The Sheik Retold(32)

I threw my head back onto the pillow with an almost-hysterical laugh.

I knew damned well what I had unleashed—it wasn't the beast in him as much as the devil inside of me.





CHAPTER SEVEN


The next morning I awoke to a blood smear and a soreness between my thighs that made me wince and then laugh. The pillow beside me still bore the impression of his head, and the sheets were stained and heavily scented from our…nocturnal revels. I could not think of a better phrase for our fierce coupling. We had become lovers in truth and deed, though there were no words of "love" exchanged between us. Still, I was loath to use such a banal, lackluster, and sadly insufficient word as sex.

My imperious will had bowed to his greater determination, and his mastery over me had provoked a fierce craving for recompense in kind. My surrender had been no common one. The feminine weakness that I had despised and fought against my entire life had triumphed over me unexpectedly and thoroughly. Pure and unadulterated passion had overthrown all my preconceived notions about the repugnancy of coition. Under the influence of my sheik's raw and robust masculinity and his compelling and dominating personality, the womanly instincts that Aubrey's training had suppressed had surged to the surface with startling profundity.

Yes, I had ultimately done what I had sworn never to do. But in surrendering my body to him, he had unknowingly succumbed equally to me. I knew the fiery nature he hid under his impassive exterior—so strong, so vigorous, so intensely alive. I had felt it even more acutely as he moved inside me—gave himself up to me. I smiled. My passionate sheik had opened my jaded eyes to many things.

I rose and took a leisurely bath, this time allowing poor Zilah to do her best for me. I smiled and even gave her words of encouragement, for I was strangely devoid of my prior restlessness and short temper. When I came out of my bath, I found awaiting me a lovely gandoura in finely embroidered saffron-colored silk.

She salaamed. "Monseigneur will be pleased if you wear it."

Two days ago I would have flung it in his face, but now I only nodded my approval when Zilah looked from me to the garment with her wide doe eyes. Yet to my growing irritation "Monseigneur" was nowhere about. I don't know what I had expected when I awoke—maybe it had only been a dream after all. Of course, it was easier to tell myself that than to let feelings of rejection and dismay overtake me. Why should I care if he was gone the whole day? Good riddance to him and may he never return!

I drank my morning tea and hours later partook of a light noontime repast, yet he still did not make any appearance. With his absence, ennui came back upon me with a restless fervor. I took up some magazines and flung myself onto the divan, determined to shut out from my sight the remembrances of him present in all the barbaric luxury of my surroundings.

A while later a hand on my shoulder made me start with a cry. Usually my nerves were in better control, but I had not expected him until dinner. He had been out since dawn and had been much occupied, but didn't expound as to what had detained him so late past his usual time. He had come in desirous of a belated siesta. I wondered if he would ask me to join him in the bedchamber. My face flared with heat, and my thighs dampened with thoughts of the night before. Yes, I wanted him again. I was eager to learn from him and experience more carnal delights.

He dropped onto the divan beside me and lit a cigarette. He was lying with his head thrown back against the cushions, idly blowing smoke rings and watching them drift toward the open doorway. I studied his long length stretched out on the couch, the steely strength of his limbs patent even in the indolent attitude in which he was lying. My gaze fixed on his handsome bronzed face, inscrutable as it always was to me, and I wondered about his thoughts that seemed so far away…so unaware of me.

Who was this volatile and capricious man? The longer I watched him, the more puzzled I grew. How could this cool and aloof stranger be the same passionate man from only last night? Surely this was not my desert lover!

Perhaps this was one of many taciturn fits to which I must grow accustomed—periods in which he simply would ignore me altogether. It was the sheik's egoism, his complete indifference to everything beyond his own will, that stung me most. Even my wild paroxysms of rage made little impression on him. He accorded them a shrug or regarded me with cold and detached curiosity, his lips parted in a mocking little smile. Careless indifference seemed only another facet of his cruelty. Did he care that he was able to torture me by expecting all from me but giving back only as suited his mood?

He noticed my scrutiny, and his gaze met mine with a cocked brow, compelling me to give voice to my thoughts. "Have you never felt pity for a thing that was weaker than yourself? Have you never been moved to compassion? Have you never loved?"

As soon as the last word was out of my mouth I wished to take it back. Only days before I had professed my own incapacity for tender feelings. It seemed cruelly ironic to me that I desired a form of regard from him that no one had ever received from me.

"Love?" He shook his head with a harsh laugh. "Connais pas! But of course," he added with his swift mockery, "I love my horses."

"When you don't kill them," I retorted.

"I am corrected. When I don't kill them."

"Why would you shoot your own horse?" I asked uncomprehendingly.

"Do you know so little of me yet? Do you think that I will let anything stand between me and what I want?"