The Sheikh's Claim (Desert Nights 2)

Dahab pounced on Adam, took him from her, distracting him with whooping tickles. Adam shrieked, delighted with his favorite playmate’s antics. It made Lujayn realize again that while she was the one he reached for in almost everything, he never laughed with her as wholeheartedly. She hadn’t been as playful with her son as she should have been. She’d let the circumstances of his birth dim her spirits, though she’d been determined not to. Seemed in spite of her best intentions and efforts, she had shortchanged him.

Now she was entering a new level of turmoil, with Jalal invading her life on all frontiers…as he’d invaded her last night....

God, what he’d done to her! She’d been in a state of molten agony ever since. She’d thought she’d remembered in distressing detail the pleasure he’d wrung from her, had even exaggerated it. Turned out she’d downplayed it. Had he always been this…?

“Huge! As in humongous!” Dahab exclaimed again, securing Adam on her hip. “You and Prince Overwhelming himself! Man, is this going to blow millions of hopeful females’ dreams to smithereens when they know he’s taken!”

Biting back a retort that he wasn’t, so those millions could still hope, she kept her tone sweet for Adam’s benefit. “Dahab—shut up. You’re making me sorrier by the second that I told you.”

Her impish sister stuck out her tongue at her. Adam followed suit, then burst into giggles again. Lujayn groaned. Dahab might be a fun companion for Adam, but she was no role model. Anyone would think she was twelve not twenty-two.

“First, you had to tell me. You needed me as a decoy because otherwise everyone would have wondered why you’re taking Adam out when you’ve been leaving him with me for weeks. Second, you should be sorry indeed. How could you keep it from me—me—that Adam is Prince Jalal’s?” Dahab swung up Adam. “No wonder you’re the most gorgeous boy on earth. You take after your father.”

Lujayn grimaced. Great. Even her own sister was infatuated with Jalal. But then, what female with a pulse wouldn’t be?

But he’d taken her last night as if he’d been suffocating and she’d been air. Or maybe she’d reflected her feelings on him…

“I mean, I understand not telling Mom and the rest of the Al—oops, Aal Ghamdi clan, what with their fourteenth-century brains. But me?” Dahab squinted at Adam. “Can you believe it, you edible tyke? She didn’t tell me!”

“I’m still wondering how you lived your formative years here and didn’t develop the basic persona. But you did develop the modern me, me, me one, didn’t you?” Lujayn smirked as she slowed down more, loath to reach their destination.

She didn’t know how she’d face Jalal again, what his reaction would be to Adam and Adam’s to him. She’d brought Dahab to defuse the situation with her lighthearted vivaciousness.

“Actually, I’m all about you, you—” Dahab squeezed Adam “—and him, right now.”

Lujayn gave her a warning/pleading look. “Speaking of him, you will attempt not to voice every thought and question that flits in your mind, right?”

Dahab feigned indignation. “Hey, I’m not that bad!” Then she wiggled her eyebrows. “But don’t worry. I’m here to take a close-up look at the Prince of Many Gorgeousnesses and witness this historic meeting between father and son, but I won’t stay. Got a hot date at two.”

Great. So she’d get the disadvantage of her unpredictability without the advantage of her presence.

For the rest of the way, Lujayn looked around the grounds she’d barely noticed last night. Without Jalal’s presence blinding her, she realized the place was like a mini-oasis. Teeming palm trees surrounded the periphery. Beyond that, the grounds were landscaped in mini-dunes and lawns with breathtaking beds of desert plants in the shadow of more palm trees of all shapes. A huge crescent-shaped ein—spring sparkled emerald and curved around the central two-level sprawling residence crouching on the most elevated dune and overlooking the desert that stretched into the horizon. The villa itself was a masterpiece in modern elegance and exotic design with an amalgam of Arab, Ottoman and Persian influences.

And as per Jalal’s promise, the place was deserted, to assure their privacy. At some point up the winding path to the veranda where she’d entered the villa last night, Adam threw himself into her arms again in order to point things out, curious to know everything.

She was explaining about the ein, and debating with Dahab whether it was natural or artificial when suddenly nothing was left, in her mind, in the world.

Jalal was striding across the veranda eagerly. She was grateful for Dahab’s presence when the sight of her slowed him down. But it was only seconds before they reached him where he stood at the top of the stairs, the intensity in his eyes almost evaporating her, even when it was, for once, not directed to her.

All his being was focused on Adam.

The next minutes, as father and son looked at each other in total stillness and silence, were the most tempestuously emotional of her life.

It felt as if all the months since the day Adam had been conceived were compacted, everything she’d felt and thought and suffered condensing in her heart, almost imploding it.

Holding in the tremors and tears with all she had, she watched the two people who possessed the lion’s share of her heart and soul and destiny.

Adam, who was never still while awake, remained motionless, all his faculties trained at that larger-than-life entity who was looking at him as if nothing in the world existed but him. Having been born within an extended family, Adam was used to being around people, to accepting new ones. But he’d never reacted that way to someone new. To anyone. She could see it, sense it. He just knew Jalal was different from anyone else. And it wasn’t because he was the largest man he’d ever seen, or who emitted the most power. She could swear she could feel, almost taste the bond that existed between them. It arced out of each, caught her in the cross fire before it sank into the other, transforming them all forever.

Suddenly, Jalal moved, fracturing the unbearably poignant moment, and almost her tenuous coordination and consciousness. Her sight blurred as Jalal reached a hand that visibly shook to feather a touch laden with awe down Adam’s cheek.

“Ya Ullah, ya Lujayn—ya Ullah! Our son!”

The thick, ragged wonder in his voice, the agonized delight gripping his face, had her heart quivering, her nerves firing haphazardly, each jolt a tiny electrocution.