“What happened here?”Jamie asked, skimming the bruise on her face. She could not evade him. His touch was both healing, magical; sensual and erotic. She felt herself curling into it as would a cat. Besides the tremulous ecstasy watching the ritual, his touch was the best experience she had since her arrival. Still she had to deny herself. Thinking of all the beatings she took from the filthy people he stuck her with while he was so ignorant re-infuriated her. She seethed to the point of almost throwing up but she did all she could to hide it. Aziza struggled to remember the words she had prepared for their first encountered but could not remember a one. It was if the sight of him, the feel of him wiped from her memory. He moved her to more direct light and held his face in his hands. “Have you been bad?”
“Not at the moment,” she tried to pull away but he didn’t let her.
He laughed. “Not at the moment, you’re not bad?”
“I am hardly bad.”
“Yes you are,” he chuckled. And studied her.
“What is it you’re looking at exactly?” she asked uncomfortably.
“A mark on your face,” he answered bluntly.
Aziza was sure his examination of her was search for proof she had been sharing her ‘confections.’ She wanted to spit in his face, she hated him that much. She didn’t care how incredibly beautiful he was. How wise his voice sounded though his words were foolish. She retorted sarcastically, “I must have tripped over my harem pants. I am so clumsy.”
He eyed her almost skeptically. “Well we’ll go collect your things.”
“Collect my vast array of things?” Aziza laughed.
“Do you find something amusing, mistress?”
“Not since I’ve been here, laird.” Not since I was made to sleep with barn animals to avoid sleeping with pigs you have housed me, she wanted to say. Not since I was beaten every single day while you were rolling around on the bellies of Arab girls.
“Come with me. I will have words with your hosts.”
“Such sweet people, the Gregors,” Aziza lied. “I have to thank you for letting them care for me while we waited for you.”
Jamie’s inquiry was not phased. “I have known Billy Gregor since we were kids.”
“Andrew Gregor,” Aziza countered.
“Billy,” Jamie insisted. “I ordered you to live with his wife and kids and him. I thought you could help with the children and enjoy them as well.”
Aziza stepped back. He had actually put some thought into who housed her? He cared enough to put her with a friend? She staggered. “All this time-“ She stared at him trying to put it all together.
“All this time what?” He asked.
“Laird MacDunna, I’ve been living with the wrong people.”
Jamie honed in on her. “Was there something wrong with the people you stayed with?”
Aziza felt sick. All the punishment she endured since she arrived and all because no one bothered to notice she was with the wrong people. He hadn’t bothered to make sure his instructions had been carried out. The rage coursing through her body was now a sharp pain in her heart.
Aziza glared. “How thoughtful. No one noticed the huge mistake. No matter. I have a special relationship with the Gregors.”
“Is that so?” he asked incredulously.
“Yes. Quite.” Aziza felt the bile rise in her throat at saying kind things about the Gregors. She wished a fat sow would crush them both.
Jamie raised his eyebrows in concession. “Well that does please me.”
“And that pleases me. Still,” Aziza lingered.
“Yes dear?”
“I can’t help but wonder how the mistake went unnoticed?”
“I will look into it, I promise though I am glad you have your special relationship. Come with me.”
“If you will, laird, by ‘come with’ you, you mean I am to go to your house?”
“Yes.”
At once, Aziza was struck with the horrifying realization her moment with the demon laird was imminent and that she could soon be with him in a ceremony the way the bride and his brother had been the night before. She was not mating with any bloodsucking Scotsman if she could help it and certainly not before a crowd. No one was going to bite her. She had to think fast.
“We have only just met. I don’t even know you. I may be haraam, but I am a green haraam. Well, a black haraam,” she said self-deprecatingly. “Allow me to stay with the Gregors until I know you better?” Aziza batted her eyelashes and gave him her most demure look.
Jamie’s face was dark. “You’re requesting to stay with your host rather than rightfully come with me? Now why would that be, exactly? You aren’t smitten with Andrew Gregor?”
Aziza blinked. She wanted to say you really do have no idea what is going on, you utter moron? “Not at all,” she laughed. “If I am to be your queen-“
“Queen?” Now Jamie laughed.
“That’s not what I meant to say. I was thinking of the old country for a moment,” Aziza was lit with furious humiliation. “But I was promised to you and you aren’t married. And in my country the first wife is the – is the-“
“Lairdess?” he mocked. Now Aziza wished the laird would join the Gregors under the imaginary sow. How dare he make her feel foolish! “No in this country, in my world, you will be exactly what you were before you came here. I am not looking to be married any time soon. Come.” He took her shoulder gently.
She shirked away. “No,” she said regally.
“Pardon me, mistress?” His tone was deep and ominous. “You will come with me. I don’t know these people.”
If she went home with Jamie he would sleep with her for sure and Aziza would rather suffer the company of the Gregors than to let him enjoy her. She affected the greatest humility she could muster when all she really wanted to do was snap a twig off the nearest shrub and jam it into his eye. “I would like a chance to tell my new family goodbye, if I may and adjust to your return, pleasant surprise as it is,” she bowed. As Aziza regarded his feet, she wished she had a cold with which to ruin them, if she could only get away with it.
She lingered, lurched in her bow thinking I was forced to travel, sometimes with my hands and feet bound like a slave, like a criminal, like a cow in putrid holding cells, traveled without rest to here and then I had to live with the dullest clod ever born, apparently in error though no one bothered to confirm, who strikes me because he said I was arrogant and he makes me sleep in the barn with the animals to learn humility he said. When the real source of his ire is that he wants to mate with me.”
“Are you going to break it to them gently that you are to leave to be my queen?” he snickered.
Aziza raised her brows but spoke with controlled measure, holding back the barrage of acid she wanted to release. “I might remind you I was promised to not one but two kings. I realize of course you are hardly royalty,” she said scathingly, “but it is not so ridiculous that I said queen.”
Jamie closed in on her, drawing a shadow over her by blocking the sun. “You would have been a whore for the Lion Heart like you’re going to be a whore for me like you were for the great Sultan Ayyubid Saladin. Only you would have seen far less action with the other two as I know Saladin loved his Queen dearly and that he hardly touched his other brides. And I have it on good authority that the Coeur de Lion isn’t interested in your types.“
Aziza stepped back as if he slapped her. “What types would that be, Jamie? Black?”
The shift between them was palatable. His body moved towards hers as almost in slow dance. “How sweet my name sounds on your tongue. Lucky it’s just the two of us. Don’t dare that again, am I clear?” Aziza was silent. “I asked you a question. Do not keep me waiting, mistress. Am I clear?”
“Yes laird,” she said through gritted teeth.
His voice softened to a sultry timbre. “Are you black, Aziza?” His fingers lightly touched her forearm. “Bronzed, maybe? Cinnamon, hmm? Red sand fro
m the Nile?” He guessed and guessed and each time a little more poetical. She could not help but be caught up a little by his amusing flirtation.
“There is no red sand,” Aziza almost smiled. The bastard was charming.
“Did I say red? I meant blue.”
“Enough,” she rolled her eyes trying hard not to show any trace of amusement.
“No, mistress. I was referring to women. His highness doesn’t like women. No matter how remarkably beautiful,” he stroked her cheek. “And it seems my battle prowess gave him the perfect out. And so here you are.”
“And I didn’t get a chance to offer him my thanks properly,” Aziza replied acidly.
He stared at her. And if her reaction to him hadn’t been so volatile, she could find his the sweetest, most endearing face imaginable. He twinkled at her. Many of the Scots did it. It was exasperating. “On second thought,” he said, “You may remain at your place. For now. I need to get settled anyway.”Now Aziza was annoyed he was not in a hurry for her. He must have had plenty of haraam under his belt to keep his appetite stayed no doubt. “We will come together slowly. As you wish,” he continued.
As you wish. It was as she wished. For she remembered all was a sinking feeling. She wanted a prince. She wished he was her husband. She feared she may have cast a spell on him. Called to him and made him appear. “Yes Laird,” she trembled.
“Done.” He pulled her into his massive arms for a sweeping kiss. That was all the proof Aziza needed. Her wish was coming true. She conjured this beautiful demon to be her husband.
Aziza felt near flight and faint at the same time. She was almost drunk with the range of emotions she had experienced at this chance encounter, from shock to attraction to anger most of all. But she had never been kissed before, on the lips that is, and scarcely at that, but knew at once no one else would ever kiss her like this. The taste of his tongue inside her mouth was a sweet as the nectar of the tiny white flower that carpeted the valley, the clung to her hair, her body, her skin, with a touch that was both masterful and light. His body was as hard as she felt limp, pliant, and supple. He cupped her breast with his large, powerful hand and moaned at its bounty. He buried his mouth to the curve of her neck.
“Oh please no,” she heard herself begging.
“You better be glad it was me who found you,” he scolded softly against her ear. Passion was making him dance a little too intensely and he suddenly pulled back, put his finger to her lips. He looked like he was about to devour her. His breaths were as labored as hers, his agony the same.
The shock of the ceremony fused with this passion equaled delectable excitement. Aziza had to concede that she encountered the most charismatic person she could imagine, second to the sultan. Instead of mitigating the torture of the past year, finally meeting Jaime made it worse. He made it very complicated to hate him.
“Laird, I can find my way home. I don’t need an escort. I’m just a whore, remember? Haraam. Better get used to hearing the word, hadn’t I if you’ve brought it all the way back from the Crusades to me. Jmylh al-Khnāzyr.” Bite me. Aziza bowed to disguise her curse as a term of respect.
“Behave, mistress. I don’t care what language you curse me in. It’ll get your mouth washed out. You’d better go before I change my mind. Let me just-” he said and with a quick maneuver her garments were righted. He twirled her to face the path that led to home and sent her on her way.
Aziza answered but her voice shrilled and quivered with arousal so that her words were almost indistinguishable. They sounded more like a whistle than anything. She was sad. Very very sad that he let her have her way. For an entire year she was angry with him because he made her wait to tell him that she didn’t want anything to do with him. Now he was here, appeared before her like a dream and as quickly, he let her go. Leaving her bothered because however he did it, he made her want him. And she was waiting again.
She wished she could turn back the day and crawl back into the night to uncast her spells. They made him appear. They enchanted him.
And he was enchanting her.
****
Home. Another day, another beating. How was Aziza going to be able to explain being out all night? Of course it wasn’t as though either Gregor needed a reason to knock her around. She once had a room in the main house but she took her bedding to the barn to escape Mrs. Gregor’s jealous wrath.
Aziza tried to explain to her hostess that none of the Scottish men wanted her. That her skin was too black for them though it was the color of sun roasted cardamom. It coursed over a perfect figure, naturally muscled and firm and lean limbs but very round breasts and even rounder hips. She had seen her face several times in a glass and had no problem liking what she saw. Soft, sweet doe eyes and a straight nose that flared at the base. Succulent full, defined lips. Her beauty became her reputation and she was chosen for the sultan without even ever meeting him.
It was true no man had ever touched her but not for lack of wanting. All of Laird MacDunna’s men looked at her the way the laird himself just had. So it was a complete lie Andrew Gregor didn’t want her. Aziza just had to remember every filthy name thrown her way since leaving the sultan’s palace to make herself sound convincing. She promised the lady of the house she was not “fucking” her husband while having the breath drilled out of her, and wondering what on earth she had done to deserve the life she ended up with.
Instead of going into the house and risking a thrashing, her ploy was to go directly to the goat pen and pretend she had been toiling since sun up, hoping that her hosts hadn't come to yet from the drunken night before.
But her host beat her to the punch, literally. She entered the pen, bent over to pick up a trowel when she felt herself shoved hard at her backside by his foot, into the muck. Her face that had been so sweetly kissed by the most handsome man she could ever imagine was now covered with goat shit and rotten food scraps. And she would be lucky if she would be allowed to break to wash. She would wear the stench and the filth at least until her hosts were passed-out drunk again.
"Who have you been fucking?" Andrew Gregor was a mean man frustrated by her to the point of brutality. He used words like that with her all the time though she had no clue what they meant. They managed to make her feel dirtier than the muck smearing her, all the same. If she simply answered "no one", he would have punched her for knowing what he was talking about. If she didn’t answer him at all, he would have hit her for not responding.
He nailed her, a right to the face. Aziza laughed hysterically. Here she had told the laird she was just clumsy and now she was getting the stuffing knocked out of her in a pen full of dung mixed mud. She should be lying around on tasseled satin pillows awaiting her turn to please her king. Or right now, walking home on her giant’s arm. And instead for the last year, this had been her life. As she rose from the ground, she was slammed with a back hand. Andrew Gregor was frustrated by her laughter. She braced herself for it. He was so predictable. She floundered to the welcomed cushion of the thick curd that covered the pen floor. It was preferable to some of the hard surfaces he sent her hurling against.
When she came to, he had thankfully abandoned her. She lifted her head. Scant syllables of his grunting found their way to her ears from inside the house. She gathered herself to her feet and ran.
The river water would be so incredibly cold. No one went into the river in the spring months because it was dangerous. The low temperature rendered a slumber of death. People fell asleep from the cold and drowned. Aziza knew this and thought that she could just float to the Afterlife. She had had it suffering one more time the abuse of someone so completely beneath her.
The water was calm but as crisp as she expected. She deliberated whether she should strip and rinse her clothes separately or simply dunk herself altogether. One step on the squishy bank riled the memory of the floor of the pen so she furiously pitched her body against the cold plane of the imperceptibly shallow water, shift and all, a
nd inadvertently embedded the entire front of herself into river mud.
She would have drowned. She would have suffocated had not so many countless prior fear-wrought episodes with Andrew Gregor taught her to keep a cool head in the face of imminent danger. She reserved her breathe and focused herself on plying her body from the suction of the wet gripping gunk. With conservative movements to the dry firm part of the bank, she wiped the slime from her nostrils with the cleaner underside of her garment. Once free and clear, Aziza gasped.
And sobbed.
It had been quite a night and morning. She re-lived the sequence of the night before, of spying on the line of people, the look on bride’s face as she walked into the woods, as she writhed upon the sacrificial table. Which all transformed into an exchange between Jamie and her. She felt an ache between her legs as she involuntarily imagined she was splayed upon the table waiting for Jamie to take her. She was begging for it all ready.
She raised her dirty garment over her shoulders and let herself hover at the surface of the frigid water to rinse the mud from her. She waved the dress to and fro like a water flag, cleaning it at the same time, all the while, wishing herself to be unmagic.
The water ebbed against her rhythmically in soothing laps. Its frigidity eased. The water didn’t just warm but became hot. Steaming. As hot as any bath she took in Egypt. Aziza looked up as though by assessing the sky she would find an explanation as to why she was now enjoying a piping hot bath courtesy of Mother Nature. To her horror, she realized she was floating to a cove, towards the spray of a water fall. She was at the base of the ravine. She did not come here on purpose. It had come to her.
But she was exhausted, she didn’t resist. On top of the otherwise undisturbed water, she rested her eyes and drifted listlessly to the fall's roar. Her arms lulled softly away from her sides and legs gently parted. Aziza was by herself but she was definitely not alone. She felt the distinct pressure of a phantom Jamie MacDunna's mouth at her neck but there was no fear at all, just the solid reassurance of his body beneath hers. She could feel his erection press against her buttocks as they drifted. It made her want to back onto it. He strummed her skin, encouraging her as she offered herself to the drive of the thundering waterfall. His hands played the planes and curves of her body, skimming it with one hand to the junction of her legs, while with the other, tweezing her nipples as he lovingly bit into skin. Aziza cried out. The sweet torture sent a flood from her body which he masterfully plumbed with his long, powerful fingers. He worked her in a wanton rhythm, both rough and gentle, directing her to the fall. She could feel him smile, casting a spell every time he did so.
Primal Moon Page 2
