Page 4 of Sheikh's Secret Love-Child

She didn’t know what she expected Malak to do then.

But it wasn’t the way he threw back his head and laughed, with all that infectious delight and lazy sensuality that had been her downfall five years ago. His laughter had not changed at all. The dark and somber suit was new, as were the guards surrounding him. That grave note in his voice, this talk of kings and thrones and palace advisors—all of that was new, too.

But that laugh... It was as dangerous as she remembered it.

More, maybe, because unlike back then, it was wholly unwelcome.

It curled into her like smoke. It wound through her, insinuating itself into every crevice and beneath every square inch of her skin. It licked into her like heat, and then worse, wound itself into a kind of fist between her legs. Then pulsed.

She’d told herself she’d been drunk that night. She’d told herself she’d imagined that pull she’d felt when she was near him, that irresistible urge to get closer no matter what. That aching, restless thing inside her that hummed for him only. She’d imagined all of that, she’d been so sure—because she’d never felt it again. She’d never felt anything the slightest bit like it, not with any man who’d come near her before or since.

But she hadn’t imagined it.

It turned out that he was the only man in the entire world who made her feel all those things. And if anything, she’d let time and memory mute his potency.

He was standing here with armed guards, threatening her baby and life as she knew it, and that didn’t keep her from feeling it. What the hell was the matter with her?

When his laughter faded and he looked at her again, Malak’s eyes were gleaming bright and she was breathless.

And in more trouble that she wanted to admit, she knew.

“There is a certain liberty in having so few choices,” he told her, almost sadly, and it felt like a cage closing, a lock turning. “This will all work out fine, Shona. One way or another.”

“There’s nothing to work out,” she said fiercely. Desperately. “You need to turn around and go back where you came from. Now.”

“I wish I could do that,” Malak said in that same resigned sort of way, and oddly enough, she believed him. “But it is impossible.”

“You can’t—”

“Miles is the son of the king of Khalia,” Malak said, and there was an implacable steel in that dark gaze and all through that body of his, lean and sculpted to a kind of perfection that spoke of actual fighting arts, brutal and intense, and not a gym.

And she believed that, too, though she didn’t want to. She believed that every part of him was powerful. Lethal. And that she was in over her head.

Again.

“Congratulations, Shona,” he continued, all steel and dark promise. “That makes you my queen.”