Chapter 14
Asyut, 21 April
THE ISIS SAILED ON, THE WIND CONTINUING true and strong, dying away at sunset only to return, fresh, at dawn.
On the fourth day after leaving Minya, they reached Asyut.
The bustling market town was the site of ancient Lycopolis, whose people worshiped the jackal or wolf. The Description de l’Egypte contained cross sections and other detailed illustrations of some of the more elaborate tombs carved into the nearby hills.
It was nearly an hour’s journey, over one of the Nile’s wider stretches of fertile land, then over a bridge, to the mountain necropolis. The openings to the tombs and caves were plainly visible from a distance. A modern cemetery lay below.
The famous rock tombs were not Rupert and Mrs. Pembroke’s destination, however. They’d decided to venture into the hills and desert beyond, where people might feel freer to answer their questions.
Accordingly, dressed in Arab style garments that would not attract attention, Rupert and Mrs. Pembroke set out on donkeys with Tom, Yusef, and a pair of guards from the town.
Rupert noticed the change in the wind as they reached the hillside. It had come up less fierce this morning, though still favorable, and he’d regretted the loss of time almost as much as Mrs. Pembroke had. But in the course of this morning’s journey it had died away altogether.
Now, as they reached the edge of the desert plain, it was reviving. It had changed direction, though.
After a few miles, he was getting a bad feeling. The guards were dawdling far behind, and the lads looked uneasy.
Rupert met Tom’s gaze. “Simoom,” the boy said. “Simoom comes, I think.”
Yusef beside him nodded and went into a long spate of Arabic.
The wind was picking up, whirling sand.
Mrs. Pembroke said, “I think we’d better—”
Tom gave a shout and pointed southward. Rupert turned that way. A great yellow fog bank welled up from the horizon.
Another shout made him look behind him. The guards were galloping away.
Yusef cried, “Hadeed ya mashoom!”
“Allahu akbar!” Tom shouted.
Rupert knew that last one. God is most great. It was a charm to ward off evil. In Minya he’d found out that the Egyptians believed the jinn rode in the sandstorms.
Running for cover was definitely the best idea.
“Go!” he told the boys. “Follow the guards.”
“Mrs. Pembroke,” he called. He could hear the wind’s roar, drawing closer.
“Yes, I—” The words slid into a shriek as her donkey reared and galloped away in the wrong direction.
Rupert spurred his animal after her. The fog swelled into a wave of sand, billowing toward them. An instant before Rupert reached them, her donkey came to a sudden halt, turned abruptly, and fell. Rupert dismounted and hurried to the fallen rider and mount.
But her donkey was already struggling up onto its feet. Before he could grab it, the beast, freed of its burdens, fled. Rupert grabbed the bridle of his mount before it could follow.
Mrs. Pembroke struggled to rise, too, but fell down again. “Just my foot,” she gasped as Rupert knelt beside her. “Silly ass fell on it.”
The billowing sand was welling up, like a whirlpool upside down. It grew into a great swirling pillar of sand, and it was racing straight at them.
He caught her round the waist with one arm and lifted her up from the ground, his other hand still holding his anxious donkey’s bridle. He dragged them both toward the jagged, stony slopes of the mountain necropolis.
The sand beat at his face, stung his eyes, filled his nose. The swirling pillar was nearly upon them.
He hauled woman and beast into the nearest crevice. He pulled off his cloak and sank down to the ground, taking Mrs. Pembroke with him. He pulled her between his bent legs and wrapped the cloak about them both. The donkey pressed close to the humans.
The sandstorm, shrieking and roaring, bore down on them.
THE MEN WHO were following the party abruptly reversed direction and raced back to Asyut. They waited out the simoom in a coffee shop near the southwest gate at the back of the town, facing the tombs. At this shop, one could obtain “white” or “black” coffee, the former laced with forbidden brandy. The men drank white coffee. They were all mercenaries who worked for a Frenchman named Duval. They had orders to capture the redheaded Englishwoman they’d been following recently. Today offered the prime opportunity. The woman had left most of her people behind. She traveled to the tombs with only a few servants and a pair of guards who could be counted on to run at the first sign of trouble. The large Englishman who accompanied her didn’t worry them. One man stood no chance against ten experienced killers.
After several cups of white coffee, though, they began arguing about the Englishman. They’d all heard he was the son of a great lord whose wealth far surpassed that of Muhammad Ali. Now some of them said he would be worth more alive than dead. With each succeeding cup of coffee, the debate grew louder. They woke from his nap the gatekeeper nearby, who left his post to demand silence. One of the men, Khareef, apologized and escorted him out of the shop. The instant they were out of onlookers’ view, Khareef thrust a knife between the gatekeeper’s ribs. He propped up the corpse in its usual place, where it remained undisturbed until the watch changed next morning, everyone who passed assuming the gatekeeper was sleeping as usual. Khareef found this highly amusing, and laughed from time to time, thinking about it.
RUPERT COULDN’T GUESS how long the sandstorm went on. It seemed an eternity.
The wind howled, and the sand lashed at them like an enraged monster. Small wonder the Arabs thought the jinn rode in the sandstorms.
In the cloak’s shelter it was hot and dark. It smelled of donkey, too. But the rocks sheltered them from the worst of the storm’s brutality, and the tightly woven cloth blocked the worst of the biting sand.
Mrs. Pembroke clung to him, mute and motionless, oh, and soft. He felt her breath, the quick inhale-exhale of fear, against his collarbone, where his shirt had fallen open. He was acutely aware of the hurried rise and fall of her bosom against his chest and of the soft pressure of her bottom against his thigh and groin.
He bent and pressed a reassuring kiss to the top of her head. Her hair was so soft, and fell in waves, like the rippling desert sand.
She’d lost her veil, he realized: the obnoxious veil he resented while aware of the protection if afforded against the Egyptian sun as well as prying male eyes. It wasn’t black, he remembered, but he couldn’t recall what color it was. She hadn’t worn black in days, he realized. Since Minya?
“We’ll be all right,” he said. He could barely hear his own words over the whistle and wail of the sandstorm. He didn’t know if she answered or not. He knew, though, that she held him tightly, her arms wrapped about his waist, as though she feared the storm would bear him away otherwise.
At moments he thought it might. The wind was unlike anything he’d ever experienced on dry land. It was more like an ocean storm, like being caught in a tearing sea of sand. Twice he thought it would rip them out from their crevice to throw them miles into the air, then drop them in so many broken pieces upon the Libyan hills.
But if so, it must take them both or none. He would not give her up to man or to force of nature, however great. He wrapped his arms more tightly about her, his fingers clutching at the robe to keep it closed while he prayed the storm would end soon, before they suffocated.
He didn’t waste any more breath on reassurances she couldn’t hear over the storm. He only pressed his lips to her head, again and again, hoping she’d understand: he’d take care of her. She would not come to harm so long as he was alive.
Some lifetimes later, the world began to quiet. The wind still blew strong, and the sand beat against them still, but not so ferociously. The juggernaut of whirling sand had moved on to sow destruction elsewhere.
He lifted his head. Gingerly he loosened his hold on the robe and peered out.
“I think it’s safe to breathe,” he said.
She let out a whoosh of breath, then coughed.
“Sorry,” he said. He kissed her temple. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to crush your ribs.”
Her arms slid from his waist. She lifted her head. She eased her rump a few inches away from his crotch.
He wanted her back. He wanted her tucked into his arms, her soft hair tickling his chin. He wanted to feel her breathing against his collarbone, and the soft pressure of her breasts and her backside.
After a moment, she crawled farther away and spat out sand. “Good grief,” she said. “Good grief.”
“Are you all right?” he said. “Your foot?”
She turned her foot experimentally. “It seems to be functioning,” she said. “My boots are filled with sand. My trousers are filled with sand. I am a walking sandbag. No, not walking. Not yet. Let me just…catch my breath.”
She drew up her knees and folded her arms upon them and bowed her head upon her arms.
He looked about them. The wind had heaped a large mound of sand into the opening they’d entered.
He rose cautiously and looked to the southeast.
A fresh yellow tidal wave was building.
“Um,” he said.
“Yes, I’ll be up in a minute.”
“I’m not sure we have a minute,” he said. “And I don’t fancy being buried here.” He hauled her up and started pulling her and the donkey up the mountain.
BEING ABRUPTLY DRAGGED to her feet and yanked up a mountainside knocked out of Daphne the half a breath she’d managed to collect. She’d none to spare for commentary. Not that he would have listened—or needed to. He’d summed up their situation accurately, she soon saw.
A glance back showed her why he was so impatient to be moving. Sand had partly filled their shelter, and another sand funnel was hurtling toward them.
Fortunately, paths had been worn or cut into the hillside for access to the tombs. With Mr. Carsington to lean on, Daphne could get along well enough. She was thankful for her Turkish trousers, which allowed for easier movement than the usual layers of petticoats under not-very-wide skirts. The donkey experienced no difficulty at all, and came along agreeably enough.
Daphne wondered where her mount had got to, and whether the poor thing was alive. She looked for it without much hope. Visibility was uncertain at best. The sun was either a hellish red behind a veil of sand or disappeared altogether. Not that one could look in any direction for long. Eyes, ears, nose, and mouth filled with grit. One could scarcely breathe for the sand. Simply trying to protect herself from it exhausted her. Yet what she experienced at present, she now knew, was hardly the worst of the punishment the hot wind could bestow.
She made herself stop looking back at the deadly yellow thing racing toward them, and focused on her companion.
She recalled her moment of panic when her donkey had fallen, and she’d seen the monstrous sand tide rolling toward her. For an instant, blinded by the blowing sand, she’d felt alone, abandoned. But it was only for an instant, because in the next he was there.
As long as he was by, she could face anything. She’d followed him through the absolute darkness of the pyramid, squeezing past corpses on the way. She’d been arrested, and locked up in jail, like a common felon. She’d burst into a room filled with cutthroats, and attacked them. She’d knelt by the dying rug merchant and tried to comfort him as the last drops of blood trickled from his slit throat. She’d shot a pistol and a rifle, though firearms had always terrified her.
Even now she wasn’t sure how she’d done any of these things. Perhaps she didn’t really know herself after all. Perhaps, somehow, Mr. Carsington knew her better.
She’d survive this, she told herself. All she had to do was stick close, not let him get killed, and this difficulty, too, would soon be behind them.
He hauled her into the first tomb they reached. The donkey balked. It pulled back abruptly, tearing the bridle from his hand. Then it stood stock still in the doorway, braying.
“Hermione, get in here,” he snapped.
The donkey brayed and pawed at the ground.
“Hermione, don’t make me come after you,” he said.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Daphne said. “This is an Egyptian donkey. Ta’ala heneh,” she called sharply to the agitated animal. “Ta’ala.”
The donkey snorted, and tossed its head.
“Ta’ala,” Mr. Carsington said.
The donkey trotted inside and went directly to him and nuzzled his arm.
Naturally.
“She’s afraid,” Mr. Carsington said, stroking the creature’s muzzle. “The smell, I daresay.”
It was a smell Daphne was growing accustomed to: death. Not ordinary death but mummy death, the thousands-of-years-shriveled-and-petrified smell distinctive to Egypt.
“It’s better than the sandstorm,” Daphne said. “Can we move further inside?” Now that she was out of immediate danger, she was trembling. “I should like to sit down. But out of reach of the wind and sand.” Without waiting for him, she started down the entrance passage.
It was much wider than the typical pyramid entrance. She could make out figures on the walls and what appeared to be a block of hieroglyphs further on. It quickly grew too dark to see, though, and she moved more slowly and cautiously, keeping close to one wall, testing the way ahead with her foot, to avoid tripping over or into something.
“This is far enough, Mrs. Pembroke,” his deep voice came from behind her. “We’re well out of reach of the sand, and Hermione is shaking like a leaf. Let’s wait out the storm in a quiet, restful manner, shall we?”
REST, YES.
Rupert needed to catch his breath, collect his wits. He might have lost her in the sandstorm. He needed a moment to calm down, that was all.
He never meant to fall asleep.
He’d seen them all settled inside: the donkey’s saddlebags and—most important—the leather water bottle, stowed safely, a space cleared in the rubble, and Mrs. Pembroke seated on a mat. Then Rupert simply leant against the wall to rest and collect himself.
The next he knew he was waking up to utter darkness.
And to heat, of course, the heat that continued to surprise him, though by now he ought to be used to it.
In England, deep inside a cave like this would be cold and damp. But not here. It was like the pyramids. One expected, going down so deep under so many thousands of tons of rock, it would be cool.
But in Egypt, the rocks and mountains stored thousands of years of hot desert sun.
Along with thousands of bodies.
Whether it had been the long-dead Egyptians troubling Hermione, or some donkey superstition, she’d settled down. He could hear her steady breathing. If anyone else in the vicinity was breathing, Hermione drowned it out.
“Mrs. Pembroke,” Rupert said. He reached toward where she’d been last time, on the mat he’d dug out from his saddlebag and laid on the ground for her. The mat was there. Her cloak was there. She wasn’t there.
“Mrs. Pembroke,” he said, a little louder.
Nothing.
“Mrs. Pembroke.”
Hermione snorted, but no human voice responded.
“Confound it.” Still groggy, Rupert stood. It took him a moment to recall which way was out and which way was in. He went toward the entrance first, recalling how she’d slowed there, captivated, as you’d expect, by the pictures on the walls.
The hot wind still blew, whirling sand and bits of rock within the passageway. A dull light penetrated, but not far. It was hard to guess what time of day it was. He could see, though, that she was nowhere in the outer passage of the tomb. He turned and made his way back.
“Mrs. Pembroke,” he called. Not a trace of sleep clung to him now. He was acutely, painfully awake, his heart beating fast, heavy strokes. “Mrs. Pembroke.”
Hermione said something in donkey talk as he went by, but that was the only sound he heard apart from his boots scraping along the tomb floor.
Rupert knew he couldn’t run blindly into the interior. He might easily collide with a wall or trip over something, get concussed, and then be no good to anybody. He couldn’t see his hand in front of his face or the ground beneath him. The tomb floor abounded in obstacles and pitfalls: gaps and cracks, chunks of stone, animal skeletons, and other debris he preferred not to think about.
He thought only of staying upright and finding her.
Alone, in the dark, she might kill herself in a hundred different ways. She might stumble into a burial shaft, and fall a hundred feet to end up unconscious—or dead—at the bottom.
“Mrs. Pembroke!” he roared.
A sound. A voice, at last. Distant, muffled.
“Mrs. Pembroke, where the devil are you?”
“Oh, the most wonderful place,” she called. “Do come see.”
He stumbled on, groping along the tomb walls, endlessly it seemed. He walked into dead ends and had to grope his way back out. He felt his way along the sides of a room until he found the doorway. He edged through a long passageway.
Then at last he saw the light flickering, and the outlines of a chamber.
THE BACK WALL of the chamber had three recesses. She was in the central one. On the rear wall, an ancient Egyptian fellow followed three women carrying flowers. The man appeared again elsewhere, presiding over a lot of people and performing what looked like rituals.
Rupert took all of this in without really seeing it. His attention was on her, alive and unhurt, occupied with her ancient men and women and never thinking of him, while he’d been half-mad with fear for her.
“Candles,” he said tautly. “You didn’t tell me you had candles.”
“In my hezam—my girdle,” she said, leaning in to study one of the figures. “That time when we were abandoned in Chephren’s pyramid taught me to carry a tinderbox and some wax candles. Is it not beautiful?”
“You didn’t tell me you were leaving,” he said.
She must have heard the tension in his voice because she dragged her gaze from the figure and looked at him.
“You fell asleep,” she said. “I was talking to you, and you answered with a snore.”
“I never snore.”
She shrugged. “It must have been Hermione, then.”
Rupert wished he could deny he’d fallen asleep or blame that on the donkey, too, but there was no getting out of it gracefully: he’d collapsed with fatigue.
Well, when was the last time he’d had a proper night’s sleep? And what of today, when he’d towed her and the donkey up a mountain, struggling against wind and sand and fighting to drag a morsel of air into his lungs? All the while he’d been terrified he’d lose his hold, and the monstrous wind would tear her away and the sand would bury her so deeply that he’d never find her in time.
Even Hercules had his limits, and Rupert was not a demigod. He was a mortal man who could endure only so much. He’d needed a moment, at least, of respite.
Still, he couldn’t believe he’d collapsed at her side, like a weakling.
Embarrassment did not improve his mood.
“You should have woken me,” he said. “You should not have set out on your own. You might have fallen into a burial shaft.”
“I had a candle,” she said in an I’m-talking-to-an-idiot tone that only fueled his temper. “Furthermore, the burial shafts are easy enough to distinguish. If you’d paid proper attention to the diagrams and cross sections in the Description de l’Egypte, you would be aware that the shafts are located in the inmost depths of the tomb and do not appear willy-nilly underfoot. Burial is an elaborate matter, and burial places are laid out according to a careful system. A shaft would be marked with an entrance, actual or symbolic, like this recess. But of course you did not give the French illustrations your full attention. They were merely a means of attracting women to your side.”
He was in no mood for lectures about diagrams or his morals or anything else.
“The point is, you should have stayed with me, instead of making me fumble about this infernal place looking for you,” he said.
“I was bored,” she said, less patiently. “Did you think I should be content merely to sit by your side in the dark, listening to you sleep?”
“I’d think you’d consider the possibility of snakes,” he growled. “And scorpions. And pitfalls and booby traps. But you’ve no notion of caution. When there’s a hieroglyph in the vicinity, or a god with a beast’s head, you take leave of your senses. You plunge headlong into danger—”
“I?” she said indignantly. “Talk of the pot calling the kettle—”
“What should I do if you were hurt?” he exploded. “What should I do if you were killed? Do you never think of me? No, why should you? I’m merely a great, dumb ox. I have no feelings, so why should you consider them?”
“Feelings?” she cried. “What do you know of feelings?”
“This,” he said.
In the same breath he’d closed the space between them. In the next he’d pulled her into his arms. She didn’t come easily. She tried to wriggle away, but he held on. And once he’d caught her firmly, she beat at his chest.
He pulled her hard against him and kissed her.
She stopped beating his chest.
Her mouth, taut with anger at first, yielded in the next instant. And then her hands were climbing up to his chest, pushing his shirt out of the way and sliding up, her bare palms against his skin, to his shoulders. She held on tightly, as he wanted her to, as though she needed him.
She kissed him back, and he tasted hunger like his own, laced with desperation and anger.
He didn’t want to feel this way. He didn’t know why he did, or when it had come upon him. A moment ago, he was aware mainly of a tumult of feelings, and they were dark to him, like snakes and scorpions lurking unseen in the shadows.
She turned the world dark and bewildering, but now he didn’t care. She was in his arms, and the taste of her was a strange champagne, and her curving body was made to wrap with his. The alluring incense scent of her filled his nostrils, his consciousness. He forgot about his inner turmoil and about the deadly storm outside and about the ancient dust and death inside, underfoot as well as in the air they breathed.
Her hands moved over his skin, over his shoulders and down, pushing his shirt out of the way as she went. He longed to tear it off, but he didn’t want to let go of her, either. He dragged his hands down her back to her waist and down, but the girdle was in the way, a long, wide scarf, folded and twisted and filled with who knew what. It was the work of an instant to untie it. Then down it slid, its contents making a muffled clatter when it hit the stony floor.
He clasped her waist. So little it seemed in his big hands, with all that baggage gone and no padded buckram corset to thicken it. In wonderful truth, there was nothing in the way but the long, snug-fitting vest and the thin crepe shirt underneath…and the waist of her trousers.
He was aware of all this, of the construction of clothing, in that problem-solving place in his mind, the place where a man stored the logistics of undressing women.
He was far more aware at present, though, of the supple curves under his hand and the way she moved when his hands moved over her. She moved like a cat, lithe and sinuous and unself-consciously demanding to be petted: yes, here. Ah, yes, there. More of this. That again. Yes.
Her mouth left his to make heat trails over his face and down his neck. Meanwhile her hands stroked down over his chest under his shirt. There was no hesitation, no unsureness: he was hers for the taking, and she knew it. He fell back against the wall, to brace himself, because she made him weak-kneed and because he wanted everything at once: he had to have her then and there that instant, yet he didn’t want to move, to do anything to interrupt the sensations coursing through him. He had no names for what he felt. He might be dying, for all he knew. The pleasure was beyond anything. Let it kill him.
She was welcome to kill him with heat and pleasure or torture him. So long as she wanted him, she could take him any way she liked. He was strong; he could bear whatever she did to him, and happily, too. But he wanted her, too, and he couldn’t wait forever.
He caught the back of her head and tangled his fingers in her hair, and drew her head back and kissed her. Not gently. She didn’t answer gently, either. Her tongue twined about his, and her hands slid under his shirt, kneading the muscles of his back until he groaned against her mouth.
He pushed the vest from her shoulders, shoved the tight sleeves down her arms, tugged and wrestled with it until it was off at last. He flung it down. He unfastened the ties at the top of the shirt’s opening and thrust the fabric back, exposing her beautiful breasts. Then he paused, in spite of heat and need and impatience to possess.
Her bosom was golden in the candlelight, and he felt like an ancient tomb robber who’d come upon a pharaoh’s treasure. He bent and kissed the silken skin and heard her first startled gasp slide into a sigh. He brushed his thumb over one tautening nipple, then brought his mouth there. She gave a little cry. Then her fingers were dragging through his hair, holding him, pressing him to her, and the quiet pause ended.
Heat and need flooded back, demolishing thought, and he was tearing off his shirt, then hers, and pulling her against him, skin to skin. It wasn’t close enough, not nearly.
He grasped her buttocks, crushing her against his groin, against his swollen cock, but that would never be enough. In a moment, he’d found the knot of her trouser string, and in the next it was undone, and the trousers were sliding over her hips, down her beautiful legs. He dragged his hands over her bottom and hips, over the swell of her thighs.
Her skin was hot velvet. She trembled under his caress. He stroked upward, to the feathery triangle between her legs. So soft here, so very delicate. Again, the wild storm of need paused. He took his time, took care, caressing gently, so gently, drawing his fingers lightly over the place.
“My God,” she said. “My God.”
He nuzzled her neck. Her mouth was soft against his ear, her voice a husky whisper: “Oh, it’s…yes. Oh, yes.”
He stroked more deeply, while his thumb caressed the sensitive nub. He knew what to do. He knew how to please women. But she was hot and wet, and “Yes,” she said.
A storm swirled into his mind, and he couldn’t remember anymore what ought to be done. Mindlessly he tore at his own trousers. The fabric fell away, and his rod sprang free. He caught her under the thigh, lifting her leg up. She wrapped her leg about his waist, and he thrust into her. She cried out, “Oh. Oh, my God.”
He would have echoed her, but he was long past words.
He was lost in her and in the need for her. Desire was a raging thing like the sandstorm. It was a juggernaut, un-stoppable. He thrust again and again, and heard her cry out and felt her body shudder to climax. But it wasn’t enough. More. More. More. Hard, desperate strokes, as though he could get to the beginning and end of her, have all of her.
She held nothing back, riding him with the same ferocity, vibrating with one climax after another. Finally, she grasped his face and kissed him hard, and then it rushed through him, the flood of pleasure. And with it came a strange exaltation, like the pillar of light soaring up from the Egyptian horizon at sunset. It was only in the very last instant that awareness sparked, and he pulled from her. His seed spilled against her thigh, and release came, and the quiet darkness.
DAPHNE SAGGED AGAINST him, her naked leg sliding down along his. She stayed there, waiting for her heart to stop pounding and her breathing to steady. She let her head rest upon his big chest and listened to his heart gradually slow. She held onto him, her arms circling his taut waist. She didn’t want it to end quite yet, and her uncertain heart gave a flutter when she felt his chin rest upon her head. She remembered how he’d kissed the top of her head during the sandstorm, and the swell of feeling within her at those light caresses, so terribly like affection.
She didn’t want to think about the surge of feeling. It was more frightening than the sandstorm. She’d left his side a little while ago because it was the only way to keep from tucking herself into his arms while he slept, and burrowing against him, and pretending he was hers and she was his.
She’d taken refuge in the scenes adorning the tomb walls. She’d wondered who the ladies were and what their flowers signified, so there wouldn’t be room in her head for thinking about him and how attached she’d become to him—though she’d known from the very beginning, perhaps from the moment she’d first heard his voice, that he was made to break women’s hearts.
She’d worked so hard to keep from being hurt again.
Now look what she’d done.
He stroked her head, his long fingers sliding down to her neck. “No weeping,” he rumbled.
Her head came up, and she would have pulled away, but he held her there, his hand gentle but firm against the base of her neck.
“I was not weeping,” she said indignantly. “I am not a weepy sort of woman. I am not emotional. I am not…” To her dismay, a tear spilled from her eye.
“I knew it,” he said.
“I am not weeping over you,” she said. “Or over what happened…just now.” She lifted her chin. “Apparently, it was inevitable, the result of prolonged proximity and excessive emotional upheaval. I have heard of such things, desperate acts after a close brush with death.”
“Ah,” he said. “That was a desperate act?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Really.”
“Yes.” She brushed the tear away. “It means nothing. It is a kind of—of instinct, perhaps. A primitive reaction. Quite irrational.”
He wrapped his arms about her and crushed her against him. “Don’t be daft,” he said. “It was nothing of the kind.”
It took her a moment to collect her wits. They wanted to wander: to the hard chest against which her breasts were squashed, and to the agreeable sensations accompanying being squashed in that way, and to the humid awareness of the contact further down.
Oh, his body was magnificent. Godlike. She oughtn’t think such impious thoughts, but they flooded in, along with the recollections. He might as well be a god, because he’d taken her to paradise and back half a dozen times. Those hands, those wicked, clever hands…
And then, “It wasn’t?” she said. She drew her head back to look at him. Shadows flickered over his handsome face, impossible, as always, to read. But laughter seemed to gleam in the black eyes.
“You’ve been in lust with me since the moment we met,” he said.
“That is not at all—”
“And finally, after behaving in the most deranged manner for this last age, you did the logical, rational thing.” He slid his hand down her back and over her bottom.
Her completely bare bottom.
Daphne became aware, then, of her trousers, in a heap at her ankles. One trouser leg was still tied under her knee. She ought to be mortified. She wasn’t in the least. On the contrary, she felt an almost overpowering urge to giggle.
“What happened was, you finally came to your senses,” he said. “At long last, after deluding yourself with every sort of puritanical poppycock, you admitted the truth: I’m irresistibly attractive.”
She was about to object to this conceited pronouncement when he clapped his hand over her mouth.
“Mmmph,” she said.
“Hush. I hear something.”