The Desert Lord's Baby by Olivia Gates Page B

documenting his muttered orders. They’d disappeared by the time he reached her, a partition sliding behind them to isolate the dining area where he’d seated her before going to “arrange matters” from the rest of the jet.
    He looked down at her with the same intensity as he had when he’d been on top of her, demanding she repeat his land’s ancient marriage rite.
    Her heart lurched like a captured bird in her chest.
    Oh God, she’d really done it.
    She’d really married him.
    She’d lain beneath him, feeling him imprinting her, hard with an indiscriminate reaction to feeling a female body beneath him, had repeated the words that had bound her to him in a marriage without love or respect—or anything, really. A sham. A cold-blooded ruling on his part, a capitulation on hers.
    It’s all for Mennah. It’s all for Mennah.
    Maybe if she repeated the mantra enough she could endure this. The feeling of forever plummeting into an abyss.
    She snatched her gaze away from his, fingered Mennah’s baby monitor receiver, praying for her daughter to wake up so she could run to her and be spared another exposure to Farooq.
    All she heard over the amazingly low drone of the jet’s engines was the soothing Middle Eastern music through the surround sound system, and Mennah’s soft breathing.
    Mennah had awakened during their departure, had bubbled with excitement in response to Farooq’s delight in her all through the trip in his limousine right up to the jet and through takeoff. She’d executed her sudden sleeping maneuver an hour ago, and he’d secured her car seat in one of the jet’s bedroom suites.
    “You haven’t eaten.”
    At his rebuke, her eyes fell on the masculine, square-cut silver service set and cutlery, laid out before her on midnight-blue silk tablecloth, nestling among sparkling crystal and crisp white napkins. She’d picked something from the extensive menu Hashem had provided. It had been served with great fanfare under polished brass domes, placed to simmer over gentle flames. Hashem had raised the covers to show her the cookbook perfection below and the aromas of the haute cuisine creations had hit her salivary glands. Her stomach had fed on its emptiness, churned with revulsion against being catered to as if she was a beloved mistress when she was just a necessary evil, an abhorred hostage.
    Corrosion surged again in her throat. “I’m not hungry.”
    His jaw hardened. “You haven’t eaten in the last seven hours. Your stomach must be feeding on itself by now.”
    Gee. What was it with men suddenly being able to read her mind? Or was she just too predictable to live?
    “You’ll have to excuse my stomach if it isn’t functioning to your calculated expectations. After all that’s happened in said seven hours, all it feels now is the urge to heave out its nonexistent contents. Just imagine what it would do to existent ones.”
    “You’re trying to tell me I make you nauseous?” Exasperation flashed across his face before morphing into derision.
    “Still playing games? Still challenging me to expose your proclamations for the feminine taunts that they are?”
    She pressed a fist to her head in an attempt to mitigate the pressure building inside. “Just why do you want me to eat? I wouldn’t miss a few pounds. If I ever manage to part with them.”
    His eyes changed hue, melted down her enervated body like his fingers once had, following a path of seduction, of destruction over her. “You have gained some weight.”
    She snorted. “Yeah, tell me about it.”
    “I will. In detail. When I’m in…possession of the full range of…particulars.”
    “Gee, thanks. Just what every woman wants to hear. An inventory of her expanding assets.”
    He leaned, ran a light touch down her left forearm to her ring finger, circled a nonexistent ring before sawing his finger between hers. “Expanding is an inaccurate word. Your assets have…appreciated.” He pushed a button on her seat’s armrest,