by Jane Feather
Now, as he waited out the hour before Yusuf would bring the girl to him, he was aware of an unusually high degree of anticipation. He enjoyed lovemaking, enjoyed the women who shared his bed, but he couldn’t remember when he was last excited by one of them, when he had last felt this burgeoning lust for one particular body. But the moment he had seen her on the road that afternoon, barefoot, her hair a tangled cloud around the small face, a wildness to the green eyes as if some fire had been kindled and inadequately doused, he had wanted her. He hadn’t questioned his wanting, and since he was not in the habit of failing to acquire what he wanted, he had simply set out to do just that. She was neither concubine nor slave nor captive justifiably acquired during hostilities. He had plucked her from her world to gratify an immoderate obsession that had hit him like a bolt from the blue … but he had not yet won her.
No, he had not yet won her. And therein lay the core of his rapidly mounting excitement, he decided. Judging by what he had seen so far, she would not prove an easy conquest. A woman who refused to speak even when words of outrage bubbled to her lips was a formidable challenge. Abul had the unmistakable impression that his new acquisition was a woman of some spirit. Only such a one would for whatever reason deliberately leave the protection of her kin to brave the dangers of a strange land whose inhabitants were not well disposed to her race and would certainly consider a lone woman fair game. And she was a woman who had had a lover, of that he was convinced. No timorous maid, this, but one who had known the joys of love and passion, one over whom men had fought to the death.
He did not yet know exactly what had happened in the encampment that afternoon, but he guessed that her lover had been killed and she had run from whatever consequences she was now to face. How deep ran her feelings for that man? He had seen the grief in her eyes earlier. If she was going to hold herself loyal to a memory, then he would have an added obstacle to overcome. She came from a monogamous people, of course, and they tended to be absurdly simple-minded about relations between men and women. Or was it that they complicated such relations unnecessarily? Either way, the thesis struck Abul as nonsensical and certainly a potential hindrance to his present aim.
Women had not hitherto presented him with any obstacles. They came when he sent for them, offered him only soft words and obedience, and did everything they knew to please him. He found he was deeply relishing the prospect of the challenge this nameless girl represented.
As she stepped into the room, he saw immediately that he had been right. There would be no subdued yielding to fate. She stood unmoving just within the doorway, her head up and her eyes meeting his unwaveringly across the room. He was unprepared for the effect she had upon him, dressed in the traditional caftan of his own people. It wasn’t a garment worn by women with fiery hair springing to their shoulders in still damp curls; green-eyed women who stared a man down with lifted chin and feet planted squarely upon the ground. The bare-legged, tattered waif had disappeared, but the woman in her place still carried that sense of something untamed, and his blood rushed with sudden speed in his veins, the pulse in his throat beating with an almost painful rapidity under a thrill of arousal he hadn’t felt since his youth.
“How are you called?” It was the fourth time of asking.
Sarita again made no answer, but her chin lifted a fraction higher, and Abul drew breath sharply. He stepped toward her, holding his hand out invitingly, in the manner one might use to coax a creature of the wild to one’s hearth.
“If you will not tell me your name, then I must give you one of my own.” He smiled as he reached her.
Sarita found she was holding her breath. He had shed the embroidered tunic, the leather britches, the studded belt and leather boots of the horseman, and wore a plain dark burnous. His head was now uncovered, and the thick black hair curled luxuriantly around his ears, waved off his broad forehead. His teeth gleamed white in the olive-gold of his complexion as his smile broadened. Never before had she been so aware of masculine power. She had never thought of power when she was with Sandro. Theirs was an equal love and passion, and they had both been powerless in its pursuit. Tariq had power, and she had felt it on many occasions, but it was the power of the leader, the power of his authority she had felt, not of his masculinity. Tonight she would have felt that male power, though. And it would have been of a different order from that exhibited by this man. She knew that absolutely. She knew that Tariq would have taken and used her body, would have exacted some vengeance upon her body for the humiliation she had caused him, and for the virginity she had given to another. Muley Abul Hassan’s power did not emanate from the advantages of brute strength. But if not that … from where? From what inner well?
Slowly she let out her breath, keeping her eyes on his, throwing the same mute defiance in the face of his smile, his hands now lightly cupping her face.
“Zoraya,” he said. “It means Morning Star. You shall be my morning star until you decide to resume your own identity.” His hands left her face, and he stepped back as if to look at her properly. “Will you take off the robe, Zoraya?”
The question shocked her, although it should not have. But it seemed to have come too quickly, without any preliminary discussion of what she was doing here, as if his assumptions were hers and could not be otherwise. She shook her head, wishing that she had moved further into the room when she had first entered. Her back was to the door, the caliph was in front of her, and there seemed no room for maneuver.
He stepped closer again and with calm deliberation unfastened the first of the pearls at the neck of the robe. She tried to push his hands away, but he continued to the next one as if she hadn’t moved.
“What are you doing?” She spoke to him for the first time, and her voice sounded strange to her, as if it were thick and creaky with disuse.
Abul hid his pleasure and simply raised an eyebrow as if at a silly question. “Unbuttoning you,” he said, sliding the third button free of its loop.
“You would force me, then?” She held herself rigid, aware that she could do nothing to stop this if he was determined.
She saw that for some reason her question had startled him; a shadow of displeasure appeared in his black eyes. “No. What enjoyment would there be in that for either of us? Besides,” he added, continuing with his work, “it will not be necessary.” The button at her navel came undone as he said this.
Sarita could feel the warm night air on the inner swell of her breasts, now partially revealed. Why would it not be necessary? What kind of statement was that? But even through her shocked confusion she sensed what he meant, and an inkling of its truth shivered in her belly. She tried again to push his hands away, this time with a flurry of desperation, as if she would banish with his hands that suspicion of her body’s potential for betrayal.
“If you do not intend to force me, why are you doing this?”
“Because I wish to look upon your body.” It was said calmly, as if he were stating an obvious truth. And she realized that for him it was an obvious truth, as obvious as his belief in his right to do it. He had wanted her, so he had taken her, and while he would not hurt her, he would do with her as he pleased because he always did as he pleased. There was no one to gainsay the caliph of Granada in the palace of the Alhambra.
Except perhaps a Spanish girl with the open road in her blood.
The thought brought her renewed strength, drove the moment of weakness into the shadows. She stood immobile as he slipped the opened robe off her shoulders, and she tried to transport herself out of this lamplit room of cushioned silk and painted walls, back to the encampment with the rough grass beneath her feet and the sun in her face and the scent of wild thyme and marjoram mingling with the rich smells of roasting meat turning on spits over the cooking fires.
She had never been naked for a man before. There had been neither place nor opportunity for such luxury with Sandro; they had learned each other’s bodies with their hands, not their eyes. Now she closed her eyes on a was
h of vulnerability that she would not, must not, let this man see. He could look upon her body, but she would not let him look into her soul.
“How did you scratch yourself?” Abul asked, his voice little more than a rustling whisper in the quiet room. He touched the angry red mark across her right breast and then turned her to touch its twin across the back of her left thigh.
The splinters as she’d squeezed through the space in the backboards, she remembered as her stomach lurched at his touch and her knees seemed to lose their sinew. The light brush of his fingers had created an effulgent warmth on her skin, so that she could almost believe her skin was glowing and he would see the radiance in the room’s dim light.
“You must be more careful,” he said as if she had answered his question and they were having a dialogue. “Your skin is too delicate to misuse in this way.”
“I do not live in a gilded cage,” she said, finding her voice and her asperity at one and the same moment. “The women of my tribe endure more than scratches when they are about their work.”
“Well, it will not happen again,” Abul said. “And these will soon heal.” He took her hands and drew her further into the room, observing, “We do not have to stand by the door all night. Sit there.” He gestured to an ottoman and, when she didn’t immediately take it, pushed her down quite gently. “You would like a glass of wine.” It was a statement, not a question.
Sarita had been drinking wine and small beer since she was twelve. There really wasn’t any alternative. Water often seemed to cause sickness and was drunk sparingly. There was milk, but the main supply was kept for the children. She accepted the goblet of Malaga with visible relief and for a minute forgot her nakedness with the familiar reassurance of a drink that anchored her to her self and her place in the world.
Abul took a sip from his own goblet and stretched out on a divan opposite her. “Must I call you Zoraya, or will you tell me your name … now that you have found your tongue?”
The softness of the silk cushions beneath her caressed her skin and made her vibrantly aware of her nakedness again. A light breeze lifted a curtain at a window, and she felt its stroking touch across her breasts. Her nipples hardened, and she knew it was not just from the coolness of the breeze. She was becoming aroused by her own nakedness in this golden bower and in front of this man.
“I wish to put on my robe,” she said, standing up.
“There is no need. If you’re cold, I will close the shutters.”
“I wish to put it on,” she said stubbornly. “Why should I be naked when you are not?”
She realized her mistake immediately. Muley Abul Hassan simply stood and pulled his burnous over his head. Beneath, he was as naked as she. She wanted to avert her eyes but found she couldn’t. His body was lean and golden, tautly muscled, with not an ounce of spare flesh. She thought of Tariq, the muscles like small hills in his arms, rippling rivers across his shoulders as he had fought with Sandro that afternoon. There was no such overt display here, but she had the impression that the body was as rock-hard, as much an efficient machine as Tariq’s, as powerfully strong as any she had seen. Her eyes drifted inadvertently downward, and she felt a warm flush suffusing her cheeks. The caliph was powerfully aroused. She sat down again abruptly.
“Come now, my morning star,” he said, having no difficulty reading her blush and finding himself much amused by it. “What did you expect? You are no maid, you have told me as much. You must know what effect such beauty will have on a man.”
“I am called Sarita,” she said, trying to sink into the cushions of the ottoman, hugging her arms tightly across her breasts. Telling him her name was an attempt to reassert her sense of self, not a capitulation, but she was too disconcerted to care if he realized it.
“Sarita,” he said slowly, as if trying the syllables on his tongue. “It seems we make progress, Sarita.”
“Toward what, my lord caliph?” She was relieved to hear a healthy snap in the question despite her present disadvantaged position.
“I have told you my name. Can you not use it?”
She regarded him through narrowed eyes. “It is something of a mouthful, my lord caliph.”
He laughed and came over to her as she shrank deeper into the cushions. “ ‘Abul’ is no mouthful. It is how I am called.”
“I wish to put on my robe and return to the tower.” She turned her head away from the still powerfully aroused body, the evidence of that arousal now at eye level. “And tomorrow I will leave here.”
“We will discuss tomorrow when tomorrow comes,” he said, and there was a new note in his voice, a hint of steel that she hadn’t heard before, yet it didn’t surprise her. It seemed inevitably a part of the natural unspoken arrogance of the man, the unquestioned and unquestionable power of him. “Let us make ourselves more comfortable.” Bending, he took her hands and drew her unresisting to her feet. She seemed to have lost all power of resistance. He led her through a curtained archway into a sleeping chamber where a wide divan stood in a pillared recess. He gestured that she should take her place on it.
“I will not get into your bed,” she heard herself say, her voice shaking slightly. “You said you would not force me.”
“I am not going to,” he said quietly. “But we will be more comfortable sleeping in the bed than elsewhere.”
“But I wish to go to my own bed in the tower.” Her voice sounded plaintive, like a small child pleading for a reprieve.
“We will sleep in this bed,” he said, firmly denying the reprieve. He pulled back the coverlet. “You need have no fear.”
She had no choice but to trust him. And if he proved untrustworthy, still she had no choice. Sarita kicked off her slippers and crept beneath the coverlet, drawing it up to her chin. She watched as he moved around the room extinguishing the oil lamps, except for one that he brought over to the divan and placed on a low table, so that the bed and its occupant were bathed in a soft puddle of light, an oasis of light in the darkened room.
“I cannot sleep with the lamp burning,” Sarita said, trying to sound firmly matter-of-fact, as if she were accustomed to sleeping beside a man in silken feather-bedded depths, the air delicate with perfumed oil and orange blossom.
“We aren’t going to sleep just yet.” Abul gently pried her fingers loose from the coverlet and drew it away from her body. “I wish to discover what gives you pleasure.” He came down on the divan beside her, and Sarita shivered as if he had just pronounced a Draconian sentence. But it was not Muley Abul Hassan she feared; she feared only herself. She feared only that her body would betray Sandro’s memory.
He drew a hand down her length in a slow, sweeping caress from the hollow of her shoulder to the soft flare of her hip; and where his hand touched, that same effulgent warmth spread across her skin. His eyes were bent upon her body as if he would imprint every curve and hollow on his mind, and his absolute concentration was more unnerving than anything she could have imagined. He placed a cupped hand over her breast; the hand seemed very large as her breast disappeared into the palm, and the warmth of his skin, the slight pressure of his palm, lifted her nipple.
He looked into her eyes then as he felt the movement of her breast in his hand. “There is nothing to fear,” he said, seeing panic flickering in her emerald eyes. “There is only pleasure.” Still covering one breast, he bent his head to the other, lifting the nipple with a grazing tongue so she shivered and cried out a muted protest.
Abul drew back. He knew the response she was denying, but he had promised he would not force her. “Perhaps we are trying to run before we can walk,” he said. “No, don’t do that.” He stopped her from covering her breasts with her arms. “They are so pretty. So perfectly formed, round and firm.” He moved his hand again in another long, lazy caress, this time from hip to ankle. “Such pretty feet, too.” He lifted one foot and then gave a little gasp of shock. “What have you done to them?”
Dangerous passion scuttled abruptly into the shadows. “I do no
t wear shoes,” Sarita said, since an explanation was clearly required. “And I do not see what business it is or yours.”
Abul began to laugh. “How absurd that you should mar such perfection in this way. We will start to work upon them in the baths in the morning.”
Sarita jerked her feet away from him, drawing her knees up and planting the soles flat on the bed. “In the morning I am leaving this place.”
Abul made no verbal response. Instead, with a tiny smile, he moved his forefinger down the length of her drawn-up thigh from the hollow of her knee to the delicate fold where her thighs met her buttocks. Sarita, realizing too late how her indignant protection of her feet had exposed her, slammed her legs flat on the bed, and he laughed.
“I have a feeling that you enjoy a little combat with your loving,” he said. “It can be most powerfully arousing.”
Sarita stared at him. Did she? Or rather, would she? There had never been time for games with Sandro, and there had been enough danger in the forbidden act itself without creating playful scenarios. But Abul’s words had sent a jolt into the pit of her stomach, and a seeping warmth spread through her loins.
“Well,” he continued coolly, “we shall discover that one day soon. Perhaps not tonight.”
“Please,” she said. “Please, no more. Let me go back to the tower.”
For answer, he dipped a finger in the shell of her navel and then brought his mouth to hers. His kiss was gentle as he ran the tip of his tongue over her lips, probing the corners or her mouth, tasting her sweetness. She found she was holding her breath, that the sensation was delicious: the warm pliancy of his lips, the darting probes of his tongue. Her mouth opened and his tongue was on hers, then as quickly withdrawn in a teasing, tantalizing play that forced her to move her mouth to recapture his tongue, drawing it deep within.
