“Oh, yes. You are.”
She gasped. “How. Dare. You.”
“What were you doing out there?” he demanded. “If I hadn’t see that wooden staff…if I hadn’t brought field glasses…” A shudder ran through him. Abruptly, he dropped her hand and turned away from her.
“I…I found Zerzura,” she said, knowing she sounded apologetic when she wanted to sound victorious.
He looked over his shoulder at her. “Who cares?”
She blinked.
He turned around, facing her. “Who the bleeding hell cares if you found Zerzura? Or Timbuktu? Or the bloody Garden of Eden?” he asked, his voice gaining volume with each word. “You might have died, Ginesse!”
“But I didn’t,” she pointed out reasonably. “You came for me.”
He nodded, at first in agreement, but somewhere along the way it turned into a shake of negation. “Yes. I came for you. I will always come from you. Because I can’t seem to help myself. It doesn’t matter where you are or if you’re officially someone else’s problem. I don’t even care if you’re married to someone else. Where is Jock, anyway? No. Don’t answer that.” He gave an elaborate shrug. “It doesn’t matter. He’s not here. I am.”
She stared at him in confusion, concerned that somewhere along the way he’d become unhinged.
He held his hand out as if asking her opinion. “And that’s the rub, isn’t it? It doesn’t matter. Because who’s going to pull you out when the earth swallows you whole or fish you out of the ocean when your ship sinks—”
“Only the felucca sank, and it didn’t even really sink. It listed,” she interjected. “The Lydonia was fine. Mostly.”
“Don’t interrupt me,” he said. “Who is going to catch you when the mountain you’re standing on explodes? Or the heavens fall?”
He glared at her, waiting.
“You?” she ventured.
“Me. I can’t help myself any more than you can help being…you. You’re a like a magnet for everything disruptive and dangerous in the world. No matter where you go, no matter who you’re with, chaos will find you and I will know.” He stared at her angrily. “In my heart, in my soul, in my bones, and in my blood, I will know and I’ll come because I can’t help myself.” He raked his hair back with his hand. Looked away. Looked back at her. Looked away again.
She stared at him, dumbfounded. She’d never seen him like this. He looked like a man on the frayed edge of sanity, holding on by only the thinnest strand. His usual composure had cracked—no, it had shattered. He strode back and forth in front of her with a frenetic sort of energy. “Did he ask you?”
“Who? Ask me what?” she asked in confusion.
“Jock. Did he ask you to marry him?”
“Oh. Yes. How did you know?”
“A blind man—” He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. What did you answer?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
Now she felt her own anger rising in answer, hot and fierce. “That’s none of your business.”
“The hell it isn’t. I’ve asked you to marry me three times and you’ve refused me each time. I thought it was because you were in love with my brother.”
“Well, you were wrong.”
His hands balled into fists at his side. She noted it, raising her brows haughtily.
“Why did you refuse to marry me then?” he demanded.
She should be quiet; she should just stay mute. But she was angry and hurt. Only moments before he’d been saying such lovely things; now he was being horrible. “Why can’t you help yourself?” she countered, shouting back.
“What?”
“Why are you compelled to come after me?” she demanded, setting her hands on her hips.
For a moment, he just stared at her as if she was daft.
“Because I love you,” he finally said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
“What?” She’d waited to hear him say those words for what seemed like an eternity, and now he’d said them just as casually and unconcernedly as he might have said, “I like that dress” or “Spot is a good name for a dog.”
“Because I love you,” he repeated. “Why else would I?”
“I don’t know. Because you’re mad?” she suggested. How dare he say he loved her here, in such a manner, with so little fanfare?
He was watching her carefully. “You seem upset.”
“Oh. Do I?” she asked sweetly. Behind her, the horse shifted uneasily. Smart horse. “Perhaps it’s because I do not believe you.”
He drew back as if she’d slapped him. “Why?” he asked, wholly bewildered.
“Because though, as you pointed out, you have proposed three times—although simply agreeing to Pomfrey’s suggestion that we marry does not in my mind constitute a proposal—this is the first time you have mentioned the word love to me.”
She held up her hand when he opened his mouth, forestalling him. “Added to which, while Pomfrey was defaming me in the worst possible way, saying awful, terrible things to me, you stood by and let him. A man in love would never suffer his beloved to be spoken of in such derogatory terms.”
“What did he say? I don’t remember him saying anything in particular,” he said, frowning. “But then I wasn’t really listening.”
“Oh! Oh, you…” She sputtered to a stop, unable to come up with nasty enough words. “We are done talking.”
He stared at her for a tense few seconds before spinning around and pounding his fist against the cavern walls, sending a spray of gravel shooting out. “Ah, hell, Ginny!” he shouted above the roaring storm outside. “Come on! Give me a break!”
“I don’t know what that means,” she said primly.
“It means that’s not fair,” he ground out through clenched teeth. “I’d just found out the woman I’d made love to and was in love with wasn’t who she claimed to be. Compounding that was the fact that I’d just discovered she didn’t even know the man she’d turned me down for. It was confusing, and I was a little,” he pounded the cavern wall again, “preoccupied.”
She flinched.
“I didn’t hear Pomfrey. So if he insulted you, I’m sorry. Do you want me to go back and beat him bloody? Because if that’s what it takes for you to believe me, I will. Hell, I’ll even enjoy it! Because right now, I really, really want to hit someone.”
“I suppose by that you mean me,” she said haughtily.
He froze, the muscle jumping at the point of his jaw, his eyes glittering. Then, all at once, he sighed.
“Ah,” he muttered, “the hell with it.” And with that, he grabbed her, bent her over his arm, and kissed her.
He kissed her long and thoroughly and single-mindedly. One arm lashed her against him, and the other snaked between her shoulder blades, cupping the back of her head. He kissed her breathless. He kissed her until her head swam and her heart trip-hammered in her chest, and then he kissed her some more, until her legs wouldn’t hold her and silvery lights exploded behind her closed lids. He kissed her until she forgot about any storm but the one he was rousing in her.
Her mouth yielded entirely under his determined assault and her body surrendered. Her breath came shallow and quick, and she knew if he hadn’t been holding her, she would have swooned. He finally lifted his head from hers and gazed down into her passion-muzzed eyes and at her lips already parting for more kisses, catching her when her knees threatened to buckle, and steadying her.
“I love you,” he said, his breathing rough and his eyes still glittering but with a different fire. “I can’t make it any clearer than that. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” she said, trying to catch her breath and losing it again when he caught her in his arms to steady her. “Yes.”
“And that’s all you wanted to hear?”
“Yes,” she said, a shade unsteadily. “I wanted the only reason you proposed to me to be because you loved me, because that is the only reason that ever mattered to me.” Her gaze slipped
away from his. “I suppose you think that’s pathetically romantic? To want to hear you say it?”
With one arm around her waist, he used his free hand to tip her chin up so he could look directly into her eyes. “I love you,” he said, and this time the words did not sound light or incidental. “I love you, Ginesse. Don’t you see? You are my Zerzura. You are my undiscovered country, both my heart’s destination and journey. Gold and temples, jewels and gems don’t hold one bit of your enticement.”
With his thumb, he tenderly brushed her lips, then charted a course down her throat. All traces of hardness had left his gray eyes, leaving them smoky and dark.
“You,” he whispered, “are my Solomon’s mine, my uncharted empire. You are the only home I need to know, the only journey I want to take, the only treasure I would die to claim. You are exotic and familiar, opiate and tonic, hard conscience and sweet temptation.”
He smiled then, a touch of self-amusement in his eyes. “And now I have no more words to give you, Ginesse. I only have my heart, and you already own that.”
Tears sprang to her eyes. She tried to blink them away. “Good heavens,” she sniffled and hated herself for sniffling because a heroine never got a runny nose upon hearing her hero’s declaration of love, “that was impressively romantic coming from an unsentimental American cowboy.”
A brief grin lit his face, tenderness and humor comingled. “Ah well,” he said kindly, “it turns out I’m actually a duke.”
She laughed, and his arms clasped around her more tightly. “What more can I offer you, Ginny?” he demanded. “Tell me. It’s yours. I’m yours.”
In reply, she wrapped her arms around his neck, pressing her face to the hollow of his neck and touching her lips and tongue briefly to his skin. A shiver ran through him. He tasted salty and dusty, an earthy tang to his masculinity. Who would ever think a man would have so many flavors?
She pulled open his robes, and he went very still.
Beneath the Bedouin robes, he wore an open-necked shirt. With quiet efficiency she set about unbuttoning it, seeing out of the corner of her eye the way his lips parted and hearing the sharp intake of his breath. He turned his head, so that his lips were a hairsbreadth from her face.
“What are you doing?” he asked, the breath of his speech caressing her temple.
“Taking what was given to me,” she replied unevenly.
“I was hoping as much,” he replied as the robes dropped from his shoulders and the shirt came open beneath her hands.
He was gorgeous, a beautiful example of male architecture: clean lines and lean muscle; hard, sculpted chest; strong, finely honed arms. She pressed her palms against his chest where they rode the heavy rise and fall of his breathing. She leaned forward and pressed an open-mouthed kiss over his nipple. He made a rough sound, catching her by the shoulders and holding her away.
For a second she feared he was going to be honorable again, but he only took hold of the edges of her own robe and peeled it from her shoulders, letting it fall and pool around her feet.
His gaze traveled over her, as hot as the sun. “Save me,” he muttered thickly, “those are worse than those damn cadet’s trousers.”
She felt her whole body warm beneath his ardent gaze. She’d forgotten the shintiyan she’d donned beneath the robes. Wide, loose trousers of filmy cotton, hitched up with silk threads at the calves and held up by a thicker silk cord low around the hips, they were far more comfortable—and cooler—than either her skirts or the heavy young men’s trousers she’d worn on their trip. They were also so sheer as to be transparent.
But she’d never expected anyone to actually see her in them. They were just to be worn underneath the loose robe.
“They’re comfortable,” she said in a small voice.
He shook his head. “Not for me.”
She squirmed self-consciously and he smiled, again sweetly, earnestly, without a trace of bravado, and as she watched, he sank gracefully to his knees in the sand before her. His head came just above her waist, his face inches from her stomach.
“What are you doing?” she asked breathlessly.
“Pressing my suit,” he replied a little hoarsely. A tingle ran through her as he spoke; she could feel his breath through the thin fabric, warming and exciting her at the juncture of her legs. She started to step back, unnerved by the heady sensation, but he wouldn’t allow it. He clasped her hips, drawing her forward and opening his mouth over that most sensitive area, boldly pressing his tongue against her mons, dampening it through the sheer fabric.
Electricity shot through her body, curling in her belly, tingling in her nipples and lips, her fingertips and the backs of her knees, pulled tight to the center where his mouth covered her. She trembled, her legs growing weak, but he wouldn’t let her fall. He pulled the harem trousers down off her hips, wrapping one big arm around her thighs and holding her tight to him.
“Put your hands on my shoulders,” he murmured against her, each warm word tapping at the uncomfortable kernel of need blooming beneath his mouth.
She could hardly do otherwise. She steadied herself on his shoulders as she felt his mouth opening against her naked skin and his tongue delving deeply along her body’s seam.
She jerked at the shock of it, the intimacy, the pleasure. He found the nub between and with exquisite delicacy, sipped against it. She cried out, sensitized to the point of pain, her body reacting forcibly, melting into liquid gold.
She fell, clutching at his shoulders, and he caught her behind her knees, sweeping her from her feet and laying her gently down on the warm, talc-like sand as the storm raged outside. “Too much, too soon,” he whispered. “I’m greedy. Forgive me.”
“No,” she said, shakily. “It’s just…I had no idea.”
He laughed softly, sweeping the hair from her face, and his expression sobered. “You are so unearthly beautiful,” he whispered.
She started, frowned. She knew he meant to please her, but she was not beautiful and to hear him say so here, now, made her uncomfortable. At once, he discerned some error, some withdrawal. He rolled over, holding himself above her with arms rippling with muscle.
“What’s wrong?” he asked quietly. “Did I insult you? Do something that offended you?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
He was watching her intently. No one had ever had regarded her so closely, she thought. She had never been so…seen. There was nothing she could hide from him. Ever.
“It’s silly. It’s just that…you called me beautiful, and I know you meant to please me, but I’m not and it made me realize that this is what one says, what you say, when you’re…doing this. And it reminded me that…others have heard the same words from you.”
For a long moment he simply stared at her, emotions flickering across his face. How had she ever thought him enigmatic? She could read his confusion, his shock, then disappointment, a touch of anger and exasperation, and finally amazement and, yes, love.
“I’m not sure if your assumptions about my sexual experience are insulting or flattering. There have been no others. Not like this. Not remotely like this. A few encounters that provided…release. But I’ve never ‘said things when doing this.’ There was very little saying going on, just,” he looked away and she could see his discomfiture, his chagrin, “mutual physical satisfaction. Certainly not love.” His gaze returned to her face, searching. “Do you understand?”
She nodded.
“And as for your not being beautiful…No,” he said as she started to turn her head. “Look at me. You are the most exquisite woman I have ever seen. You are certainly the most beautiful. Hasn’t any man ever told you that?” he asked, and for the life her she could hear nothing but stunned amazement in his voice. “Then it could only be because you intimidated them, and you are, God preserve me, intimidating.
“It was your beauty that almost sent me to my knees the first time I saw you, and I hadn’t even seen your gorgeous eyes yet, the wit and
warmth in them. Your lips haunt my dreams with the memory of their taste, your neck inspires a wicked desire to trace its length with my tongue. And your magnificent nose, imperiously belying all the lush, wanton beauty of your eyes and mouth. Ginesse, your beauty dazzles me.”
And she looked into his eyes and realized he was telling her the simple unadorned truth, nothing less and nothing more. He thought she was beautiful. And so, she was.
With a little cry of delight, she pulled him down to her, relishing his weight covering her. Hungrily, she set about exploring him. Her lips skated along the hard column of his neck, across the smooth skin capping his broad shoulders and back to the tender flesh beneath his ear. Her hands flowed down his back, the muscles tensing in his hard buttocks, and back up the velvety ladder of his ribs, to the silky slide of his hair and the beard-rasped angle of his jaw.
Her mouth found his, and a shudder ran through him. He angled an arm beneath her, lifting her, the other hand peeling back her top, exposing her breasts. He cupped one in his hand, lifting and molding it, his thumb rubbing back and forth, teasing it into a taut nub. He broke off the kiss, shifted her beneath him, lowered his head, and took her nipple into his mouth.
She gasped. With exquisite intention he stroked it with his tongue and sucked it into his mouth. She arched back, her fingers flexing deeply into his shoulder muscles. Her hips lifted in an involuntary plea, rocking against the hard thigh pressed between her legs. He murmured against her breast, dropping his head lower and sliding his hand between their bodies. He looked up into her face as he pushed the shintiyan’s belt down past her hips, his hand following the silk’s retreat, caressing the newly uncovered skin beneath.
She moved restlessly against the too tender touch, wanting more, and when he did not acquiesce, she reached between them, jerking open his trousers and shoving her hand down inside them, closing over his erection. He froze, his eyelids slipping closed, his breath ragged. For a long moment he waited, looking more like a man enduring torment than one enjoying his lover’s ministrations, and finally, with a rough sound, he grabbed her wrist and pulled her hand away.
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