Jalal smiled down at Adam, smoothing his hand in wonder over his silken raven hair and his downy-soft face. Lujayn could swear Adam purred in pleasure. “Tell your aunt she’ll never owe me any thanks. She needs only to ask anything and it’s done. I’m at her command, just as I am at anyone’s who loves you.”
“Wow. Now I know what Aladdin felt like!”
As if understanding his aunt’s quip, Adam burst out giggling, took Jalal’s face in his chubby hands and kissed him soundly.
Jalal squeezed his eyes and groaned, looking as if he’d been punched in the gut with a battering ram of emotion.
Dahab chuckled at his distressed expression. “Excuse me, Jalal, but you’re behaving as if you’ve never heard a baby laugh before. Or been kissed by one.”
“I’ve never heard mine laugh or been kissed by him.” Jalal hugged Adam closer to his heart, rubbed his face against his silky hair, kissed the top of his head. Realizing he was being worshipped by this huge man, Adam dived more securely into Jalal’s embrace as if he’d always been there.
Jalal hugged him and Lujayn tighter, alternated his gaze between their upturned faces, his voice becoming a ragged rasp. “He has your eyes. He has your everything. But he somehow also has mine. He makes us look alike.”
She gaped at him, then at Adam. Her mouth fell open. He was right. She’d never wanted to see Jalal in Adam, but he was there, in just about everything as he’d said. In the shape of the eyes, the dimples in the cheek, the cleft chin, the hairline, the hair itself. It wasn’t hers as she’d always assumed, had the exact hue and shine and wave of Jalal’s....
“Now that you’ve put your finger on it, oh yeah!” Dahab exclaimed. “You two suddenly do look alike, when just a second ago I saw nothing in common between you but that fabulous black hair, which on closer inspection isn’t even the same color, after all!”
Right then, Adam decided they’d had enough introductions and exclamations, tapped Jalal’s shoulder with a commanding “Down.”
Laughing at Adam’s nonnegotiable order, and still holding her to his side, Jalal bent and put Adam on the ground. Adam darted toward the open veranda doors.
At the threshold he turned. “Play.”
Laughing again, Jalal took both her and Dahab by the shoulders. “The little prince has spoken.”
At that humorous declaration, Lujayn’s heart dropped a handful of beats. She almost stumbled as Jalal led them inside where he had a sumptuous lunch prepared. He insisted that Dahab postpone her date and have the meal with them.
All through the late lunch, he laughed with Dahab, doted on Lujayn and Adam, and answered Adam’s incessant curiosities and demands for his attention with unending patience and unwavering enjoyment. Lujayn barely ate, or participated, upheaval intensifying as realizations piled up.
She hadn’t even thought any of this possible. Jalal’s response to Adam, the fluency of interaction between them, that instant bond and mutual appreciation and delight. And it left her in an untenable situation, both retroactively and going forward.
She had deprived Jalal—both—no, all of them of all that. And she couldn’t see how she could stop doing it from now on.
The only way she could was if she agreed to Jalal’s earlier proposition. After she left Azmahar, he’d come to them whenever he could, to continue their affair and be Adam’s father. She had to admit, after what had happened between them last night, after today, there was nothing she wanted more from life.
But that would only be a finite solution. According to her uncle, the throne was almost in Jalal’s bag. Once he became king, he’d need a queen and heirs. Legitimate heirs. Which meant their…arrangement would be temporary. And though their relationship would end when he married, his relationship with Adam wouldn’t. But it would remain clandestine for his throne’s and rightful heirs’ sakes. That might be acceptable now, with Adam so young and unaware, but in a few years? She would never let Adam suffer being an unacknowledged, second-class son.
But how could she deprive him of his father now, after she’d seen them together, realized what a difference Jalal would make in Adam’s life? While Jalal’s duty to the throne would force him not to acknowledge Adam publicly, he would love him, would want to be his father in every other way that mattered.
But would that be enough? Could she make the decision for Adam, when whatever she chose would end up hurting him?
Feeling like she was about to tear down the middle, she barely interacted with the others until Adam napped and Dahab left. And she had nowhere to hide from Jalal’s focus.
Before he could say anything to make any coherent thought impossible, she spoke up as soon as he returned from seeing Dahab off. “We have to talk.”
His smile sizzled over her as he came closer. “First let me thank you for not telling your sister what a son of an ex-royal bitch I was with you. I bet if you’d told her half the things I did, instead of acceptance and laughter, she would have ripped my head off. And though I don’t deserve it, you also didn’t influence Adam in any way, either, but let him make up his own mind about me.”
The lump that now perpetually occupied her throat expanded. “What happened between us remains between us. And I realize I’ve misinterpreted a good chunk of it, anyway.”
“It still doesn’t change the facts of what happened. So I’m deeply grateful that you didn’t expose my…wrongdoings.”
Her throat closed completely. “I’d never say anything to anyone, and I’d certainly never try to turn Adam against you.”
He didn’t stop until he had plastered himself against her.
“Jalal, please, we need to talk....”
He pulled her fully against him, “And we will. But before anything, we have to do what all parents must always do.” He hugged her off the ground, buried his face in her neck. “Make love, hard and fast, before our baby wakes up.”
She stood paralyzed as his hands and lips roamed her, worshipping and accessing all her triggers. She drowned in his kiss, his hunger, her body blossoming under his appreciation and ministrations…then a thought detonated in her mind.
She pushed out of his arms. “God, how didn’t I think of this?”
He tried to reach for her again, his hands gentle, his eyes concerned. “What is it?”
She stumbled away. “I know Dahab will keep our secret, but how didn’t we think of Adam? He’s not about to forget this visit.”