by Ella Brooke
"She... did not look altogether well..."
Annabel lifted her chin defiantly.
"She's not," she said, her voice terse. "She's tired all the time, and the doctors aren't sure what's going on with her. The tests are expensive."
She bit back more, but Adil was nodding.
"She would be provided for in every way," he said, his voice soft, and she felt her heart squeeze.
"You put me in a very difficult place," she said finally. "There is no mother who would not promise everything for even the chance that her daughter could be made well."
He inclined his head in her direction.
"Begging your pardon, but there are many mothers who would not," he said. "Because you would, that is why I want you."
She felt like a rabbit watching the bars of a trap slam down around her. They were moving slowly, but for some reason, she could not find it in herself to escape. There was no escape, not if Marissa could be cured.
"So... your arrangement. What would it entail?"
Even though he must have known that he had won, Adil's voice stayed level and grave.
"You will come to Sakhi, my homeland. You will bear me an heir there. Upon agreeing, you will receive 500,000 dollars. Upon the delivery of an heir, you will receive 1,500,000 dollars."
She stared at him.
"Two... million dollar?"
"Yes. And of course, as long as you stay in Sakhi, and if you deliver me a child, every need will be granted. You and Marissa will receive the best of everything, including medical care."
"And then... what? You'll whisk my child off when he is born like some kind of bad fairy?"
"Well, the sight of me in tights and wings sounds hilarious, but no. I want a mother for my child, and that means in every way possible. You are, of course, free to leave when the child is delivered, but for an additional million every year, perhaps you will stay and raise the child. There is an estate that is even traditional for this, for women who are the mothers of future sheikhs and yet not sheikhas themselves."
A place for concubines and mistresses to bear children, she thought, and no matter how kind or clinical his language, she knew that that was what she would be.
"I hope you know," Annabel said, clinging to whatever scraps of dignity she could,"that I will not abandon my child once he is born. I will love him just as I do Marissa, and I will fight for him just the same, no matter who you are or how much power you have."
Adil looked completely undaunted in the face of her veiled threat.
"I would expect nothing less," he said softly. "It is what tells me that I have chosen correctly. Have you made your choice yet, Annabel?"
There was a small part of her that was screaming. It was all happening so fast. She didn't know this man from Adam, and yet he was offering to change her world. He was offering to save Marissa, to give her more money than she would make in a lifetime.
"I think it is no choice at all," she started to say, but then she was shocked into silence as he took her hand. There was a pressure there, but what shocked her more was the electricity that lept between them. It made her eyes open wide, and in that moment, she could see that he felt it too.
"No," he said softly, and there was a soft purring sound in his voice. It made some part of her hind brain want to run or perhaps to roll over and show its throat, she wasn't entirely certain.
"No?"
"No, that is not what I want to ear. Tell me yes or no. I want you to understand, Annabel, this choice is yours. I will not have you say that I forced your hand, ever. Yes... or no?"
"Yes..."
The word was out of her mouth before she had time to think about it. Later, Annabel would wonder if she had to agree before her common sense got the better of her.
"Yes what?" he asked, his voice dropping a little lower, and Annabel swallowed hard.
"Yes, I will come to Sakhi. I will be the mother of your heir."
There was a fierce triumph in his eyes as he stood. She wondered if, after securing her agreement, he would leave, but instead he tugged her up into his arms. He was a large man, topping her by a head and a half, and she had never felt more small or delicate than when he tilted her head back for a deep and claiming kiss.
Annabel would never say that she was a passionate woman. She wasn't. She was a woman who was responsible. She was dependable. She was a mother, she was a hard worker, and she would call herself rather clever if pushed.
Passion had never been one of her strong points, but now she could feel it flood her. Everywhere her body touched Adil's, she felt as if she were lighting on fire. It was as if she had turned into a fire, and every touch only made her burn brighter. She found her fingers tangled in the soft expensive fabric of his shirt, clinging to him and willing this pleasure to keep on going forever. She didn't think that she could stand it if it were to stop.
He kissed her with the expertise of a man who had been seeking the finest pleasures the world had to offer for two decades. His kiss was at once claiming and tender, and when he stroked her lower lip with his tongue, she opened her mouth and drank him in greedily.
There was really no telling how far things might have gone if she hadn't pulled away from him abruptly. He frowned, and he might have pulled her back, but then a small figure wandered into the kitchen.
"Can I have some juice, Mama?"
"I'm going to have dinner on in a little while, pumpkin. How about some water before then?"
That was deemed acceptable, and as Marissa made her way back to the bedroom, Adil looked at her with frank surprise.
"How did you hear her?" he said. "She walks as quietly as a cat..."
"Well, maybe that's something I can teach you in the time to come," she said with a small laugh. "If you have a little one, particularly a little one that is clever and curious and prone to learning how to get around early, you do start to develop more ears that you were necessarily born with."
She sighed, taking a step back. She had never felt the kind of passion that Adil brought out in her before. It felt awe-inspiring, like lightning reaching down to blow an old dead tree into pyrotechnic flame. However, she knew what lightning did to old wood, and she was not at all sure that there would be anything left of her if that flame was allowed to burn to completion.
"But I do need to get dinner started," she said.
Adil looked surprised.
"You are shortly going to be coming into at least 500,000 dollars. You are still going to make dinner?"
"Well, that money's not in my hand yet. In the United States, we have a saying about not counting your chickens before they are hatched. Besides, tonight's tuna casserole, Marissa's favorite, and I told her that I would make it for her."
Annabel hesitated. What she was going to do next was a bit risky. She might not have a lot to be proud of, but she hated being laughed at. It was all too easy to imagine this beautiful wealthy man laughing at her, but well, he hadn't yet.
"I've got more than enough to share, especially if, as you say, I'm actually going to be coming into some cash soon. Do you want to stay for dinner?"
For a moment, she thought that her intuition had steered her entirely wrong. He was a king in his own country, a man who spanned the globe as easily as others planned a trip downtown. He could eat at any of the most expensive restaurants in the city, and here she was asking him to sit down for an incredibly dull meal with a single mother and her sickly daughter...
"That sounds quite good," he said with a smile. "I've not eaten since midday, and I'm fairly hungry. Is there anything I can do to help?"
She shook her head and laughed a little. He wasn't used to making the offer, but it was sweet of him to do so.
"No, just keep me company. Watch closely, and maybe next time you can pitch in."
Well, you can always rely on things to change, I guess, she thought, and she started boiling some water.
Chapter Six
Adil watched the mother and daughter pair in their plush airplane s
eats, a slight smile on his face. In the rush of the last week, they had both been given a wardrobe that would be more suitable for their lives in Saki, but nothing had taken away their wonder at the world around them.
“Are we really so very high up, Mama?” asked Marissa in awe. “Are those really clouds?”
“They are, pumpkin,” said Annabel. “They're condensed water, hanging around in the atmosphere and waiting to rain on the world below...”
Annabel shot Adil a look that was half-defiant and half-wary.
“This is the first time she has been up in an airplane, let alone one so fancy,” she said, and Adil waved her words away.
“It is very beautiful, and I am afraid that I have become more than a little jaded to it,” he said with a smile. “The truth is that seeing it through a child's eyes again for the first time is a gift...”
She did that sometimes, he observed. She was always waiting for him to make fun of her or her daughter, to think of them as simple or bumpkinish, but in fact it was quite the opposite.
He hadn't been able to be by their side for every moment of the last week, but he had been there as much as he could. By tacit agreement, they had not kissed since their last kiss in her shabby little kitchen. It seemed... somehow untoward.
Instead, Adil had returned to the hotel suite where he had been staying before. He had his own matters to attend to as Annabel had gotten her affairs in order and received a very thorough checkup from a discreet clinic in Manhattan. The results had been expedited, and he and Annabel had received the news at the same time.
“I am pleased to tell you, Ms. Lister, that your body is in excellent shape for you to attempt to conceive,” said the smiling doctor. “Your eggs are healthy, your body is in great shape, and you should have as smooth a pregnancy as might be guessed at this point.”
He had assumed that the doctor's words would bring about in him a sense of satisfaction, a feeling that everything was going to go according to plan. He had thought he would be pleased certainly, but perhaps no more so then when a great dam was nearing completion or when a skyscraper was approved to go up in Sakhi.
Instead, what had coursed through his body was pure possessive joy. The doctor had given him the missing piece of the puzzle, and everything else was falling into place. This strange woman was going to be his, she was fertile, and the child that came from her womb was going to be one they created together.
The thoughts were so foreign to him that he froze. It took him a moment to murmur words of pleasure and gratitude to the doctor. Through it all, however, he was still a little shocked at himself.
Those were not the thoughts of a civilized man, even one who was as given to enjoying his own hedonism as much as he was wont to do. They felt almost barbaric, primitive, the thoughts of an ancient desert lord. The idea of planting his seed in the belly of the quiet woman next to him made him feel as if the earth was tilting at his whim. It was a victory he had not earned but felt with every bone in his body.
Adil knew that he had to be careful. This entire enterprise was strange enough to say the least. He could not afford to go off the rails, and glancing at Annabel's pale face in the doctor's office, he could not afford to frighten the mother of his child either.
***
Somehow, the doctor's words made it real in a way that it had not been before. When Annabel and Adil left the doctor's office, she found that she was shaking a little. At first, she thought that Adil hadn't noticed her disquiet or worse yet, hadn't cared, but then he sat her down in a tiny green space tucked into one of the hospital's courtyards.
"Having second thoughts?" he asked softly, and Annabel shot him a surprised look.
"Would it matter at this point?" she asked, and he looked a little surprised.
"But of course," he said. "This is your choice. Before you have my child in your belly, this is always your choice. This is not something that I can force you to do."
For some reason, that comforted her more than she would have thought. He took her hand, and though there was perhaps a great deal to be said between the two of them, they simply sat in silence. When she glanced at his serious face, she wondered what a man like him, so used to living close to his own whims and desires, could think of the future.
He is kinder than you think he is, she mused to herself. He might be kinder than he himself knows.
This was the thought, more than any others, that kept her buoyed up as the days passed and she readied Marissa for their move. With the resilience of young children, Marissa took their move at face value, simply excited for a change of scenery and the fun that a new home would bring.
After a short while looking out the window, however, Marissa tired quickly. She had been up early to get to the airport on time, and now her mother could see her flagging. Though she fussed a little, the prospect of sleeping in a real bed on a plane fascinated her.
"Do you mind if I go get her settled?" Annabel asked Adil.
"Of course. That is not something that you need permission for, after all. You are her mother."
Hand in hand with her daughter, Annabel walked to the rear of the plane, where there was a small bedroom. It was actually close to the size of Marissa's room in their apartment -our old apartment, she corrected herself- but the bed practically went from wall to wall.
Marissa climbed in eagerly, stirring the covers around her until they were practically a nest, and Annabel came to lie next to her.
Absently, she listened to her daughter's drowsy chirping until even that trailed off, and then she listened to Marissa's soft breath. She remembered when Marissa was still a baby, and she had been doing this all alone. She would go to her daughter's room and listen to the breaths in and out, always terrified that the next breath wouldn't come.
For a moment, all she wanted to do was to wait until she fell asleep as well. It wouldn't take long. The warmth of the jet, the soothing sound of Marissa's breathing and the incredible softness of the bed underneath her would all mean that she fell asleep sooner rather than later.
However, then she would wake up, and the world would still be as large and unknown as it had been when she went to sleep. Adil would still be out in the cabin.
She fought with herself for a moment, and then with a barely audible sigh, she stroked Marissa's hair one last time before rising from the bed.
I might not be holding any of the cards here, but I'll be damned if I let him think of me as a coward, she said, and lifting her chin up, she walked back into the main cabin.
She was almost disappointed to find him doing something as simple as reading on his tablet. She came to sit down across from him again, and he was the first one who spoke.
"You needn't look as terrified as you do," he said, not looking up from his tablet. "There is nothing to fear, not when you are with me."
"Excuse me?" she asked, and she was a little concerned that he could feel the edge of her fraying temper in those words. When she spoke next, Annabel's words were certainly a little softer.
"I'm not terrified, I think I am just... a little nervous."
"It finally did occur to me that you have every right to be terrified if you were," he said. It occurred to her that there was something studied about his nonchalance. He was deliberately being casual to... to what? To put her at ease? To make her less terrified.
"I..."
"Women are historically afraid of men," he said. "It is not something at which I take offense. It is only natural."
"I do not think it is natural for people to be afraid of each other," Annabel said tartly. "Some caution is order, perhaps, and some wariness may be appropriate, but terror? No."
"Ah, so you are saying that you are not afraid of me?"
I don't know if I could put what I feel for you into words, she thought, but she certainly didn't say it. It felt suddenly as if she were in the middle of a chess game, and the last thing she wanted to do at this early stage was to make a wrong move
"I am saying that you do not inspi
re fear in me," she said, and she hoped he would not ask her what she in fact did feel for him.
"Oh really."
He set his tablet aside, and the look in his eyes was frankly challenging.
"Why don't you show me, then, that you do not fear me. Ever since that kiss in your kitchen, you have not touched me. Without further evidence, I cannot help but think that you are afraid of me."
"Believe me, fear is the last thing I feel for you," she retorted, and then before she could change her mind, she leaned over the table to kiss him.
It should have been a terrible kiss. She was bent halfway over the hard table, her elbows digging into the solid surface. She was stretched as far as she could reach, and even then she could barely reach his lips.
It was terrible, but the chemistry leaped up between them again, drenching them both in passion. The moment their lips touched, it was there again, and she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was definitely not fear that she felt for this man. Even the gentlest brushes of their lips together could carry her away, and as their kiss deepened, she could feel herself falling into the passion of it all, not caring about anything else.
With a soft sound that was more than a little similar to a growl, Adil pulled away from her. She was ready to ask him if that was enough, if he was ready to say that she was not afraid just yet, but he came around the table, lifting her out of the chair as if she were a paper doll.
"Adil, what..."
"Shhhh..."
He carried her to the enormous couch at the front of the jet. He sank down on it with her settled in his lap, and then, stroking along her neck with absurdly gentle fingers, he started to kiss her.
"Why do you never wear your hair down?" he asked. "It is always braided and wound around your head... surely that is an old-fashioned style?"
"Well I guess it is a little old-fashioned..." she said, or at least, she started to say that, and then she gasped as his lips feathered over the pulse in her throat, making her whimper a little.
She was certain that she had never felt so alive. She had never felt as if her blood had turned molten in her veins or as if there was a fire in her, centered low in her body, that was crying for more, always more...