A single tear escaped one of his eyes that had turned dark jade as he stared at her, almost panting as hard as she was. As if still afraid to let himself believe, to allow himself relief.
Then he reached out an unsteady hand to cup her cheek. “I need you to understand one thing. Then you can make this declaration again once you’ve heard it. I wasn’t exaggerating. After a lifetime of emotional deep freeze, you’ve decimated all my barriers and hurled me into an inferno, one I need to burn in for the rest of my life. I will love you single-mindedly, ferociously...till my very last breath.”
She hurled herself at him again, rained tears and kisses all over every part of him she could reach. “Yes, yes, please, love me just like that. It’s how I love you...” Her heart twisted again. “Even though I don’t deserve you.”
He hauled her off the ground and crashed his lips over hers, swallowing her contrition and self-blame.
By the time he raised his head, hers was spinning, her body racked with the wildfire of reclamation and her soul with the grief of agony and guilt.
“Never shed any more tears for anything if you love me, ya hayati, ya galbi. You are my life and my heart. When I thought I lost you, I thought my life was over. But it has all turned out for the best. This way we’ve found each other in spite of everything, making what we have all that more unique and unstoppable. It was even my despair over your rejection then disappearance that drove me to finally remember the vital memory that exonerated Hassan and put my demons to rest at last.”
She pulled him down to her for another frenzied kiss before she could reply, “So you really do believe it was an accident.”
“Yes.” His gorgeous lips suddenly quirked. “Now after I was about to puree Hassan, I might even tolerate him for Najeeb and his siblings’ sake. You see, because of you I’ve learned how to compromise. Now that will allow us to have an extended family for our baby.”
The way he said our baby skewered through her heart with poignancy, made her legs give out.
He cursed and swung her up in his arms, homing in, unerringly as always, on her bedroom.
What followed felt like a resurrection. A surrender of everything she was. And a possession of everything he was. A merging.
Then it was next evening, and he was starting to rocket her to the most decadent reaches of ecstasy again when she finally stopped his fondling hands, needing to say something coherent for a change.
“Numair, about the baby...”
He immediately frowned, his eyes turning wary once more. She was suddenly quivering with uncertainty again.
“You said you wanted an heir...but I have a feeling it’s a girl. Don’t ask me how I know—”
His lips stopped her agitated words. “I wish it is a girl. I lived all my life among rough, gruff XY creatures, and now I want to spend the rest of my life wallowing in the delights of female companionship.”
“Really?”
“Really. I will only ever tell you the whole truth from now on.”
She grimaced. “Uh...sometimes the truth isn’t such a great thing to hear. Like when my nose blows up to double its current size with pregnancy hormones.”
He tugged lovingly on a thick tress as he suckled a breast ripening more every day with those hormones. She was still deliciously sore from his nightlong ministrations. “Don’t they believe in the region this only happens when you’re carrying a boy?”
“You’ve done your homework very thoroughly.” She moaned with pleasure, then stabbed her fingers in his now loose hair, making him relinquish her nipple before she lost whatever was left of her mind again. She needed to say something else. “About Zafrana’s throne...”
He lowered his mouth to her flesh again, skimmed his way up to her lips, his smile filling her with joy. “I have no more desire to take over
my heritage. The only thing I care about now is the future we’ll make together for our children.”
“Children!”
“Only as many—or as few—as you like,” he rushed to assure her. “This baby is all I need. You are all I need.”
She groaned with yet another surge of emotion. “You are all I need, too. And I want everything possible with you, and as many children as you want. But let’s just take one child at a time. Let me work on this one first.”
He laughed and hugged her exuberantly. “We’ll work on this one, and everything else, together.”
As he lowered his head and began ridding her of her last shreds of sanity, she squirmed, making him stop again. “But you have to claim your heritage. It would be the best thing to ever happen to Zafrana and Saraya if you merged them and sat on their combined throne.”
Nipping her lower lip, he murmured, “I only want to be on the throne of your heart.”
“You’ve been there from day one,” she moaned. “And you’re now stuck there.”