The Pleasure of Your Kiss (26 page)

Poppy slipped out from behind the marble column to find Farouk standing all alone in the ruins of his celebration. His guests had fled, his guards had been dismissed, and his concubines had been ushered back to the confines of the harem.

The tiled floor was littered with scattered cushions and crushed blooms, their fragile edges already beginning to curl and turn brown. The guttering flames of the oil lamps mounted on the wall sent shadows creeping slowly across the floor to swallow every drop of light in their path.

Poppy drifted nearer to Farouk. If she had been an assassin, it would have been only too easy for her to slide a dagger between his ribs. He had the look of a man who had already taken a blade to the heart.

Aching to comfort him in some way, she drew close enough to reach out and touch the sleeve of his robe. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “I know you loved her.”

Jerking away from her touch, he turned on her, his dark eyes blazing with fury. “What do you know of love? You are nothing but a silly virgin who hides from the world behind your spectacles and the skirts of your friend! The only thing you will ever know of love will come from mooning over some ridiculous story or poem where a man finds the one woman who can forever satisfy the yearning in his heart.”

Although his cruel words dealt a painful blow to her heart, she stood her ground. “I’d rather believe in those stories than waste my life searching for love in the arms of one lover after another but never finding it.”

He seized her by the shoulders, jerking her up until their faces were only a scant few inches apart. “Between the pages of a book, there may only be one woman for every man, but between the sheets of his sleeping couch, any woman can satisfy a man’s lust.”

“Any woman?” she whispered. “Even a woman like me?”

His gaze dropped to her trembling lips for a dangerous moment, then he bit off a guttural Arabic oath and shoved her away from him. He turned and stormed from the hall, his robes rippling around his ankles with each of his long, angry strides.

As Poppy watched him go, a rush of warm tears fogged up the lenses of her spectacles. She reached up to tug them off, thinking that the world was indeed a much kinder place when one couldn’t see so clearly.

F
or the first time since arriving at the sultan’s palace, Clarinda felt like a prisoner. Solomon marched her past the expressionless guards and through the doors of the harem, his grip on her upper arm gentle but as unyielding as an iron cuff. The doors swung shut behind them with a hollow clang, the sound echoing with chilling finality.

Clarinda had been dying to pepper the eunuch with questions about his timely warning ever since they had left the hall. But knowing the palace walls were riddled with secret passages and peepholes, she hadn’t dared to do more than shoot him a quizzical glance.

His sad, wise eyes had stared straight ahead, and his broad, placid face had betrayed nothing, leaving her to doubt her own senses.

As Solomon led her through the main hall of the harem, the women silently parted ranks as if a condemned criminal were passing among them. The other concubines hadn’t even made their way back to the harem yet, but as always in this place, word of what had happened had traveled to the ears of the harem’s occupants as if on wings. Clarinda could feel their knowing gazes on her, some envious, some pitying, some gloating with satisfaction. No doubt some among them believed she was about to get exactly what she deserved for stealing their master’s attention away from them.

We both know she’ll never be anything more than your whore.

Ash’s heartless words seemed to echo what they all must be thinking—that this night would mark the end of her special status in Farouk’s eyes. After being used by the Englishman, she would be forever sullied and unfit to be the sultan’s wife. She would be no better than Yasmin or any of the other concubines who had been paraded before the guests at the celebration and put on display like a stable of prize fillies. The next time Farouk entertained an honored visitor to the palace, she could be the one offered up to tend him in his bath or warm his bed.

Clarinda cast the stairs leading up to the haven of her alcove a longing glance as they passed, but Solomon’s resolute steps did not slow.

It seemed he had other plans for her on this night.

He led her down a long, narrow passageway she’d never traveled before. As they approached the door at the end of the hall, it swung open as if guided by invisible hands. Two women garbed all in black stood in the flickering lamplight of the chamber, waiting to receive her. If Ash had chosen Yasmin, would they have been waiting for her as well?

Solomon gave her a somber bow before backing into the shadows of the passageway, his dark eyes as unreadable as chips of polished obsidian. One of the women reached past Clarinda and gently closed the door in his face.

Although Farouk had commanded Solomon to have his women prepare her, Clarinda knew that nothing in this world could prepare her to spend an entire night in Ashton Burke’s company.

She stood as still as a marble statue as the women descended upon her, their gnarled hands efficiently stripping her of her garments until she stood naked before them. Lifting her chin, she stared straight ahead, refusing to quail with fright or shame. She had no choice but to go along with this charade if she didn’t want to cast suspicion on Ash or herself.

One of the women removed the circlet of beaten gold from her brow and began to run a pearl-handled brush through her hair in long, languorous strokes, while the other poured warm rivers of sandalwood oil over her skin and massaged it into her frozen muscles. Their touch was kind but impersonal, as if they were preparing a sacrifice for the god of some pagan altar.

Clarinda tried not to flinch as one of them brought out an earthenware pot and dabbed a spot of crimson rouge on each of her nipples. It hadn’t occurred to her until that moment that the rouge Yasmin used with such a free hand had been spiked with some sort of abrasive herb. Clarinda’s nipples tingled and puckered beneath its kiss, the unfamiliar sting disconcerting but not entirely unpleasant.

She had to close her eyes when one of the women knelt in front of her and drew a jeweled comb through the silvery blond nest of curls at the V of her thighs. She opened them to find the woman trading the comb for a fresh vial of oil. The old woman poured some of the oil in her withered palm, then smeared it on her fingers.

As she reached to part Clarinda’s curls with those bony fingers, Clarinda’s hand shot out to capture her wrist.

“No,” she said firmly. Some indignities she would not submit to, no matter the cost.

The woman’s wrinkled face fell. “We have heard the English can be quite savage in their attentions. The oil will ease his passage and make it easier for you.”

Her companion held out the pot of rouge. “And this will show him exactly where to touch to please you the most.”

A little shudder ran through Clarinda as she imagined the sting of that concoction against her most sensitive flesh. As she gazed into the hopeful dark eyes of her attendants, she had to fight an absurd desire to burst out laughing. She sincerely doubted a man with Ash’s experience required a road map to find his way around the female body. If half of what the scandal sheets said was true, he could give these women a guided tour.

When she continued to shake her head and firmly push their hands away, the women sighed and clucked their disappointment but quickly moved on to their next duty, which was to drape Clarinda in a shift so sheer it made what Yasmin usually wore when strutting around the harem look like something Miss Throckmorton would have worn to a dignitary’s funeral.

Clarinda’s courage did not begin to falter until the women each took one of her icy hands in theirs and led her toward the piece of furniture that dominated the chamber. The plush sleeping couch with its silken sheets and scattering of pillows and bolsters in all shapes, sizes, and colors was twice the size of her own and was so decadent and sumptuous it could have been designed for only one purpose.

And that purpose was not sleep.

Clarinda hesitated, her knees betraying her. When confronted with the reality of what everyone expected to happen on that couch, it was far too easy to forget that this was all for show, the first act in Ash’s daring plan to rescue her.

Wasn’t it?

In that moment before Solomon had led her from the hall, Ash’s face had been the face of a stranger, its rugged planes set in ruthless lines she barely recognized. How well did she truly know the man he had become? What if their years apart had changed him more than she had ever suspected? He and his brother had been at odds for a very long time. Just how badly did he hate Maximillian? Or even her?

If he had even the slightest inclination to take advantage of the situation in which they now found themselves, there was no one to stop him. Here in this place where women existed solely to satisfy the needs and hungers of a man, she was as much at his mercy as she had been at Farouk’s.

A dark shiver of mingled fear and longing raked her.

The women tugged her numb feet back into motion, urging her to turn and sit on the edge of the couch. When one of them poured a stream of liquid from an earthenware flask into a golden goblet, then tipped the goblet to her lips, she did not protest. Perhaps a little wine would take the edge off her nerves and make her less inclined toward flights of fancy.

But the instant the liquid in the goblet touched her tongue, she knew she had made a grave error. The thick brew was both sickly sweet and sharply bitter. She tried to push the goblet away, but one of the women grabbed her wrists, her wiry hands possessing surprising strength, while the other turned the goblet up, forcing her to drink deeply or choke.

By the time she finally managed to knock the goblet away, sending it flying from the woman’s hand to roll across the floor, it was nearly empty.

She glared at them. “What are you trying to do? Kill me? What in the devil was that foul stuff?” Resisting the unladylike urge to spit out the last mouthful, she swiped her lips with the back of her hand, her throat burning and her eyes watering.

She blinked away the tears only to find the four women still swimming in front of her eyes.
That’s odd,
she thought. Just a minute ago, she would have sworn there were only two of them. Or was it three?

One of the women tenderly stroked her hair. “Do not fight the effects of the elixir, my child. It is an ancient recipe, handed down to us from our mothers and their mothers before them. It will dull any pain you might feel.” The woman’s voice had begun to echo as if it were coming from the bottom of a deep well, and Clarinda had to strain to make sense of what she was saying.

One of the other women gave her a sly smile. “It will also make you crave his touch. You will be like a wild creature, begging him to do whatever he likes with you. And you will be begging to do whatever pleases him.”

“No,” Clarinda whispered, dismay swelling within her. Didn’t they know that no elixir in the world was powerful enough to dull the pain Ash was capable of causing her? And she certainly didn’t need any ancient potion to make her crave his touch.

“It is a very rare and costly elixir. That is why we save it for the virgins,” one of them whispered.

Clarinda opened her mouth to tell them she was no virgin but was shocked when nothing but a shrill giggle came out. She tried to clap a hand over her mouth to contain it, but her hand felt as heavy as an anvil. It only made it as far as her waist before falling uselessly back into her lap as if no longer attached to her wrist, which only made her giggle harder.

Exchanging knowing looks, the women (all six of them) eased her back on the nest of pillows as if she were a lifeless doll designed solely for their amusement. She thought about protesting their high-handed treatment of her, but it was so much more pleasant to lie in dreamy contentment gazing up at the erotic frescoes painted on the plaster ceiling.

In the mural directly over Clarinda’s head, it was not a woman on her knees before a man but a man on his knees before a woman. A dark-eyed beauty with a flowing mane of sable hair reclined before a turbaned warrior, her hips propped high on a nest of ruby red pillows, her plump thighs splayed in wanton abandon. Her eyes were closed and her round face was a study in sensual indolence, as if her entire being were concentrated on the gratification his mouth was bringing her in that moment. As if that wasn’t shocking enough, the next mural in the fresco revealed a second man watching the two lovers and holding his exaggerated manhood in his clenched hand as he patiently awaited his turn to pleasure her.

“My goodness,” Clarinda murmured, blinking up at the scandalous, yet oddly stirring, vision with frank fascination. “Do you think she knows he’s watching?”

“Oh, she knows, my lamb,” one of the women said with an earthy chuckle. “She knows.”

The sheer fabric of Clarinda’s shift offered meager protection against the night breeze drifting through the open window. Her flesh was becoming so attuned to even the slightest stimulus that she found herself writhing beneath its sultry caress as if beneath the touch of a living hand.

“Rest, my child,” the other woman whispered. “You will have need of all your strength on this night.”

Heeding her wise words, Clarinda sighed and returned to contemplating the mural, not realizing that her own face was already beginning to mirror the blissful expression of the woman in the painting.

The last time Ash had been blindfolded he had been facing a firing squad.

I suppose it shouldn’t have surprised me that there was a woman involved in your latest little contretemps.

Isn’t there always?

Max’s contemptuous words and his own cavalier reply echoed through his memory, causing a grim smile to flirt with Ash’s lips. Perhaps his brother wouldn’t be so quick to condemn him now that it wasn’t just any woman involved, but Max’s own bride-to-be.