The taint of that discovery had left him determined never to fall for anything approximating female innocence.
Until Annalisa.
‘Is that why you’re here? You want a change from your glamorous lovers?’ Her voice dripped disdain.
She couldn’t know how right she was. He yearned for her as he’d never yearned for any of the seductive beauties he’d bedded.
He couldn’t recall feeling so hungry for a woman.
He stroked a finger along her bare arm, feeling her shiver in awareness. Instead of yanking her arm away she stilled. Tahir stiffened, iron-hard in arousal.
‘How many have there been, Tahir? Dozens? Hundreds?’
‘I’m no saint,’ he growled, annoyed at her insistence on talking.
‘I gathered that,’ she murmured. ‘I looked you up on the Internet this evening, since I had a name to search for.’
He froze at her frigid tone.
‘Is it true you dated all the finalists in that Caribbean beauty pageant last year, in between closing a major business deal?’ He watched her shift beneath the sheet and imagined his hands on her.
‘The reports were exaggerated,’ he murmured. A little.
‘So is there a chance you’ve given me anything else, as well as a baby?’
For an instant he didn’t follow her logic. Then his head reared back. ‘You really are a doctor’s daughter, aren’t you?’ Annoyance warred with reluctant admiration at her temerity. No one spoke to him like that—ever. ‘I may be reckless, Annalisa, but I’m not completely foolhardy. I have a clean bill of health.’
‘I’m glad. For the sake of our child.’
Our child.
The reminder was a cold douche to his libido and he straightened away from the bed. He’d spent the last half-hour ignoring that complication. Far easier to focus on the delicious Annalisa than face the reality of a ready-made family.
Tahir didn’t do family.
Couldn’t do family.
He was a loner. Had been all his adult life. He had nothing to offer a child or a long-term partner.
He’d probably take after his unlamented father when it came to parenting. What if that defective gene had passed from the old man to him? Certainly he’d followed the old devil’s footsteps in courting vice. Had his father seen that flaw in Tahir’s personality from the first? Was that what had inspired such hatred of his own son?
The notion sent an icy shiver through his gut.
He’d never inflict his father’s brand of paternal discipline on any child. Never risk that tainted strain appearing and harming an innocent.
He turned on his heel and strode for the door, his stomach churning. ‘We’ll talk later.’
‘But not here,’ she said quickly. ‘I don’t want you in my room. Ever.’
Tahir paused, the muscles across his back and shoulders tightening as if in response to a blow.
It was a sensation he hadn’t felt for years. He couldn’t remember it hurting this much.
‘As you wish, Ms Hansen. I won’t set foot in your room unless invited.’
Annalisa watched him go, her hand at her mouth to stop herself calling him back. She didn’t want him here.
So why had she waited, quivering in anticipation, to see if he’d do more than stroke her arm? If he’d caress her properly?
Properly! There was no properly between them. She was pregnant with what would be his illegitimate child. She was a commoner and he a king.
He’d probably gone to meet some glamorous woman who’d be at home in the bed of a spoiled, aristocratic playboy.
What she’d read on the web had ripped the scales from her eyes. If a quarter of it was true Tahir was a man she couldn’t begin to understand. A financial marvel, reckless gambler and lover of epic reputation. He strode through the ballrooms, boardrooms and bedrooms of at least three continents, taking what he wanted and moving on.
Stories about him were legion, but there was one common thread. He was a loner, never linked for long with any lover, not burdened with close friends or business partnerships. A man who needed no one.
And the man she’d met in the desert?
He hadn’t been real. He’d been the product of Tahir’s weakened state and extraordinary circumstances. He’d bedded her for the novelty of it. She couldn’t be more different from the sexy women draped on his arm in the media reports.
The knowledge cramped her chest and she drew her knees up tight, curling into a ball.
Pregnancy was an enormous responsibility. Add to that the fact that she couldn’t quash this craving for a man who saw her as an amusement and she was in deep trouble.
She’d even imagined something dark and troubled behind Tahir’s careless demeanour. Had his nightmares in the desert been proof of that, or simply a fantasy brought on by delirium? She wanted to probe, uncover and confront the bleakness she sensed beneath his casual, sexy attitude.