Pleasure: The Sheikh's Defiant Bride. Sandra Marton

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      “This is my baby, you pathetic bastard! Not your heir. Not a—a thing to be sold! And if you try to take my child, the least I’ll do is see to it that you rot in jail for the rest of your life.”

      “You’re an intelligent woman,” he said, giving it one last try. “Stop and think. You’re young, obviously fertile. You can always have another child.”

      “How about you having another brain? I want this child. I love my baby. You hear me, your lowliness? I-love-my-baby!”

      Tariq frowned.

      Of all the things he’d considered, he’d overlooked that possibility. He wanted a child because of his commitment to his people. She wanted one because she had those female hormonal instincts.

      It had not dawned on him to factor love into the equation.

      His mother had been a perfumed figure who’d drifted in and out of his life and Sharif’s. She’d seemed pleased with them, but love …?

      “Love?” he said.

      “Love,” Madison said fiercely.

      Tariq’s frown deepened.

      If this were his country, he would simply command her to do as he wished—but this was America, she was American and she had a sentimental view of things.

      Strickland had already warned him there was no case law to fall back on, no situation he could find in which a sperm donor and the recipient of that sperm both wanted custody of the resultant offspring.

      Now what?

      A long, drawn-out, scandalous legal battle? The whole embarrassing story splashed across the gossip columns? The media vultures would feed on the story for months.

      His reputation would be ruined. Far worse, his father, his people, his country, would be humiliated. And no matter how the case ended, the child, his heir, would forever be the butt of a thousand terrible jokes.

      The woman was still fighting him, twisting and struggling in his arms. It was impossible not to be aware of her. The softness of her breasts. The thrust of her hips. Even the smell of her, sexy and female.

      Despite everything else—his anger, her intransigence, the legal quagmire he’d stepped into—his body was responding.

      He was growing hard. Growing hard? He was already so erect he was like stone.

      And she knew it.

      Suddenly she became absolutely still. Her face lifted to his; he tried to read the dark mix of rage and fear in her eyes but it was impossible.

      He only knew there was something else there, too.

      Hunger.

      He groaned. Brought her hand to him. Let her feel what she had done to him. And when she gave a hot little cry, he brought his mouth to hers. Kissed her, kissed her without mercy. She hissed like a wildcat. Her sharp teeth sank into his bottom lip. The taste of blood, of anger, of something darker and even more primitive was in his mouth and then her tongue was dancing against his, her hands were in his hair, she was kissing him back and moving, moving against him.

      He slid his hands inside her robe.

      Cupped one breast. Caught his breath as the nipple budded under the brush of his thumb. As she cried out and lifted herself against him.

      “Yes,” he said thickly, “yes …”

      His hand moved down her body, over her belly, brushed over her mons. She cried out again and as he kissed her, she sucked the tip of his tongue into her mouth.

      Tariq grabbed the lapels of her robe. Jerked them open. Began pushing the robe from her shoulders but suddenly, she went crazy, pulled away from him, slammed her fists against his chest.

      “No,” she said, her voice trembling, “no, no, no!”

      He didn’t listen. Couldn’t listen. He wanted this, had to have this. And then she said “no” again and this time he was the one who jerked back, his breathing ragged.

      She had played this game with him before.

      “Get out!” she whispered. Her voice trembled. “Do you hear me? Get out!”

      He stared at her and thought how easy it would be to finish this. He could carry her to the bed, show her what happened when a woman teased a man beyond endurance.

      But the stakes were too high.

      There was a new playing piece on the game board: the child they’d created together without sex, without emotion. The child she would not give him and he could not permit her to keep.

      He turned away, ran his hands through his hair, forced himself to calm down. Then he swung toward her, his face a mask.

      “I will not take the child from you,” he said, his voice rough and harsh and suddenly shot with the accent he had surely lost, years ago.

      “No,” she said with conviction, “you most assuredly will not!”

      “What I will do,” Tariq said, with the assurance of a man who’d just solved the riddle of the ages, “is take you as my wife.”

      CHAPTER SIX

      RUGGED cliffs rose above the Hudson River.

      In the small hours of the night, the road that traversed those cliffs was almost deserted. Though the place was little more than an hour from the heart of Manhattan, Tariq could almost imagine he was racing his Porsche on a cliff above one of the wide mountain rivers of Dubaac.

      His foot was almost to the floor; last time he’d bothered checking, the speedometer needle hovered at one-forty. It was a dangerous speed for a dangerous road, which made it perfect for a man still filled with a savage rage.

      He had proposed marriage and Madison Whitney had laughed in his face.

      His hands tightened on the wheel.

      At first, he’d thought the expression on her face was one of shock. Who would have blamed her? He’d shocked himself but then, what other choice was there but marriage?

      Whatever he’d expected, it wasn’t laughter.

      “Me?” she’d said. “Marry you?”

      Who did she think she was? She wasn’t expected to spin straw into gold, for Ishtar’s sake! He wasn’t Rumpelstiltskin. He was a sheikh. A prince. And he’d offered to make her his wife!

      Fury had surged through him. He’d grabbed her by the elbows, hoisted her to her toes, imagined shaking her until her teeth rattled.

      Imagined something far more primitive. Carrying her to the bed. Tearing off her robe. Taking her again and again until her laughter turned to cries of passion, until she understood the consequences of taunting a man until she’d stripped him of the last vestiges of self-control.

      But СКАЧАТЬ