“So help me, Reigna,” he growled through clenched teeth. “If you’d stoop low enough to try to pass my baby off as Jasiri’s, you’d better prepare yourself for a battle. Because I’m coming, and I’m bringing hell with me.”
Aléx stood in front of the floor-to-ceiling window that made up the fourth wall in the conference room of Gemini Queens, Reigna’s cosmetics company. He’d had few direct dealings with her with respect to commerce. He had people to handle the dirty details of business. There was no reason for him to have muddied the waters in that respect.
His pulse beat loudly in his ears as he waited for Reigna to join him for what she believed was a matter of her company’s business dealings with his country.
They had business to deal with, certainly. But it didn’t have a damn thing to do with commerce.
“Your Majesty, thank you so much for stopping by to speak with me while we’re both in town.”
He turned around, bracing himself for seeing her in person after their last time together. Unbridled anger raced through his vessels like poison when he thought of what she might have done. But he also feared the tangible chemistry that had put them in this situation to begin with might be there too.
When he laid eyes on her in a fitted knee-length dress, her bump just beginning to show and all her curves on display, attraction never made an appearance.
He shook his head, not understanding what was going on inside him. He’d obsessed over this woman for months. Now, except for the notion that she might be the mother of his child, there was nothing there between them.
She smiled and offered her hand to him. He didn’t take it. He was so busy trying to figure out what the hell was going on, touching her seemed unwise.
“Reigna, let us dispense with the niceties of royals meeting. I think you know why I’m here, and things will work out best for everyone involved if you’re honest with me.”
“I’m not sure what you’re referring to, King Aléxandros.”
That was the second time she’d called him by his title, and it stirred something in him as he remembered her spread out beneath him, wild with pleasure as he forbade her from calling him anything other than his name.
It was on the tip of his tongue to correct her. But as he looked at her, the pull of fire and need that had been there before wasn’t now.
“Then I’ll be blunt.” She lifted her eyes in anticipation of Aléxandros’s next words. “Am I the father of the baby you’re carrying, and are you attempting to pass it off as your husband’s?”
Her jaw dropped, and her brown eyes turned to steel as she gazed at him. She took a step back and moved her hand to her wrist, where her smartwatch rested elegantly against her skin. He grabbed her arm, preventing her from touching what he was certain was some kind of security alarm.
“Uh-uh, Queen Reigna. I’ve got one of those too. Let’s say we settle this before you bring in the cavalry. Is it possible I’m the father of the child you’re carrying?”
She snatched her arm from him, anger burning in her gaze as she put distance between them.
“Who the hell do you think you are, asking me something like that?”
His jaw tightened, making him worry that he might crack the bones there as he pried it open to speak.
“I’m the man you begged to pleasure you exactly four months ago. So I’ll ask again. Am I the father of your child?”
Something sparked in her eyes that he couldn’t quite make out. She tilted her head, staring at him as if she was understanding something he wasn’t privy to.
“King Aléxandros, considering my husband is a dark-skinned Black man and you’re of European descent, I think it would bepretty stupid of me to try to pass your baby off as Jasiri’s. This is not your baby.”
Her gaze was steady and her voice calm. Everything about the way she stared at him painted her as the picture of poise and virtue. Everything in her countenance said she was telling him the truth. But the familiar darkness he’d fought so hard to bury in his past wouldn’t let this small kernel of hope die.
Not again…not this time.
“Forgive me if I don’t take the word of the woman who went from one king’s bed to another with such apparent ease.”
She folded her arms as she leaned to one side, jutting out one hip.
“I’m not going to be too many more liars and whores, no matter how prettily you dress up your words. I’ve answered your question. Now get out, before I cause an international incident and throw you out on your ass.”
He knew he was out of line with his insinuations, but the need to know wouldn’t let him curb his tongue.
“This won’t be the last you’ve heard from me, Queen Reigna. If I must sic my lawyers on you and your king to establish paternity, I have no problems with the inevitable scandal that will follow. I don’t think your newly installed king can say the same.”
With that, he took his leave. Reigna Devereaux might have Jasiri wrapped around her finger, but she didn’t hold any power over Aléx…not anymore. If he had to fight for his child, he would. Never again would someone take a child from him without him battling tooth and nail with blood and bone. If Reigna’s child was his, he’d go to hell and back to claim it.
