Innocent in the Sheikh's Harem (16 page)

Celia returned the gesture. ‘
Wa-alaykum as-salam
, Sheikh Farid. May our paths cross again one day.’

‘I will pray for it.’

Celia’s farewells to the many Bedouin children who crowded round her, tugging at her
abeyah
for attention, were less formal and more protracted. Ramiz watched almost unnoticed, content to remain in the background, a strange emotion tugging at his heart. It was pride, he thought. He was proud of her, and proud to be in her company. It felt good, this sharing. A taste of what it could be like to have a consort. A partnership.

‘She has the brains of a man in the body of a beautiful woman.’
Sheikh Farid’s words were a high compliment indeed, and Celia deserved it. She was exceptional. She deserved to be recognised in such a way—as herself, on her own terms. It was only in seeing someone else do so that he realised he had long since stopped trying to slot her into any preconceived role himself. She was Celia. Unique. He would never meet anyone like her again.

She finally escaped the clambering embraces of the children and allowed Ramiz to help her up onto the high saddle of her camel. Smiling and waving, the children followed them for about a hundred yards, Sheikh Farid’s little daughter being among the last to give up the chase. Celia, touched immeasurably by the affection she had been shown, was dabbing at her eyes with a scrap of lace. Beside her, Ramiz kept his camel to a slow trot to allow her to regain her composure. The reality of her leaving was beginning to dawn on him with cold clarity.

This ‘interlude’, as she called it, he had intended as his cure.
The only way to eliminate temptation is to yield to it.
Asad’s words, which only a few days ago had seemed to be the answer to his prayers. Now they mocked him. He had yielded to temptation, he had abandoned his principles to do so, but far from being sated, he was now addicted. Addicted to Celia’s body. Addicted to her company. Addicted to her mind.

He needed her. He craved her. He could not imagine how it would be without her. Loneliness loomed like the vast desert plain stretched out before them in the rising heat of late morning, scorched of life, bleached of colour, dusty and arid.

A messenger had come in the night. The English had arrived at the port. The escort Ramiz had organised to attend them was even now leading the caravan across the desert to Balyrma. By the time they returned to the city tomorrow Celia’s father could be waiting to take her home. They had only tonight. Just one more night.

Ramiz could hardly bear to look at the bleakness which was his future. Almost he resented Celia for doing this to him. Until she’d arrived he hadn’t even known he was lonely. Until she’d arrived he hadn’t needed anyone or anything. Only A’Qadiz mattered. A’Qadiz was his life and his reason for being. Now A’Qadiz without Celia seemed as drained of colour as an English morning in November.

Tonight would be their last together. Tomorrow he would cut her from his life. Why did it feel as if he would be severing a part of himself? He didn’t even know what she felt about it all, not really. He hated the way she looked so cool and collected, when he ached with something horribly akin to love. But he could not love her and he would not—any more than she could or would love him.

Tonight was all they had left to them. Tonight must be enough, for there was no more to be had.

When Ramiz joined her in the tent he seemed different. Celia couldn’t say how, just that he was. He had been in a strange mood since the morning’s visit to Sheikh Farid. Distant, but watchful. Every time she looked at him he was looking at her, his eyes slits of amber, the tiny lines at their edges more pronounced than usual, as if he were frowning, but he did not seem angry. He seemed tense. And now, prowling around her tent in a dark blue caftan, restless as a caged tiger.

Neither of them had eaten much over dinner. They had not spoken much either. Celia was aware—too aware—of the fact that this was the last time. She could feel her heart beating, marking time like a pendulum, swinging inexorably back and forth, back and forth, counting out the seconds and the minutes and the hours.

She was apprehensive, waiting for him to make the first move as he always did when they came together. Excitement lay like a sub-strata beneath the layer of tension. Tonight she wanted it all. She did not care about the risk. She did not care about the possible consequences. She did not care about anything other than knowing, experiencing the completion of their union inside her—something Ramiz had been extremely careful never to allow. She loved him for it, and knew she should be grateful for his self-control. She was, but it left her feeling as if something was missing, something lacking. It left her feeling empty. She wanted him to make complete love to her. Just once.

But she was nervous. And if she hadn’t known him better she’d have said Ramiz was nervous too. Something was bothering him, though he denied it when she asked him.

‘I’ve made you a present,’ she said, pulling the caftan she had so carefully embroidered out from under a cushion and handing it to him.

Ramiz shook it out and examined it. Dark blue silk, she had copied its pattern from one of his others. The long sleeves were embroidered in shades of blue in the traditional pattern which Yasmina had shown her. The same pattern was repeated around the hem and at the neckline, delicate but unobtrusive, designed to give weight to the garment rather than adornment. The most intricate work was on the motif she had sewn on the left breast. A crescent moon and a falcon—Ramiz’s own insignia—but the bird was in full flight, and in its beak it carried a rosebud.

Ramiz gazed at it in silence, tracing the image with his finger.

‘Do you like it?’

He laid the caftan down carefully on a divan. ‘It is a very evocative image.’

‘It’s how I think of you. Me. This.’

‘Us,’ Ramiz said softly, stroking her hair behind her ear so that he could lick into the little crease behind her lobe, inhale the scent of her that lingered there, feel the strength and the fragility of her that seemed to be encapsulated at that precise point, in that combination of soft flesh and delicate bone.

‘Us,’ she said breathlessly, allowing herself to feel the word, to think the word, to believe that it could be true just for tonight.

Ramiz pushed back the heavy fall of her hair to flutter kisses onto the nape of her neck, his fingers kneading her shoulders, stroking the wings of her shoulderblades. He pulled her against him, slipping his hands down to her waist, wrapping his arms around her, folding her into him.

She could feel his erection pressing against the base of her spine. She could feel the wall of his chest, his heart beating slow and sure against her back. Her head nestled into his shoulder. She closed her eyes and drank in the scent, the feel, the soft sound of his breath—drank it all in so that she would remember it for ever.

Ramiz turned her round in his arms and kissed her. So tenderly. So softly. Holding her as if she were something precious, his hands on the side of her face, his thumbs caressing her jaw, his eyes warm and golden, with such a look that she felt as if she were melting. She closed her own eyes and surrendered to the moment, which was like no other moment that had passed between them. A long, languorous moment, as if they had all the time in the world just to kiss and kiss and kiss. Gentle kisses, gentle caresses, as if they would soothe rather than arouse, as if they would coax and cajole, a slow burn—so slow that they barely noticed the flames rising.

Her clothes disappeared as if they had melted. His hands were on her breasts, touching her as if he had never touched her there before, his fingers marvelling at the roundness, the smoothness, the creaminess of her skin, the pink puckering of her nipple. His mouth landed like the whisper of a butterfly, sipping and sipping and sipping until she was nectar, trickling hot and sweet in a path downwards from her nipples to her belly to the darker, more sumptuous heat between her thighs.

He was naked. She was naked. Liquid with desire, molten with it, she lay touching and being touched, kissing and being kissed, stroking and being stroked. His shaft throbbed under her caress, but he seemed in no hurry, intent on tending to every curve and dip and swell, every crease and pucker, rolling her onto her stomach to kiss down her spine, the curve of her bottom, the back of her knee, the hollow of her ankle bone, then on to her back, to work his way up again, reaching the softness of her thighs, the damp heat between them, jolting her from floating bliss to jagged desire in an instant.

Celia moaned and clenched back on her climax, catching Ramiz unawares when she wriggled out from under him, rolled him onto his back, placing herself on top of him, leaning over him so that her breasts were crushed into his chest, her nipples taut and hard on his skin, his shaft taut and hard between her legs. She kissed him urgently. She saw the urgency reflected in his face, his eyes dark with it, his skin flushed with it, and then as she kissed him she felt herself lifted, his hands gripping her waist, and he thrust up and was inside her, deep inside her, as he let her fall on top of him at the same time.

She gasped her pleasure, lying still over him. He pushed her gently upright, steadying her by the waist, and the action allowed his shaft to forge deeper. His thrust forged it deeper again, touching something, a spot high inside her, that triggered an instant clenching and pulsing climax, sending her over in a headlong rush so that she was barely conscious of him thrusting inside her still, of the tension of his control etched on his cheekbones, on the rigid muscles of his shoulders, the corded sinews of his arms as he gripped her and thrust, and she lifted and fell in the same rhythm, lifting and falling, feeling him building and thickening as with every thrust he hit that same spot again and she trembled and shuddered.

She could determine the moment when he would push her from him by the way his eyes lost focus. She could see the resolution in him in the way his grip changed. She could feel his climax tightening in the base of his shaft. She could feel him swell, her own muscles gripping and holding, furling and unfurling against him. Ramiz groaned. She fell on top of him, pushing him down as he thrust up, pushing him hard down so that he couldn’t move, and with a harsh cry he came, pouring hot and endlessly, high and deep inside her, and it was more, more than she had ever imagined it would be—for it was as if their essences mingled, and for now, in this instant, they truly were one.

They lay melded together for long moments, breathing fast, hearts thumping in wild unison, limbs entangled. Celia’s hair trailed over Ramiz’s shoulders, over his arms, which were wrapped tight around her waist in an iron grip, pressing her against him as if he would never let her go. She floated on a cloud of ecstasy, glided on a current of the sweetest, warmest air, heavy yet weightless, finally understanding the word
sated
.

Gradually their breathing slowed. Ramiz’s hold on her relaxed. She waited, but the anticipated rejection did not come. He smoothed her hair back from her head. He kissed her gently on the mouth. He turned her onto her side and cradled her into him—two crescents fitting perfectly together. He ran his hand possessively down her flank and held her thus until she slept. And when she awoke in the dark of the night, when the lamps had burned out, he was still there. Still holding her.

‘Celia.’ Ramiz kissed her neck.

She tensed. Now he would leave. Now he would say something. But he didn’t. Except her name. ‘Celia…’ in that husky voice, raw with passion, brushing over her skin like velvet, and he turned her to face him and then he kissed her, and it started over again—except this time Ramiz took control, Ramiz lay on top of her. It came harder and faster, their joint climax, as he thrust with her legs wrapped around him, and he poured himself into her with no need for her urging, his cry one of abandon she had never thought to hear and would never forget.

In the morning when she awoke he was dressed, sitting on the edge of the divan, with his formidable look back in place. She stretched out her hand. ‘Don’t hate me.’

Ramiz shook her away. ‘If I hate it must be myself. A man must take responsibility, since a woman must bear the consequences. It should not have happened.’
It should not, but he could not regret it.
His own intransigence confused him.

‘It was my fault.’

‘No. The fault was mine. We must trust to the fates that you are not punished for it.’

Celia bit her lip. Punished! He was talking about the possibility of a child, their child, as punishment. She sat up. ‘I should get dressed. You wanted to make an early start.’

His mind seethed with words. His heart seethed with emotions. He couldn’t understand it—any of it. He couldn’t think straight. He wanted to shake her until she told him what she really felt. He wanted to make love to her again, to experience that sweet perfection of their union, a perfection he hadn’t known possible until last night.

Ramiz got to his feet, running his hand through his hair. ‘A messenger arrived yesterday. Your father is here in A’Qadiz. He arrived at the port two days ago. He will be at Balyrma shortly—perhaps even before us.’

‘You knew last night?’

Ramiz nodded curtly. ‘This is the end.’

‘You knew last night?’ Celia repeated stupidly.

Her eyes were like moss damp with dew. Her hair curled like fire over the creaminess of her skin, over the soft mounds of her breasts. She looked like Botticelli’s
Venus
. He had never seen anyone so beautiful or so irresistible. Having her, taking her so completely, possessing her, had made it worse, much worse. Knowing did not satisfy. It only made the wanting more painful, for he knew now what he would be missing.

‘Why didn’t you tell me, Ramiz?’

He had no answer—none he could give which would not force him to confront—what he did not want to confront—so Ramiz shrugged. ‘You know now. There are two women with him also. One young, one old.’

‘My aunt? The other is probably a maid.’

Another shrug. ‘Get dressed. You will find out soon enough.’ He turned to go.