Silver Angel (21 page)

He was surprised by her vehemence, but he shouldn’t have been. It wasn’t going to be easy to make her admit to any pleasure she experienced at his hands, not as long as she was so set against him.

“Then I will tell you,” he said softly, placing his hand on her belly. “You felt warm and weak and trembling. Your pulse raced, your senses throbbed, and heat unfurled in your vitals.”

“How did you—” She caught herself on that revealing question, but too late.

“Because I felt it, too,” he replied, his hand circling her belly in a warm caress. “It’s called desire, and it has a will of its own that cannot be denied. Do you feel it now?”

He looked down at his hand on her skin and she did, too, and panicked, because she
did
feel that heat unfurling inside her again. “No!”

She reached out to pull his hand away, only to have her fingers locked in his. She tried to pull her own hand away and ended up having it pinned to the bed. She began to struggle in earnest then, until she heard his deep chuckle and realized she was accomplishing nothing.

“If you think you can fight me as you did Kadar, you are welcome to try it. But I warn you, he was very limited in what he could do to restrain you. I am not.” And then his brows narrowed, seeing her fear. “Don’t look at me like that, woman. Have I hurt you even once? Did I punish you when you refused me before? No, and I will not this time either. Doesn’t that prove anything to you?”

Chantelle caught her breath. Had she heard him right? Of course she had. So he was not the one responsible for her kitchen duty. His mother was, and he obviously didn’t know anything about it. And if he did know? She had a feeling he wouldn’t like it, because for some reason he was trying to impress her with his benevolence, and petty punishments would ruin that impression. But someone else could tell him if he or she dared. Chantelle wasn’t about to risk his anger, even if it wasn’t directed at her, especially in her present precarious position of lying half beneath him in his bed.

“You seem surprised, Shahar.” He was watching her thoughtfully. “Don’t you believe me?”

Believe him? What had he said? Oh, that he hadn’t hurt her. Yes, she supposed that was true—so far. But there was more than one face to this man, and she had seen the face that could terrify her.

“No, I—I’m not surprised—just confused—yes, confused. The one thing that has been repeatedly told to me is that I can’t refuse you the use of my—well, I can’t refuse you. Now you’re telling me that it’s all right. Who do I believe?”

“Me, of course,” he said with an engaging grin that had her staring at his mouth for an inordinate amount of time. When her eyes returned to his, they seemed to be smiling at her, too. “Ah, sweet girl, what am I doing to do with you? I can’t have you thinking that it is all right to refuse me. It will upset the whole balance of my harem. I did not say it was all right, only that you wouldn’t be punished.”

“Then—”

“Let me finish. You will not always refuse me. You will accept me of your own accord when the time is right.” He put his hand to her cheek to stop her from
shaking her head to deny it. “You will, Shahar, I promise you. You felt desire for me this morning. You felt it the other evening. It is not something that you can ignore for long.” His fingers moved to her throat to caress the pulse there. “Even now my touch excites you.”

“That’s fear,” she murmured breathlessly.

He chuckled. “What a little liar you are. Of course, I will allow it is easy to mistake the one emotion for the other when they are so similar. But I believe you know the difference by now. Just don’t deceive yourself for too long, Shahar. What we will have together will be beautiful, if you will just let it happen.”

He was telling her, without saying the words, that he had only so much patience. She supposed she should be grateful he had any at all. She certainly hadn’t expected it of him. But then she hadn’t expected him to be so considerate of her feelings either. How was she to deal with such unpredictability?

She didn’t know how to answer him, so she didn’t. But he was waiting for her to make some comment after those last disturbing statements. Perhaps she could put him on the defensive for a change.

“Won’t it seem strange, your keeping me here so long? I was told you spend the night only with your wives.”

He turned away from her to sit on the side of the bed, giving her his back. She was relieved to see that although he had removed his tunic to sleep, he had worn his trousers to bed. For her sake?

She was almost sorry now that she had annoyed him with her question, and she certainly had. The muscles along his back were taut, and she could see one hand where it gripped the edge of the bed, the
knuckles white. Why should that particular question bother him?

“No one questions what I do, Shahar.” He said this without glancing at her. “They would not dare. You will not question me either.”

Her eyes flared, as did her temper. What bloody, autocratic nerve! “In other words, you can ask me anything you like, no matter how improper, but I can’t ask you anything?”

“Exactly.”

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.”