She hadn’t been nervous in the house before, but tonight she kept wondering if someone was keeping watch inside the house, too. The sense that eyes were watching her was disturbing, almost spooky, and for the first time she wondered if the place had ghosts.
Her nightshirt provided minimal cover. It was just a beige T-shirt she had torn the sleeves out of, covering her barely to mid-thigh. If there were men watching, Rosalind thought belatedly, she probably should have put on a robe. But the night air was pleasant on her bare skin, the tile floor was cool under her feet, soothing the lacerations she had got earlier. She went on.
She reached the third courtyard. It was in darkness, no light showing from the study, or the command centre, or whatever it was. She realized by the disappointment she felt that she had unconsciously been hoping to find Najib still there.
So he had decided to sleep somewhere else tonight. Her heart kicked a protest, and she shook her head. Paradise never did last, did it? The story of Adam and Eve, whatever else it was, was a metaphor for humanity’s inability to inhabit perfection for long.
The door had an old-fashioned, wrought metal, latch-type handle, and Rosalind pushed it quietly down, trying not to make any noise. She didn’t want some secret service type mistaking her for a house-breaker and giving her a karate chop to the neck or something.
It didn’t give, and she tried again. Locked, she realized, and her heart thumped. Najib must be still in there, after all. She went to the window, but that was closed, too, though she was pretty sure no one ever closed the internal windows or locked the doors at night.
Rosalind heaved a sigh of irritation and turned away. She stepped straight into the embrace of the man standing behind her, and her heart jumped into another rhythm as his hands grasped her arms and held her away,
“What are you doing here?” Najib asked in a hoarse, strained voice, as if he was going through agony. “What do you want?”
Fourteen
His presence was enough to let her know that it was him she had come after. Whatever their arguments and misunderstandings of the day, she didn’t want him sleeping in some other bed. Her body was softening with the grateful memory of delight. She needed him.
“I—I wanted a book.”
“A book,” he repeated tonelessly.
His upper body was bare—he was wearing only a pair of flowing white cotton trousers. She lifted her hands and pressed them against his chest. His skin was warm. She began to melt, like butter in the pan.
“Why haven’t you come to bed?” she asked.
His breath kicked in his chest, and she smiled. Then his hands were tight on her arms, pushing her away.
“No, Rosalind,” he said. “No, this will not work tonight. Tell me why you are trying to get into this room. Who do you want to call?”
His voice was a rasping whisper. He sounded like a dying man. He had watched and waited, knowing that tonight she would make some attempt. He had known, and still he had hoped it would be otherwise.
“Call?” she murmured, reaching for him. Why was he pushing her away, when she wanted to hold him and be held? She was lonely and hungry for him, she had had a terrible fright today, why wasn’t he comforting her?
“Hold me,” she said. “Najib, please hold me.”
His arms were trembling with the effort not to wrap her against him. She reached for him again, and his grip weakened helplessly. Sensing it, she smiled and lifted her arms, sliding her hands up his chest and around his neck.
“Love me,” she whispered, and was amazed to see an expression of agony cross his face.
“And what of tomorrow?” he whispered, through his teeth.
She didn’t understand him, but she was past caring. “Never mind tomorrow,” she pleaded. “Love me tonight.”
He understood that he was lost. He bent and swung her up in his arms, and turned to trace the way back to the bedroom.
One last time. He would give her one last time to remember. A night of lovemaking she would remember and sigh for, all the rest of her life. And wish that she had been true.
The bedroom was as she had left it, one lamp glowing softly by the bed, the sheet flung aside. It seemed a closed, protected world all their own.
He set her on her feet and drew the T-shirt up over her head in one continuous movement. Rosalind gasped once to find herself so suddenly naked, and then again, when she saw the passionate torment in his face.
“Naj!” she cried softly.
“Yes,” he said through his teeth, “yes, you will cry my name tonight. I will remember the taste of you, Rosalind, and how you called my name.”
His hand caught in her hair, and drew her head back, her face up for his kiss. She felt him tremble, and the thought that he was struggling not to lose control ignited her. His mouth came down on hers with wild hunger, his arm going around her back to press her naked, sensitive breasts against his chest.
Heat burned all through her, her blood was molten gold pouring down all the pathways of sensation. His hand was around her waist, half lifting her off the ground, her body bent backwards till she was dizzy, his tongue driving hungrily inside the moist hollow of her mouth.
He moved her just as he wished, tilting her head, drawing her breasts against the roughness of his chest hair, pressing her lower body against his hard, aroused flesh, back and forth, melting her into readiness.
She reached for his powerfully aroused sex, but he knocked her hand away. “No, my beauty,” he said, with a harshness she did not understand. “Tonight is all for you.”
Then she was being lowered through space as he kissed her throat, her breasts, her stomach, and she felt the cool tile floor under her feet, the bed under her thighs and back.
His hands moved down her body and came to rest on her thighs, and he dragged them apart and knelt on the floor between her knees. She sighed.
“Yes,” he said, “yes, I know you like it, Rosalind. I give it to you to remember.”
She felt the heat of his breath as he spoke, and had time for no more than a gasp of anticipation before the hot damp of his mouth pressed against her. He had learned what she liked in the days and nights past, and now he was ruthless with the knowledge he had gained. His tongue, his hands, his lips, were flames dancing over her, and she was helpless to do anything save accept the pleasure, flowing over her in drowning waves of liquid fire.
“Naj!” she cried, each time her body trembled in honeyed release. “Naj!”
And on and on, over and over, till she was weak.
At last he stood up, dragging the white cotton shalwar down his legs and off. Then she was being pulled up, her legs trembling, too weak. She would have protested that she could not stand, but he turned her to face away from him, and pushed her forward to bend down onto the high bed. And she was filled anew with sensation and anticipation.
Behind her, his knee pushed her knees wide apart, and now she was all open to him as his hands stroked her with rough, urgent, thrilling caress—thighs, hips, sex. His fingers gripped her hips, and the hungry pressure of him came tantalizingly between her thighs, once, twice. Then his hand cupped her sex to hold her for his thrust, and he entered that moist, hungry pathway of sensation with one long, strong stroke that took him to the hilt in her and sent almost unbearable sensation to every part of her. She cried out her shocked surprise from an open throat, and felt him swell to new hardness inside her.
He began to thrust into her, his hold on her hips drawing her back hard against him so that each thrust went to its depth, and this pleasure was so profound it was almost pain. She cried aloud with every thrust, and excitement mounted in her until mists shrouded her brain and she no longer knew where she was, or what she cried to him. Every stroke was too much, was not enough, was building to an explosion that she both feared and craved as he pushed his way in again and again past the million nerve ends of her being.
One hand released her hip, and then she felt his touch on that bud of nerves that was her centre, stroking
, teasing, circling as the thrusts went on and on, sending sensation like fire roaring down her veins, across her skin, into her brain. She called, and begged, and cried to him, drunk with sensual delight and torment, until it suddenly exploded in her, and in him, spiralling out from somewhere deeper than herself to touch every greedy part of her. Then she sobbed his name again, and moaned, and the blackness enveloped her in waves.
He was already hard again, and lifting himself away, pushed her to lie on her back. He bent over her impatiently, pulling her legs apart, and she cried weakly at this new assault, “Oh, Naj, I don’t think I can take any more.”
“No more?” he growled. “No more? But you must have more, Rosalind, so that you will remember tonight always!”
Then he held her head in his two hands, bending over her. “Look at me, Rosalind!” he commanded, and obediently her eyes focussed and she smiled drunkenly up into dark, passionate, tormented eyes.
“Say my name.”
The passion in his voice melted her all over again. Never in her life had she seen, or felt, such passionate hunger.
“Naj!” she said, and on the word he drove home in her, in one hard, powerful stroke. “Naj!” she cried again, and he heard how, in spite of being so sated, the need was building in her.
“No more?” he said, his hands tangling in her hair. He pounded into her unmercifully, and again pleasure built and exploded all around them.
Still it was not enough. His body surged into hunger again. He drew her up, lifted her high, and fitted himself to her again. She wrapped her legs around his waist, and her arms around his neck, and he carried her to the wall and leaned her back against it, his hands under her hips, his body locked with hers.
She reached out for the carafe of water on the table, and splashed some into her palm, wiping the cooling liquid over her hot face. Poured more, and wiped it over Naj’s face, his chest.
He smiled. “More,” he said. Obediently she splashed water on his chest, making him grunt, and over her own, over stomach and thighs, till the jug was empty. He bent his head to drink the water from her breast, and ripples of delicate sensation flowed to join the rivers already rushing through her.
He carried her along to the window, pulled open the lattice. A slight wind blew in, and they rested there, still conjoined, skin damp, letting it cool them as their bodies ground together. Outside the moon was high, casting ghostly white light over the world.
He cupped the mound of her breast in one hand, and kissed it in the moonlight, as somewhere, once, a worshipper had kissed the white marble breast of a goddess. Then he turned back to the bed, laid her down on it, moved up over her, and began again.
Everything was black. She had gone beyond the senses, beyond endurance, into a world where she was a tool for the expression of sexual pleasure, and she must submit to its will. Images of ancient statues occurred to her mind unbidden, the god and the goddess locked in sacred congress, and she understood them for the first time.
“Naj!” she whispered, for he, too, was an instrument of the Will.
He was above her, lifting and pounding into that seat of pleasure. Crying out with every thrust, so deep in her it seemed to reach her soul.
He knew that he was a fool. In his determination to drive her over the edge, he had only brought himself there. It was too deep in him now. She was a part of him forever, though he had intended it the other way. He would never forget her, or this night, as long as he lived.
He had to know. He could not go on in ignorance, loving her more and more deeply, hoping that she was worthy of his trust but not daring to trust. It would drive him mad, loving her like this, and yet so tormented by his fears.
“Rosalind,” he said, his hand locking in her hair, his voice desperate, as he pushed helplessly in. “Rosalind, tell me the truth. You must tell me! Tell me! Tell me!”
She heard him through the cloud of delight that comes with complete submission to Will. Heard nothing but his voice in the raw, high cry of abandonment and pleasure, and it rasped along her nerves and added its weight to her joy.
He had lost control now. His body surged in her, and he knew this was the ultimate pleasure and there would be no holding back, there would be nothing left. He leaned down and pressed his lips to hers, and as it rocked through him, cried the anguish of unbearable pleasure against her mouth.
She cried his name then, exactly as he had intended. But he also cried hers.
“Approach,” the sultan commanded.
The portrait drew her. She came nearer, while the old sultan’s eyes followed her. He lifted his hand, and she bent and kissed the ring.
Her mouth burned from the contact. She drew back, staring at the pink stone. She stared closer, closer.
“Oh!” Rosalind exclaimed aloud.
Rosalind awoke aching in every muscle, but with her cells so stuffed with honey it didn’t matter. Feeling his hand stroke her spine, she purred in gratitude and rolled over. Najib was lying on his side, his elbow propping up his head, watching her. The sheet was draped over his hips, leaving his powerful chest and arms naked for her delectation.
There was a frown behind his dark gaze.
“Good morning,” she murmured. His hand cupped her breast, trailed up to her lower lip, where his thumb first brushed her, and then his mouth.
“Tell me, Rosalind,” he begged, and it was as if the words were torn from him against his will.
She closed her eyes against the wave of feeling, and knew that she was safe. She wanted to say it—they were words it seemed she had been wanting to say to him for a whole lifetime. I love you.
She heaved a sigh, and a smile played across her lips. “What do you want to hear?”
“The truth!” he said violently. “I cannot bear to live with lies another day!”
Rosalind gasped. “What?”
Bitterness rose up in his throat as he looked at her. Only now, loving Rosalind, did he understand how pale had been his feeling for Maysa. At the time he had believed the confusion of guilt and desire must be love, but now he understood that the pain he had felt when he walked in to find her in bed with another man had been the pain of bruised pride.
Rosalind’s betrayal of him would cut him in two. Losing her, he would lose half himself.
And how much more power she had to betray him than Maysa had had. Maysa, with her simple greed, heartlessly turning everything in life to her own advantage, was a baby compared to the games Rosalind must be playing with them all.
He had learned it all too late. He was lost now. He should never have agreed to this charade. His own weakness had been clear from the outset. What misplaced vanity had allowed him to believe he could live in such close confines with this woman and remain aloof?
Jamshid had already proved her powers. Grasping at the straw of her pregnancy to bind Rosalind to him, against every family duty…leaving her his fortune, the jewel that was his only because he was his grandfather’s heir…these were the acts of a man besotted. Naj himself should have seen this as a warning.
Now she was playing for some deeper prize, but although he could guess, he could not be certain what she really wanted. Perhaps she was only afraid.
Some part of him wanted to believe that he could turn her from her course. That his clear sexual hold over her would also give him some hold over her emotions, even if it could never equal the power of her hold over him.
He leaned to kiss her as she gazed at him aghast, but she turned her face away.
“Tell me!”
“You said that last night. Tell me the truth, you said. I remember.”
She sat up, her brain buzzing, pulling the sheet to her breasts. “You were trying to get me into a sexual frenzy in the hopes that I would confess in the heat of the moment? Is that what you were trying to do?” She closed her eyes as thoughts took shape. “You were just trying to—this has all been an attempt to manipulate me, hasn’t it? All of it. You’ve been using sex—pretending to be attached to Sam…acting just lik
e a spy! Are you a spy?”
He gazed at her.
“Your men, you said,” she recalled, her heart clenching with painful spasms. “My God, a spy! And as Cup Companion—I suppose you actually run the secret service or something!”
“So you know that much,” he observed levelly. “How do you know?”
“You think I got the news from Ghasib?” Rosalind shrank away from him.
“Tell me the truth,” he begged.
“You know what? You’re such a cheat yourself you wouldn’t know the truth if it lay down in front of you and offered its belly. I have told you—and this is the last time I am ever going to say it, so listen carefully— I have told you nothing but the truth from start to finish. I have never lied to you. And if you had any humanity in you at all, you would know it.”
“What you have told me defies science.”
“Maybe it does. Sometimes, when you accept what seems to defy science, you come upon truth, don’t you? You of all people should know that!”
“Should I?”
“A plane defies science unless you understand the science that puts it up in the air,” she said. “A bumblebee defies science every time it flies, and I guess it will go on doing so even if no one ever discovers the science that proves that a bumblebee is capable of flying. Mohammad defied science, too, didn’t he, when he split the moon in two for all those people who couldn’t believe?”
“Are you saying Sam’s birth was a miracle?”
“No, no miracle. I’m merely pointing out that when it suits you, you accept things that defy science. Either because of personal observation, or because of faith. Your personal observation of me could have told you I was telling the truth, and if you had even a little faith in me as a person, that would have told you, too.”
She was not making the best logic, but still his raised eyebrow angered her.
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