As You Desire (2 page)

“Who is he?” she breathed, her gaze riveted on the figure now almost to the camp.

“He came for you,” Rabi said.

Her head snapped around in surprise. She’d thought “drink, you drink” the extent of Rabi’s English vocabulary. He looked positively jubilant.

“You mean … he’s taking me … tonight?”

“Yes, yes,” Rabi said, pulling her forward. “Tonight you go with him. Everyone will be happy.” He dragged her toward the campfire and she stumbled to her knees.

“Hup, hup, you hup,” one of the veiled men grumbled, coming and standing over her.

She tilted her chin haughtily. “Why should I?”

He made a grab for her and she scooted to her feet. She would not give him the satisfaction of swinging her over his shoulder like a sack of grain and dumping her back in that hot, smelly tent—the way most of her previous acts of defiance had been met.

She was an Englishwoman; she had her pride. With a brave toss of her hair, she swept into the bright circle of light.

“Here is
Sitt,”
the man ahead of her mumbled, flicking his hand in her direction and snatching up Rabi’s goat bladder as if he needed it. He took a deep swig.

She looked around and found the one unfamiliar figure in the camp. Her heart started racing. Her breath caught in her throat. Without doubt, without reason, unequivocally and absolutely, she knew this man would
own
her.

He hovered on the periphery of the darkness, licked by shadows, studying her. When he came forward, it was with the soft-sure footfall of the panther. He approached at an oblique angle, his head cocked as he considered her. Somehow she contrived to remain erect beneath that keen and heartless perusal.

He flung back the inky cape suspended from a jeweled clasp on his shoulder and set his gloved fist on his hip. Only his eyes were visible; his expression
was obscured by an indigo
burkos
tucked beneath the edge of his
khafiya
.

Another Tuarek tribesman, Desdemona thought breathlessly. The most savage of the lawless desert nomads.

Above his veil his eyes narrowed and glittered in the uncertain firelight. Dangerous, sleek, and arrogant, he stalked toward her. She swallowed hard and, her self-possession breaking with his predatory approach, scuttled back from his advance.

He laughed, a cruel, barbaric sound. It stopped her retreat. Generations of British pride steeled her backbone, and she met his gaze defiantly, even courageously. His hand shot out with the deadly speed of a striking cobra and he grabbed her wrist, dragging her to him. She fought fiercely, knowing the slavers would do nothing to intercede, fear replacing her former defiance.

He held her easily, her strength a negligible thing, and called over her head to the muttering slavers in hoarse, guttural Arabic. Why, oh why, she asked herself, could she never learn to
speak
the dratted language, only
read
it?

One of the men, a dirty individual in a lopsided turban, flapped his hand toward the tent where she slept. With another low laugh, the stranger snatched her forward and hauled her into its dim interior.

The sudden severity of her situation exploded in upon her, erasing some of the torpor from her drink-befuddled mind. This was no romantic prince of the desert, this was a hard savage, a man who would use her body as casually as an Englishman would
soil a napkin and just as casually discard her when he was done.

She screamed. His big hand clamped over her mouth and he spun her about, dragging her against the unyielding wall of his chest. He hissed something in her ear but she couldn’t make out the words, her stifled screams reverberated too loudly in her skull. She struggled, kicking and flailing.

“Would you bloody well stop it?” he thundered in her ear.

She froze, her surprise at hearing not only an English accent but
that
English accent so great she couldn’t have moved. He unclamped his hand from her mouth and wheeled her about. In their struggle his
burkos
had fallen, uncovering his face.

She stared at him, disbelief turning to amazement turning to fury. “Harry Braxton, if
you
bought me, I’ll kill you.”

“I
s that any way to behave?” Harry Braxton ducked her windmilling blow and caught her wrist above her head. Clucking his tongue, he whirled her in an impromptu pirouette and looped his arm around her waist, pulling her against him. “Particularly as I have just saved your scrawny hide from some horrifying fate?” His warm breath tickled her ear. “What, by the way, horrible fate had you dreamed up with that vivid imagination of yours?”

“Whatever it was, it couldn’t possibly be more horrifying than to be owned by you,” Desdemona declared, abandoning her struggle.

She was simply no match for Harry. She could feel the hard muscular planes of his chest, his heart pumping intimately beneath her shoulder blade. She looked at his arm belting her waist, noted the golden down covering the ridged sinew of his forearm and supple wrist. Damn it, he was all masculine strength, arrogantly unconscious of his own superior
power. The thought caused her to go still. Without Harry, she wouldn’t be getting out of here. He may laugh at her, but he’d come for her, too. Masculine strength had its good points.

She relaxed and it seemed to her that his arm tightened, pulling her into an embrace that did not merely restrain, but that translated something urgent and potent …

Oh, no! She wasn’t going to make that mistake again. While she had no intention of giving up the habit of scripting romantic scenarios, she wasn’t going to be casting Harry in any of her daydreams’ leading roles. She had done so once and too painfully learned the difference between dream and reality.

“Why didn’t you tell me it was you?” she asked gruffly, pulling free of his embrace. Though in retrospect, she should have realized. No one, not a desert prince or American red Indian or even captain of the Oxford polo team, which—if memory served her right—Harry had been, rode a horse as well as Harry Braxton.

“I didn’t want to spoil all the fun you were having playing defiant captive. Besides,” he went on, “these men and I have occasional business transactions.”

“So?”

“I have my reputation to consider. Egypt is a male-dominated society. I was merely being dominantly male. I wouldn’t want these chaps losing their respect for me.”

“No one respects you, Harry.”

As this blatantly untrue insult didn’t have any noticeable effect on him, Desdemona got down on hands and knees and started feeling under the edge of the thick carpet lining the tent.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“Gettin’ my things,” she responded, and then, hearing the slight, unfortunate slur in her speech, she said very carefully, “You are, I assume, going to take me back to Cairo? I see no need to prolong my stay, charming as my hosts have undoubtedly been.”

“Things?” Harry echoed, “What ‘things’? Abdul said Rabi took you from a market. You don’t have any ‘things.’ ”

“I do now.”

Harry’s pale eyes lit with a familiar, avaricious gleam.
This
was the Harry she knew. “What kind of things?”

“Only an ol—” She caught herself in time. Just the thought of Harry discovering what kind of material she’d been reading was enough to send the blood boiling to her cheeks. If he ever suspected what she had, she’d never live it down. “Never mind.”

“You are a remarkable woman, Dizzy. Here you are, half sotted on the fermented goat’s milk Rabi claims was the only way to keep you quiet, having convinced yourself that you’re nothing but a pitiful slave heading for auction, and still you manage to buy—” His eyes widened as her guilt betrayed itself on her cursed face. “You didn’t
steal
these things, did you, Miss Carlisle?
That
would be wrong. One is tempted to say
unethical
, not to mention
immoral. A
virtuous young model of English womanhood like you—”

“I did not!” she protested. “That boy Rabi gave them to me. They’re mine.”

“You actually talked your captors into giving you presents?” He was staring at her in open admiration. “Marry me.”

“Stop that,” Desdemona snapped, finding her bundle and extracting it from beneath the carpet. Hurriedly she shoved it under the waistband of her skirt and drew her loose native blouse over it.

Marry, indeed
. Harry never missed an opportunity to remind her of her one-time infatuation. If he’d ever actually suited his actions to his words—She stopped, chastising herself for that dangerous line of thought. “And stop calling me Dizzy. No one calls me Dizzy. I am in no way, shape, or form
dizzy.”

Liar
. The inside of the tent felt preternaturally still and warm, and she felt all loose-jointed and breathless.

“It’s the irony that makes the nickname so piquant. Besides which, I think I’ve earned the right to call you pretty much anything I like. According to the laws of many cultures, of which the Tuarek are one, you belong to me.”

She stared up at him with unblinking eyes. So odd. Even though light-headed, she could see him quite clearly: the way the moonlight cast interesting shadows beneath his cheekbones and in the hollow of his throat, the laugh lines about his eyes, even the fine, clear texture of his skin. Yet drunk she must undoubtedly be, because despite his insouciant
tone, she saw something sharp and yearning in his expression that simply could not be there. More than desire, and yet that was a part of it. Desire and … She shook her head, trying to clear her thoughts. She’d drunk too much.

Yes, she thought drawing her legs up and wrapping her arms around her knees, she was half done on fermented goat’s milk. It was the only thing that could account for that inexplicable something she swore was betrayed on Harry’s lean countenance.

She closed her eyes and pressed her fingertips into her temples and massaged them. When she opened them Harry’s face reflected nothing more than his usual ironic self-assuredness. Just, she nodded sadly, as she’d thought.

“What is this
present?”
Harry asked.

“A royal sarcophagus,” she said, though her tone was not as cavalier as she wished. “And what do you mean I belong to you?” She struggled to her knees.

“Don’t you?” he asked softly. “I have rescued you. And you haven’t even thanked me.”

She froze, caught on the horns of a moral dilemma. He was right—drat him. He had rescued her, possibly even saved her life, and she supposed she did owe him something for that.

She glanced at him. He was giving her an abused lapdog expression that she didn’t buy for an instant. There was nothing in the least bit domesticated about Harry Braxton. He was a complete jackal and, like the jackal, a born opportunist. Still, God knew how long he’d been searching for her, struggling
over blistering sand dunes, broiling beneath the interminable desert sun, sleeping out alone in this barren, blasted landscape. She felt herself softening.

Utterly unwise. Unfortunately unavoidable.

“I imagine you had to pay a lot for me,” she said despondently.

“Oh, yes.”

Just what would it cost to purchase her from these slavers? Probably a small fortune. She didn’t suppose harem blondes were that easy to find.

“I’ll find some way to repay you, Harry. Perhaps I
can
find time to translate those papyri you filched off that American archeologist. At least: then you’ll know what to charge your … 
clients
for them.”

She staggered upright and confronted his telling silence. She should never have gotten involved in this conversation. In her present highly vulnerable and emotional condition, he would doubtless take appalling advantage of her.

“Harry,” she said plaintively. “You know we don’t have any money. Grandfather is a horrible accountant. I have always suspected—” She leaned close, glancing one way and another to ensure that any forthcoming indiscretion wasn’t going to be overheard, and nearly pitched forward on her face.

Harry caught her forearm and tilted her back upright. His hand passed gently by her face, pushing the fallen locks out of her eyes. She shivered at the warm, sparkling tendrils of sensation his touch left behind. His lips parted slightly and she could see the clean white gleam of his teeth within his mouth. Had Harry been unveiled when he rode up, she
thought inconsequentially, she would have known it was him at a hundred yards. She’d know the shape of Harry’s lips anywhere.

His breath sluiced delicately over her forehead and cheeks as if he were consciously attempting to gauge his exhalation. He loomed closer and her own breath jumped, catching in her throat, her body startling her with its involuntary response to his. He backed away immediately, but though he moved only a matter of inches, it seemed he’d removed himself much farther.

“You were saying?” he prompted, a line between his brows, a harried note in his voice.

She blinked, disoriented. Something about Grandfather … Ah, yes. “I have always suspected that one of the primary reasons Grandfather took this post was to get away from his creditors.”