One Night Of Consequences Collection. Annie West

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      Gossip, mainly. She lifted her chin and focused on his hard face, which wasn’t much better. ‘Well, do you?’ she asked coolly.

      ‘I’d say that’s a moot point now, wouldn’t you?’

      ‘No, I most definitely would not. I’d say it’s very relevant considering the way you’re behaving.’

      ‘Sometimes, Imogen, life throws us curve balls but that doesn’t mean we have to drop them. I don’t need a DNA test to confirm that I have a child.’

      Frustration made her voice sharper than usual. ‘Of course you need to do a DNA test. What kind of crazy talk is that? No rich man in his right mind would take on a child as his own without doing a DNA test.’

      Nadir laughed and this time it rang with genuine amusement. ‘You always were just that little bit different from the pack, habibi.’ His voice, so gentle and deep, brought a rush of memories back into her dizzy brain. ‘But you need not worry. I plan to do my duty by her.’

       His duty?

      A sense of terror entered her heart. Was that what he meant by saying he’d be claiming what was his? She didn’t want to know. Not right now. ‘I don’t need you to do the right thing by Nadeena.’ She’d been looking out for herself for a long time now and she could look out for her child as well.

      Nadir raked an impatient hand through his hair. ‘Nevertheless, I will.’ His striking eyes narrowed. ‘Now quit arguing and give me a list of things you will need for our flight to Bakaan.’

      Striving for calm, Imogen tried to slow down her heart that was banging away inside her chest so loudly he must surely be able to hear it. Right now she felt as if she was trying to survive a fierce gale that was corralling her towards the edge of a very high cliff. Then a horrible thought froze the blood inside her veins. ‘I won’t let you take my baby, Nadir.’ She hated that her voice rang with fear. ‘If that’s your plan.’ She’d never even considered it before but now that she had she couldn’t push it from her mind.

      He glanced at her impatiently. ‘If I wanted that then you couldn’t stop me.’

      ‘I could. I’d...’ Panic clawed inside her throat. ‘I’ll...’

      ‘But I don’t want that.’ He made an impatient gesture with his hands. ‘I am not so callous that I don’t realise that a baby needs its mother. That is why I plan to marry you.’

       Marry her!

      She shook her head, biting back a rising sense of hysteria. She needed time to make sense of everything that was happening and she couldn’t because her mind didn’t know which way to turn.

      ‘Breathe, Imogen.’ Nadir went to put his hands on her shoulders and she jerked back, wondering how he had got so close to her without her being aware of it.

      Imogen shook her head, fear spiking inside her like a flash of lightning. ‘You’re crazy to think that I’d marry you after the way you treated me.’

      Nadir’s mouth thinned and he stepped closer to her, contained anger emanating from every taut line of his body. ‘I can assure you that I’m not. I’ve had a lot of time to review my options while you were in hiding and this is non-negotiable.’

      Imogen tried to still the trembling inside her body. ‘I was not hiding.’

      ‘It’s irrelevant now.’

      She laughed. What else could she do? ‘You can’t just come back into my life and think you can do whatever you want.’ Her father had behaved that way. Coming and going as he pleased with little concern for either her or her mother. As if she’d shackle her and her daughter to a man cut from the same cloth. ‘I’ll fight you.’

      ‘What with?’ She hadn’t realised that her hands had balled into tight white fists until Nadir’s mocking gaze drew hers to them. He reached out and raised them in front of her, enclosing them inside his much larger grip. ‘With these, hmm? I have to confess that, as aggressive as you can be in bed, I didn’t take you for the violent type.’

      She wouldn’t have before today either. ‘Nadir, we had an affair,’ she cried, throwing his earlier words back in his face and tugging at his implacable hold. ‘We only had sex a...a...a couple of times.’

      He resisted her feeble attempts to break free with embarrassing ease and hauled her closer. ‘Let’s see,’ he said with a snarl. ‘Four weekends, around three times a day, more at night.’ His eyes dropped to her mouth and lingered before returning to hers. ‘You don’t have to be Einstein to know that comes to more than a couple of times, habibi. And it was good sex.’

      His words and his tone combined to set off a wildfire reaction inside her body.

      ‘It meant nothing,’ she choked out, still trying to free her hands from within the prison of his. Wishing that his grip was hurting her to distract her from the riot of sensations being this close to him was setting off inside her. She couldn’t seem to focus her thoughts when she became enshrouded in his earthy male scent, the sensitive tips of her breasts rising against the lace of her bra and the deep achy feeling between her thighs reminding her of how it had once been between them.

      ‘Nothing?’ His soft question had a lethal undertone that had her raising her eyes to his, but she only reached his mouth, which seemed so close to her own that if she held still long enough she was sure she could feel his breath against her lips. ‘Nothing, Imogen? I don’t think so.’

      ‘I’ll get a lawyer,’ she said breathlessly, yanking harder on her hands, only to find that they were now trapped against his hard chest.

      He laughed. ‘From what I know of your finances, you can’t afford a decent babysitter.’

      ‘Bastard!’

      His eyes bored holes into hers. ‘And what court of law is going to side with a mother who kept a child’s existence from its father? Who leaves her baby with friends while she works?’

      ‘Lots of mothers do that.’

      ‘Yes, but lots of mothers do not have a child of royal blood. Nadeena is a Bakaani princess.’

      ‘I don’t think of her like that.’

      ‘Right.’

      ‘I don’t!’ she exclaimed at his cynical tone. ‘She’s just an innocent baby to me, not a commodity. And no court in the world would favour a father who thinks like that.’

      Nadir arched a brow. ‘You’re not that naïve, surely.’

      ‘Nadir, stop this, I beg you.’

      ‘Do you?’

      She flushed, remembering the last time she’d said those words to him. It might as well have been five minutes ago for the response of her body. The feeling of being helpless beneath him, her hands held above her head as he’d nudged her thighs wider with his knees, the feel of his silken hardness at that first moment he pushed himself inside her body, that feeling of her softness giving way to all that male strength in inexorable pleasure.

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