SHEIKH'S SURPRISE BABY: A Sheikh Romance (92 page)

She closed her eyes and let her head roll back as she felt him under her, cementing the memory in her mind.

Walid’s hands moved to her thighs and ran up the skin of them, under her skirt to her panties. Then, in a motion faster and stronger than she’d ever experienced in her life, he had torn her panties. What was even more, he had done it without jerking and tugging against her, but instead had done it between his hands.

Lacy fell forward and dug her fingers against his chest. “Did you just rip my panties off?”

Walid ran his tongue across his upper lip and held up her torn underwear.

“That is without a doubt the sexiest thing I’ve ever heard of.” She dropped onto him, kissing him deeply and reaching under her to grip the firm length of him.

He took her and turned, putting her on her back. Both of them fought to undo his pants and once the button was free, she reached up with her feet and pushed his pants down to his ankles.

Walid looked down at where his pants went and then back up to her.

“What?” she asked, frozen.

“I’ve never had any woman do that before.”

“Bad?”

“Amazing.”

“Oh.” She grabbed him by the face and pulled him back for a kiss.

His lips locked to hers, he pressed the head of him against her. She was already so wet that there was no resistance. Lacy gasped as he slipped inside. Rich, powerful, handsome, and
not
a small man. She dug her fingers into the meat of his back as he worked himself in and out of her.

Mid-stroke, he started trying to fight with his pants, and the pause in motion made her so frustrated that she cried out “Forget the damn pants!”

She grabbed his pants with her toes, worked them free of his heel, and pulled them off of one foot, and then the other.

Walid spread his legs, planting a knee on either side of her waist and moved so that he could get deeper inside of her.

“Oh my God,” she cried out as she felt him fill her entirely.

His pace worked up into a frenzy, the passion between them obviously as long pent up for him as it was for her. She couldn’t get enough of him. If her world had shrunk to a pin-point before during the kiss, it was a diamond tip now. All she could think of was how amazing he felt inside of her.

Every part of her body was burning for him, the arousal inside stretching around every part of her. When she looked at him, all she saw were his eyes, and that small smile. Those lips filled him with such an expression of joy that she couldn’t help but become drawn in by it. When he drove himself deep inside of her on a stroke, and she lost herself to the ecstasy of it, she would see him smile wider.

“Enjoying yourself?” she asked him teasingly.

“Never so much in all my life.”

She put a hand to his cheek and couldn’t stop herself from smiling. “Same.”

He licked his lips and leaned down to kiss her. She held him there as he moved inside of her, and they made love that way until the pleasure overwhelmed her. She cried out in her orgasm, holding his lips to hers as she did. He grabbed a handful of her hair as he climaxed. She moved her hips against him, trying to make it as pleasurable for him as she could.

When he finished they laid there holding one another. They kissed, and when he closed his eyes and rested his head beside her, she was surprised by how relaxed she felt to be with him. She would only close her eyes for a moment, she told herself, and then she would leave.

And that was what she told herself as she drifted to sleep.

Walid sat across from Jacob Michaels, a big shot in the city and one of five others that claim to own the city itself. In Walid’s admittedly short time stateside he had come to realize that he was doing business on someone else’s territory. In his home country, such a transgression would have been met with the death of the intruder, their family, and anyone associated with them.

Here the idea was to set an example, but where Walid came from, it was closer to the idea that to clean the wound, as it were, all of the infection must be cut out, or else it’ll return in strength. Which brought him to the other thing they do differently here: warnings. So much blubbering and bolstering. It had been one of Mr. Michaels’ associates that had sent the assassins to Walid’s hotel room before, but it would seem that had been a rash act, and the offended properly “dealt” with. It was not lost on Walid how the term “dealt” was spoken with quotation marks.

No doubt their conglomerate was now one party member fewer than it had been. Despite that, however, Jacob Michaels, a fat, balding man with a shiny pate and a ring of silver hair around his skull now sat across from him going on and on about proper channels, fines, donations, and the like. Walid sipped his wine and listened, picking out the bits and pieces he needed to hear in order to understand what was actually being said.

The Italian restaurant was brightly lit, furbished with a lot of red fabrics, gold ornaments, and art on the wall had a distinct grape motif. The entire place, though in the middle of what would be considered rush hour, was completely empty. Walid suspected the man sitting across from him had paid the owner to keep it that way for the duration of their meeting. No noise would be the excuse. No witnesses would be the truth. Walid’s men were told to wait outside, as were Mr. Michaels.

During the course of the meal, however, three of Michaels’ men wandered in as causal as anything. They sat at tables, ate some pasta and bread, and seemed to have no interest whatsoever in what was going on. This, of course, was all a terrible ruse. These men either assumed Walid to be a complete idiot, or they were terrible tacticians. The truth, Walid suspected, was somewhere in the middle.

As Jacob Michaels paused in his current rant about the troubles with the American economy and how times were tough on everyone, Walid took it upon himself to make his position known. All of this was meant to intimidate him, to make him feel as though he existed on this planet under their permission. Permission which, at the snap of a finger, could be revoked. It was meant to fill him with fear.

“My father felt that for his children to take on his dynasty,” Walid said as he lifted his wine glass and took a sip, “it would be prudent to teach them in the ways of economy, customs, and war.”

“A wise man,” Michaels said, interlocking his fingers atop his impressive gut.

“Indeed. In this pursuit, we were taught from some of the finest tutors around the world. You may not know this, but I am fluent, spoken and written, in Russian, Mandarin as well as Cantonese, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and of course English.”

“Is your accent this bad in all those languages, too?” one of the thugs asked from his table. The other two henchmen chuckled, but went back to their meal.

Walid made no outward show that he had heard them, though mentally noted which had spoken, and went on. “In all of those languages, in all of my schooling, I had never realized that you Americans had so many ways to say the word
bribe.
”

This ruffled feathers. The henchmen shot their heads up and looked to their boss. The fat man’s lips curled and he hunched his shoulders as if trying to adjust his jacket without grabbing the lapel.

“Look here Mr., uh…”

“Sheikh,” Walid said and stood. The men all around him stood as well, drawing their guns but keeping them pointed down. “I am a sheikh. I am your sheikh. You’ll receive no such donations from me. No fines. No permits. I know the law of your country. My lawyer assists me in this. You and your partners stick to the business you know best, allow me to do mine without interference, and I promise you all will go smoothly for everyone.”

Michaels looked amused. He had the smirk of a man who sat in a seat with three guns pointed at his enemy. It would be the look he died wearing. “This lawyer, a Miss Lacey. Nice lady. Saw her on TV once. She, uh, she’s got a real fire in her gut, eh? How’d you like it if we set an actual fire to that pretty little gut of hers?”

“I was willing to let you live despite your insults,” Walid said. “But you threatened a woman with which I’ve become particularly fond. This I cannot forgive.”

Michaels’ smirk grew wider. “You, uh, you talk as though you’ve got a dog in this fight. The way I seein’ it, you got nothin’, and I got uh, well, one, two, three guns.”

“Two,” Walid said.

“Huh?”

“You have two guns.”

Michaels looked over, and saw one of his men missing.

“Now it’s one.”

Another man gone.

Michaels panted as he shot up from his seat, backing away from Walid, his head swiveling all around him. Walid stepped onto the table, crushing a wine glass under the soul of his leather loafer.

“Your men outside have also been removed.” The third henchman disappeared, all without a shot being fired. “Your men inside are now gone.”

Michaels continued to back away, trying to push chairs in Walid’s way as he dropped from the table and continued to approach him. “How are you doing this? How is this possible?”

Walid cracked his knuckles menacingly. “As I said, I am your sheikh. All is within my control.”

Michaels shook his head and held a hand out in front of him. It was clear this was a man that always had others do his dirty work for him. Such clean hands were useless for defense.

“You’ll only piss him off. He doesn’t care if I die, he only cares that business is conducted according to his wishes, eh? He’ll kill everyone you care about before taking you out.”

“Piss off whom?” Walid asked.

“The Sheikh.”

Walid narrowed his eyes, intrigued. This would need further investigation. He was interested, but not enough to let Michaels live unscathed.

Lacy took a deep breath as another wave of nausea swept over her. She hated coming in to work when she was sick, but this wasn’t going away and she had too much to do. Of course, she suspected that was the problem.

All her life she always held her stress in her gut. Some people had tight shoulders, some developed pressure headaches. For Lacy, it was always her stomach. When she was too stressed with life, it always hit her right away.

Nausea, vomiting, it was never a happy time. After her night with Walid, things were good for a little bit. He took her to dinner, and always seemed happy to see her. Then after some business meeting he started growing distant. She remembered that one meeting because when she asked about it, he had become evasive with his answers. Walid was not a man to lie, so instead he simply didn’t answer.

That had been the first time she had become truly worried for him since the attack on his hotel room that one day. Her worry for his safety had haunted her all night until he called her the next day regarding some paperwork. It had been a sleepless night, and instead of being reassured by his call, his cool tone had only made her more concerned. It was the day everything changed with them.

She’d been scorned by exes before. Harsh words, irreverent treatment, cold-shoulders were all the norm. Not Walid. He was too classy for that. He was as polite as ever, and when they spoke she never felt that he didn’t like her. Not exactly. There was definitely a shut-off for him, though. She’d lost guys before, but nothing like Walid. He had touched some nerve inside of her, treated her too well to be easily forgotten.

With her head in a tailspin from their sudden and inexplicable break-up, her workload seemed to double almost overnight. Try as she would to throw herself into her work, she found it harder and harder to focus with every passing day.

Then, just like clockwork, her stomach started to bother her. All she wanted was to go home, slip into her pjs and watch TV on her comfy couch. But that wouldn’t solve anything. If she wanted to feel better, she had to tough it out and get through it.

“You okay?” Linda asked.

Lacy blinked her eyes to try and clear her vision. “Not feeling the best.”

“You’ve been sick for a little bit now, huh?”

Linda came and set down Lacy’s afternoon coffee. The smell of it struck like a chemical weapon, and Lacy clapped a hand over her face both to block the smell and to try to keep from vomiting everywhere. Unable to speak, she frantically waved a hand at the cup, as if shooing away a yapping dog. Linda, startled, jumped into action and snatched the cup away. She took it out of the office and came back in empty handed. Lacy picked up a manila folder and started fanning the air with gusto.

It took a few minutes for the coffee smell to dissipate enough for Lacy to breathe again. Linda held a hand to her chest, and the other out to Lacy.

“Are you good? Can I get you anything? Water?”

Lacy shook her head quickly and took another cleansing breath to calm her stomach. It wasn’t wanting to listen.

“I have never seen you react like that to coffee.”

“That’s because I’ve never had a reaction like that to coffee. I skipped this morning’s because I just wasn’t feeling like it.”

“For the longest time I thought your blood was made up of coffee.” Linda said. Then sitting in Lacy’s spare office chair, she gave a small laugh and jokingly said, “Maybe you’re pregnant.”

Lacy gave Linda a polite smile and a look that said all on its own “That’s not funny.” Then she stopped and thought about it. She must’ve had an expression on her face she wasn’t aware of, because Linda perked up.

“Are you serious?”

Lacy shook her head. “I don’t know. I mean, I don’t think so?”

“You don’t
think
so? So there’s a chance?”

“Stop. You’re freaking me out.”

Linda shot up from the chair. “I’m freaking
you
out?”

Lacy bit down on her thumbnail and frantically started trying to do math from when she’d last had sex. Three weeks. His name popped into her mind and she recalled that they hadn’t used a condom. She squeezed her eyes closed.

“Oh no,” Linda said.

“Do you know who?”

“Linda!”

“Oh my God, I’m so sorry. That’s rude to ask. Of course you know.”

Lacy looked up to see Linda looking at her dubiously. “Yes, Linda, I know who the father is.”

Lacy immediately waved her hands in front of her as if she could take back those words. “Would be! Not is. I don’t know if I am.”