Chapter Twenty-nine #3
Her mouth started to drop open, but she snapped it shut, grinding her teeth for a moment. She had the powerful urge to hit him square in that hard back he was still presenting to her, but her anger hadn’t quite overridden good sense yet.
Tightly, she asked, “May I go now—your highness?”
She was not going to call him “my lord,” as most everyone else did, for that would only reinforce their positions. And she knew “highness” was just one of many names that were acceptable to call him, though she could think of numerous others she would have preferred to use.
She watched his shoulders droop almost tiredly, though his tone was still curt. “Yes, go.”
Thank God she was dressed. It would have been mortifying to have to wait to put her clothes on, but then it would have been mortifying to wake up naked in bed beside him, too. And that could have been a distinct possibility, considering that she had passed out in his bed.
Realizing that he could have done anything he liked to her unconscious body, but hadn’t, took a little steam out of her indignation. Finally standing up and seeing the two Nubian guards for the first time knocked the remaining wind out of her.
Good Lord, they had been there all along, even when Jamil was—when he…
Hot color flooded her cheeks. How could she not have known, or sensed their presence so close?
But, of course, her attention had been captured by Jamil from the moment she had awakened, to the exclusion of all else.
And they might not be looking at her now, their focus straight ahead, might not have glanced at her as she lay next to Jamil, under him, letting him…
With a small sound of dismay, Chantelle made straight for the door. But to reach it, she had to come around the bed and pass in front of Jamil, who still faced in that direction.
“Shahar?”
She stopped, groaning inwardly. She might have dismissed him temporarily from her mind, but he apparently had not dismissed her, even though he had seemed to.
“You are forgetting something.”
His voice didn’t sound quite so brusque now, but she still turned around hesitantly, to be met with the powerful image of him sitting there nearly naked on the bed.
Wariness receded, replaced by pure fascination.
She hadn’t really looked at his bare chest before, but now she couldn’t help it.
Sleek muscles were visible, as well as a faint scattering of black curls across his breastbone.
Even though he wasn’t sitting perfectly straight, there was no rippling of skin across the hard stomach.
And the shoulders seemed so wide in that position, with his arms still braced on each side of the bed.
They were powerful arms, deceiving when adorned in his rich tunics, but so obvious now as to be disconcerting.
When she had thought of his power, it had been in relation to his authority, not to his physique.
His height might have been daunting, but he had seemed so lean, his movements so graceful, she had not imagined there might be hard strength beneath the surface.
She saw him now as a man, not as the Dey, and a very impressive man.
She once again felt the overwhelming attraction she had experienced when she’d first laid eyes on him.
Fortunately, it was that selfsame body that both aroused this new attraction and helped to tamp it down, for it was blatantly clear now that there was enough strength there to force her to his will if his authority could not.
Annoyed with herself for allowing him to see her fascination with his body, Chantelle dragged her eyes up to his, treating him to the contradiction of her emotions, blazing eyes and a trembling lower lip, which she stilled by sucking a portion beneath her teeth a moment before asking. “What did I forget—your highness?”
That slight pause was enough to bring his brows together.
Her refusal to call him anything less impersonal was deliberate, and now he knew it.
She didn’t care. The only thing she could have forgotten was to bow herself out of the room, and if he was going to be so arrogant as to insist on it, she felt she would scream.
He said simply, “Come here.”
“Must I?”
“Come here,” he repeated without raising his voice.
That he completely ignored her flippancy was the only reason she didn’t consider refusing. She moved toward him, albeit very slowly, but stopped several feet away.
“There,” he said.
Chantelle looked down where his hand indicated, to see a bundle of material on the floor by his feet, clothes, she assumed, that he had discarded before getting into bed.
But resting on top, as if on a bed of white silk, was a small pile of sapphires.
She’d never seen them before to her recollection, and could only think that he meant to pay her for sleeping in his bed, even if nothing had come of it.
Indignation stiffened her spine, and her eyes flashed back to his. “I don’t want them.”
A single brow rose at this response. “Interesting,” he said, and after a long pause, “but irrelevant.” He bent down to retrieve the jewels, and once dangling from his fingers, they were revealed to be mounted in silver, three tiers of different sizes and cuts, forming a magnificent necklace that had to be worth a fortune.
Cheeks reddened with the assumption that he meant to buy her affection, she repeated stiffly, “I don’t want them.”
He surprised her by smiling at her, as if he found her show of indignation amusing.
He did, she realized, when he said, “A necklace such as this might be presented to a woman on the birth of a child, not for what you are thinking. As it happens, you arrived wearing it, and so you will leave wearing it, to return it to its rightful owner.”
“Your mother,” Chantelle said, flushing even more as she realized her mistake. “She lent me the pearls, so she must have…You can return them to her as easily as I,” she finished, not wanting to take even a single step closer to retrieve the necklace from him.
He had other ideas, leaning forward enough to catch her arm and bring her right between his knees. When she tried pulling back, his hold tightened.
“Are you that afraid of me?”
She heard the anger in the question but didn’t care. Pride made her snap back, “No,” even if it wasn’t true.
“Then be still,” he ordered. “I only mean to put the necklace on you, since it was I who took it off. You will leave here as you came, Shahar.”
He released her, daring her to step back. She didn’t. An image had come to her from his words, of him removing the necklace, touching her skin, while she slept blissfully unaware. The unfurling of warmth in her belly surprised her so, she gasped. How could that happen from an image?
“I’m waiting.”
Recalled to herself, she didn’t understand for a moment what he was waiting for, and when she did, she balked. Since he hadn’t stood up to put the necklace on her, he obviously wanted her to kneel down before him. It was too much, too subservient, too demeaning.
“I don’t have to wear the necklace to return it.” She held out her hand for him to simply give it to her.
“I insist.”
“Well, you can just go—”
In whatever direction she had meant to send him was lost in a small gasp as one of his feet came around to press against the back of her knees, buckling them, and his hands on her sides forced her down and kept her down. She had to look up to see him, and she did, murderously.
“Are you happy now?” she demanded shrilly.
“I will be happy when you stop fighting me,” he replied with a tinge of regret, then added softly, “This was not meant to humble you, little moon. I will grasp any excuse to wrap my body around you, to feel—”
“You said I could go!” she cried, eyes flaring.
“And so you can. I still mean only to put the necklace on you. Lift your hair for me and it will be done.”
She did not know what to make of him. Wrap his body around her? God, how weak that image made her feel….
Quickly, to get it over with, she lifted the weight of her hair off her neck. He picked up the necklace from where he had dropped it on the bed. And then he stared at her for a long moment before he slowly, very slowly, slipped the cold metal around her neck.
Chantelle shivered, not so much from the coldness, but from the warmth of his fingers that were there, too. Then he leaned closer to fasten the clasp, and she did find his body wrapped around her, his arms, his chest, his knees pressed to each side of her hips.
The cold, the heat, the contact of her cheek against his chest, all combined to make her forget her anger.
It was like being enclosed in a warm, safe cocoon.
Safe? Yes, somehow she did feel safe for the moment.
He had said she could go, so she had nothing to fear from this embrace except perhaps her own reaction to it.
God, it did feel good to have him surround her like this.
The regret she felt when he removed his hands from her neck was real. She looked up at him in bemusement, to find him smiling at her.
“Was that so hard?”
She refused to answer, pride pushing away what he had made her feel. “Can I go now?”
“Yes.” But his hand on her shoulder stayed her when she started to rise. “As soon as I have your word that you will come to me tonight when you are summoned.”
“But—”
“Your word, Shahar, or you don’t leave me now.”
“Nothing has changed,” she told him plainly.
“I did not think it had, but you will come here anyway, and we will see what happens. Your word?”
She bit her lip in indecision, then finally nodded. This brought his hand to her cheek for a soft caress and an even softer warning. “Save your fighting for me, little moon. If you have not noticed, I have accepted the challenge.”
When she rushed from the room, it was with a certain degree of dread, but something else as well. She wasn’t ready to admit it might be anticipation.