Page 35 of Sheikh's Secret Love-Child

The night before came back to her slowly. The way these things always did. It reminded her too much of waking up in strange foster houses as a child, never knowing where she was. But she didn’t feel unsafe at all now.

And maybe that was what soothed her, as she took stock of her body, stretched out on a big, wide bed. She felt...protected, even as she tried to sort out what had happened. She felt a delicious tiredness all over, in her fingernails and her skin and the crook of her toes. Marvelously, beautifully used. As if every last inch of her had been—

Shona felt a hot flush move over her, as if from the inside out. Because she remembered, then, in a great, rolling wave of delirious heat. Every last inch, indeed.

Malak had been demanding—fierce and thorough.

She had lost track of how many times he had taken her, there in his dizzyingly vast suite of rooms, all of which were exactly as luxurious and over-the-top as she had expected, given what the rest of the palace looked like. Had there ever been room in her life for such foolishness?

Not that it was his bedroom that had captivated her, hour after hour.

She had learned how he tasted, everywhere. She had explored him as if he was hers. She’d had her mouth and her fingers on every inch of his beautiful body, reveled in that hot, smooth skin of his that looked like cinnamon and tasted all man. Hot and gloriously male.

He had taught her to take him deep in her mouth, either kneeling there at his feet or over him on the bed, propped up between his legs. He had made her scream, with his mouth between her legs again, and more outrageously, using nothing more than his fingers on one nipple and his teeth and a wicked bit of suction on the other.

The night had gone on and on, until it had all felt like liquid, pouring through her hands, impossible to hold, shimmering there whenever she turned her head too fast. And she hadn’t given herself permission to brood. To worry. To do anything but enjoy what was happening there between them.

Again and again and again.

He had called for food at some point, and they’d eaten it together, there in the seating area somewhere beyond the foot of his bed. It was erected around a vast fireplace that looked as if ten men could stand inside it, though Malak had only laughed when Shona had said so. She had wrapped herself in one of the shockingly soft sheets from his bed, and they’d feasted on food that had ceased to seem strange to her, after all these weeks in Khalia. Dates and nuts and strong cheeses. Delicate pastries that melted in her mouth. Meats and casserole-type things that looked like lasagna but tasted far more complicated and airy.

And when they had both eaten their fill, Malak had crawled over her on the sofa where she’d been sitting and had told her he couldn’t wait for dessert. Nor had he, as he’d pulled her hips up to his mouth again, until her cries had echoed off the walls.

She sat up carefully now, waiting to feel something pull, deep inside somewhere. She waited for the pain, because surely that was the price that had to be paid for a night like the one they’d shared. She could hardly remember what had happened five years ago, or not this part of it, anyway. She remembered waking up in that hotel room, how hushed and uncertain she’d felt as she’d crept around, looking in all the rooms. There had been so many rooms, when all she knew about hotels were down-market motels, where a person was lucky to have a bed and a towel that didn’t draw blood. But when she’d discovered he was not lurking in one of the other rooms of the suite, that he’d gone sometime before she’d woken up, she hadn’t wanted to stay herself.

Luxury had made her uncomfortable. It seemed like some kind of...mockery, really. She had gathered herself as best she could, scrunching up her hair so that the curls looked springy again, and smoothed her dress back into place. Her heart had been pounding wildly in her chest when she’d walked out into the front hall that was still a part of the hotel suite, then taken the elevator that was right there down to the ground floor. She’d expected to be stopped at any moment, for one of the people who clearly belonged in a hotel as fancy as that one to question her; to ask her what on earth she thought she was doing in a nice place like that, when she was sure she had her humble beginnings written all over her.

But no one had said a word. And if they’d looked at her with any sort of judgment in their eyes, she hadn’t looked closely enough at anyone she’d passed on her way out to have seen it. She’d escaped back into the bawdy French Quarter gratefully, feeling almost instantly at ease once she’d hit the streets. That was where she belonged. Not in some fancy hotel.

Here, now, she certainly didn’t feel as if she should have been waking up alone in the king’s bedchamber. It was worse than that hotel. It was...royal. Sunlight was streaming into the bedchamber from the grand archways that functioned as both windows and doors, leading out to another one of those polished marble balconies—this one wider and far grander.

Shona sat where she was, listening carefully. She held her breath, trying to hear any clues as to Malak’s whereabouts. She’d learned how to be good at that kind of thing in too many foster homes to count. It was always better to have an idea of where everybody was under whatever roof she happened to find herself.

But she couldn’t hear a thing. Fancy hotels and royal palaces were so quiet. She crept out of the bed, making sure her feet made no noise against the floor, covered as it was in fine rugs. She looked around for the gown that Malak had taken off her so slowly, so deliciously, the night before, but it was nowhere in sight. She frowned at that, because she was certain he had tossed it to the side right there on the floor. But it wasn’t where she thought it should have been, over in the vast expanse between the side of his bed and the bathroom suite that could have housed an entire parish or two.

“You look confused,” came Malak’s voice from the doorway, rolling over her the way she began to realize it always would. As if he was connected to something inside of her and could tug on it at his leisure. “Not exactly a rousing endorsement of last night’s festivities, I think.”

“I was looking for my clothes.”

“I cannot imagine why you think you need such things.” He sounded amused. And something darker. Hotter. “When I am only going to remove them.”