Sary and the Maharajah's Emeralds

by Sharon Shipley

  “And today?”

  “Today I have it on good authority that he is captain of his bed. He has the grippe, as they say in France. Flags at half mast, the nation in mourning.” He grinned sardonically. “We are safe, little one.”

  Haunted by the bloated specter, I clung to him.

  He cupped my chin. “I am unafraid, yet I cannot put you in more peril.”

  “I am greedy too,” I whispered huskily. “I weary of being fearful. I want to live, if even just for now.” I reached for wine, warming now. I’m afraid I drank from the bottle, my throat raw from lusty breathing. Laughing, he did too. We lounged there, passing the huge bottle back and forth, like two hooligans chuckling at nothing and continuing to drink, watching each other over the bottleneck, already tasting the next sweetness to come…

  The slippery wine felt good trickling down. Our next kisses were wet and sweet. Pushing me into cushions, he trailed winey kisses down my neck to my breasts, lingering there, covering them with sticky sweetness; he licked and sucked sweet warm wine off my nipples.

  I shuddered, lifting my face to thrust my tongue into his mouth. We stayed locked, exploring, touching, gripping shoulders and waists and buttocks, as if wishing to grasp every part and make us one, filling every curve, bone, hip, or knee into a matching hollow, until bodies seamlessly melded.

  Then, in a fit of shyness, I burrowed into the stones so glacial, so smooth, relishing the sensation of translucent pebbles, the crashing and tinkling of discordant music, while this strikingly erotic male lifted handfuls, trickling emeralds over my shoulders, spilling them down the cleft of my pale breasts, his muscles rippling strongly in the warm flickering light. My flesh was cream satin against his polished bronze—a beguiling contrast and the only color against the verdant glow washing over us in a weightless tide.

  Murmuring Hindi, he dribbled stones down my taut belly until they fell into the crevice of my thighs, lost in a pale silk tangle.

  Selecting a small emerald where it fell in the dip of my navel, he ran soft lips down, down, delicately plucking more stones—a flick of the tongue here, a nip there—from where they secreted themselves.

  I moaned and twisted, trying to reach him as he held me back with one sinewy arm.

  “Stop. Tickling!” I gasped, gripping his black mane to stop his search for more elusive emeralds in my most secret parts before I exploded.

  He raised his handsome tousled head, regarding me with eyes shadowed by long glossy lashes, eyes hot, black, and drugged with desire.

  More? Shall I stop? They spoke.

  His long naked copper body, warmed with cinnamon oils and slick with sheen, was now above me, propped on both arms.

  Oh, yes, do not stop! Ohhhh, yes—now, please.

  When I would fly to the domed roof and circle the room screaming my pleasure, he had no mercy.

  Yes, yes, yes, please…spare me begging. Grind my bones…kiss my breasts…do things.

  We rolled off the cushions. Myriad facets felt like small pinpricks. I wriggled to find a comfortable hollow…then forgot any tenderness as the tiny sharp jabs stimulated and heightened my pleasure. I had never felt so abandoned. Oh, yes, closer still—invade me like a ravaging army…

  Wrapping my arms tightly about his lean, muscular waist, I was buried in him…and him in me.

  With a flash of teeth like a grimace, he rolled me on top and held me up at arm’s length.

  I saw my tumble of pale hair drop heavily, shielding our faces.

  In the bower of my hair and breathing in the scent of our recent pleasure, musky and perfumed, I couldn’t hold back a shy grin matching his, feeling as wanton as a baud, yet aware he had made our first union special and we should not waste it.

  He raised me higher, sliding me forward with the strength of muscled arms, plying his tongue, sliding down to my belly, tickling my navel, while I, giggling, breathless, fought to be let down.

  “Stop!” I begged.

  He stopped. “No?” he asked.

  “Y—yessss! But…”

  I answered by wriggling down, drawing my knees up and, before I could tumble off, pressing down on his hardening center…gasping, “Ahhhhh!”

  He grinned up at me, conceited, the burgeoning growth immensely hard now and unbelievably large. I wondered briefly if I was supposed to be this lustful? Am I supposed to be this abandoned?

  Easy! You act like a back alley strumpet, my imp insinuated.

  I quashed my imp, lying full length across the rajah’s chest and kissing him with renewed ardor, tongue to tongue.

  My reservations did not last. Sensing a blissfully familiar escalating pressure, I rode him—he matching my rhythm, trying to take over—but I held him back with the flat of my palm, and so we swam, rolling in the green seas of our underwater grotto, awash with wave after wave of desire…

  I was out of my mind…urging him, floating and twisting, plunging and lifting above the green stones, until our bodies soared to the ceiling with ecstasy and a fiery explosion erupted deep in my secret self.

  Satiated and exhausted, the tide receded, washing us at last to the shore of sanity…or relative sanity.

  ****

  Later I pondered if we had both gone mad, not from forbearance but from the uncertainty of the future.

  I would never be the same.

  Sated, throbbing, and pleasantly exhausted, we eventually found contentment in entwined fingers and the touch of shoulders. The rajah whispered against my hair, “Do you know why I wanted this?”

  “No, not quite,” I whispered inadequately.

  “It is beautiful. No?”

  I nodded numbly.

  “I wanted”—he waved a hand—“something to please you. You’ve had little that is pleasant here,” he murmured through my hair.

  You can say that again.

  “The first time I saw you, your eyes so filled with green fire they would turn these stones into dull pebbles of no consequence. I knew my brother’s riches could never compete, nor would I wish them to.”

  “This was a challenge?” I rose on one elbow.

  “I spoke clumsily. Yet a lifetime of looking into your eyes gives all the emeralds I could ever wish for. I no longer care what my brother wills.”

  I giggled.

  His turn to glare.

  I waved him off, stuffing a knuckle in my mouth to keep from laughing. “No matter,” I sputtered. “You speak at times as if reading from Jane Eyre.”

  “Jane—Eyre?” He raised those fierce wings of brows again. I smiled up at his exasperation, his annoyance at being found lacking in any way.

  “Never mind. I love it when you speak that way. Don’t stop.”

  He looked at me so gravely I wanted to laugh again but quickly sobered at his next words.

  “You are my wife now, my little foreigner.” He spoke as if it were an ordinary comment, like how salty or sweet a dish.

  “Wife…?”

  “I am your lord and protector. No one will ever harm you,” he stated in his best pedantic style. “Let him have all of this. All Rajasthan—all India. I have you.”

  ****

  I woke aware of cooler, wetter air, his strong arms cupped under my knees and shoulders, my head bouncing on his chest under his chin; I stared up at the muzzy moonlit sky. A wet moon.

  “May we come back, ever?” I whispered against his neck.

  “I will move the mountains to make it so.”

  Reluctant to break the spell, I rushed on. “Might I have another wish…?”

  “Anything, pyara.”

  “I wish to leave the palace. If even for a day,” I whispered into the hollow of his strong neck.

  His grip tensed.

  “With you!”

  “You are beloved as a wife now, Sarabande.” He spoke in liquid Hindi, then, changed to his stilted English. “I can deny you little. But think you that I cannot protect you?”

  “It isn’t that, my—my love.” The word seemed so new on my lips. “This is my
place now. I—I feel it so.” And truthfully I meant it then. I considered carefully. “Yet I am not real. I need to see people,” I explained inadequately. “Real people. I need outside these walls.”

  The rajah looked down at me oddly. “If it means so much,” he answered shortly, “we will see…”

  I was miserable. I had spoiled it all. He would avoid me now, so as to avoid these conflicts. Yet I had a right. I could not turn myself into a doll to be dressed, cosseted, and taken out of the box every so often.

  And grow fat and indolent? my imp suggested.

  Chapter Twenty

  Uncontrollable Tide

  “Pri-ya…” The rajah put his finger on my chest.

  “Pri-ye…” My love pointed to himself.

  I parroted, pursing my lip, of which the rajah took full advantage. A good time later, I asked, “But what does it mean? You’ve never told me…” I laughed, swatting him with one of the multitude of pillows.

  “It means ‘sweetheart.’ Now say after me, Mera pyara…”

  “Mera pyara,” I echoed.

  “My love…or if you like, mere dila ka pyara…”

  I raised my brow.

  “Love of my heart.” My rajah folded both hands dramatically over his own. I hid a smile.

  “You have many ways of speaking it,” I murmured low, stroking where he loved to be touched. He shivered and stayed my hand.

  “You are a strumpet—a witch, a kali. You make me forget my priestly upbringing.” He grinned impiously.

  I looked from beneath my lashes. “Say me more.” I relished how he spoke—the tenor resonance of formal toff English. He could recite a book on laying brick and still I would listen, like a rapturous schoolgirl.

  However, my rajah had been distant, or so I imagined, after our idyll in the treasury crypt and my apparently ill-timed demands.

  Next morning he had gone. Busy with affairs of state, I told myself, or his prize horses, or perhaps he left the palace altogether. Yet his leaving put me at odds, restless and always looking over my shoulder.

  We had been overly polite upon return to his rooms that night. He read my mood. I did not sleep but lounged on the parapet overlooking a lake as deep and black as my thoughts.

  I must have fitfully slept. In the morning, an old servant, stiffly formal and openly disdainful, told me with some relish, “His highness left early. I do not query where he goes, memsahib, or what business commands his attentions.” Clearly not you was implied.

  I had the sulky notion to return to the seraglio but could not make myself. I would have liked to have Asha with me, however. Virtually ignoring her in my captivation with the rajah, I did not deserve her friendship now, she who had shown me charity.

  The rajah seemed suitably chastened when I next saw him, even shy.

  “Madam, I presume you are well,” he uttered formally. Then we rushed to each other’s arms with graceless abandon as we bumped noses and missed lips in our eagerness to make amends.

  “I am not used to announcing my leave-taking,” he said grudgingly. “It is new to me, and unusual for a—”

  “For a male to need to, here in India?” I raised my brow.

  “Precisely.”

  “Then I shall not care.”

  ****

  We grew reckless, even flaunting our relationship before spies and staff alike.

  My rajah assured me, “My servants are loyal. Isn’t that right, Anupam?”

  I blushed that first time, sinking slowly under the covers.

  Anupam, the rajah’s aide de camp and best friend, had arrived as usual, cheerfully whistling. Anupam smiled, man to man. “So right, my lord!”

  Throwing open shutters, plunking chilled chai and rice cooked in milk and fruit, kheer, and generally making himself at home, even sitting on the edge of our bed, he chattered on about the day, kitchen gossip, the maharajah’s disposition—homicidal, drugged, or just his natural suspicious nature—and whereabouts. Serious fare along with the chai. It forewarned if the maharajah was on a rampage or safe in “his cups.” Until we are not…

  I looked forward to this gossip of the day—like having with breakfast a juicy gazette that one did not need to open.

  Still I pressed. “Why, my love? You seem to be doing more and more away these days.”

  The rajah grew silent, clenching his jaw. “I do not wish to speak of it. Let us say my dear brother grows more—irresponsible.” Moreover, he would not elucidate, no matter how delicately I picked at the subject.

  Either way, my rajah often needed to take over the reins, leaving me much alone.

  ****

  It was one of those days we were abed feeding each other dates, chai, paneer with naan, peaches bursting with juice, or green melon, and wallowing on finest linen scented with jasmine, tuberose, and lily. Outside of a troubling fogginess regarding my past, I could not recall living any other way. I rather liked being a de facto princess.

  “Oh, stop, silly!” I toed the interesting bulge in his linens. “Stop tormenting me”—I looked up beneath my lashes—“with speeches.” For he had been reliving a talk he’d had with a stuffy German manufacturer of hunting rifles, a subject not dear to my heart.

  He began loosening the bedclothes twisted around me, rolled me onto my tummy, and commenced the slow journey of kisses down my back. “So then, I proceeded to ask of him naturally, the quality and caliber of his ammunition, the accessibility and…”

  “Oh, do stop.” I giggled as he showed me the quality and accessibility of his ammunition.

  Later, we lay drowsy and satiated, with the scent of love heavy in the air.

  “Must get up, insatiable wench.” He slapped my rear. “I have duties.”

  “In-satiable! My, we are learning big words,” I cooed.

  “I can teach more than big words.” The rajah kissed my ear, then sat up and groaned, thrusting a hand through long black hair.

  “Pyaar,” I tried in Hindi, “what troubles you?”

  “My brother—is ill again. I meet dignitaries—these from Holland. Something delicate. Treaties, in case of war. Possible loans.” He smiled over his shoulder. “It is time I lifted something besides you. And I must attend to the maharani,” he tossed out negligently.

  At my quick look, he continued. “She is brought low. She needs friends, love. If not me, then…?” He left the question dangling.

  “No friends!” I raised a jealous brow. “With all her ladies in the seraglio?”

  He bit his lip.

  “The maharani is very beautiful.” I said clumsily.

  “Indeed, the most lovely in the country, and with the fairest disposition,” he agreed, oblivious.

  “You are a trial.” Unreasonably jealous, I teased him again with my toe, hoping to divert him. He snatched my foot and tickled the tender instep. I writhed, breathless.

  “Trial, am I? I will show you the full wrath and power of your master.” He held me, arms above my head, and pressing me deep into the feathers, kissed me thoroughly. Tasting the last juices of the peach, I wrapped my legs to bind him more tightly—he lifted my hips to affix me tighter still; our ardor took over, mindless, fevered, and breathless as usual, with lips bruised and bodies delightfully used.

  Still gasping, the rajah tossed me over. I rolled back, pulling my long hair out from under. It was different now, though. I sulked. I was being appeased. I examined him with a raised brow and pushed out my lower lip as he fitted on the red sash and gaudy badge of rank, with the aid of Anupam, to meet the ambassador from Holland—and also, it seemed, the Secretary of Defense from France.

  “Later, the dinner of state, my lord?” Anupam asked.

  “Oh!” My eyes widened. I jumped up, holding the silk sheets before me.

  “Should I wear something more—dignified?” I plopped back and lifted a leg behind Anupam, letting my sheet float back. “A state dinner with maybe four hundred of your visiting cousins and the French Defense Minister… Is he handsome?”

  “Of co
urse! He resembles me.”

  “Sounds dull indeed!”

  “Sary, love.” He watched me in the pier glass. “I thought you understood. You will not be seen—not be attending this time.” He bent to kiss my nape. I swerved aside.

  I kept my expression pleasant. Was this a change I should worry about? I had grown too complacent, too assured.

  I despised the face-covering veil, yet occasionally I sat, the subject of curiosity, in the balcony, with select ladies of the seraglio. The dinners were glamorous, candlelit and glittering. I longed to be by his side. Occasionally the maharani made an appearance. I hoped this was due to her heightened influence and not his interest.

  The rajah, with dark dangerous eyes, said when I mentioned it, “I am no longer concerned over what my brother might think, yet why stir the pot? Who knows what might float to the top. Besides, the maharani implied her husband might be making an effort this evening.” He grimaced.

  “I’d feel like a fun-time girl trotted out at a men’s smoker, at any rate!” I fumed.

  Well, aren’t you? goaded my imp, who had been, thankfully, silent these past weeks. Neither wife nor recognized, I would say. More like a handy trull. My imp apparently was making up for lost time.

  “You said something, love?”

  “No bother.” I bit savagely into a persimmon, spitting the seeds like a hoyden.

  He raised his brow.

  “Yet there is your brother’s birthday. There is precedent for that!”

  I grew silent as it struck me I had been within these confines for almost a year. He threw me a cool glance.

  “Have they run out of precious stones with which to gift him? Lead weights might be suitable.” I said as heavily as the subject, happy to see his mouth twitch.

  He sighed and turned to admire himself, straightening the back of his tunic. “Please don’t vex yourself, love.”

  He held out his arms to allow Anupam to fasten bracelets, bent his neck for the choker of pearls, and finally let him fit on the turban before the man sailed out with a knowing expression.