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apart her chest, Carmen heard him say, “I won’t take her away.”
    Suddenly there was silence. And darkness.
    From a timeless void, sounds returned. Blood drumming in her ears to a sluggish rhythm. Another set of heartbeats booming there. Slow, steady, powerful. Coming from the living granite wall her ear was pressed against.
    The rest of her senses coalesced. Smell, soaking in the scent of virility and vigor. Touch, transmitting the luxury of cashmere and silk and power. Orientation, placing her in his embrace, her head on his chest, her breasts molded against his upper abdomen, his arms around her back, her thighs. Then her sight focused on the fierceness drawing his winged eyebrows together, chiseling his features deeper, clouding the translucence of his golden eyes.
    Such intent. He was carrying her to yet another session of delirium and ecstasy. The tension that had started to gather in her limbs melted into the enervation of expectation, her body readying itself for his onslaught, his possession…
    But as each of his strides transmitted their effortless power to her bones, realization seeped through, until everything crashed back into her awareness.
    This wasn’t the past. He wasn’t carrying her to his bed, or anywhere else where he’d ravish her with pleasure. This was now. In the oppressive present.
    She might have imagined the words he’d said pledging he wouldn’t take Mennah from her.
    She convulsed in his arms from the resurrected dread. His scowl deepened, and his hold firmed as he shouldered open her bedroom door. “Be still. You passed out.”
    “Put me down. I’m all right now.”
    “I’ll put you down on your bed. B’Ellahi, quit struggling.”
    She shook her head, crushing his lapels in spastic fingers.
    “You said you w-won’t…?”
    He didn’t answer her amputated question, deposited her on her bed with utmost care, leaning over her with arms flanking her head. His eyes swept down her length as they’d always done, as if he were struggling with the decision about which part of her to ravish first.
    When he had her quaking, he swept back up to her eyes, drawled, “I won’t take Mennah away from you, Carmen. I’m not the monster you insist on painting me.”
    “I never thought you were a monster.”
    “No? The man you claim to think would have forced you to abort your baby, or would take her from you to banish her somewhere, make her live her life unknown and illegitimate so he’d secure his position? If this isn’t a monster, what is?”
    “I’m sorry, Farooq. So sorry.” She clung to his forearms as he began to withdraw, desperate to make him understand. He extricated himself as if from slime. She shuddered. “I was so afraid…it was too huge, I couldn’t afford a margin of error, could only consider worst-case scenarios. I was afraid you’d think I’d lied on purpose, meaning to compromise you. I didn’t know you long enough to know how you’d react to perceived betrayals or threats. And then it wasn’t about you, or me. It was about her. Everything is about her. She’s everything to me. Everything. ”
    Emotions she couldn’t define blasted from his eyes, flaying her. It was a minute before he had mercy on her. He wrenched his gaze away, razing her single bed, her room, instead. She felt him wrestling his temper under control and began to realize the depth of his affront, his fury.
    Everything he’d said was the opposite of what she’d imagined. It shriveled her to know she’d taken extreme actions that had hurt him on so many levels….
    No. They had hurt him on only one level—where Mennah was concerned. He suffered anger that she’d hid the baby, offense that she’d dared fear him concerning any child, even one conceived without his will and knowledge. What they’d shared was not worth mentioning except to reference her exit act, which he’d made clear had been so pathetic he’d seen right through it.
    Suddenly a gurgle tore through the silence. One of