Chapter Twenty-four
Magic words, “do or die.” Until Chantelle could determine if it was true, she had to give in. She might be furious and terrified in turn that it had come to this, but she wasn’t stupid. There were a lot of things she would do to preserve her maidenhead. Dying wasn’t one of them.
She barely heard Haji Agha as he hurried her down the long corridor toward the Dey’s private apartments.
The last-minute instructions and warnings fell on deaf ears.
She was too aware of what was going to happen.
Vashti had taken her through it step by step, and those were the words she kept hearing.
“It is over with very quickly. He will stick his thing in you and you will feel the terrible pain as it rips through your hymen. If his mood is good, he might allow you time for the pain to subside—most likely not, since what you feel does not concern him. Then he will thrust and thrust and finally cry out his pleasure. He will take a few moments to recover; then he will move away, and that is the end of it. Simple. All over quickly, and he sends you back to the harem. Rarely does he keep a concubine with him all night, since he prefers to sleep with his wives.”
Those words had haunted Chantelle ever since, intruding on her other lessons, in which her instruction had begun in the arts of enticement and seduction, but mostly pleasure. How to please a man. Not just any man, but one man in particular.
Chantelle had had to see a little humor in it or she would be fast on her way to going crazy.
For so many people to be concerned with one man’s sexual delights was the height of ludicrousness, yet that was exactly the case here.
Every single woman in the harem, every single eunuch, every slave, was concerned with only one thing, the Dey’s pleasure.
If it weren’t so ridiculous, Chantelle would cry about it.
But it wasn’t so ridiculous now, not when she was about to become the main course on tonight’s menu.
It had come about. It was actually happening. No, it’s not. It’s just a dream.
“You do not rise until he bids you to.”
“Rise?”
She was facing a door. Slowly she turned to see Haji Agha’s eyes narrowed at her.
“Shahar, have you heard nothing I’ve said?”
“I—I’m sorry, but I don’t think so. If you’d like to repeat it—”
“There is not another moment to spare,” he said in annoyance, fully aware she was playing for time. “Just remember to prostrate yourself before him and stay down until he bids you to rise. Do exactly as he says and all should go well. We can only pray he has not become annoyed with the delay.”
“What delay?”
“He wanted you here immediately.”
“Why?”
Haji sighed. “Allah only knows.”
Abruptly, he yanked away the short veil that had covered her lower face, then opened the door and escorted her to the center of the large room.
Not trusting her to do as he said, Haji tugged on her arm until she sank to her knees.
Satisfied to see her lower her head to the floor as well, he backed out of the room.
It was not out of respect that Chantelle prostrated herself.
She had kept her head bowed and her eyes on the floor upon entering the room and would continue to do so for as long as she could, for the simple reason that she didn’t want to look at the Dey.
In this position she couldn’t, and that suited her fine for the moment.
Where he was she didn’t know. He might not even be in the room—she didn’t hear him, couldn’t sense him. Or could she? Yes, she did feel as if she were being watched, and it wasn’t a pleasant feeling.
Derek remained quiet, not trusting his voice just yet.
It seemed as if he had waited forever for this moment, though it had only been four days.
Four days of misery and hoping he could later laugh at himself for building something up out of nothing.
But it was later now, and there was nothing to laugh at.
She was more lovely than he remembered: ethereal, willowy—and his.
But a virgin. He had to keep that uppermost in his mind, or he would carry her straightaway to his bed.
“Sit up and look at me.”
Not “Let me look at you”; he was already doing that, damn his eyes.
Chantelle had tensed at the sound of his voice but didn’t move otherwise. Not that she didn’t want to. She was just afraid that once she did, her defloration was going to proceed at an alarming pace.
“You know that you must obey me in all things, Shahar, though all I ask is that you look at me. Is that so unreasonable a request?”
His voice was calm, gentle even, and yet it was the same voice she remembered from before, slightly husky, with a deep timbre, a voice that could condemn a girl to brutal rape one moment and then rescind the order and ask without really caring if he hadn’t redeemed himself in her eyes.
This man could never redeem himself in her eyes, no matter what he did.
But now that she was reminded of what a coldhearted bastard he was, she felt she could meet his eyes without showing her fear. It was her loathing she wasn’t so sure she could hide.
When she sat back on her heels, she saw not only Jamil but also his two bodyguards, standing with their backs to the wall on each side of a large four-poster bed.
Jamil was at the foot of the high bed, resting his hips against it, his arms crossed over his chest, his legs stretched out before him and crossed at the ankles, the pose so bloody English in its casual nonchalance that Chantelle nearly gasped in surprise.
Thank God for the Eastern dress that made the effect incongruous, reminding her that there was nothing English about Jamil.
Since he’d been raised a barbaric infidel, blood didn’t count.
“You are allowed to speak, you know.”
Her gaze dropped back to the floor. Her fingers worried at one of the four ropes of pearls Rahine had draped over her head just before she’d been led out of the baths.
“I have nothing to say.”
“Do not retreat, Shahar. Return your eyes to me, or better yet, come closer.”
“May I walk?”
“Don’t be impertinent. If I wanted you to crawl, I would say so.”
Color singed her cheeks. He would, too, the swine. But she was warned by the abruptness of his tone that she had better keep her flippancy to herself for now.
With acute dread which was accelerating her pulse, she rose slowly to her feet and closed the distance between them. Still, her eyes wouldn’t meet his again, and whether he was getting annoyed with this continued defiance on her part she couldn’t tell.
She watched him push away from the bed so that he was standing when she stopped an arm’s distance away. Legs straight and spread, an arrogant stance if she’d ever seen one, his arms unfolded, and then she felt fingers gliding across her cheek.
Fire was her impression, his fingertips were so hot.
Amazingly, she kept from flinching, but her gaze remained locked on the deep V of his white tunic and the large tiger’s eye medallion that rested against his skin there.
It was bronzed skin and sparingly dotted with crisp black hair near the point of the V, which made her realize with a flare of irritation that he didn’t have to suffer his hair being plucked and scraped away.
On top of that thought was the further realization that she wasn’t completely denuded of hair either, though she was supposed to be.
What would his reaction be to that? she wondered, and in the wondering knew that she had already accepted the fact that he would soon be in a position to discover her apparently sinful state.
“Will you take dinner with me?”
The incongruity of that question, when she had expected at any moment to be tossed onto his bed, brought Chantelle’s eyes flying up to his face. “Dinner?”
“If you like,” he said softly.
He was staring at her mouth. His thumb moved to trace the line of her lower lip. And then his eyes locked with hers. Emerald fire. There was nothing indifferent about this gaze.
“Dinner would be nice…I mean wonderful…I’m famished, actually,” she ended on what she hoped was a note of sincerity.
He laughed, amazing her. The sound was deep and pleasant, and she imagined that she could feel its reverberation inside her own chest.
“You are so transparent, Shahar. Did you think I would ravish you the moment you walked through the door?”
Exactly, but she didn’t say so. She didn’t have to. The blush soared clear to her hairline this time, visible even with her head bowed.
“This shyness is allowed, but your eyes are exquisite, little moon. I want to see them.”
And everything you want you get? she thought with annoyance, then tossed caution to the wind and said it in English.
His emerald gaze narrowed the tiniest bit.
“English is unacceptable here, Shahar. Your French is superb, but it is not a language everyone is familiar with. You may use it while you are with me, but otherwise you will practice the mixture of Turkish and Arabic that is the common language of the palace. Eventually, that will be the only language you will speak.”
She said nothing. What could she say? That was tantamount to an order. And she learned one thing. His mother might be English, but she obviously hadn’t taught him to speak it. He proved it by his next words.
“Now, what was it that you said to me?”
For a split second she considered lying. But his hand had come beneath her chin, forcing her head back up, forcing her to meet his gaze. She decided on the truth, hoping it would annoy him enough to take his hand off her.
“I asked if you get everything you want.”
He didn’t take his hand away. The other hand came up, and he cupped her face in his palms. He obviously wasn’t offended, but then the instinct for self-preservation had kept the derision out of her words this time.
“Of course,” was his husky reply. “Everything, Shahar. Why should it be otherwise, when everything you see belongs to me, including yourself?”