Page 39 of Sheikh's Secret Love-Child

She braced her hands against his chest and gazed down at him, unable, still, to make sense of all of this. Because it felt too good. It felt too...right. Malak hardened again deep inside of her as if he, too, could never get enough. His beautiful body, hers to touch like this.

To claim, something whispered inside of her.

As if he was hers.

She, who had never had anything.

“I will be your queen, Malak,” she told him.

She had meant to sound funny. Or wry, anyway. Light and airy and offhand.

But there in the dark of his bedroom it sounded a great deal more like a solemn vow.

And she could see the way his dark eyes gleamed. “Will you indeed.”

“I will,” she said again.

And she moved her hips then, smiling when he responded instantly and surged against her. It was a flame that would never, ever go out, because it lived between them. It was theirs.

She let her smile turned wicked. “For Miles, of course.”

“Of course,” Malak replied, his voice little more than a growl. “I commend your maternal instinct.”

And then Shona was laughing because Malak flipped them over in the bed, coming over her to drive himself deeper inside of her, taking complete control.

And she surrendered.

Her heart was too full. She wanted too much. She had never imagined that she could risk herself this way—

But how could that matter? He was a king. He called her his queen. And better still, her son looked at them both as if they had never been anything but.

Mostly, she thought as Malak surged inside of her, it was him.

It was Malak.

And maybe that was why, when he drove her over the side of the world this time, she tipped her head back and cried out the one thing she had never said to another man. Or any other person alive, besides her son.

“I love you, Malak,” she sobbed, because she had to say it out loud or burst with the force of it. “I love you.”