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“That friend of yours,” he muttered, which didn’t make any sense until Cleo saw the way he was looking at her, with that considering gleam in his gaze, as though he was puzzling her out. As though she was a puzzle herself. “The lawyer in New York.”
She opened her mouth to correct him, to remind him that Jessie lived in New Orleans, halfway across the country from New York—but didn’t.
“Don’t waste your time reading the papers, Cleo,” he said shortly. An order, not a request. “They’re not worth the paper they’re printed on and that goes double for the online versions.”
“I considered your advice then and now,” she told him after a moment, and her tone wasn’t light at all, that flare of temper inside her far more like a bonfire, and she was sure he could see it in the way she glared at him. “I believe I’ll have to reject it. But thank you.”
She regretted it when he rolled away from her, coming up to sit on the edge of her bed. He raked his hands through that thick, coffee-black hair that she loved to run through her own fingers, but he kept his back to her.
“It is of no matter,” he said, and she was glad she couldn’t see his face then. “You will be pregnant soon enough and the world can occupy itself with counting to nine months however it thinks best. No matter what you read.”
Cleo felt cold, though she couldn’t possibly be cold when she’d been overheated five seconds ago, and she pulled the flung-aside sheet over her as if she thought she might get a chill in the perfectly warm room.
“I’m not planning to get pregnant anytime soon, Khaled.” She didn’t know why her voice was so careful, as if there were imminent danger here. As if there were traps laid all over the floor, the bed, and the slightest sound might trigger them.
“Aren’t you?”
“Of course not.” She wished he would look at her, and then he did and she wished he’d spare her all that darkness and brooding power that made her shiver deep inside. “I’m only twenty-five.”
“You are a woman full grown,” he replied after a moment, that hard face unreadable. “And I require heirs.” A beat, as if he heard how clinical and medieval that sounded, how it ricocheted between them like a bullet. “I want children, Cleo. Our children.”
“But...” Cleo couldn’t understand why her chest felt so tight. When this was only logical, wasn’t it? That he should ask... But then, he wasn’t asking. “You don’t mean now?”
“Why not now?” Yet the smile he aimed at her didn’t quite meet his eyes, and she pulled the sheet tighter to her.
Relax, she told herself. He can’t order you pregnant!
“This is probably something we should have talked about before we got married. Like so many other things, like sleeping arrangements and schedules.” She swallowed, eyeing him. “I don’t think straight when you touch me, I guess.”
His hard mouth softened a shade. “Nor do I.”
He sounded significantly more baleful than she had, but she was encouraged anyway.
“The good news,” she said calmly, a great deal more calmly than she actually felt, “is that we can take our time making this kind of decision.”
“Cleo.” He moved then, and while there was a ruthlessness in the way he came across the wide mattress until he leaned over her, she got caught in the poetry of it. The sheer athletic perfection of this man, the way she always did. The way she thought she always would, and for the first time, that inevitability felt hollow. “We haven’t taken any precautions. Ever. I assumed we were both on the same page. But let’s be clear. Do you want children? My children?”
“Yes.” But she couldn’t really imagine it, and she couldn’t have said why. “But not—”
Not now, she wanted to say, but couldn’t.
Not when he was so fierce, so close, so dangerous and compelling at once, and she thought she might die if he looked at her in disappointment. With pity. With the knowledge that she was as plain and pointless and frigid as Brian had decided she was. As she was still so afraid Khaled would realize she was, after all.
“That’s agreement enough,” he murmured when she didn’t continue.
He angled himself closer, and she had the barest shred of a moment to wonder if he did that deliberately, if he used that fire between them—
But no. That was crazy.
“A meeting of the minds, is it not?” he asked.
