Must Have Been The Moonlight (20 page)

“You’re the most forward woman I’ve ever known.” His lips lingered possessively over hers.

“I know this is risky, Michael. But I had to see you.”

“Why?” he whispered.

She only knew that she didn’t want to be just another woman that he’d forget when he left. She’d always preferred to be fractious and unmanageable rather than insignificant.

Insignificant terrified her. She tried to kiss him.

“Why, Brianna?”

“I want every woman you meet to come up lacking because you’ve had me.” Her eyes glittered with the unexpected tears of her jest. “Because thirty seconds yesterday wasn’t nearly enough time to ravish you.”

“Christ.” His mouth smiled against hers. “You make me ache.”

Totally conscious of the heat between them, Brianna no longer held her breath as his lips seized hers. The headache that had plagued her for the past few hours faded as his hands moved over her slim shoulders, pushing past her barrier of doubt whether he would welcome her tonight. She knew so little of his heart, and the control she imagined she’d possessed never materialized. His presence swallowed hers. Walking her backward, he slid his arm around her waist then curved both hands over her bottom. Her breasts ached to be touched. She placed her hands on each side of his face, his jaw rough against her palms, and kissed him as he kissed her.

A deep groan sounded from within his chest. His hand went to her breast, her collarbone, then reached for the cloth wrapped around her head. A tug sent it unraveling to the floor. His mouth closed again over hers, and their tongues danced then melded, tasting and loving.

“Raise your arms.” His hand fisted in the tunic and pulled the cloth over her head. Her hair tumbled over her shoulders to her waist. The tunic whispered to the floor beside the turban.

Brianna’s fingers slid beneath his jacket and pushed it off his shoulders. It fell to the floor, unnoticed by either of them.

He reached behind him and pulled the thin shirt over his head.

Her back hit a wall.

So did his palms. Gasping for air, they stared at each other, silver eyes locked on blue, his dark hair disheveled. She opened her hands over the light spattering of hair on his chest. He smelled faintly of sandalwood and sweat. He was fully aroused against her. “Tell me,
amîri
”—his hands crushed the loose cloth of her waistband and slid her trousers far enough down to finish the descent with his boot—“tell me I’m not a fool for wanting you as much as I do.”

His lips slid down her throat over her collarbone to the full slope of her breast. With feverish impatience, his hand was intent on unbuttoning the clasps on his trousers. A groan trapped in her throat, she dropped her head back against the wall. His mouth pulled first one nipple, then the other. Then he was lifting her easily, his other hand wrapped around his erection as he bent and guided himself inside her, filling her. Alive and hot, different than he’d felt when he’d worn the French
lettre
. Somewhere, a part of her brain rebelled that she wasn’t protected. The danger whispered, but Brianna reached to kiss his mouth in unthinking greed.

With the throbbing tempo of her heart, he began to move in a slow rocking rhythm, forcing her weight upward and against the wall. “Tell me, Brianna.” His uneven words rasped against her ear, while his body continued in measured rhythm. “Tell me I’m not a fool.”

Her palms gripped the corded muscles of his arms.
She’d
been the fool to come here thinking that she would be the one to seduce
him
. She had never controlled anything about this relationship. But she wanted him inside her. She felt protected in his arms, safe in his strength, and too far gone to think whether this union could result in a child. All of her well-planned precautions had combusted.

She clung to his shoulders. “I want you, too, Michael.”

“That’s good to know,
amîri
.” His breathing almost urgent, he returned his lips to hers. “Because I want to be deeper inside you.”

He pushed her thighs farther apart. The wall braced her
back. Brianna sought to embrace the subtle violence beneath his emotions. She only knew that he took faster than she could give in return, that he’d barreled through her control and the remnants of her defenses.

She was no longer the simple romantic she’d once been, she realized in some hazy, detached portion of her brain that looked upon her complete submission to him with profound alarm.

There was a darkness about Michael that frightened her; a life she knew little about, except that he had left a world he’d once known and never looked back. What kind of man could do that to his heart?

Except perhaps a man who had left that heart in England.

His arms crushed her against him, sliding her body to meet his thrusts. Her hair draped his shoulders. With a cry, she arched in his arms. Then he caught the back of her head in his palms so he could look into her face, and helplessly she slipped into climax.

Michael watched her through smoldering eyes as she watched him, until her lids were too heavy to remain open, until he took her body to shattering completion and drank in her choked cry. And neither noticed when he finally sank to his knees.

It was a long time later before he opened his eyes. Brianna was draped around him. He scraped the hair off her face and found her smiling. “You said that we have until the sunrise,” he said.

“Yes.” She locked her ankles around his hips. “So you may get undressed and take me to your bed.”

Michael cocked a wondering brow before he took her mouth in a deep, lingering kiss and finished his descent to the floor. He could feel himself sinking into the deep fire of her body. Yielding to her intimacy. She was sweet delicious torture, and he suspected that they wouldn’t make it to the bed for some time yet.

M
ichael leaned a shoulder into the archway of the bedroom and raised a cup of coffee to his lips as he observed Brianna sleeping in his bed. He’d not shaved. Wearing a loose-fitting caftan open to his chest, and black trousers, he didn’t know how long he’d been standing there since he’d risen and dressed. He’d been unable to sleep.

Daylight had begun to displace the shadows, bringing color to the murky gray of his room. Brianna’s dark, perfumed hair lay in waves over his pillow. A white sheet wrapped the long curves of her body, the rest of his bedcovers lying on the floor, her serenity contrasting with the wanton in his arms last night. A tremor passed through him that he was unused to feeling except when he was watching her climax beneath him. More and more these past weeks he’d found his mind drifting to her when he should have been working. Found his thoughts pulled by the primal realization that she belonged to him. She made him feel things he’d thought gone forever.

Michael was a man without illusions about his character. He’d spent too many years of his life possessing no heart at all
to believe in love. But he felt bloody damn sure that what he and Brianna shared was far better, and more potent, than love. It was more than most people started out with in a marriage—a marriage of his choosing—and now that he’d had the night to reflect on an uncertain future and the possibility of a child between them, he found that he wanted Brianna beside him. He liked the idea. They suited each other.

She wasn’t tainted by the elitist circle of his past. She had courage and beauty, and strength of purpose enough to make a duchess. To stand at his side. Like solid eastern philosophy, their differing facets complimented and contrasted each other, yin and yang—the source of light, heat, and darkness that fit perfectly in one circle to make a whole. She’d been a virgin when she came to him, and whether he agreed with the idolatry of maidenhood or not, that act had had a profound affect on him.

The thought of another man in her life, even one as benign as Cross, drove like a stake through his gut. He didn’t understand his need to possess her, and now that she could be carrying his child, he only knew that he couldn’t leave her in Cairo.

His gaze went to the glass doors overlooking the lake. Sunlight began to turn the steel-gray sky gold, and in the amber mists of a new dawn, Michael watched the sun rise.

“You look like a brigand.” The voice came from the bed and arrested Michael’s hand as he was about to drink his coffee.

Brianna had turned her head and found him standing in the doorway. He peered at her with eyes that were filled with both tenderness and desire. “And you look like a well-pleasured houri slave girl.”

Brianna rolled onto her stomach. Her hair fell in a tangled mass over her shoulders. “Am I part of your harem, m’lord brigand?”

“Would you want to share me, then?”

Brianna leaned forward on her elbow.

She still felt the sluggish effects of the chlorodyne drops
Gracie had given her as she watched Michael set down his cup. “Never.”

“That’s good. Because I wouldn’t want to share you either.”

But even as she sensed the tempo of Michael’s mood change, Brianna became aware of the sunlight on his hair, on the floor and walls. Her eyes returned with shock to the window. “You should have awakened me.”

She swung her legs over the side of the bed and, dragging the sheet along behind her like a Nile queen, swept past him. She frantically searched for her clothes, snatching them off the floor. “This is Gracie’s whist morning at the consulate.” Brianna slipped the tunic over her head. “She thought I was ill last night and wouldn’t have tried to wake me. I still might be able to get back. Why didn’t you wake me?”

Michael had moved to the doorway in his office. Beneath the loose-fitting caftan he seemed taller, less civil, as much by what his clothing revealed as what it did not. He was a man who appeared to have staked a claim, not only to the doorway, but to her.

“I’ll take you home.”

Brianna stumbled in place as she bent to slip on a sandal. And the awful thought struck that he’d allowed her purposely to sleep past dawn. Except she wouldn’t believe that he’d put her in that kind of dilemma. Christopher would never forgive her for this indiscretion. “That would be very unwise, Michael.”

His arm blocked her passage. “Brianna.” He tilted her chin. “You and I need to talk.”

“No.” She knew what he was going to say. Knew where this conversation was heading. More than the realization struck that she’d had completely unprotected sexual congress with him last night. Numerous times.

“Chrissakes, Brianna. I’m asking if you’ve considered the consequences of what we did last night?”

“Yes.” She glared at the ceiling before meeting his gaze. “I considered it briefly.” She poked a finger at his chest, hor-
rified that he might attempt something honorable, and blurted out the first thing that entered her mind. “And if I’d wanted to wed anyone, I’d have wed Stephan Williams years ago. At least I would have been assured of a normal life.”

Her voice died as a pair of piercing eyes locked onto hers. “Is that right?”

“I apologize, Michael. I shouldn’t have said that.” Her burst of panic gave way to misery. “But I don’t want some magnanimous sacrifice from you. I am not a brainless twit who can’t take care of herself!”

“Your enormous wisdom in this matter is quite apparent, Brianna. I applaud your insight and perception with a standing ovation.”

Despite herself, she felt a surge of fury. She felt betrayed by his mockery. She thought that he knew her. That they had reached a mutual understanding. She’d learned the veracity with which reality could tear everything away. Nothing was sacred and nothing lasted. She’d sworn never to fall victim to helplessness again. Never to expose herself to vulnerability.

“In a few days you’ll be walking out of my life forever.” She dropped to her knees and looked beneath the bed for her other sandal. “I can live with that better than knowing that you sacrificed yourself because of some antiquated notion of principle and gentlemanly honor concerning your responsibility toward me.” Snatching her sandal, Brianna stood and looked around the room. She swept past Michael. “Where is my turban? Why can’t I find—”

In a daze, she felt the steel pull of his fingers wrapped around her wrist. Her eyes snapped up. His grip was not brutal but she knew she’d not be able to pull away until he chose to release her. “Why are you really angry?” He touched his mouth to her temple. It was hot and burned a knowing path down her throat. “What exactly are you afraid of? Me?”

“Yes!” She’d wanted to rail at him, but the word came out in a barely audible rasp.

Even if he did have the right to plan the rest of her life, had he considered how she’d survive married to an aristo
crat? “I can never be a duchess. You must know that. No amount of pride can overcome our class difference. You would only find a reason to dislike me after a while.”

“Is that what all of this is about?” He laughed, pulling her tighter within the circle of his arms. She glared at him. It wasn’t fair that she couldn’t resist him, and had already proven herself exceptionally easy. “Do you know what the third son of an earl is? A commoner, Brianna.”

“How can you not understand?” No matter what Michael called himself, he’d still grown up with the Aldbury name. “I grew up fighting the entire caste system your name represents. Lady Alexandra’s father nearly ruined our family. I’m Irish, Michael.”

“None of which stopped you from coming over here last night.”

“The possibility of a child between us must surely be remote. It’s not worth ruining both of our lives, Michael. Wait if you must.”

Someone pounded on the door, and Brianna nearly jumped out of her sandals. Michael eyed the intrusion with malice.

The pounding came again. “Major Fallon?” They heard a heavily accented voice through the thick door. “We must speak with you.”

“Who is it?” Brianna whispered.

Michael walked with long strides to the bedroom window and peered through the blinds. Two men wearing the special uniform of the khedive stood on the street below, holding the reins of a half-dozen horses. Brianna leaned around him. “Are those Omar’s men?”

Struggling with the leather strap on her sandal, she hopped behind him into the office and watched as he pulled his gun off the shelf where he’d placed it last night. “What exactly happened to you last night?” she asked.

“I tried to see Omar.” He spun the cylinder on the revolver. “Afterward, my men and I were attacked.”

“You couldn’t tell me this last night?”

“And ruin the whole mood of your seduction? Trust me, you were a far more pleasing weight on my mind. Stay out of sight.”

Brianna grabbed his forearm. “Why don’t
you
stay out of sight, and I’ll answer the door? I can tell them they are at the wrong apartment.”

Reaching behind him, he tucked the gun in his waistband, and grinned. The pounding on the door became more insistent. “That’s why we get along, Brianna. You have a sense of humor that defies logic.”

“Oh!” She snatched her hand away. He caught her wrist and yanked her against him, her furious breath leaving her in a rasp. “You’re bloody impossible, Michael Fallon. How could you not tell me that someone attacked you?”

He grabbed a gentle fistful of her hair and pulled her head back to look into her eyes. “Would you miss me if I were gone?”

She tried to look away. Michael tightened his hand on her nape, and her eyes snapped to his. His gaze burned with white-hot intensity. Pressed to the hardened length of his body as she was, she didn’t even try to break his grip on her wrist. They stared at each other, suspended in light and sound; then haltingly he lowered his lips.

“You and I are not finished with our conversation,
amîri
.”

The last person Michael expected to see on his porch when he opened the door was Christopher Donally, his hands shoved in his pockets, pacing the narrow enclave. Michael shifted his gaze to the man who had been pounding on his door. Wearing the green and scarlet uniform of the palace guard, the captain was braced with his hands behind his back. Halid leaned against the stone wall that divided the stairs. Michael noted that he was unarmed.

Donally spoke first. “You’re a difficult man to find.”

“Are you here to protect me?” Michael asked pointedly. “Or to see me arrested?”

“Omar’s dead,” Donally said, straight to the point.

“Dead.” The word was a statement, an undigested response. Incredulity. The captain shifted, putting an end to any illusion that he was there on anything other than state business. “Since when do they send the Public Works minister to act as constable?” Michael asked.

“Sir Christopher was with me when the captain arrived at the ministry office this morning, Fallon effendi,” Halid said.

“I’m here because my wife has a great deal of fondness for you, Major,” Donally explained, “and understands the justice system as well as you and I. Halid seems to be the only man in Cairo who knows where you live, and he thought it prudent to cooperate.”

Michael shifted his unblinking eyes to the captain. Making a decision, he reached behind him and carefully withdrew his pistol. He handed it grip first to the captain. “Tell thy men to stand down,” he said in the vernacular, moving to allow Donally and Halid to pass through the doorway.

The captain hesitated, but he dismissed his men before entering Michael’s quarters. Folding his arms, Michael leaned with his back against the door and took all three men into his gaze. “Couldn’t this interview have waited until I came into the ministry this morning?”

“You were at Omar’s residence last night,” Donally said.

“Omar wouldn’t see me.”

“And you could not break into his residence and hold a gun to his head this time?” the captain queried. “Do you recognize this weapon, effendi?” He unrolled a thick cloth. A blood-smeared knife thunked to the table. “Omar was found early this morning stabbed to the heart. The last time he was seen alive was last night at eleven o’clock. Where were you?”

Shaking his head, Michael looked away in disgust. The authorities were going to pin the murder on him. Christ…Omar was dead. It wasn’t the first time he was innocent of something of which he’d been accused. He focused his next statement on Donally. “Do I seem like an idiot who would leave a murder weapon in my victim?”

Leaning his hip against the table, Donally folded his arms, his eyes stark in the shadows. “I’d hoped that you were not.”

“You were attacked last night,” the captain said, seizing the conversation again. “You must have been very angry. Angry enough to seek revenge.”

Disgusted with the captain’s peremptory tactic, Michael cocked a brow. “What makes you think that Omar was responsible for the attack on my men when he is supposedly innocent of such deeds?”

The man’s dark eyes faltered. “I only assumed—”

“That he would try to kill me?”

“I assumed that you would presume it was he, effendi.”

“Last night I was too concerned about getting my men to an infirmary. I didn’t notice my knife missing. Yes, I’d been to see him before that, but as witnesses can attest, he was alive when I left.”