Only now, his eyes adjusted to the dark and his life no longer his own, was he able to take note of her breasts, and how their increased size already hinted at her pregnancy.
Stepping back into the room, his nostrils flaring to catch the scent of her, he remained in control of his voice at least, when he said, “I should have never assumed.”
How could he have been so reckless?
Rita was pregnant.
The world’s most remarkable, beautiful and ingenious woman was going to have his baby.
He went to the bed, kneeling to take her hand, which remained stiff between his palms until he repeated, “I’m sorry, Rita. None of that is what I meant to say. I was a fool. What I meant to ask was how are you feeling?”
And then she melted into him, her lush body pliable and lovely in his arms. “Sick, but Rafida assures me that it’s a sign the baby is healthy.”
Breathing into her hair, he closed his eyes as the wave of realization swept over him.
He had a child to protect.
“Rafida would know.”
For the third time since he had met her, Rita split him in half. There was a Jag that had existed before this moment, and a Jag that existed now.
The first time had been when she became his wife.
The second, when he made love to her in the moonlight.
And now, the third, as she made him a father.
Their agreement was shot.
There would no longer be an end date on their contract—they would share a child for the rest of their lives.
As rich and powerful as he was, there was nothing he could do to stop this train now that it was in motion. All he could do was recovery and damage control.
They would need to renegotiate. He would need to increase her security, and he was going to have to move up the date of the press conference.
With a little more time to sit with the information, it was obvious to him that he had been wrong to even consider postponement at the news.
With Rita’s announcement, his worst nightmare was coming to life, and in a world like that, there was no room for men like his father to have power.
And in the meantime, he would keep watch over Rita himself, here in the palace, with the support of additional security.
Soon he would have the kind of obligation in the world that he would be willing to die for. He would not allow any harm to come to it.
But she didn’t have to worry about any of that now. No, he would make sure she was happy, healthy and well—the most supported pregnant woman on earth. He owed her that much for his part in things, and for the fact that she was the future mother of his child.
Lifting from his kneel, he rose, loosening his shirt and sliding into bed beside her.
Her body was stiff, resentments and tension still lingering in her muscles. He had done this to her. Fortunately, since everything else had crumbled around them, he knew a way to make it right.
As if she could sense the shifts in him, she gazed at him, her brown eyes like two deep wells. Her lips were parted, plump and the prettiest pink, and he’d held back and punished them both for so long.
He caught her lips with a growl, and she melted into him, and he set about easing her stress one of the best ways he knew how.
She would have questions tomorrow, and he would not only have answers, he would have come up with entirely new ways to keep her out of his heart.
For both of their sakes.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN