At the edge of the pool, he held out his hand. She hesitated. “My love,” he said softly.
She slipped off the pattens and got into the water. He didn’t regret his promise of restraint. He would not disgrace them both by allowing the possibility of one of Eglender’s servants interrupting them engaged in something that must be private between them.
“When we are back in England,” he said while he scrubbed his arms without looking at her—anything to take his mind off all the things he wanted to do to her, “I am going to build a Turkish bath at Maralee House.” That remark required a glance in her direction. She was scrubbing her leg, her head tilted toward him. “Perhaps I’ll even hire Turkish servants to staff the addition. What do you think? Shall we have a Turkish bath?”
“That sounds very nice.” She stared into the water, keeping her back turned away.
Foye put a hand on her bare shoulder. He was far, far gone from trying to pretend he didn’t want her or that he wasn’t going to touch her again. He was. As soon as they were private. Just not now, when they were both tired and hungry and nervous with each other with so many things between them unsettled. “You’re so lovely, Sabine. I haven’t told you that near often enough. Nor how much I admire you.”
She looked over her shoulder at him. There were dark circles under her eyes. “Thank you, Foye.”
“What you need,” he said, smiling at her, “is your very own hammam boy.”
She laughed at him.
“At your service,” he said.
He stretched for his bowl and used that to scoop water to get their hair thoroughly wet. When he’d done that, he grabbed her hand and walked with her to the bench where he’d set his bathing supplies. She had none of her own, of course. He put his between them and set himself to washing his hair. Sabine did the same. He adored the way her short hair exposed the line of her throat and shoulders.
When he poured the last basin of water over her hair, she let her head drop back and closed her eyes. She let out a sigh. “Heaven. This is heaven. I’ve been dreaming of a bath forever.”
Foye stared at her bare breasts because he was too damn tired not to. She was lovely beyond words. While he stared he knew deep in his soul that she was the woman with whom he wanted to share his life; there was no question in his mind whatever. He wanted them to be married now. Yesterday. This minute.
She opened her eyes and caught him staring. Foye didn’t bother to pretend he hadn’t been. He no longer cared about trying to keep his reactions subdued. Her cheeks turned pink, but she didn’t look away from him. He ran his fingertips along the underside of one of her breasts. “When we are alone, Sabine, I will adore you properly, I promise. If you’ll let me. If you want me to.”
“Oh, Foye,” she whispered. “What am I to do with you?”
She was so very young in some ways, with so little experience of men in the usual social sense. She had never been given a season, never been presented to men as a marriageable young lady. She’d had no interactions with men to whom he might be compared so that she could be certain she preferred him to anyone else. She had lived her entire life believing she would always be taking care of her uncle.
“Whatever you like,” he said. He was careful to smile so she wouldn’t read more into his reply than she was ready to hear. He picked up his soap and worked up a lather. Between them, they washed the dirt and stink from their bodies. He didn’t see any reason for modesty between them, so he moved aside his pestamel and soaped himself everywhere. He didn’t dare do the same for her; he knew where that would lead, and this was neither the time nor place for that.
While she stayed in the pool, he waded out and propped the kit’s mirror on one of the ledges above the tap that fed water into the basin. Barton would have been astounded that not even a nick marred his cheeks or throat when he was done. He put his razor under the water to clear away the soap and ended with a thorough rinse of his face.
“There,” he said, rubbing his newly smooth chin and checking to see that he’d not missed any spots. “I am as handsome as ever now.”
Sabine didn’t say anything to that, and when he looked over, he saw why. She was fast asleep. Her head rested against the tall marble decorations carved above the next basin and tap, and her rinsing bowl bobbed in the basin beside her. Her hair was partially dry. One curl, part gold, part brown, was damp enough to cling to the side of her cheek. She’d refastened her pestamel around her waist. Drops of water glistened on her skin.
Even though he had touched her body everywhere a man could desire to touch a woman, even though he’d had his mouth on her there, he felt he was seeing Sabine for the first time in his life and falling in love with her like some damn fairy tale in which the monster was redeemed by the maiden. Well. He was a beast, and he was in love with her.
His conviction about the state of his heart left him shaky and uncertain. Had he felt this way about Rosaline? He knew he’d believed he loved her. If anyone had tried to tell him he hadn’t he’d have called him a fool. He had loved Rosaline, that was so. He’d been pleased—no, happy, intensely happy—when she accepted his offer of marriage and had only fallen more deeply in love with her afterward. After they were formally engaged, he’d been faithful to her. A changed man compared to his previous ways. There had been no more mistresses, no more affairs with widows or married women.
But had he ever felt that if something were to happen to Rosaline his life would end? He wasn’t sure. He remembered the giddy happiness of loving Rosaline. And how little of himself he had shared with her. Because, he knew, to his shame, that she had not been his equal. Sabine was. And he was quite sure that without Sabine he’d be destroyed. Indeed, he had loved Rosaline, but he loved Sabine in an entirely different way. More deeply. More dangerously.
Foye returned to his belongings, bundled them up, and went to Sabine. He knelt at her side. “Sabine?” he said. She didn’t respond, so he touched her shoulder—God, her skin was soft—and gave her a gentle shake. “Sabine?”
Her eyes twitched under her closed lids.
“Sabine,” he said softly. She opened her eyes, but he could see she wasn’t fully awake. “Sabine, wake up.”
She lifted her head and blinked slowly. “Foye?”
She needed him, he thought. Whatever reservations she had about him, she did need him. She was alone, with no family to worry about what happened to her, no one to keep her safe. Her eyes focused and something in him twisted painfully when he saw how she fought to wake herself up. “My goodness. I fell asleep.”
“Come, Sabine,” he said. He was proud of her and all she had endured without complaint. “It’s time we went upstairs.”
She more or less succeeded in staying awake from sheer force of will. He tucked away his sexual response to her as he picked her up and carried her into the cool room. There, he wrapped a towel around her hair and two more around her shoulders and waist and settled her on a divan while he went back to fetch their clothes and bath items.
When he returned, she was awake and sitting cross-legged on the divan combing out what was left of her hair. She had put on her shirwal but left the towels covering the rest of her. Pity, that. She worked a comb through her hair, then switched to the other side, beginning on the tangles there. When she was done, she set her comb very precisely on the table beside her.
“I need help getting dressed,” she said.
“Of course.” This was accomplished quickly enough. Once they’d bound her bosom again, his primary contribution was to hand her the various parts of her costume. She was all too soon Pathros.
“I’ll arrange to get you more suitable clothes in the morning,” he said while she adjusted her headdress. “Perhaps Eglender knows someone whose wife or daughter is your size.” He threw aside his towel and began dressing. He looked at her sideways while he wrestled to get his shirt right-side out. “I’ll see about finding a ship to get us home. Tomorrow. Or later today. I’ve lost track of the days. After we’ve slept.�
� He glared at his shirt; one of the sleeves was now wrong-side out. How had he not noticed that? “I can’t think straight anymore.”
She left the divan. “Do you need help, effendi?”
Foye let out a short, hard sigh. “Hell, yes.”
She took his shirt from him, and he ducked his head for her so they could get the thing on him. They succeeded, eventually, in getting him dressed, while he did his best to ignore the intimacy of her hands on him, touching him, shaking out his clothes, smoothing them out, buttoning, fastening, even tying a very decent knot in his cravat. Hell, he even put a hand on her shoulder for balance when she bent to get his stockings on his feet.
He couldn’t wait to get her upstairs and both of them undressed.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
July 5, 1811
About half past seven in the morning. Bayt Salem, in the foothills above Iskenderun. An upstairs room with carved cedar cabinets and a painted ceiling. A finch sat in one of the high windows trying to convince a lady (inch to visit his most excellent perch.
Foye rested his weight on one forearm and looked down at Sabine. It was sometime in the morning since there was enough light for him to see despite the room lamps being out. She was naked and felt remarkably good tucked against his body. Tenderness welled up in him because she was Sabine and the woman who made his heart whole. He would take care of her. No matter what happened or how she did or didn’t feel about him.
She lay on her side, facing him, her hands up close to her face, head bowed toward his chest. His uppermost leg was draped over her lower body. The color on her face, although lighter than it had been, remained darker than the rest of her skin, which was immensely and beautifully pale. So very English of her. Her hair was, of course, still a mutilated walnut streaked with gold.
Sabine, still asleep, moved closer to him, burrowing her face against his chest, and he was touched that she sought him out. He caressed her shoulder with the tip of his finger, tracing a circle on her very pale skin. She made a soft sound in the back of her throat, and Foye leaned down and kissed her shoulder. She smelled of attar of roses from the scent bottles left on hand in the cool room, and he was viscerally reminded of how he’d felt when he was inside her, when he was looking into her face, sweat between their joined bodies, and her looking at him as if he were the handsomest man she’d ever seen. There weren’t many women who looked at him like that.
All in all, he was very much at peace with what they must do. He ought to be more bothered by his predicament than he was; marrying a too-young woman when he’d been so certain he did not want to marry at all. He would be doing well by them both if he could make Sabine content in their marriage. And himself. He kissed her earlobe. He looked forward to returning to England to settle into a country life where the most excitement they were likely to face was whether they would walk to church on Sunday or drive.
“Mm,” she said without opening her eyes. “Foye.” She stretched slowly, luxuriously, and his belly tightened with desire for her as her body slid against his. “Is it morning already?”
How sublime it was to hold Sabine in his arms, to feel her against him and know the woman he loved returned the emotion and more. He wouldn’t trade a single day with Sabine for anything. None of the heart-pounding fear, none of the days fighting his feelings for her. Not a minute of any day since he’d walked into Anthony Lucey’s parlor and seen her sitting there.
He shifted himself over her, only partially so that he did not crush her, and slid down to kiss one of her breasts. The minute he did, his cock went full-on hard for her. When his mouth closed over her nipple, she moaned softly and arched into him. She wasn’t, after all, despite her small size, the sort of woman who did not like a large and rather beastly looking man. As he recalled, she liked him very well indeed.
Her arms wrapped around his shoulders, and Foye felt himself slip away, far from anything that was right or proper or gentlemanly, and into a world where all that mattered was Sabine, who loved him.
She adjusted herself, and he watched her eyes open and focus on him. He was poised to enter her, but didn’t yet. He wanted to be sure she was ready for him and that he had a firm grip on his need for her.
“Foye,” she whispered in a low, desirous whisper. She pushed at his chest, and he submitted himself to whatever fancy she had in mind. He ended up on his back with Sabine over him. Her hair fell forward as she leaned down to his chest, tiny curls almost as unmanageable as his own. Her tongue came out and swept over his nipple, and he felt the pull of that all the way to his balls.
She slid one hand along his rib cage and down to his hip and then across to his aching cock, and all the while she was kissing his body, his chest, his nipples, then his belly, and the, oh hell yes, the inside of his thighs.
“Jesus God, Sabine,” he whispered when her tongue dipped into his navel while her hand was being very bold beneath. She cupped his bollocks in her palm, and by then he wasn’t thinking of much besides whether she was going to take him in her mouth and whether he would go out of his mind before she did. When she put the matter to rest, Foye thrust his pelvis toward her and buried his fingers in her hair. “I am your slave,” he said while he still bad something of his wits about him. “Your abject slave.” Her tongue touched the rim of his cock. “God, help me, yes. Like that.”
He was a damned lucky bastard no matter what because, as it turned out, she was able to take a good deal of him into her mouth, and he couldn’t see any sign that she minded this in the least. She proceeded to send him mad with pleasure. Her fingers, too, stayed quite busy, touching, stroking.
He was quickly at the point of climax and trying to delay the inevitable.
“Sabine,” he said. “Sabine, I want to finish inside you. God, please.”
She stopped but not before he had to exercise every ounce of his willpower not to let himself fall, and even then, be held her tightly because for some time he was in danger of a single touch from her dropping him off the edge. “Did you like that?” she asked.
“Hell, yes.” At some point, he thought, he would have to relearn how to control his language around her. At some point.
“Mm,” she said. She still had her head by his parts, one hand on his thigh, the other on his belly. She had a calculating look on her face, as if she’d been taking mental notes of his reaction, and the thought that she was analyzing what they’d just done, what he’d just let her do, wound him tighter yet. Where might a mind like hers end up on the subject of his pleasure? “Perhaps I’ll do that again,” she said, and hell if she didn’t run her tongue along her lower lip. “I want to see you lose control. I want to know what you look like when that happens.”
“No,” he said, very serious now. He pulled her onto his chest. It was crucial to him that she understand he would never lose control with her. Ever. They would have a very controlled and proper marriage. None of this overlarge emotion that had plagued them. “You would not like that at all.” He buried his hands in her hair and summoned a smile. “A great beast like me, Sabine? I’d terrify you.”
“You wouldn’t, Foye.” She gave a tight shake of her head. “I don’t want you to hold back.” She reached up and pressed a hand to his cheek. “I won’t break. I can promise you that.”
He rolled her underneath him but kept her on her stomach. He kissed his way down her spine before he slid a hand underneath her hips and brought her up so that, with him on his knees and holding her hips with both hands, he entered her from behind. “Is this all right?” he whispered. “Am I too wicked for you?”
“Foye.” She gave a soft moan and pressed back against him.
That was certainly an encouraging development, wasn’t it? He watched his cock disappear inside her, felt the slick tightness of her pressing around him when he was in as far as he could get. He held her hard against him, working himself in her, dying.
Someone, some godforsaken, addlepated fool, knocked lightly on the door. Once and then a second time. Someone said
something in Arabic.
Sabine went still. He bent over her, one arm holding his weight, and careful not to let his torso touch her back. He got his breath under control.
“Don’t even think of stopping this,” he whispered. “Not until we are both quite done.” He pushed back and wrapped the fingers of one hand around her hips. He held her tight against his groin while he circled his pelvis. “Pathros,” he said in a voice made rough with passion, “tell whoever it is that I am not fit company yet, but that you will soon make me so.”
She called out something in Arabic, but only a word or two, which was not enough for her to have said anything that would prevent someone from opening the door and discovering Foye was breaking the tenets of his faith and the Mohammedans’, too. At least with her naked, there would be no doubt that his conduct was with a woman rather than his young dragoman.
There was a response from the other side of the door.
“Tell him the rest, Sabine.” He kept his fingers on her soft, soft skin while he continued moving in her. He had to put his other hand on the floor to keep his balance and hold his weight off her while be put his mouth by her ear. “I am not to be disturbed just now. You, personally, will see to my every need and have me downstairs shortly.”
She said something again, several sentences of which he understood not one word. Whoever was on the other side of the door said another word or two, and he and Sabine stayed quiet enough to hear him walking away. He got an arm around her, fingers stroking her hard until he felt the beginning of her climax. Foye pulled out of her and put himself on his back.
“Foye,” she whispered when he was inside her again with her on top. “Foye.”
“You are delicious,” he said. He had the presence of mind to keep his voice low.
“I love you,” she said. She put her palms on his chest and worked her hips on him while he put a hand over her nether hair and stroked her. He wanted this to last, this time when they were both at more leisure than they’d ever been. “Foye,” she said. He heard the strain her voice.
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