SHEIKH'S SURPRISE BABY: A Sheikh Romance (68 page)

He talked candidly about how he’d been treating women, how it had started, and how it all just escalated so quickly into the life he had now. Here she thought he enjoyed being such a ladies man, but truth was it was killing him inside. After hearing about all of that, it became easy to tell him about her past boyfriends. She told him about how they all ridiculed her for her weight. Each one of them, in their own special little ways, made sure she knew she wasn’t good enough for them, that their attention was the best she could hope for.

That was why she’d become so hard lately. She just wasn’t going to let anyone treat her like that again.

Then, while she was staring into her cup of rocky road ice-cream, playing around with a chunk in it with her spoon, she felt him lift her chin. She looked up at him, expecting him to give her some half-hearted compliment.

Instead, his lips met hers. The soft warmth of his lips contrasted against the cold ice-cream she’d been eating, and it felt like her mouth was on fire. After the initial shock passed, she suddenly couldn’t get his lips closer. She put her hand on the back of his head and pulled him against her.

He’d finished his ice-cream a bit ago, and wrapped his arms around her. She just dropped hers to the ground and grabbed him by his jacket. Time became lost on her. She was sure, somewhere, people were passing them by on the sidewalk, but she couldn’t be bothered by any of it. All that mattered was him, right then, right there. When he pulled back, he looked at her. She could see it in his face, and she was surprised to find she felt it too.

“Let’s go to your place,” she said.

He raised his brows at her, surprised, but he sure didn’t argue.

Walking hand in hand they went back to the parking garage near the restaurant. A city that big there was only ever parking vertically, especially near the posh place he picked twenty storeys up.

She followed him through the traffic, her heart hammering in her chest. Was she really going to do this? She knew his reputation just as well as anyone. This whole thing had been a game just to get her to sleep with him in the first place. How could she trust that all of this wasn’t just more gaming, more lies? Her phone blinked with a new text. At the stoplight she quickly checked it. Bryan had texted her his room number and said to wait before following him up. He didn’t want her being tied to him for the fear of his reputation giving her a bad one.

She wiped a hand over her mouth as though she could clean the kisses off of it. She would go back to his hotel room and tell him face to face that she wasn’t interested in him, that she wasn’t going to fall for this stupid game of his. Somehow this made her even more nervous.

To counteract it, she thought of all the stupid things he’d done so far to her, nearly losing her her job. It worked to artificially turn all of her nervousness and lust into anger. By the time they reached the hotel, she was fuming. She couldn’t remember having ever been so worked up in her life. Bryan had already reached the hotel ahead of her, so she didn’t bother with waiting.

She didn’t wait! She wasn’t one of his sluts!

Maggie practically jumped out of her car, slamming the door behind her and marched all the way through the parking garage, lobby, all the way to the elevator. When it reached his floor, her feet stomped and pounded along the carpeted hallway to his room. She knocked, practically panting through her flared nostrils.

He opened the door, his cheeks flushed, his shirt halfway unbuttoned. She did her best to ignore it and walked into the room.

“All right, look—“ she started.

He had her in his arms before she could say more and kissed her. In that kiss, all of the fake anger she’d worked up melted, and she went weak in his arms. “Damn you,” she whispered, then kissed him again.

“What?”

“I really wanted to be mad at you.”

“Mad? Why?”

She put a hand flat against his chest, her anxiety overtaking her again. “Because this is all just another trick. A game to get me to sleep with you.”

“But it isn’t.”

“How can I know that, though?” She looked up into his eyes, searching them for any hint that her fears were well-founded.

“Because it isn’t,” he said.

He didn’t try to tell her that she could trust him, or work to convince her. That was all. It wasn’t a trick. She wanted so badly to believe him, to believe that what they had was a real connection.

“Kiss me again?”

He smiled, leaned down and pressed his lips to hers. She played her fingers through his hair, pulling his face closer to hers. When he started removing her shirt, she didn’t stop him. His hands were rough from thousands of hours of basketball practice, his fingers strong as they pulled her against him. Before she knew it, they were on his bed, kissing and undressing one another.

When he entered her, all thought disappeared and she lost herself to the sensation. He was incredible. As he moved inside of her, her body flooding with warmth, her mind completely overtaken by the ecstasy of it all. The whole time he was right there, always touching her, looking at her, watching her. She’d been with men only using her to get off. Their attention was always very internalized, focused on their own pleasure, and likely imagining they were having sex with someone else. With someone more attractive.

Not him though, he was right there with her. When they both climaxed, it felt like a culmination of everything in her life up to that point. She had no idea what life would bring after this, but for just that moment, she switched off her brain and allowed herself to be happy.

They spent the rest of the day in the hotel room. He ordered them room service, and they had sex again that day… and again that night. Bryan had never felt so compelled by a woman, so completely taken by her. They fell asleep together, holding one another in his bed. Normally he hated when they slept in his bed. They took up his space, always wanting to touch him. It made him hot and uncomfortable. Why couldn’t they just keep their damn hands to themselves? Not her, though. When they rested together, he couldn’t hold her close enough. It was the weirdest thing he’d ever experienced.

So much so that he dreamed it had all been a dream. It was the craziest thing to wake up, in his dream, and find her gone. That it hadn’t happened at all. That morning, when he actually woke up and she was still there, her eyes closed, her breathing steady, he actually felt relieved.

Again, normally he wanted them gone if he couldn’t have kicked them out the night before, but this time he had to take a deep breath to steady himself. Her face looked so relaxed. She looked happy. Her happiness almost bled through her, shining on him.

How could he have gone through life without feeling like this before? Who was this woman to make him feel this way? He knew she was something special, but this was beyond anything.

The need to relieve himself was too urgent for him to ignore, however, and as angelic as she looked, he couldn’t stay in that bed any longer. Slipping his arm out from under her he carefully crawled out of bed so as not to wake her and snuck off to the bathroom.

While he was in the middle of going, he heard her say his name.

“In here,” he called back.

“Oh,” she said, her voice muffled by the closed door. “I was afraid you’d run off.”

He gave a small laugh and when he was finished going, he came out and leaned against the wall. She was sitting up in bed, the sheet wrapped around her body modestly. The fact that she was still showing such modesty after everything they’d done was somehow endearing. All of these women with no respect for themselves just lounged around in their nudity, not caring who saw. Just one more thing he found fascinating about her.

“So…” she said and bit her upper lip.

“Yep,” he said.

Wait, was that bad? He suddenly realized he had no idea how to act. Normally he wanted them gone, but not her. Yet, lavishing her with gifts had had the opposite effect as well. How did he get her to stay? What was he supposed to do? What did normal people do the morning after?

“I, uh, I should go,” she said.

Oh, well maybe that’s what normal people did. If she needed to go, he didn’t want to stop her. The last thing he wanted to do was mess this up by coming off as clingy. He didn’t know what she needed, so he would just give her whatever she wanted. “Yeah, of course.”

He went over to the side of the room where her pants had dropped and tossed them over to her. He didn’t want her feeling weird about having to leave, so he tried to make her feel better by saying, “I have stuff I need to do today, too, so, yeah.”

Should he kiss her goodbye? Would that be weird? He stood, feeling awkward as hell as he watched her get dressed. He could tell it was making her feel weird, too, but he didn’t know what to do. Purposely looking away felt weird, too. It was like there was no right answer. After putting on her shoes she came over and stood there for a second, looking like she was trying to figure out what to say. At least it wasn’t just him feeling weird about it.

In an attempt to help her out he sort of blurted the first thing that came to mind. “See you later.”

“Yeah,” she said, and left.

Just like that, she left.

He couldn’t help feeling a bit bad by the fact that they didn’t even hug or anything.

As he’d told her before, he had to start traveling for games, so they didn’t talk or see much of one another after that. He’d tried to get ahold of her, but their conversations were always strained and awkward.

Finally came the time when he had to hit the road, but things with Maggie felt unfinished. He hated it. So, one night when he had some time to stress over everything, he remembered her friend Stacy. She seemed down to do whatever he wanted, so he hunted down her information and gave her a call.

After she got over her initial shock that he was calling her, he finally got around to getting to what he really wanted from her.

“What’s up with Maggie?”

“What do you mean?” Stacy asked, her demeanor shifting instantly. One second she’d been so happy to hear from him, and then she turned cold as ice.

“Everything seemed cool, but now I can’t get her to talk to me.”

“Why do you want to talk to her? Thought you were done with her.”

“What?” This was going exactly the opposite of what he’d hoped to hear. “Why would you say that?”

“That’s what she told me. She said you got all weird and now when you talk it’s all awkward. She was pretty broken up about it, too. She tried to act tough, but I could see it. Why do you care?”

“Because I do, all right? Thanks for the information.”

“Whatever,” Stacy said with a sigh and hung up.

Bryan frowned at his phone and couldn’t help feeling that she was kind of a bad friend.

Maggie was at home doing some research for work when her cell rang. She didn’t recognize the number, but it could’ve been a client so she answered.

“Hey,” Bryan said. Just the sound of his voice sent that thrill followed by the sting of how he’d treated her.

“It’s late,” she said. “Is this work related?”

“Don’t hang up,” he said quickly. “I wanted to see if you wanted to come to New York and watch my next game?”

“Can’t,” she said, keeping her tone flat.

“Busy.”

“Look, I’m not trying to buy you, okay?”

“What’s the matter, one of your other women can’t make it? Am I your second choice, or farther down the list?”

“I just talked to Stacy.”

“What?” Maggie asked. She couldn’t have put more irritation into the word than she did.

“No, not like that. You weren’t talking to me and I didn’t know what to do. She said I hurt you? I don’t know what I did.”

“That’s just it. You didn’t do anything. It was like you couldn’t wait to be rid of me, and then every time we talked it was just like you had something better to do. I’m giving you your space, okay? I’m not one of your drooling little fan girls. You don’t have to pull away. I’m already gone.”

“No, wait,” he said, “it’s not like that. It’s been weird, yeah, but not because of that. I like you. I normally would’ve kicked you out, yeah, but I didn’t want you to go.”

“You didn’t stop me when I said I should go,” she said, setting down her work so she could focus on the conversation.

“Maggie, look, I don’t play games. You say you have to go, I assume you have to go. I don’t want you around, I tell you I don’t want you around. If you do something try to see if I’d do something or act a certain way, you’re going to be disappointed. I don’t play that. I wanted you to stay before, and when I was trying to talk to you after, it was weird. It felt… like I’d already lost you. All before I’d really had a chance to have you, even. I mean, that night was great, right?”

Maggie sighed. Could she really have misunderstood everything? Even just considering it made her scared. Was he dragging her along? “Yeah,” she admitted reluctantly. “It was. I really thought…” She bit off the words, scared to put too much of her heart on her sleeve.

“Thought what?” he asked softly.

“I really thought you liked me.”

“I do,” he said. “That’s why it’s so weird between us. I don’t know what to do. I can’t treat you like I treat girls. I, I dunno, I respect you.”

Maggie chewed on her lower lip for a second and tucked her hand under her other armpit, as though giving herself half a hug. “Really?”

“Definitely. Now look, I’m inviting you out to New York because the city is awesome, and I want to see you. I want to spend some time with you. I… I miss you.”

“Really?” she asked, this time feeling moved by his words.

“Yeah. I really do. Please come out?”

That did it. Maggie agreed and had him call in a complaint to her boss, demanding she come out and settle things. He paid for her plane ticket and got her her own hotel room, so that it looked legit. She came to the game, and this time didn’t feel so surreal about the whole thing.

Being in New York was incredible, though. It really was the city that never slept. After the game, they were able to find shows to go to and hit up a club or two. She hadn’t been out that late in years. The night was filled with laughter, sparkling lights, some of the finest champagne she’d ever had. Everyone wanted to talk to Bryan. He kept his arm around her the whole time, introducing her to movie stars and other athletes.