with his hairy paw. “There is no need. Very little royalty in room. Mostly American Arabs. And no royalty at table. Two of my employees only. Only royalty will be your guest, Ms. Garner—as my wife tell me! Hah! See, Jean? Because of your friend we are to spend the evening with royalty!”

  His accent was hard to und
erstand, and Gracie just nodded and smiled earnestly as she took a moment to process the words. She glanced at the empty chair next to her, doing a double-take when she saw a namecard with Jonathan’s name printed on it. Shit, she thought. She wanted to grab the tag, but she decided not to do it with Jean’s eyes on her. Already Jean could sense something was up. God, perhaps Jean could smell that something was up . . . up inside Gracie’s—

  Stop, she thought in a panic as she felt her pussy clench almost in reflex, the way it had been doing all through that insane session behind the dark red curtains. It was so strange how her body had reacted to him, so freaky how fast her arousal had soared, so weird how her cunt literally seemed to be operating independent of her brain, like her pussy was seriously trying to hold the man’s semen inside its depths!

  God, was she crazy?! It was bad enough to get so caught up in the moment that you let him come inside you, she told herself. And now look at you. You’re sitting here holding your thighs together, clenching your pussy like some . . . some . . . oh, God, what are you now? A slut, or something worse? What if you get pregnant, Gracie?! From a stranger?! A foreign stranger that you know nothing about?! And did he say he was a Sheikh?! So now she could be pregnant by a foreign, stranger Sheikh. OK. Move along. Nothing to see here. Oh, God how could this happen?!

  Calm down, she told herself. Nobody gets pregnant the first time they have sex with someone, right? And she could always take the morning-after pill if she was still freaking out tomorrow.

  Could she take that horrid pill, though? she wondered suddenly. Would she take that pill?

  There was no denying that Gracie wanted a child. She knew she was destined to be a mother—perhaps several times over. Hell, that’s why she had left Jonathan. She hadn’t consciously analyzed the change of heart about Jonathan that happened so suddenly at the diner—even though it hadn’t escaped her notice that it was strange how much her body seemed to be controlling her emotions. It was like the need to have a child was dictating the kind of men she was attracted to, and letting her walk away from the others without a second thought!