‘What my father took from A’Qadiz is at the bottom of the sea along with my Papa.’ Tears started in her eyes, but Juliette brushed them away angrily with the back of her bound hands. ‘It’s true. He did take things without asking permission, but only because he was forced to, and he only selected the least valuable,’ she said fiercely. ‘What he cared about more than anything—what he taught me to care about—was knowledge. Who were these people, he asked. How did they live, what gods did they worship, what did they believe in, how were these things passed from one civilization to another? Whether an amulet was bone or gold, whether an idol was studded with jewels or formed from clay, it was what it represented, not what it would fetch in a market which mattered. I don’t care if you believe me or not, but it is the truth. Now he is dead, and there will be others with far fewer principles sent to replace him.’
Her passionate plea surprised him, for she articulated exactly what he felt himself about Persimmanion and all the other sites here in Lash’aal, but the fact remained, she and her father had been stealing. ‘I can guarantee that our borders will not be so easily breached as those of A’Qadiz,’ Khalid replied. ‘We are quite capable of looking after our own treasures without the help of your Western experts.’
‘Sans doute you will treat them all as well as me,’ Juliette threw at him. ‘Perhaps when they hear that their fate is to be held prisoner by savages and given away like a slave they will not come.’
Her refusal to back down infuriated him. There was something about this feisty, altogether wholly unusual female, with the mind of a man, the manners of an infidel and the body of an odalisque, that set his blood aflame. He was wholly unused to being challenged, and entirely unprepared for the source of the challenge to be a mere woman. ‘Perhaps,’ Khalid retorted furiously, driven beyond logical thought in his sudden burning need to bring her to heel, ‘we would treat them more hospitably if they waited upon an invitation.’
Without really thinking what he was doing, wanting only to cow her, Khalid pulled the little dagger, which nestled in the hilt behind his scimitar, from his belt.
Chapter 2
He intended only to free her, and was irked with himself for not having done so immediately, but as he advanced on her, Khalid found he was even more annoyed with Juliette than he’d realized. The defiance in those clear grey eyes of hers could not be ignored. Her face was gamine rather than beautiful, but the way she held herself, just exactly as he would himself under such circumstances, bold and proud, and the surprisingly lush curves of that taut body, roused in him more than just admiration. Desire, like a sharp flash of desert lightning, jolted through him. It didn’t occur to him that he might frighten her. He would have been appalled if it had, would have ceased immediately, but it simply did not. It was the sheer challenge of her, crying out to the innate conqueror in him, which made him raise the dagger higher.
The blade winked cruelly, its edge gleaming in the reflection from the tiles. Spellbound, Juliette watched as he closed in on her, her heart beating wildly in her breast. Was he going to slay her? Was she going to die, bleed to death here on the carpet which had been her gift wrapping?
Prince Khalid’s eyes, glittering like the blade, watched her from under hooded lids. They watched her like a hunter watches his prey. Mesmerizing. The blade was raised. Her blood ran cold, but she did not shrink away from it. She would not be mesmerized. Despite appearances, despite the steely blade and his remorseless eyes, she did not really believe he would kill her in cold blood. It was a test. She would not fail it. She would not!
‘Do it,’ she said, her voice trembling but her gaze unwavering. ‘Do it, I dare you.’
She trembled. He saw the instinctive flinch, the plea for mercy being bitten back and his admiration for her grew, completely subsuming his anger. With a movement so swift that it was over before she could even cry out, the dagger in Khalid’s hand arced through the air, slicing cleanly through the bonds around Juliette’s wrists, before continuing down, in a swooping hiss, to those at her ankles.
With a startled cry she fell back, the blood rushing to her feet making her stumble. Her wrists were throbbing, the welts left by the bonds angry-looking. Juliette rubbed her aching wrists, eyeing him warily.
He could not blame her. Forced upon him as she had been, she was nevertheless his guest. Honour decreed that he treat her with respect. A lesser man would have had no compunction in teaching her, in the age-old way of things, just how little control she had over her destiny. Khalid had no harem, nor any desire for one. Nor did he feel any need whatsoever to prove his power in such a way. At least….
The more he looked at her, the more his body liked what he saw. He wanted to tame her. Knowing she would not be easily tamed made his desire increase, but stronger still was the knowledge, which came to him of a sudden, that he wanted her to submit of her own accord—not through fear, nor in order to barter for her freedom, but because she desired him. Confused by such atavistic emotions, realizing that his own physical desire was manifesting itself in a most uncomfortable and obvious way under his tunic, Khalid eyed his prisoner uncertainly.
‘What do you intend to do with me?’ Juliette asked, backing away from him. He was so tall. Too tall. And really, the way he was looking at her—as if he would devour her. The very idea of it made her go first hot then cold. Fierce as he was, Prince Khalid was doing something to her insides that was making her want, quite contrarily, to ignore the impulse to flee. She was not accustomed to being looked at in such a way, with such interest, such intent. It threw her off balance. For some reason, it made her blush. ‘I warn you, if you lay a hand on me…’ She faltered, first because she had no idea what she would do, and second because the idea of his laying a hand on her was, just for the tiniest fraction of a second, alluring.
‘You will what?’ Khalid asked, doing just exactly that. One hand reached out for her hand, pulling her towards him. The other arm snaked round her back, effectively preventing her from moving. The length of his body was hard against her own. The hilt of his scimitar dug into her belly. ‘What will you do, Juliette de Montignac?’ he asked. ‘Scream?’
Grey eyes clashed with blue. Khalid smiled. There was no humour in that smile, only victory. Juliette opened her mouth wide to scream, not because she was afraid, but because that was the last thing he expected her to do. She took a deep breath, but just as she began to release it, his mouth descended on hers, and his kiss knocked the breath from her.
Warm and hard, his lips were on her. Warm and hard, his hands were, too. No one had ever dared. No one had ever tried. Try as she might, in the dark of night, fired by the erotic pictures glimpsed in some ancient and forbidden book, or painted on a temple wall, she had never been able to imagine what a kiss would be like. Pleasant, she had conjured, but not much more. This was not pleasant. It was passionate and masterful. His mouth commanded hers; his hands ordered a response from her body. She should fight, but she wanted to submit, just as she had yearned to, deep in her darkest dreams. Shock gave way to an astounding surge of pure, unadulterated pleasure. For one delightful moment, Juliette surrendered, her mouth blossoming under his caress, her blood coursing rapidly through her veins, her heart pounding. For one delightful moment she had a glimpse of the pleasures of the senses, then Khalid wrenched himself free of her and the colours, the textures, the heady delights she had almost tasted melted away like shadows.
Juliette staggered back, only just managing not to collapse onto her knees. Totally taken aback by her own response, horrified by the extremely unwelcome suspicion that, had he not stopped she would not have stopped him, she wanted at all costs to prevent Khalid from seeing the effect his kiss had had on her. With her defences breached, she had no option but to attack. Quite deliberately wiping her hand over her mouth, she cast Khalid a contemptuous look. ‘Merci du compliment, but I have no wish to become your concubine, Highness,’ she said, dropping a shaky curtsy.
Khalid, as astonished by his actions as Jul
iette appeared, had been on the verge of apologizing, but he had been taught to counter attack with attack. ‘You have much to learn before you could even aspire to such a position, mademoiselle. Concubines are rather more skilled in the arts of pleasing men than you.’ In truth, her innocent response to his kiss had been more rousing to him than the experienced touch of an odalisque.
‘I demand that you release me,’ Juliette said, more for lack of anything else to say than a desire to go.
It was what he had intended, but once again her refusal to back down made him behave contrarily. ‘No one makes demands of me!’ Khalid exclaimed. ‘You forget that you were given to me as a gift. In the eyes of my people, in the eyes of the law, you are now my property to do with as I wish.’
‘I am a citizen of France, you cannot….’
‘You are in my kingdom, under my jurisdiction. There is nothing I cannot do,’ Khalid interrupted ruthlessly, so thoroughly enjoying his unwonted release from self-control that he conveniently forgot he believed no such thing. ‘What is more, you should consider yourself fortunate to be here with me. You should ponder, mademoiselle, the eventual fate which would have awaited you at the hands of my tribesmen. Eventually, those flashing eyes and that vicious tongue you have would have been insufficient to protect your virtue. If, that is, you have any virtue to protect.’
‘How dare you! How dare you imply that I, Juliette de Montignac, would—’
‘You are quite right. No man in his right mind would wish to breach such a forbidding citadel,’ Khalid cut in again, too intent on besting this infuriating female, too carried away with having finally perceived a crack in her armour to consider the outrageousness of his words. ‘No man that is, until now. Now, my fair prisoner, I can think of no better lesson to teach you. It is time you learned that you are a woman, capable of passion. And the place to learn that lesson is the harem.’
In the heat of the moment, she had forgotten that first impression of him. Formidable. Too late, she realized that appeasement would have been a far better tactic. ‘Please! Prince Khalid, I did not—that is, I am sure you cannot mean….’
‘I never say what I do not mean.’
The determination in his voice told her she had overstepped some invisible mark by some distance. Prince Khalid swooped down on her before Juliette could protest any further, never mind make any attempt to escape him. He picked her up bodily, throwing her over his shoulder as if she weighed nothing, striding up to the double doors at the end of the throne room, kicking them open to the utter astonishment of the guards who stood on the other side.
With the tingle of his kiss still there on her lips, thoroughly panicked by the shockingly appealing image of the sultry harem and all it implied, knowing that the only way to escape what she suspected must be her inevitable, willing submission was to free herself from his inexorable hold, Juliette beat Khalid’s back with her clenched fists. She tried to kick with her bare toes, she tugged his headdress from his head, she let forth a stream of idiomatic curses garnered from years of mixing with soldiers and adventurers alike, and nothing made one whit of difference. On he strode with her, through miles of spotless tiled corridors, past what seemed to her hundreds of guards, until he arrived at a large oak door with an iron grille set in it. The key was in the lock. He turned it, holding her steady with one hand clamped over her bottom, and entered the courtyard, kicking the door shut behind him.
Expecting to see hundreds of scantily clad houris lying about on divans and eating sweetmeats, Juliette let her protests die on her lips as she gazed about her. The courtyard was empty. The fountain, an ornate affair with some rather buxom nymphs at the centre, was dry. The rooms, which ran, one opening out onto the other, around the perimeter of the courtyard, were empty. The silence was eerie.
As Prince Khalid released his hold on her, allowing her to slither to her feet, Juliette backed away from him, willing the tears pricking at the back of her lids to stay where they were. There was a gate fixed in the wall on the opposite side of the courtyard. Peering through it, she saw a garden, a tangled wilderness of bright, blowsy flowers and overgrown trees, lemon and orange, pomegranate and fig, and caught the overpowering scent of jasmine. ‘Where have you brought me?’ To her relief, her voice sounded calmer than she felt.
‘I’ve told you. It is the harem. My harem.’
‘But it’s empty.’
‘Not now. You, mademoiselle, have the honour of being the first occupant.’
‘But….’
‘And I,’ Khalid said, advancing on her with an intent that made Juliette’s heart begin to pound unevenly, ‘in the absence of any other concubines, will be the one to teach you.’
‘Teach me what?’
‘What no one has taught you before. How to be a woman. How to enjoy being a woman. How to take pleasure from your body, to ignore that clever little brain of yours, Mademoiselle de Montignac, and remember that you are Juliette. A woman. And, for the present, my woman.’
His finger trailed down her cheekbone, her throat, her collarbone, the outside of her breast. His touch made her shiver. Her nipples hardened into tight peaks. ‘I won’t,’ Juliette said automatically. She did not like what he was doing to her. She did not like the way her body was responding. Except she did like it, in the same contrary way she liked the way he looked at her, really looked at her, as if he saw what no one else did. Juliette. A Juliette even she did not know. She liked that. No, she didn’t. At least, she ought not to. Shouldn’t she?
Struggling to retain her composure, Juliette met Prince Khalid’s gaze. ‘You can’t make me.’
Khalid laughed softly. ‘You may be naïve, but you are not that innocent,’ he said. ‘I won’t have to, and you know it.’
She did know it. And when he kissed her for the second time, a hard, possessive kiss, over all too quickly, he confirmed it. A flicker of heat, a sizzle of anticipation, the temptation of the leap into the unknown. As if, holding up a candle to a newly discovered tomb, she hesitated upon the brink, and in her hesitation knew that she surrendered.
Khalid picked her up in his arms once more and carried her through the doorway of the first of the interconnecting rooms which ran around the perimeter of the courtyard. He meant only to teach her a lesson in humility. Though the laws of Lash’aal made her his, body and mind, though Khalid himself was the symbolic upholder of those laws, he did not really believe that one person should own another. Slavery had been abolished in Lash’aal two hundred years before. He did not own her, but she did not know that, and while Khalid was above all else a man of honour, there was something about Juliette de Montignac that stripped away the centuries of sophistication and revealed the inner conqueror, the hunter, the man. It confused him. At some point, it would perhaps shame him, but right now, what it did more than anything was overwhelm him. Juliette must be tamed. He would not force her. She would give, and once she gave, he would demonstrate the full extent of his power over her by refusing to take.
The harem had not been occupied since his father’s time, but aside from the garden, it had been well maintained. The bathing chamber was huge, white-tiled, with one wall consisting entirely of mirrors. The ceiling was painted dark blue, with the constellations of the Arabic sky picked out in silver. At the centre of the room stood an enormous sunken bath, filled from a golden spout in the shape of a sea serpent. Khalid placed Juliette back on to her feet and turned the tap to allow the water to flow. ‘The first duty of a concubine is to prepare herself,’ he said.
Wide-eyed, gazing longingly at the bath, Juliette was conscious of how grubby and dirty she was. She felt as if she were in a dream. The shipwreck she had so miraculously survived had cast her free from the anchor which had been her life. Only now, in this exotic palace, with this exotic man, did she realize just how empty that life had been. In the brief time here as Prince Khalid’s prisoner, she had experienced more extremes of emotion than she had felt in her entire life. This interlude had no place in reality, she knew that,
but right now she didn’t care.
She felt alive. She felt liberated. She felt…she felt distracted. By the perfume wafting up from the petals and oils which Prince Khalid had strewn into the bathwater. By the tingling sensation his kiss had left on her lips. By the way her body heated, her skin too hot, all her senses accentuated. By the man himself, once more turning his attention towards her. He had discarded his cloak, his weapons, his headdress. His hair was black, midnight-black, just like hers. Without the formal clothes, he looked much younger. Much more attractive. Much more dangerous. Much, much more dangerous. He was no longer an aloof prince, but a man.
She had never really thought of herself as a woman, but now, because he so obviously did, so too did she. Compared to his lithe body, the compact power in his muscles, the very potency of him, she felt vulnerable, soft, exposed. Her will seemed to have fled. She was oddly inclined to do as he bid her, oddly excited by the prospect.
‘Take off your clothes.’
One thing to imagine, quite another thing to actually do. Juliette clutched at her tattered robe. A blush stained her cheeks. ‘Non!’
But it was no use. His hands were already dealing competently with the few remaining fastenings of her practical cotton gown. The shoulder seams gave way as he eased it over her body. The skirt crumpled to the floor. Her corsets followed. Clad only in her chemise and pantaloons, Juliette panicked. She had never looked at herself naked in a mirror before. She wasn’t sure she relished the thought of her body, reflected endlessly in those mirrors. ‘No, please, I….’
The Sheikh's Impetuous Love-Slave Page 2
