The Cobra & the Concubine (Khamsin Warriors of the Wind)

by Bonnie Vanak

  His honesty startled her. "But you have adapted well."

  "I have no choice. I have obligations and duties of a vastly different sort now, Badra. Duties I must take as seriously as any I did when I was a simple warrior."

  Newfound respect for him emerged. "You are one of the most honorable warriors our people have ever known, Khepri. I am certain you make an equally honorable duke."

  A distant look came into his eyes. His hand cupped her cheek, his thumb drifted across it in a feathering touch.

  "Am I still Khepri to you, Badra? I’m a duke with a small touch of longing for Egypt and his past. Oh, you smell like Egypt—desert flowers, sunshine, heat and hot sand," he said in a husky voice. "No matter how many layers of English clothing you wear, you will always be the desert. It’s within you."

  "It’s within you as well. You cannot leave it behind. You are still Khepri, here, in your leb." She took his hands and clasped them together, pressing them to his heart.

  He leaned closer, hunger sparking in his eyes. "Give me back my desert, Badra. Another kiss, one small memory of the home I left behind. Kiss me, Badra, and let me taste Egypt once more," he begged, his voice low and husky.

  Deep within the fathomless pools of his sea-blue eyes, she glimpsed the real Kenneth: adrift and alone on an ocean of uncertainty, flooded with new duties and a new life, yet longing for the familiar, torrid heat of Egypt.

  How could she deny him a kiss, a memory of the land they both loved and that he had forsaken?

  Giddy with daring, Badra tilted her head up, summoning her courage. So tall. She arched up on her toes, reaching for him like a budding flower for the sun, hoping it will touch her petals and give her life.

  His lips burned like the promise of passion. They reminded her of the black tents of Egypt, the subtle rubbings of flesh against flesh, the quiet cries echoing in the still desert night. They made Badra think of women pleasured by their warriors.

  Oh, she wanted more.

  A tiny sigh escaped her throat. Kenneth cupped her nape in one strong palm and held her still as his mouth angled more securely over hers. His touch was gentle, considerate, undemanding. Then his tongue lightly traced the seam of her closed lips, flicking as if in invitation. Intrigued, she parted her lips.

  His tongue darted inside, flicking and exploring as he swept into her mouth, claiming her. Badra opened her mouth, willing him to explore.

  Willing to let him claim her.

  Kenneth slid an arm around her waist, pulling her close. His hand swept over the curve of her hip, cupped her bottom through her thick skirts and kneaded the flesh there. She moaned and gripped his shoulders, quivering at the odd sensations racing through her. The pleasure she’d felt when he kissed her for the first time had returned. Surely, this was passion. Maybe she could overcome her fears, if he...

  Then he tore his mouth away, panting. He stared down at her.

  "No, don’t stop," she protested hoarsely. "More."

  She rubbed her body against his, desiring more of this closeness, needing to quench the fire in her loins. Her hands hooked around his neck, pulling him down. She kissed him.

  A strangled moan arose in his throat. He gently backed her up against the large polished desk, eased her down upon it and continued kissing her. She felt the solid hardwood beneath her, the strong male body above pressing her against it.

  A sense of unreality stole over Badra, as if she were watching everything unfold before her in a dream. She slipped into a favorite fantasy—Khepri proposing and her working up the courage to say yes. They married in England. Their wedding night.

  The fantasy merged with reality in the urgent heat of Kenneth’s silken mouth. His kisses were sweeter than warm honey, and his arms secure and strong, like the pillars of Egypt’s temples. His hands, capable of brute strength and of crushing an enemy with ease, were gentle as he stroked her body. He whispered sweet words of love into her ear.

  His hands...

  She became aware of the large male hands pushing at her skirts, thrusting them up. The hands were warm, and she felt them brush against her bare hips, a delicious scrape of his flesh on hers as he slid down the odd white English underdrawers, pulling them off her legs, past the soft kid slippers that did not pinch her feet.

  A thumb edged her silk stockings, teasing the flesh there then working upward as Kenneth stroked the hot flesh of her thigh. She moaned into his mouth. Answering with a growl, he pushed skirts, petticoats and chemise up around her hips.

  Dawning shock roused her from sleepy passion, from the sweetness of her innocent dream.

  Startled, she clamped her legs shut. Wool abraded her sensitive flesh as Kenneth’s knee drove between her legs. He stood between her parted thighs. Air brushed against that most private, feminine part of her. Badra felt open, vulnerable. As Kenneth tore his mouth away from hers, she opened her eyes—and saw his face, intent, looming over her.

  It was a face taut with male lust, not tenderness.

  Kenneth unfastened his trousers, tugging them past his narrow hips, pulled down his thin white silk drawers. His member jutted out, heavy and thick with arousal. He leaned forward, trapping her with hardness and heat.

  This was her nightmare, coming true again. Trapped beneath a man’s weight, slave to his needs.

  Savage possessiveness flared in Kenneth’s eyes. "You’re mine, Badra. Mine alone. You always have been."

  Fareeq’s words blazed in her memory. "I will never let you go, Badra. You are mine. My slave."

  Kenneth leaned over her, his hands pinning her wrists to the desk. Badra felt his hardness pushing at the soft hollow between her thighs and panicked.

  She struggled in his unyielding embrace. He was a powerful English nobleman. His word here was law. Servants would ignore her cries. She was helpless in his arms, vulnerable to his passion. The enormous strength of his grip frightened her. He could crush her like a flower petal, use her body. Memories surfaced, Fareeq’s bloated face gleaming with cruel victory as she lay helplessly beneath him.

  Replaced now by Kenneth’s.

  Past memories assaulted her; Fareeq’s body crushing her to the dirty sheepskins, burning pain as he shoved himself into her untried body as she screamed and struggled ...

  Never again. Badra writhed against Kenneth’s muscled weight pinning her down, turning away from his heated kisses. With every last ounce of strength, she struggled until he released her wrists. The rounded knob of his member began to push inside her. Badra shoved at his muscled chest.

  "Stop, stop—get off me!" she shrieked, beating at him.

  Panting, he stared down, eyes large and glazed with passion. Naked desire simmered in their depths. For a wild moment, terror seized her. He would not relent. Then Kenneth uttered a low curse in Arabic and eased off her.

  Badra immediately sank to the floor on her knees, her skirts piling around her like wilted flower petals. Scalding tears blinded her. Fear coupled with shame coursed through her.

  His hard fingers curled about her wrist. "Don’t touch me!" she cried. Her hand struck his cheek in a stinging slap.

  Through the haze of tears she saw him step back, button his trousers, his breathing ragged. "I was trying to help you stand," he finally said.

  Gulping in a trembling breath, she scrambled to her feet. Kenneth touched the faint red mark her palm had made.

  "Badra, what’s wrong?" Bewildered lines furrowed his brow. His concern threatened to unloose the torrent of emotions dammed inside her. She could not sob and break down.

  Deliberately she forced disgust into her voice, disdain on her face. "This was a horrible mistake. I told you once before, Kenneth, I can’t return the feelings you have for me."

  A blank expression replaced his tender one. "I’ll order the carriage and have my man escort you home."

  Kenneth turned, presenting his back. At the doorway he paused, a hand resting on the frame, his heavy signet ring winking in the light. "Good-bye, Badra."

  She knew the words m
eant farewell forever. His tall, dignified form moved away with stiff-shouldered resolve.

  Badra blinked back scalding tears, aching and wanting. Afraid to confess her secret. For a wild moment she regretted extracting a promise from Jabari never to tell how Fareeq had flogged and raped her. But years had buried her secret like layers of sand covering Egypt’s tombs. Her past was dead and buried. It was too late to expose it and face the shame, and the pity.

  "I’m sorry, Khepri. How I wish it could be different," she whispered after his departing figure.

  He did not hear.

  Kenneth dragged himself upstairs to his bedroom. His head swam with Badra’s fragrance. Hot blood pumped through his veins. His aching loins cried for release.

  It had taken every ounce of restraint and control he had learned as a Khamsin warrior to pull away from her. For a minute he had thought he couldn’t, so great was the urge to push inside and claim her at last. Passion and self-discipline had wrestled in him, and finally restraint had won. Kenneth ran his tongue along his lips, still tasting the honeyed sweetness of her mouth. Bewilderment raked him. The way she had responded, her lips growing rosy and soft beneath his, her eyes darkening with desire—why had she pulled away?

  He paused before the door, stricken with a memory—Jabari telling him to guard her virtue. But never had his sheikh told Kenneth anything about her past. Kenneth had asked, once. Jabari had quietly told him he needed know only his duty, to protect her.

  Now he wondered. What had Fareeq done to her? Badra had never displayed any interest in another man. Even now, in Rashid’s company, the two acted more like friends than a courting couple.

  Was Badra afraid of him? Then, he remembered her disgusted look. Her words. "This was a horrible mistake. I told you once before, Kenneth, I can’t return the feelings you have for me"

  He felt flayed, open, and vulnerable. He was a cobra defanged, without a skin to protect him.

  He fished a key from his pocket and went into a storage room. Dust motes danced in ghostly beams of late afternoon sunlight streaming from its round window. A brass-tipped trunk was in a corner, and Kenneth approached it with wary dread. He shut his eyes, inhaling memories.

  Opening the chest, he stared down into it. His hand touched one yellowed stack of vellum tied with a frayed blue ribbon. He untied the ribbon, took the first letter and squinted in the dim light at the strange letters inked there.

  The cursive, neat script eluded him.

  Read to me, Badra. His words echoed mockingly in his head.

  Read to me, Badra, for I cannot read for myself. Not English. Not the very language of the country where I was born.

  No, but I will learn. Here, where no one will witness my shameful secret. Where no one English may look down upon me, a heathen, and laugh. Kenneth pressed a forefinger to the first word, grappling with what little he’d taught himself. He scanned the words, then stopped. He’d forgot. One read English left to right. Backward. Not like Arabic, right to left. Toward the heart. Letters so different from Arabic characters.

  "M-mm-y. M-my. D-d-d-e-a-r."

  In keen frustration he slammed a fist down on his thigh. Letters he could not read. He couldn’t even spell his own damn name. His signature mocked him, large whorls and intricate loops that looked pompous and official and ducal, but meant nothing.

  Kenneth could spell his name in Arabic. He devoured books in Arabic. He just could not read nor write English.

  Literate in both languages, Jabari had helped him master reading and writing until his Arabic was as flawless as that of a native Egyptian. But Jabari had failed to teach him to read and write English. Oh, he’d meant to. But Khepri had become such a part of them, so Egyptian, so Khamsin, that no one had thought it necessary. Becoming a warrior, a skilled fighter like Jabari and Ramses, had taken precedence in his life. Kenneth had never bothered going back and pursuing the studies.

  And he’d never regretted the lack of schooling until returning to England, until the day his grandfather told him of the letters stored in the attic trunk. Letters Kenneth’s father had written on the day Kenneth was born. A journal chronicling his life. His mother’s soft smile. His brother Graham’s mischievous inclination to eat all the gingerbread at Christmas. His father’s days at Oxford. His entire family history recorded on crisp, yellowing sheets with fading ink.

  And he couldn’t read one single, bloody word of it.

  Kenneth carefully replaced the letter, his throat tightening. His gaze fell upon a folded swath of indigo. The indigo binish of a Khamsin warrior of the wind. His trembling hand stroked the cloth. Tucked against the trunk’s edge was a metallic sheath holding a curved sword. Kenneth lifted it, aching to see the dull, tarnished silver handle.

  He slowly withdrew the sword from its sheath and held it aloft. His eyes closed and he tried making the low, undulating cry he had been taught. It came out as a hoarse rasp.

  Kenneth swallowed hard and replaced the weapon. No longer Khamsin. He was Duke of Caldwell now. The illiterate Duke of Caldwell.

  He let the trunk lid slam with a sound that echoed the dull thud of his heart. He stared at the chest until a nagging thought nudged him.

  Why had Badra selected a volume deliberately kept from arm’s length? Had he not seen her with it, he’d never have given in to his lust.

  He sped back to his library, climbed the ladder and began thumbing through volumes. His answer came quickly—the necklace of Princess Meret tumbled out from between two books.

  Kenneth stared at the stolen necklace. Badra had hidden it here. Why? Had she taken it from Rashid? Gratitude to see his property returned mingled with the hundreds of questions racing through his mind.

  His hand caressed the gold and semi-precious stones like a lover. But this treasure was lifeless, and he burned to hold the real prize in his arms. Badra. She had wound him about her like a snake’s coils, ensuring he was her slave.

  Kenneth thought of the earlier phone call from his cousin; Victor had booked passage for them. Zaid had left already on a steamship bound for Egypt. In Egypt, he would meet Badra again. He was certain of it.

  Chapter Ten

  Cairo. A storm of sights and smells assaulted him in fresh waves; a cacophony filled his ears. Kenneth perched on a cane-back chair on the wide terrace of the Shepherd’s Hotel. Domed minarets rose above the city in graceful arches, the muezzins calling the faithful to noon prayer. Men in long shirt-like thobes and baggy trousers began drifting toward the mosques. Mists of steam curled into the air from the blue-veined cup before him.

  Kenneth turned his attention to the street below. A snake charmer coaxed a slithering reptile from a basket. Performers with trained monkeys executed antics to the amused glee of an English boy and girl enthralled by the dark-skinned strangers. Their horrified parents appeared and hustled them away with angry admonitions.

  Kenneth let a finger drift over his teacup’s rim. It was still the same Egypt. Yet different. He had never glimpsed this land through the eyes of an English noble before. Two worlds colliding. Egyptians who bowed and salaamed before stiff Englishmen who passed them by with indifference. Wily dark eyes looking for opportunities, dark-skinned hands stretched out in an endless plea for baksheesh. Disapproving, pale-faced Englishmen, noses tilted in the air, radiating contempt.

  Hail Britannia! Allah-hu-Akbar!

  Kenneth felt comfortable in neither world now. He glanced at the tea leaves puddling at the bottom of his cup and felt a sudden stab of longing for thick, rich, bitter Arabic coffee in small, handleless cups. Large chunks of date bread with almonds, drizzled with golden honey. His mouth watered.

  He took another sip and swallowed his regrets. Once he had stayed here with Ramses when the Khamsin guardian came to Cairo to negotiate a sale of Arabian horses to a wealthy buyer. Kenneth had marveled with wide-eyed fascination at the sights. The snake charmer and the monkey owner appeared enchanting and delightful then. Now, he noticed the grime dusting the hems of their long thobes, the careworn wr
inkles carved into their sun-darkened faces, their skeletal frames.

  Dirty natives, the English called them.

  British imperialism. Haughty, upper-class, stiff-upper-lip contempt for the "slovenly, lazy, and stupid Egyptians."

  White-bellied fish, Ramses had laughingly called the English in return, a sneer in his voice, a curl to his lip.

  Prejudice existed on both sides. Ramses himself had finally admitted his English half and embraced it. He’d married the daughter of an English earl. They were deeply in love. Could Egypt and England reconcile to each other as Ramses and Katherine had? Could the imperialistic blue blood running through Kenneth’s veins ever mix freely with hot-blooded sensuality learnt in the black tents?

  Again, he felt like a skinned snake. Raw, inside out. Vulnerable and alone. Belonging to neither world.

  "Do be careful with those trunks!"

  His attention swung to a stern Englishwoman in a starched white gown with large, puffy sleeves, accompanied by three young, white-frocked girls trailing her and a dour-faced husband. Two exhausted-looking porters puffed behind the family and carted trunks up the steps of the verandah. Kenneth leaned back in his chair, watching with interest. And the English called the Egyptians lazy?

  The matriarch paused in her ascent and surveyed the verandah like the captain of a frigate scanning a shoreline. Her gaze landed on Kenneth. She clasped her hands and burbled.

  "Your Grace!"

  The woman sailed toward him, skirts billowing in the wind, her charges dutifully skimming in her wake with the haggard husband. The tired porters set down the trunks with grateful sighs. She halted before him, dipped into a curtsy that made her corset stays creak, and hissed at her girls to do likewise. Rising, she beamed, showing yellowed teeth.

  The Khamsin had gleaming white smiles, always chewing mint leaves to sweeten their breath and scrubbing their teeth with myrrh.