As You Desire (17 page)

He hadn’t handled the situation well. His gut instinct had been to take advantage of her infatuation and her youth and make love to her. Well, he’d been
young, too. He gave himself credit for not acting on the impulse, driving though it had been.

Too bad he hadn’t been able to think of any wonderful, tactful way to get her quickly out of his house, maidenhead intact. Instead, he’d done the only thing he could think of in his highly stimulated and tense state; he’d laughed.

He’d not realized then that his laughter had, if nothing else, banished his chief rival: himself. It would have been an understatement to say he’d fallen from his pedestal. He’d plummeted. Which had been fine with him. He wanted Dizzy to see him as he was in truth, or as much of the truth as he was willing to allow.

Until now.

Until Blake.

Until Blake he hadn’t realized that she thought him irredeemable, in fact worse than he was. It was almost laughable that in seeking to disabuse her of one fantasy, he’d merely replaced it with another.

He couldn’t find a smile for the painful absurdity of it. Not now, here, when she was suddenly so meltingly attainable. Her mouth was close, her eyes drowsy and unguarded. And it was getting harder by the minute to remember his resolve not to take advantage—

“Lord Ravenscroft has a nice mouth.”

—especially when he wanted to seal her lips with his, keeping them from forming Blake’s cursed name again. Ever.

“But not as nice as yours. You have the most wonderful mouth, Harry,” she said, and sighed. “Your
lips look like they could tell the difference between grains of sand.” She touched her index finger to the center of his mouth, and his eyes drifted closed with that intoxicating sensation.

Who was more drugged? He couldn’t tell anymore. His body was tense and liquid, a hard veneer filled with molten energy.

Her fingertip tickled his upper lip. “I think it’s the way your upper lip dips down in the center here,” she said thoughtfully. “Or maybe”—she traced the underside of his lower lip—“maybe how firm and yet extravagant your lower lip is.”

She tugged his lip open and gently stroked the slick inner lining. He shuddered. She inhaled on a breathy little hiss and caressed him again. Her pupils had merged with the fluid darkness of her irises.

“Sometimes,” she confided in a faraway voice, “when I look at your mouth, the very tips of my breasts tingle, inside, where they can’t be itched. It almost hurts. And I think about your mouth and I wonder if your lips could—”

“Jesus! Stop it, Dizzy.” She was a hair’s breadth away from finding out the answer. His arms were tightening involuntarily and the faint, delicious, but unmistakable scent of feminine arousal inundated his senses. He wanted to find its source.

Her hand dropped away. Her brow furrowed.
“You
talked about my breasts,” she said in an accusing tone. “Why can’t
I
?”

“I didn’t—” He stopped. He had. But he hadn’t played with her body while he was doing so, hadn’t
fingered her lips, though in his mind he had been roving every satiny inch of her flesh with hand and mouth and tongue.

“Aha! You did. If you can talk that way, so can I.”

She was drugged, unaccountable for her actions. He had to keep reminding himself of that.

With a conscious effort he slipped his arm from under her knees, easing her to her feet. She looped her arms around his neck and he could feel her breasts, dragging softly down his chest. Her eyes were … shining? Cloudy? Damn, he couldn’t tell.

“Have you ever wondered what it would be like if we made love?” Her tone was detached, quizzical. Her body was not. He could feel her nipples, hard and delicate, like pearls, through his shirt.

He couldn’t answer, could barely breathe.

“Well?” She cocked her head. “Why don’t you answer?”

“You want a yes-no answer or is this an essay test?”

She ignored his words, staring into his eyes. “You look at every woman like you’re looking at me, don’t you?” she asked mournfully. “You can’t help yourself.”

“Jesus.” He really could not take any more. He was beyond frustrated working well into recklessness. He couldn’t seem to untangle his gaze from her lambent one, and when she smiled at him—trusting, uncomprehending—he made one last bid to keep her impromptu and utterly unconscious seduction under control, to shake her from this sweet, befuddled incomprehension.

“Dizzy, if you’d like to find out how far you can tease me, I suggest we go inside.
Now
. I’ll be more than happy to show you.” His voice was strained, harsher sounding than he’d intended.

It acted like cold water on her drowsy mind. Her musing, unfocused gaze sharpened, her soft lips snapped together.
“Tease
you?” she echoed.

“Yes.
Tease
, as in arouse without giving satisfaction.”

She laid her hands flat against his chest and pushed.
“Me
tease
you?”
she asked. “You’re the one who filled my head with all that nonsense about being a desert and a river and being your ‘country’! What do you call other women … your continent? Your hemisphere?”

He laughed. He couldn’t help it. She hadn’t been as serenely unaffected by his words as she’d pretended. She had everything he’d wanted and dreamed of in a lover: wit and competence, shrewdness and generosity … and a nice right jab.

She thumped her fist into his chest. “You are the most monumentally low-minded, disreputable, unromantic—” she said. “Why can’t you be more—”

His humor vanished. “More what?”

“More … more …” She stumbled around his name. Harry didn’t.

“Like Blake?” he finished in soft, glacial tones. His arms tightened. Damn it, he’d not give her up to Blake. Nor to anyone.

“Exactly like Lord Ravenscroft,” she said, falling gleefully on his suggestion. “He would never be less
than a perfect gentleman.
He
would never say such crude things to a lady.”

God, he hated the way she said Blake’s name. Like she was proclaiming a new king’s ascension to the throne.

“No,” he said tautly. “He’d tell you he was in danger of being ‘carried away’ by your beauty—your roselike beauty—before striding manfully off to some brothel to do with a courtesan what he wanted to do with you. Well, I’m not going away, Dizzy.”

He knew frustration was responsible for his anger, frustration, and jealousy. They burned clearly, hotly, rending into ashes his resolve never to want that which he couldn’t have. It left one essential truth: He loved Dizzy.

His beloved set her jaw and swung her fist at him, nearly falling over with her impetus. There was no possible way she was going to navigate the way to her house under her own power.

He plucked her off the ground and slung her over his shoulder, dropping her upside down.

“Put me down!” she demanded. “I
hate
being carried like this!”

“Too damn bad.”

She pounded her fists against his back. He ignored her, striding down the empty street that led to her home and stalking angrily up to her front door. Without a word, he set her on her feet and reached past her, pounding on the door.

She sagged against the wall, her knees starting to buckle. He caught her under her arms and she sank
against him, her unblinking gaze still locked with his.

“What do you want from me, Harry?” she whispered, her chin angled upward, her eyes so damn innocent.

“Dizzy—” He didn’t get any further. His mouth covered hers in a hard, succulent kiss. Her lips opened on a purr, and he took advantage, unable to help himself, unable to stop, delving his tongue into her mouth. She was yielding, supple, making little whimpers of pleasure deep in her throat. It was the sweetest sound he’d ever heard.

He moved closer, catching her face between his hands and using his thumbs to tilt her face up so he could—

—hear a carriage clatter noisily down the street. He stopped, lifting his head, breathing hard, senses slowly returning. Damn it, he was making love to Dizzy in the streets, in full view of all Cairo, as if he were some randy soldier and she was a doxy.

And she was drugged.

He leaned her back against the wall.

Her eyes were dark, her lips ripe. He wanted to taste her again. “Please,” she whispered, “don’t stop.”

“Allah, God, and heaven.” He raked his hair with shaking fingers.

“Please.”

He swayed forward. The sound of the bolt on the inside of the door being driven back stopped him. “I can’t.”

She shook her head. “No. You won’t.
Again.”

“I
s the
Sitt
awake?”

At the sound of Magi’s dulcet tones, Desdemona rolled over and buried her face in her pillow. She didn’t want to talk to Magi. She felt: awful: foggy-headed, feeble, and embarrassed.

“I can see that revered
Sitt
is indeed awake.”

“No, she’s not.”

“Yes.” Magi sounded positively perky. “She is. I can tell from the moaning she makes. Very different from the moaning she made when she was asleep. But this is stretching the definition of ‘sleep.’ I would be better served by saying ‘unconscious.’ ”

Desdemona turned her head. The rest of her body refused to follow. “I really don’t feel very well, Magi.”

“Oh? Really?” Magi cooed. “I am devastated to hear as much. I am sure your discomfort far exceeds that felt by certain people upon hearing from Duraid
that you sneaked into the
suq
and were smoking hashish.”

Desdemona groaned.

“Or upon hearing that you were kidnapped by white slavers.”

Desdemona closed her eyes.

“Or that you had been drunk on fermented goat’s milk.” She waited.

“I’ve had a rough week.”

“How could you, Desdemona?” Magi demanded, sweetness abandoned.

This time Desdemona managed to roll over. Magi stood over her, her hands planted on her hips, dark eyes flashing. Even though lying on her back put Desdemona at a distinct disadvantage, she couldn’t find the energy to rise.

“I didn’t even
know
it was hashish.”

“Humph. You are not a fool, Desdemona. You must have suspected you were not imbibing in a simple puff of
sheesha.”

Sheesha. Tobacco
. Harry had said the same thing … hadn’t he? But Joseph had assured her that—

At the thought of Joseph, she bolted upright. With the sudden movement, pain hammered through her temples. She grabbed both sides of her head, squinting in pain. “Ow! Where are the
ostraca?”

Magi pushed her back down, clucking impatiently. “They are fine. Harry brought them over and gave them to Sir Robert. Your grandfather is most pleased, Desdemona.”

Damn!
She couldn’t ask her grandfather to give them back. She bid good-bye to her projected five-pound
profit.
Thank you, Harry
, she thought. At times it almost seemed he was making a concerted effort to sabotage her plans to return to England. She shook her head.

The entire preceding day was an inextricable tangle of images and voices and sensations—all of them profoundly uncomfortable. The most disquieting one had Harry attached to it. She remembered a kiss. Or was that a three-year-old memory? Could hashish conjure up the past—textures, fragrances, flavors—so clearly?

She
had
to have been reliving that one long-ago kiss. The memory of disappointment was the same, the feeling of frustration and abandonment. It had ended the same way it had then—with him setting her aside. Hadn’t it? Lord, she was so confused!

“I cannot stand by when you endanger yourself,” Magi was saying.

“I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”

“It had best not. Hashish is for fools,” Magi exclaimed passionately. “In the
seraglio
there were many women who smoked hashish and opium. They smoked it to flee the boredom of their lives, to wander in dreams where they were forbidden to go in reality. Pitiful creatures making fantasy their only truth.”

“Don’t worry, Magi.” She meant it. If she never saw another hookah, it would be too soon. She could not remember ever having feilt so dull and sluggish … and stupid. And if what she half remembered did indeed happen, she’d certainly embodied that last attribute.

“You must promise me—”

“For heaven’s sake, Magi, I promise. You and Harry. The two of you should open a school of naggery. No wonder Harry is so good at what he does … he bullies his clients into acquiescence.”

“I am glad Master Harry has lectured you.” Magi sniffed. “I do not mean to harass you. I only want you safe, Desdemona.”

Magi’s mouth turned unhappily and Desdemona, suddenly aware of her ingratitude, caught her hand, squeezing it. Magi’s concern for her was real, her affection unfeigned. Magi was as much a mother as Desdemona had known. “I know, Magi. But please don’t worry. I have no intention of ever smoking hashish again.”

“Good.” Having gotten the answer she wanted, the worry promptly evaporated from Magi’s expression. She pulled her hand free, fussing about at the foot of the bed.

“Desdemona?” her grandfather called from the other side of the bedroom door. Desdemona glanced at Magi. If her grandfather got wind of what had—