“Which time?”
“The afternoon I ordered you whipped. I had no choice, yet I knew I was the one to blame, not Elena, who has the unbridled passions of a child, and certainly not you. You bore my venom longer than I would have, had I been you. Of course, your well-placed blow to my groin was a painful reminder for several hours.”
“You make me sound like some sort of Amazon, with nerves of iron. It’s not true, Kamal. I didn’t have the courage to accept my own death to save my parents. When I attacked you with the dagger, my hand wavered. Your death would have meant mine, and I was too afraid to accept it. Even today, I realized I did not want to die, that life was too precious. I’m very much a coward.”
“No, cara, you are not a coward. You are vibrant and full of life. You will not be scarred,” he added, touching her back.
“You stayed with me, didn’t you?”
He looked at her full in her face and traced his fingertips over her arched brows. “Yes. I stayed with you until you were fully aware. I left you, fearing that your hatred of me would make you more ill. I have found that I cannot bear to be away from you. When the guard was discovered last night and I realized what you had done, I knew such fear that I wanted to howl my anger at myself.” He watched her lashes sweep downward to hide her expression from him. Slowly he leaned forward and kissed her, a gentle kiss, undemanding. He felt her surprise; then her lips parted. He allowed himself the deep pleasure of her mouth, then drew back. He saw disappointment in her dark eyes and smiled.
“No. I hurt you and you are still likely sore. I don’t want to cause you any more pain.”
“It is the oddest thing,” Arabella said, “but when you touch me and kiss me, I want nothing more than for you to continue. And you always know just what to do.”
“Arabella, I do not wish to discuss this anymore. I am not made of stone.”
“Then why did you kiss me?”
“Because you are here and I love you.”
His words fell between them like a sharp clap of thunder. Arabella’s breath caught in her throat and she could only stare at him. She was aware that her heart was pounding, and she swallowed hard. “Oh,” she said.
Kamal rose gracefully to his feet. He damned himself for a fool. But the words had slipped out. He said, “It is late and you must be tired from your busy day. Come, let us sleep.”
But sleep was the furthest thing from Arabella’s mind. She watched him stride to the small tent and pull back the flap. She sprinkled sand on the dying fire, picked up the blankets and walked slowly to the small tent. It was dark within. “Kamal—”
“Yes?”
“I brought the blankets.”
“Good. It gets cold in the hills. We will need them.”
She stood quietly for a long moment, her eyes adjusting to the dark. He was lying on his back, his head pillowed on his arms. Time seemed to slow. She was aware only of him, his flat, emotionless voice, and of her pounding heart. He was trying to protect her, she knew, from herself and from his feelings, feelings he believed exclusive to him.
“Kamal?”
“Yes?” He sounded impatient, angry.
“I would rather have you than the blanket.”
Why was she pushing him, damn her? He jerked himself up on his elbow, wishing he could see her face clearly. “I would suggest that you lie down, and go to sleep.”
“Very well.” She eased down close to him, but not touching. She pulled the blanket over her. He could hear her breathing, and he forced himself to turn on his side, away from her. Then she spoke again. “Do you really love me?”
“No, dammit. I tell all my women that—it is what they want to hear.”
There was absolute silence.
“By Allah, do you wish to strip all honor from me?”
“No,” she whispered.
He cursed fluently in Arabic and drew her roughly against him. He did not immediately realize that he was stroking her hair, placing light kisses on her temple. She turned her head and his kisses fell on her cheek and her mouth.
“Please, Kamal, love me.”
“I don’t want to hurt you.”
“I’m hurting now.”
It seemed perfectly natural for him to slip his hand inside the robe and stroke her. She arched up against him and pulled his head down. The touch of her mouth made him frantic with need for her.
“Tell me what to do. I want to please you as you do me.”
“To feel you moving against me, to hear you moan, to taste you is the greatest pleasure you can give.”
When they finally lay locked together, still kissing each other softly, languidly, he said, “Arabella? Did you mean what you said?”
“Yes.”
“Do you remember what you said?”
“I love you,” she whispered. At her simple words, she felt a great weight slip from her mind. “I love you.”
He clasped his arms around her and rolled onto his back, bringing her on top of him. “I will never let you forget it, madam,” he said, and kissed her.
“Kamal,” she said after he allowed her to catch her breath, “why do you love me?”
“Because you’re a witch and have cast a spell on me.”
She was silent for a long moment. Finally she said, “I’m not always a nice person.”
“True. But you are also never boring.”
“Oh. I will make you suffer, sir, if you don’t tell me the truth.”
“Because you’re so damned honest,” he said at last. “And so loyal.”
Arabella buried her face in his throat. “What are we going to do?” she whispered.
“We will talk about it in the morning.”
Chapter 27
Kamal poked a piece of pita bread into Arabella’s smiling mouth and lightly kissed the tip of her nose.
“It’s stale.”
“If you, cara, would stop holding me down, I could do some hunting.”
“No,” she said, “I would rather be hungry for food than for you.”
“Shameless hussy. You will kill me before I am thirty.”
She gave him a wide smile. “I am a woman now,” she said, immensely pleased with herself. “I am twenty. I was beginning to think that I was cold, that I would never find a man who would make me feel such marvelous feelings.”
Kamal leaned over and began to nibble her throat.
She threw her arms about him, knocking him off balance, and they fell together, Arabella sprawled on top of him.
“How could you ever have believed yourself cold?”
Arabella raised her head from his shoulder. “Well, there was only one gentleman who kissed me, and I didn’t like it at all. In fact, I kicked him in the shin.”
“I would have preferred the shin to where you kicked me.”
“I’m sorry. I was so afraid, and you made me so angry.”
“Arabella, will you give me your loyalty?”
She tensed at his deadly serious tone, unable to answer him. She pictured her parents, Adam, and Kamal’s mother. “How can I?”
He held her tightly. “I will not let you go, so stop fighting me. I will do nothing to harm you, Arabella. Do you believe that?”
“But if you harm my parents, you harm me.”
“I know. Will you trust me to put a stop to all the madness?”
“Do you now believe my parents are innocent?”
“If I believe them innocent, I condemn my mother as a vicious liar.” He sighed deeply wishing they could ignore, at least for another day and night, the reality that awaited them. He felt the fatalism that was inbred in his culture, beginning to seep into his mind, paralyzing him. “Dammit,” he said, pounding his fist against his open palm. He rose swiftly to his feet and looked down at Arabella. He saw fear in her eyes. Instantly he dropped to his haunches and drew her against him. “I love you, and I want to be with you forever. It will be so, Arabella, I promise you.”
Would wanting something to be true make it so? Arabella wondered.
They did not discuss the future for the remainder of the day. Kamal hunted, bringing back a rabbit for their dinner. They bathed together in the small clear pool, their enjoyment in each other taking on a nearly frantic quality. When they lay together that night in the tent, sated and languid, Kamal whispered against her temple, “You are so giving to me.”
“Yes. How else should I be when you wrap me in sunshine?”
“A witch poet,” he said. He pulled her robe away and rested his palm on her flat stomach. He splayed his fingers and touched her pelvic bones. He felt a jolt of fear, picturing her belly swollen with child. She seemed so narrow. “Are you built like your mother?”
“Yes, I suppose so.”
“Did she have difficulty birthing you or your brother?”
“I remember, long ago, hearing my old nurse, Becky, talking to my mother about being lucky in her husband. She said that he had stayed with her and helped her birth my brother. Why do you ask?”
“I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You are hurting me now,” Arabella said, pulling him closer to her.
“Do you know,” he said, watching her eyes, “that I was trained in the art of lovemaking?”
“You were wh-what?”
“At the ripe old age of thirteen, an old woman, probably about your age, introduced me to the marvels of my body and a woman’s body.” His fingers lightly touched her. “Here, she taught me was a woman’s essence. Here is softness, warmth, and a woman’s release. She taught me how to stroke and caress both with my fingers and my mouth, to control my own desire until the woman had reached her climax.”
“But that seems so calculated.”
“Then it was, I suppose. She observed me with other women to ensure that I followed her instructions. It was a bit unnerving. I remember one young girl who liked me, and probably felt sorry for me. In any case, she began moaning and carrying on before I scarce had a chance to begin. I thought myself the most brilliant lover in the land. Ada, my teacher, on the other hand, nearly fell over a chair laughing.”
“If you ever, for the rest of your life, touch another woman, I will not be responsible for my actions.”
“I love you.”
After he brought them both to pleasure, Arabella whispered, “I do not hear your teacher laughing.”
“Master.”
Kamal grinned at Ali, giving him a jaunty salute before he helped Arabella dismount.
She stood beside the stallion for a moment, staring about the camp. All signs of the burned tent had been obliterated, for which she was thankful, and another had been erected. She saw the lion skin, and shot Kamal a questioning look beneath lowered brows, but he was speaking to one of his men and did not notice.
It was close to noon, and Arabella, her stomach growling, was relieved to see food spread upon a cloth near the small fire. She was again wearing her men’s clothes and thus sat cross-legged near the food and began to eat an orange.
“Here are lamb and bread,” Ali said, handing her a plate.
Arabella thanked him solemnly.
Ali wondered at this woman with her golden hair and her spirit that made him shudder. A woman should not behave as this one did, but his master loved her. Ali had seen it in his eyes.
“You will marry the master?” he asked, squatting down beside her.
“Yes,” Arabella said without hesitation.
“You have driven my master nearly wild,” he said. “It is good that he has finally tamed you.”
Arabella stopped chewing on the tasty lamb. “Tamed?”
Ali shrugged. “He is the master and he will have what he wishes. I am pleased that Elena will not be his first wife. She is a bitch, that one. I suppose if a man wishes spirited sons, he must breed them off a spirited woman.”
The lamb fell unheeded to Arabella’s plate. The world was intruding. “First wife,” she repeated, feeling numb and cold despite the warm sun beating down. “Breed? That sounds like two animals.”
Ali regarded her with some surprise. “It is our way,” he explained as if to a dull child. “Women are made to breed and birth men’s sons. Allah knows that a man cannot be happy with but one wife. The master, after he satisfies himself with you, will doubtless take three more wives. He will want many sons to follow after him.”
Fool. Kamal’s first wife. She laughed aloud.
“Arabella?”
It was Kamal. The master. The man who had tamed her. The man who wanted her for his first wife.
She turned distraught eyes toward him and slowly began to back away from him. “I will not do it. I will not be but one of your women, Kamal.”
Kamal stared at her, stunned. He started toward her, only to draw up at the shouts from his men. He whirled about to see swirls of dust in the distance, heralding the coming of a number of men. There were no hostile tribes this close to Oran, but he would take no chances. “Arabella, get into the tent and stay there. Now.”
Robbers? More men like Risan? There were only a half-dozen men here with them. Many more were riding toward them, possibly twenty. She looked toward Kamal, watching as he caught a wickedly curved scimitar from one of his men and pulled his dagger from his belt. Did he expect her to hide, to watch him die? Kamal shouted at her again, waving the deadly scimitar toward the tent.
She needed a weapon, anything. She dashed into the tent, frantically searching. She found a dagger lying on a pile of furs. She heard the shouts of men now, nearly at the camp. She pulled back the tent flap and looked out. Kamal and his few men stood together, but the riders were spreading out, surrounding them. Three men were riding directly toward Kamal, their faces swathed in kufiyahs.
She stole up to stand directly behind Kamal, unaware that her hair was unbound and streaming down her back. Suddenly one of the men shouted and pointed at her. She felt her blood freeze.
Kamal whipped about and their eyes locked for a long moment.
“No,” Arabella said, moving closer to him. “If we die, it will be together.”
To her absolute astonishment, the man shouted again, and it was her name that rang out.
“Arabella!”
Her dagger clattered to the ground. “Adam. Kamal, it’s my brother, Adam.”
She ran forward before Kamal could stop her. The three men pulled their steaming horses to a halt, whipping up clouds of dust. Adam leapt from his horse and caught her to him.
“My God. Are you all right?” Arabella was laughing and hugging him, oblivious of the men who stood stock-still about them.
“Oh yes, Adam, I am fine. How are you here? Come, you must meet Kamal.”
Adam pulled off his kufiyah, stared down at his beautiful sister, and threw back his head in deep laughter. “You amaze me, Bella. I should have known that you would be anything but dead or abused.”
Kamal looked at the handsome black-haired man who was Arabella’s brother. He knows her as well as I do, he thought, and he understands her. Slowly he walked toward them.
“Kamal.”
He stopped abruptly, and turned very slowly toward the man astride a huge black stallion. He felt gooseflesh rise on his arms.
The man gracefully dismounted and stood a moment watching him.
“Have you no greeting for your brother?” Hamil slowly pulled off his kufiyah, his eyes on his brother’s face.
Arabella turned in Adam’s arms to watch the two men staring at each other. “His half-brother Hamil?” she whispered.
“Aye,” Adam said. “He is my friend.”
Slowly, the shock fading from Kamal’s mind, he smiled at his half-brother and said, “You have a son. Now he is no longer my heir.”
Hamil had pictured this meeting many times in his mind. Kamal’s first words dissolved his final niggling doubts. He gave a great shout and held out his arms. The brothers embraced, slapping each other on the back, talking at the same time.
They fell apart and studied each other.
“I see that death has painted your hair with a
streak of silver, Hamil. I imagine it was not my prayers that saved you, but rather your own stubbornness.”
“And you, brother—have you bankrupted my coffers?”
“You have returned just in time to prevent me from doing so.”
“Lella. She is well?”
“Well, but terribly sad. Your son is beautiful, Hamil.”
“Life,” Hamil said, “is very odd. You see, I have brought the woman’s brother to take her off your hands. He assured me that no man could intimidate her. She is a hellion and too proud to be but a woman.”
“That,” Kamal said, turning to smile at Arabella, “is true. Come, my brother, and pay attention to my future wife.”
“Wife. By God, little brother, you have the woman eating out of your hands in a mere week?”
Arabella, hearing Hamil’s words, smiled. “Adam,” she said, “what did you tell Hamil?”
“Only the truth, Bella, only the truth. What is this Kamal said about a wife?”
“I want to meet Hamil,” Arabella said, all possibilities now clear to her. Kamal would no longer be ruler of Oran. He was free. But what if he did not want to leave? She shook herself. Her life had taken so many bizarre turns in the past week.
“Lady Arabella, I believe,” Hamil said, studying her face. There was a dirt smudge on her cheek and her men’s clothes were wrinkled, too big, and somewhat the worse for wear.
She met his gaze. “I have heard much of you from Kamal. You look very fierce.”
Hamil shook his head, a smile hovering around his mouth. “Your servant, my lady,” he said, and bowed before her. It was only then that he became aware of the murmur of voices from Kamal’s men. He turned and raised his hand. “I am returned to the land of my father,” he said. “We will rejoice together before we return to Oran.”
“Kamal,” Arabella said, tugging at his sleeve, “this is my brother, Adam. He looks fierce also.”
The two young men eyed each other. Adam said carefully to his sister, “You wish to wed with this man, Bella?”
“Certainly,” Arabella said. “You would too, Adam, if you were a woman.”
“Perhaps not, cara,” Kamal said, “I think that you are blind, thankfully so.”