Sharp teeth sank into her shoulder. She incongruously remembered him saying that the sheikh did not advocate cannibalism, and then she did not think anything. She became the animal that she had always feared she would become, moaning and groaning and begging, lost in her pleasure, his pleasure, their pleasure, the raw beauty they created together, flesh to flesh, breath to breath, heartbeat to heartbeat. When her orgasm ripped through her, she did not know who cried out, or even whose pleasure it was that exploded inside her body in pulsating waves of repletion. Elizabeth and Ramiel. Ramiel and Elizabeth.
She collapsed under the weight of his body and lay there for long seconds, savoring the boneless feel of him pressing her into the cool satin comforter. Their bodies pulsed in unison, inside, outside. A pool of hot sperm bathed them both.
“I want champagne,” she whispered.
He grunted. It was such a purely male sound that she smiled.
The smile instantly turned into a rush of gratitude. He had given her so much. “I want to bathe you in it.”
The softened flesh inside her jerked. His fingers convulsively tightened about her stomach and pubes.
“And then I want to lick you dry.”
His flesh buried inside her was no longer soft.
“And then I want you to ejaculate inside my mouth so I can taste your pleasure.”
Ramiel stared down at Elizabeth.
Her face was flushed with satiation and sleep. Her eyelashes were spiked from tears and sweat and champagne. Gently, reluctantly, he pulled the silk sheet over her naked breasts, up to her neck.
She sighed and turned into his hand.
Ramiel’s chest tightened. He would not let Edward Petre hurt her again.
Quickly, silently, he dressed, careful not to disturb Elizabeth. Extinguishing the flame in the oil lamp, he could not resist swooping down and tasting her.
She unconsciously opened her lips for him.
He regretfully pulled back.
There was another name that he had not relayed to her during their lesson: el tsequil, the vulva belonging to a woman who never tires of her man.
Elizabeth would not tire of him, and both Allah and God knew, he would never grow tired of her.
The foggy night was cold after the warmth of Elizabeth’s body. Big Ben echoed over the rooftops—it was one o’clock in the morning. Parliament sessions lasted until two.
Ramiel eased through the darkness, whistled sharply when a hack neared him. It stopped.
“Where to, guv’nor?”
“The Parliament building.”
The hack smelled of gin and musk. Elizabeth had smelled of oranges and hot, womanly need. The day before she had come to him smelling of gas and fear.
The cabbie expertly drove through the foggy London streets. When the hack stopped, Ramiel jumped out and paid his fare.
“Thank ’e, sir.” The cabbie pocketed the generous tip.
“There’ll be more money if you drive over there outside the lamplight and stay. I am meeting someone.”
“It’ll cost ye, me waitin’.”
Ramiel smiled grimly. “It will be worth it.”
He waited outside the Parliament building, hat pulled low and wool scarf high. His back, thighs, and calves ached pleasantly, a reminder of more agreeable moments. Elizabeth had given him three orgasms; he had lost count of the number that he had given her. The taste of her lingered on his tongue, a combination of her sweetness, his saltiness, and bubbly champagne.
Idly, he watched carriages line up along the street—and wondered if he would ever taste champagne without getting immediately, painfully hard. The cabbie’s nag, out of the gaslight, neighed softly. And then the doors to the Parliament building swung open, and men, some exchanging banter, some dressed in formal dinner attire, poured out.
Instantly alert, Ramiel searched the crowd—there. Edward Petre was talking and laughing with a group of Parliament members. Stiffening, preparing his body for action, Ramiel waited for the right moment.
The animated discussion broke up as each man sought a carriage, either alone or in pairs. Ramiel moved quickly. He grabbed Edward Petre’s arm just as he placed a bowler hat on his head.
“Uranian, Petre.” Ramiel’s voice was muffled but clear through the scarf. “Come with me now or every man here will soon learn about your little diversions. And while I am aware that several of them share your proclivities, they will not support you when the knowledge comes to public notice.”
Edward Petre’s face turned pasty white in the light of the gas lamps. His breath, a gush of silvery steam, punctured the air. “Take your hand off me.”
“Soon. There’s a cab waiting for us. You and I are going to your house for a little chat. Or I can kill you and dump you in the Thames. Since the latter would certainly simplify matters for me, I suggest you shut up and come with me. Now.”
“You would not dare. Someone is waiting for me.”
“I dare. I was exiled from Arabia for killing my half brother. I assure you, Petre, I dare.”
Stark fear filled the older man’s brown eyes. “You would not. You are fucking my wife. Even she would not want a man who killed the father of her children.”
A cynical smile twisted Ramiel’s mouth. “Perhaps. She might surprise you. In either event, you will be dead. Free of earthly concerns. Shall we go?”
Petre did not further protest. Ramiel guided him toward the hack, fingers digging into the wool of his coat, and gave the cabbie the address to drive to. Dull yellow light penetrated the dirty cab windows. The suffocating scent of Petre’s cologne and the macassar oil that Europeans universally wore overrode the smells of the hack.
“Elizabeth will tire of you.” The Chancellor of the Exchequer’s voice was admirably calm. “And then she will come back to me.”
Ramiel fought down a burst of dangerous rage. He wanted to kill him. “Softly, Petre. We will talk when we are inside your house.”
“Afraid of scandal, Safyre?” Petre sneered.
Ramiel looked out at the gleam of lights on the river. “No. The Thames is too close. I am afraid I will give in to temptation.”
The remaining journey passed in taut silence. Petre was angry, but he was a clever man: He was afraid of what a bastard sheikh who confessed to killing his half brother would do to a man who kept him away from his woman. Rightfully so.
While Ramiel paid the cabbie, Petre fumbled with his house key. Hoping, no doubt, that he could rush inside and lock the Bastard Sheikh out.
Ramiel calmly took the key from Petre’s gloved hand and inserted it into the door. He mockingly inclined his head. “After you.”
The servants had left a gaslight burning. A dangerous courtesy, considering what had happened to Elizabeth.
There was no sign of Elizabeth and her incredible gift of passion in the town house. It was not cluttered with a table in every corner or knickknacks on every surface but it was still a typical Victorian home with its drab wallpaper and predictable furniture draped with cloths lest the sight of their legs excite a man.
Petre walked stiffly down the floral-papered hall, wrenched open a door. Ramiel followed. The older man lit a gas lamp more efficiently than he had opened the front door. But then, he was intimately aware of the dangers of gas.
It was a masculine room that Ramiel stood in. Darkly conservative. A heavy walnut table occupied one side of the study, while a Carlton House desk stood prominently in the center of the room.
Ramiel softly closed the door. Petre turned, faced him. His tall black bowler curled over his ears; he clenched a gold-knobbed cane in his right hand.
Tossing his own soft wool hat onto a side chair, Ramiel unwrapped the scarf from around his neck.
Fear suddenly exceeded Petre’s anger. Dropping the cane, he darted around the desk.
Ramiel leapt after him. He slammed the desk drawer on Petre’s hand that scrambled to gain purchase on the gun within. “Why didn’t you shoot Elizabeth?” he grated. “It would have been more ef
ficient. Servants are apt to notice gas. Just as they are apt to recognize poisons.”
“I don’t know what you are talking about.”
Ramiel pushed harder on the drawer. He had the satisfaction of watching what little facial color Elizabeth’s husband possessed drain away.
“Tell me, Petre. Why would a politician think that murder is less damaging to his career than divorce is?”
Petre’s mustache quivered. “I tell you, I don’t know what you are talking about.”
“You tried to kill Elizabeth with gas. And then you tried to kill her sons, your sons, with Spanish fly.”
Petre knew what cantharidin was. The knowledge was clear in his brown eyes.
“I had nothing to do with her lamp going out. She tried to commit suicide.”
“How convenient for you, especially considering the fact that she was leaving you.”
“You are smashing my hand.”
“Good. Perhaps next time you will think twice before you try to harm Elizabeth or her children. But you have intrigued me. Why would you try to kill your wife when you could far more easily have committed her? You must know I would not have let you get away with murder.”
“For the love of God, I never tried to harm her.” Petre’s left hand wrapped around Ramiel’s wrist and tried to pry it away from the drawer. Ramiel was far stronger. “Elizabeth didn’t have the stomach to face me in your home. I have not been near Eton or the boys. Let me go!”
Ramiel grabbed Petre’s left hand, used the combined weight of their bodies to press harder on the drawer. “How badly do you want me to let you go, Petre? As badly as Elizabeth wanted a divorce?”
Sweat rolled down the older man’s bloodless face, beaded off his waxed eyebrows and mustache. “I will divorce the bitch. Just let me go!”
“Not good enough. I will not have her name smeared all over London. Furthermore, you will grant her custody of her two sons.”
“She has committed adultery.”
“And what have you done, Petre? You have pandered your own son. I assure you the courts will be more concerned about your behavior than they will be hers.”
Petre stopped struggling. “You have no proof.”
“I have been to Eton. I have all the proof I need.”
“Let me go.” Petre’s voice was dull.
“Make it worth my while.”
“I will give her a divorce. Privately. She may keep her two sons.”
Ramiel slowly released the drawer, deftly removed the gun from Petre’s limp fingers. Blood dripped down the back of his hand. The knuckles had already started swelling.
“Neither you nor Andrew Walters will go near Elizabeth or her sons again.”
Petre nursed his hand. “If word happens to leak out about my . . . ‘little diversions,’ as you call them . . . I will make sure that Elizabeth does not gain custody of Richard and Phillip.”
Another secret. Another compromise.
Petre had the power to take away Elizabeth’s sons; Ramiel had the power to prevent him. But not through death . . .
For Elizabeth’s sake, he would not murder the father of her children. And perhaps for his own sake as well. Because he would not be killing Edward Petre; he would be killing his half brother all over again.
Slipping the gun into his coat pocket, he turned away. From the ugliness of the past. From the ugliness of the present. He had a future to look forward to: He would not jeopardize it.
“You were right. You’re a canny bastard. Committing Elizabeth was the perfect solution. I left the morning her lamp went out to procure a lunacy order. I had no need to gas her. Nor did I try to kill my two sons. I have not needed Spanish fly since I last bedded my wife, your whore.”
Petre was not as smart as he should be. A man did not denigrate the woman of a bastard who was the son of a sheikh. He especially did not deliberately conjure up images of the bastard’s woman lying underneath another man.
Ramiel came very close to forgetting his resolution of not killing Petre.
“Then you hired someone to do it. Like you hired someone to threaten her last Thursday night when she spoke at a meeting,” Ramiel said tightly, fully aware that solution did not explain the cantharidin poisoning unless Petre had placed a spy in his home. But unlike the private detective who had met the Petres’ footman outside the town house and paid him to quit his employment, there were no new servants in Ramiel’s home.
“I am a public figure; I would not hire someone to murder or threaten my wife for fear they would talk.” All of Petre’s arrogance had returned. “It was foggy last Thursday night. Elizabeth was late. I brought in the constable in the event that if an accident did befall her, he could quote me as a concerned, loving husband.”
Ramiel reached for his hat on the side table by the door. He noted that his hand trembled. “Then it was Andrew Walters who arranged everything.”
“So she told you about Andrew’s regrettable outburst. He would no more kill her than would I. Not as long as there existed a safer method of controlling her. Andrew was with me the morning I signed the lunacy order.”
Ramiel did not turn around. “Then who do you suggest tried to kill her?”
“Perhaps Elizabeth is not the woman you think her, Safyre. Perhaps she tried to commit suicide. And failing that, she tried to kill her sons rather than face them in a divorce court.”
“And perhaps you are lying, Petre, because you don’t want to feed the fish in the Thames.”
“Perhaps,” Petre agreed mockingly.
But he was not. Ramiel was suddenly quite certain that Edward Petre had not attempted to kill Elizabeth. A politician did not kill when less risky avenues existed. He would have committed Elizabeth to an asylum without blinking an eyelash, but murder would be investigated.
Ela’na. Who had tried to kill her . . . if not her husband or father?
Ramiel opened the door and quietly closed it behind him to prevent giving Petre the satisfaction of seeing that he had neatly wrested control from his hands. A tall, shadowed man waited for him in the dimly lit foyer. Ramiel groped for the gun in his pocket.
“It is I. Turnsley.”
The private detective Muhamed had hired. The one who, according to Elizabeth, was sleeping with her maid.
“What do you want?”
“To talk.”
Ramiel did not want to talk. He was in the grip of an uncontrollable need to get back to Elizabeth to ascertain that she was safe. He would not lose her.
“You reported to Muhamed yesterday,” he said shortly. And the report had been . . . that the detective did not know who had blown the gas lamp out.”
“I reported what I knew then,” Turnsley responded evenly. “But there is someone who knows more than I. And she is willing to talk.”
Chapter 24
Elizabeth studied Ramiel’s sleeping face. The dusky stubble of a morning beard shadowed his jaw. Twin fans of almost feminine lashes softened the sculptured hardness of his features.
He had forced her to acknowledge the darker side of desire and shown her that she was not immoral, merely a woman. Their union had been primal; it had been physical; it had forever splintered her convictions about right and wrong.
Blistering heat reached out underneath the covers, wrapped about her thigh. Immediately, the slight frown on Ramiel’s face eased. He sighed.
Elizabeth’s throat tightened.
She would not live in fear for the rest of her life. Nor could she endure the cold, sterile life that had been hers as a “respectable” wife. If Edward would not grant her a divorce with custody of her two sons, then she must find a means to force him to bow to her will. The law, he had informed her, allowed a woman to sue her husband for a divorce if he had a mistress or if he physically mistreated her. Attempted murder must surely qualify for abuse, especially when the man in question also tried to kill his own children. All she needed to do now was produce his mistress, or lover, as Edward called the woman who was a member of the Uranian f
ellowship.
For a second she contemplated waking Ramiel. He knew who Edward’s mistress was.
But he had protected her sons; she could not ask more of him. Perhaps he was right. Perhaps when she was ready she would see the truth for herself.
Slowly, carefully, she loosened the long, hard fingers that so perfectly fit her body, both inside and out. Ramiel groaned in sleepy protest.
A flood of remembered pleasure washed over her body.
He had cried out when she had taken him into her mouth and suckled him like he had suckled her breasts, suckling and suckling until his entire body tensed and he grabbed her head to hold her still while he spasmed with ecstasy. Bahebbik, he had repeated in an oddly hoarse voice when she swirled her tongue around his deflating crown in search of more of the salty fluid that had shot into the back of her throat.
Elizabeth licked her lips, tasting him, tasting her, tasting their combined essence. Overlying the salty, musky flavor was the fizzling effervescence of champagne.
Muscles she had not known she possessed rudely presented themselves at the impact of cold wool carpeting and hard wood flooring. She wondered if a man also ached and throbbed after a night of strenuous sex.
Her reticule lay on top of the nightstand by the tin stamped with Queen Victoria’s portrait. Silently, determinedly, with reticule in hand, she padded across the Oriental carpet to the wardrobe. The twin doors were closed. Boxes were piled high between the red velvet-upholstered armchair and the massive mahogany wardrobe. They had not been there last night. Had Muhamed come into Ramiel’s bedroom while they slept?
Immediately, she berated herself for the hot blood that flooded her face. Muhamed had seen more than her sleeping body bundled under the covers. Furthermore, he had saved her life, the countess had said, by pouring an emetic down her throat. It was ridiculous to get embarrassed because he had seen her sleeping in bed with Ramiel, when yesterday he had held her head over a chamber pot.
Grabbing the royal blue skirt and bodice Ramiel had purchased for her—oh, no, there were no underclothes save for the frilled bustle—ah, there were her shoes. She tiptoed to the water closet. Some minutes later, after hurriedly brushing her teeth, washing, and dressing, she stealthily opened the door.
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