by Emma Darcy
‘We have little time, and much to do,’ Gaia prompted. ‘A design such as this has to be fitted. I have brought my best invisible stitcher with me. The art is to get the best result with the minimum of interference to the natural flowing of the drapery.
‘Legend has it that Solomon was so taken by the Queen of Sheba, he granted her all she desired,’ Gaia continued. ‘Your entrance to the sheikh’s quarters must effect the same result so that legend can repeat itself.’
‘I hope so,’ Amanda said fervently.
‘Come with me,’ Gaia demanded, leading Amanda into the next room where her assistants waited with the necessary materials for Amanda’s requirements. ‘My art must remain a secret,’ Gaia explained, closing the door on the harem women.
Amanda’s robe was quickly removed. She was draped in shimmering blues and greens, the material measured for the length needed for the design. Busy hands fluttered around her, tucking, adjusting, smoothing.
Gaia pointed to a bolt of midnight blue silk taffeta. ‘You will require a cloak. This will be most suitable. We shall attach a hood so that your initial presentation will be one of hidden mystery.’
Amanda eagerly agreed to the idea. ‘Who pays for all of this?’ she asked a little nervously.
‘No...o...o problem. I will invoice the palace.’
More crimes, Amanda thought, but she had no choice but to put herself completely into Gaia’s hands. She needed all the help she could get.
Under Gaia’s private ministrations, Amanda found the time flying all too rapidly. In between fittings of the veil and the cloak she attended to the rest of her appearance. She bathed and had her hair washed and dried and brushed until it shone and felt like silk. The harem women persuaded her to have her body rubbed with a lotion that made her skin glow. Her nails were manicured and varnished an opalescent pink. She eschewed exotic make-up in favour of a subtle highlighting of her eyes and a lip gloss that matched the colour of her nails.
‘What of the dance?’ Gaia asked. ‘Do you need instruction?’
It was clearly in Gaia’s interests that Amanda did not let the designer down by failing in other areas.
‘I have a plan,’ Amanda answered, projecting a confidence she didn’t really feel. She knew there simply weren’t enough hours to turn her into a skilled dancer, no matter how masterly the instruction. What happened between her and Xa Shiraq would depend on a dance of the mind and heart.
Midnight approached.
The veil was a triumph of erotica by the time Gaia finished arranging it to emphasise and enhance Amanda’s curves. Amanda had never thought of herself as a femme fatale but she certainly began to see what had induced King Solomon to dally with the Queen of Sheba. There was a definite art to looking and feeling sensual and seductive.
The midnight blue cloak was carefully lowered over her shoulders so as not to disarrange the effect of the veil. Her hair was gathered back and hidden by the hood which formed a shadowy frame for her face. Amanda practised undoing the fastening at her throat so she could open it in one fluid movement.
I’m ready, she told herself. As ready as I’ll ever be.
She took several deep breaths.
Her nerves were playing havoc with her stomach. Her nipples had tightened into hard little buds. Her thighs were aquiver. She was sure her blood had turned to water.
The clock ticked on.
Near midnight her escort arrived to take her to the sheikh. Her attendants’ well wishes rang hollowly in her ears. Gaia accompanied her to the door that led out of the harem. ‘My princess...my queen...’ she whispered, a last benediction that Amanda desperately hoped was prophetic.
With her heart pounding a painful yearning for everything to turn out right, Amanda stepped out of the harem and moved towards her fateful encounter with Xa Shiraq.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
THE doors softly closed behind her. Amanda stood in a circle of light cast by two wall-lamps. The rest of the room receded into darkness. She was spotlit as she had been in their original meeting at the Oasis Hotel in Fisa. It made her feel like a rabbit trapped in the headlights of a car with nowhere to escape.
Where was he?
Music was playing. Soft, romantic music.
In front of her was a magnificent room thickly carpeted in royal blue, with rich furnishings in the same colour combined with white and gold...deeply cushioned sofas in velvet and silk brocade, beautifully grained marble tables, exotic lamps, gold urns holding luxurious plants, exquisite vases from which trailed arrangements of tiny white flowers.
Xabian jasmine.
The scent was unmistakable, stirring Amanda’s senses, arousing a tingle of anticipation, soothing her fears. Her pulse quickened. Surely it meant he wanted her to be excited. Or was he teasing her with what could have been?
At the far end of the room was a row of high, graceful arches. Beyond them was total darkness.
‘Do you call that a veil?’
The mocking question had a cutting edge to it that sliced into Amanda’s assurance in her appearance. So much for an air of mystery!
Her trembling hands went to the fastening at her throat. With the one fluid motion she had practised, the cloak parted. She pushed back the hood then tossed the long coverall from her shoulders. Her hair dropped like a waterfall of spun silk, caressing the bare skin around her collarbones. She held her hands apart as if in supplication.
‘Do you want other men to see me like this?’ she asked softly.
She heard the voluble intake of his breath.
Her gaze swung to the source of the sound. His tall, lithe body was framed in the last arch on the right-hand side of the room. He was clothed in a pure white robe and headdress, the black and gold coiled ‘iqal circling his head like a crown. He looked every inch the formidable ruler of Xabia.
Amanda took a few steps away from the circlet of light to merge with her own shadows. It suddenly seemed important to meet him on equal terms, person to person, regardless of dress and position.
His black eyes were hidden but Amanda could feel them riveted on her, burning with intensity.
‘If the beauty of your mind reflected the beauty of your body I would love you for an eternity.’ There was a curl of contempt in his voice as he tried to vanquish the feelings she was arousing in him.
Amanda knew he was affected, deeply affected by her. But he didn’t believe in her, she thought despairingly. Not in her words, her love, her need for him.
He gave a derisive laugh. ‘Perhaps it was appropriate that you came wrapped in darkness...a phantom of the night. It hides what is best not seen.’
He was trying to negate what he felt, wish it into nonexistence. Amanda knew she had to reach out to him before he set himself irrevocably on a path that would turn him away from her forever.
‘I’m as human as you are,’ she said quietly. ‘You know it. You’ve felt it. I didn’t come here because you ordered me to. I came because I wanted to. I wanted to be with a man who has aroused passions in me that can never be forgotten. I wanted to...’
‘Enough!’ The tortured command was driven from his throat by forces he could no longer master.
He said nothing more. He stood utterly still.
Amanda bravely held his gaze, willing him to remember she had chosen to go with him and be with him wherever he led, not knowing he meant to reveal the crystal caves to her.
It seemed that the very air between them thickened and thinned with the sheer force of feeling that flowed and swirled in turbulent currents from one to the other. Amanda sensed a mental shift in him, a decision made or a barrier moved aside.
His gaze dropped from hers, gathering a different intensity as it ran slowly over her body, touching every part, heating her blood, sensitising her skin, making her breasts ache with a swollen heaviness, brushing her nipples into taut peaks, circling her stomach with an erotic sensation that arrowed down to the centre of her womanhood, stirring the warm moistness of desire.
He moved.
It was as though he drifted along high-tension wires that were strung between them, each step a tug on her heart, a tremor quaking through her body, a wild exhilaration thrilling her mind. His eyes feasted on her, drawing on her innermost being, wanting her to be all he desired.
‘Dance for me,’ he commanded.
Amanda thrust her breasts forward against the flimsy silk chiffon, wanting to feel the imprint of his hands upon them. She swayed her hips in rhythm with the chords of the Eastern music, conscious of the veil sliding and shimmering with every slow, undulating movement. She felt sensual. She was sensual.
‘Dance with me,’ she invited, holding out her arms to him, her voice throbbing with intense emotion and the deeply felt need to be once more taken into his embrace.
‘Never!’ he said, halting several paces away from her. ‘You twist and turn as it suits you. Prove to me you can keep your word. Dance as you said you would.’
Amanda fought against letting this further evidence of his mistrust hurt her. He didn’t want it to be this way. She was sure he didn’t. ‘I thought it would give you more pleasure,’ she appealed, swaying to the music in seductive invitation.
He looked at her with hard, scornful pride. ‘Do you know nothing of our culture? For centuries, milleniums, women have danced for the pleasure of men.’
Amanda did not have the skill or knowledge to match his Xabian dancers. To try would only invite derision. She needed to reach him, touch him.
She advanced towards him, uninhibitedly provocative in the way she moved as she pleaded her cause. ‘That may be true in Xabia. Where I come from, men dance with their women. It has always been so, not only because it is more equal, but because it gives greater pleasure to both.’
‘You are in my country,’ he reminded her.
Amanda opened her hands in a gesture of giving. ‘Are we not beyond race and culture?’ she whispered, repeating the very words he had spoken to her in the Presidential Suite in Fisa, the words that had tapped so powerfully at her resistance to him.
He stiffened. His chin lifted fractionally, tightening as though she had hit him. She sensed the conflict raging within him, the strong impulse to accept what she was offering, against his rigid sense of what was owed to him.
‘You said you would dance for me,’ he bit out, still holding her to her word.
‘For you...with you...so you can feel the dance that is only for you.’
‘I would not be able to see you,’ he said, dismissing her argument, turning aside in disdainful rejection of it.
She quickly reached out and touched his shoulder, arresting his movement away from her. He did not pull away but he did not turn back to her, either.
‘You will see all you need to see,’ she promised huskily. ‘You will see my eyes.’
Amanda trailed her hand down his arm. She sensed his struggle to exert control over the desire she stirred in him. Slowly he turned, the swing of his body dislodging her hand so that it dropped away from him. It didn’t matter because his eyes told her she had touched him in far more than a physical sense. The violence of his feelings was reflected in their dark turbulence. His chest rose and fell several times before he spoke.
‘Your eyes have the depths of oceans, and hold the mystery of the skies. They hold the promise of unknown delights; they would tempt any man...beyond endurance.’
She moved closer to him. ‘Take what I can give and give to you alone. Feel my body pulsing in harmony with yours.’
His fingertips bridged the distance between them, barely brushing her waist, yet his touch was magnified by the fineness of the material that barely separated his flesh from hers. An electrifying tingle raced over Amanda’s skin. It was as though the shimmering veil transmitted the compelling power of his desire for her, making her body more responsive, more aware than if she’d been naked.
Amanda knew she had to show this man she loved him. He had to know it beyond all doubt. Only by giving him the absolute assurance that she held nothing back from him, now or ever, would he come to a true appreciation of what she felt for him.
She let the music seep into her body, breathed deeply of the intoxicating jasmine scent and moved forward, undulating against him, provoking, prompting, her thighs sliding over his, the tips of her breasts rolling across his chest, and not for one second did her eyes leave his, challenging him to see, to know, to believe.
His loins hardened into rigidity.
The fingertips at her waist drifted down, tracing the curve of her hip, then slowly tempted to move over the soft mound of her buttocks. His other hand joined the voyage of discovery, caressing her back, following the sensual curve of her spine. She shivered in his arms and saw the leap of exultant pleasure in his eyes, the knowledge that her response was beyond any design or control.
Amanda slid her own hands over his shoulders, under the flowing headdress, finding and stroking the bare nape of his neck. A muffled cry was torn from his lips. He gripped her body more firmly, moving it to the rhythm she had incited in his, crushing her breasts against the hard masculinity of his chest.
Amanda felt the heat suffusing her body, becoming concentrated between her thighs, the sharpening awareness and piercing sensitivity growing, strengthening, spiralling towards involuntary orgasm, and her eyes clung to his, mirroring the sweet drowning inside her, her lips parting on a gasp of wonder, a breath of life that she offered to him as a gift of utter abandonment to the feelings he evoked in her.
If he could see her heart, he must know it pounded for him.
If he could see her mind, he must know he obliterated everything else.
If he could see her soul, he must know he resided there.
‘Amanda...’
It was a whisper of seeing and knowing and believing. He carried it to her parted lips, his mouth closing over hers, warm, sensual, the breath of his life mingling with hers, so softly, caringly, nurturing her gift of love with infinite tenderness, tasting it as though it was the most exquisite wine in the world, incredibly, wonderfully, uniquely intoxicating.
His fingers found the brooch that fastened the veil. With a single movement he unclipped it. He parted the flowing panels, baring her shoulder, and his mouth moved from hers, trailing soft burning kisses down her throat. Instinctively, Amanda arched her neck to the beat of his pleasure. Her hands moved restlessly, throwing off his headdress in her need to touch more of him, her fingers revelling in the silky thickness of his hair.
He eased the chiffon over her breasts with his tongue, absorbing the texture of her skin, sensitising it to his taste, leaving her with hot, licking imprints of himself that burned into a deeper possession of her consciousness. As the veil undraped and slid from her hips he followed it, adoring her body, the revelation of her nakedness, her satin-smooth flesh, all the way down until what the Queen of Sheba had once worn lay as a pool of formless cloth about her feet.
Agile fingers, never still in their ceaseless roaming, sent ripples of pleasure down her thighs. His mouth began its relentless march up her body towards the object of his pleasure. Amanda felt herself going limp, overwhelmed by the almost unendurable sensations he was evoking. She had to restrain herself from crying out in case it made him cease his exquisite ministrations.
Her breasts heaved. Her legs trembled. In a flowing motion he picked her up into the warmth of his arms, cradling her across the strong wall of his chest. Amanda was beyond caring where he took her. She clung to him, wanting him with a deep, desperate ache that yearned to be filled by this man and only this man.
He carried her through the archway to a terrace, and here the scent of the Xabian jasmine was stronger. The air was warmer, more sensual. Amanda could see the sky. The stars were brightly shining.
He lowered her on to an opulently cushioned dais, thickly strewn with the soft petals of wild mountain roses. Fronds of freshly cut jasmine leaves formed a semicircle around her upper body. The realisation that this had all been prepared for her was sweet confirmation of her faith in the feel
ings they had shared together. He had hoped...dreamed...wanted...and like a gently wafting summer breeze his fingers caressed her waiting breasts.
‘Come to me,’ she moaned. ‘Love me!’
His clothes were tossed aside. Her eyes feasted on his physical beauty. He was perfectly proportioned, his body sleekly honed to tight flesh stretched over the curves of muscles that were strongly delineated. The smooth sheen of his skin looked like polished bronze in the starlight. She was enthralled by the power of his maleness, the visible pulsing of his need for her.
She was aflame with desire. She did not try to hide her willing receptivity and need for his embrace. She lay fully exposed, her back arched in anticipation, her arms outflung across the cushions in complete abandon.
He came to her like a man who had ceased to function for anything other than joining with her. He slid between her legs. With a hoarse cry he plunged deeply into her body. Amanda felt a fierce and triumphant satisfaction as at last their union was completed. She closed around him, squeezing, a wild, exultant joy pleasuring along his manhood.
A gasp of astonishment emitted from his lips. Amanda felt a sense of exaltation. She knew he had not experienced anything like this before in his life. She was putting her imprint on him, possessing him as no other woman had or would, making him as deeply hers as she was his...linked forever by this moment of mating.
He started a fierce stroking that super-heated her inflamed responses. Her thighs trembled. Her body tap-danced to the beat of his rhythm and her need for climactic release. She gasped involuntarily as a suffusion of moisture melted around his pulsing flesh.
Xa Shiraq appeared to take it as some kind of signal. His back was arched like a bow, his weight supported by his extended arms, as he drove faster and deeper and faster within her. His breathing came in short gasps, feral and un-restrained. Amanda convulsed around him again. Short, rapid, staccato thrusts preceded a guttural exclamation of appeasement and release as the innermost seeds of his passion spilled from his body into hers.
Instinctively Amanda’s arms reached up to hug him and bring him closer to her. She had to be close to him now, closer than she had ever been. She had to prove her love and want and need for him. He had to know that he was the one.