The Pleasure of Your Kiss Read online

  Clarinda slowly lifted the pitcher in a white-knuckled grip, using every ounce of her self-control to pour a stream of water over the sleek planes of his back instead of breaking the pitcher over his arrogant head.

  “Perhaps you are being too harsh on this Miss Cardew. I have heard it said a strong woman can be the very backbone of a man.”

  “Ha! Not this woman. She’s much more likely to be a pain in his backside. If Farouk goes through with his harebrained plan to marry her, I can promise you he’ll have nothing to look forward to but a lifetime of misery. And nagging. Why, that woman could flay the skin off a man’s back with her tongue!” Ash shook his head. “I shudder when I think of how close I came to being leg-shackled to just such a— What the hell?!” he exclaimed as the empty pitcher went bouncing off his skull and into the water.

  Rubbing his head, he shot her a wounded look over his shoulder.

  “Forgive me, my lord.” Clarinda lowered her eyes, hoping he would attribute the trembling of her hands to shame, not rage. “The soap must have made my hands more slippery than I realized. Your back is clean now. May I go?”

  “I should say not.” He settled back against the edge of the pool with a sulky sniff. “I’m afraid my front is feeling quite neglected.”

  All of her plans for revenge forgotten, Clarinda jerked her head up to give him a shocked stare, but his eyes had already drifted shut.

  According to the older women who had been instructing Clarinda in the arts of love, women were interchangeable in the eyes of a man. All men desired was a warm, slick place to spill their seed, and as far as they were concerned, one womb would do as well as another. That was why a woman must strive to make herself more attractive, more charming, more irresistible, than all of the other women around her if she hoped to catch the sultan’s attention and be summoned to his bed for more than just one night.

  Despite the warning words of her teachers, Clarinda supposed some part of her had still wanted to believe Ash was different from other men. That he wouldn’t be as quick to slake his lust with some nameless—and even faceless—harem girl.

  She lowered her head again, despising the tightness in her throat almost as much as she despised him in that moment. “Perhaps it would be best if you minded your own front.”

  She was halfway to her feet when his hand shot out to capture her wrist, imprisoning her. Although she kept her face turned away from him, she could still feel the steady weight of his gaze. “Your master assured me that any woman he sent to tend me in my bath was mine to command.” His voice was no longer congenial but rumbling with sensual menace. “Is it your intention to make a liar of him?”

  Clarinda hung there in his grip, poised between escape and surrender. Her every instinct was urging her to flee, but she had never backed down from a challenge, especially if it came from him. Perhaps it was not too late for her to exact her revenge against him after all.

  “Of course not,” she said softly. “It is my sole desire to please my master … and you.”

  With that promise still on her lips, she returned to her knees and accepted the soap from his hand. As Ash settled back against the edge of the pool, breathing out a lusty sigh of anticipation, she reached around him with both arms, wrapping him in her embrace.

  For a long moment, he didn’t breathe at all. Then she felt his chest heave beneath her hands as he dragged in a shuddering breath. She slid her fingernails through the damp whorls of his chest hair, then began to rub the soap in lazy circles over his torso, lingering over the rigid nubs of his nipples.

  Bringing her mouth close to his ear, she whispered, “Does this please you, my lord?”

  “More than you could ever know,” he replied, his voice little more than a growl.

  The soap slid from her hand, disappearing beneath the water. She used the flat of her palms to work the slick film of soap into a creamy lather, her hands straying deeper into the far more dangerous territory of his abdomen with each languid stroke.

  To keep her balance, she was forced to lean forward until the very tips of her breasts brushed his back. Given how hot his skin was, she wouldn’t have been surprised to hear a sizzle or see fresh tendrils of steam rise from those points of contact. The water sleeking his skin melted through the silk of her bodice as if it were butter, making it impossible to hide the fact that her own nipples had tightened into turgid little buds.

  As one of her hands drifted even lower, slipping beneath the surface of the water, she felt the rock-hard muscles of his upper abdomen twitch in reaction.

  His hand dove beneath the water to close around her wrist, snaring her in a trap of her own making. The motion threw her off-balance and she tumbled forward, plastering the softness of both of her breasts against his back.

  He is going to send me away, she thought, torn between exultation and disappointment, both emotions that were best left unexamined. She had been right about him after all. He was not a man to be satisfied with the seductive charms of a woman who would go down on her knees for any man just to please her master.

  But instead of pushing her away, he covered her hand with his much larger one, flattening her palm against his abdomen. Turning his head so that the warmth of his lips was pressed to her ear, he whispered, “You have extremely nimble little hands, my dear. If we set both of our minds to the task, we should be able to devise an even more clever use for them.”

  She gasped aloud as he captured her earlobe between his teeth and gave it a gentle tug even as his hand began to exert a subtle pressure, urging her hand down … down … down …

  She was on the verge of forgetting all about her own plan to work him into a frenzy of desire and leave him wanting when she remembered that it wasn’t her hand he was holding.

  It wasChapter Fourteen Yasmin’s.

  She reared back on her haunches, jerking her hand out of his grip. “Oh, I already have a use for my hands,” she said sweetly. “I think they would be just perfect for washing your hair.”

  “But I’ve already—”

  Before he could finish, she planted both hands on his shoulders and shoved with all her strength. If he had known what was coming, she wouldn’t have been able to budge him. But her unexpected attack caught him off guard and he disappeared beneath the water without a struggle.

  He came up sputtering and cursing, water streaming from his hair. Reaching behind him, he closed his hands around her waist and flipped her neatly over his shoulder and into the pool, the resulting splash swamping them both.

  Everything happened so fast. One minute Clarinda was kneeling at the edge of the pool, savoring her triumph; the next she was in the pool, lying across Ash’s lap.

  She was still struggling to catch her breath when he yanked off the veil covering her nose and mouth, sending it fluttering to the surface of the water like a flag of surrender.

  “Now there’s my darling little English harpy!” A wolfish grin spread over his face, making his teeth look dazzlingly white in contrast to the sun-toasted copper of his skin. “I was wondering just how long it was going to take you to show your claws.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Clarinda glared up into Ash’s laughing face. “Why, you miserable wretch! You were just toying with me, weren’t you?” Infuriated to find herself once again the butt of his joke, she slapped both palms against his chest. “Just how far were you going to let me go before you stopped me from making an even bigger fool of myself?”

  “Oh, far be it from me to stand in the way of your desire to—how did you so eloquently put it?”—he wagged his eyebrows at her—“please your master … and me.”

  She swiped a sodden strand of hair out of her eyes. “How long have you known it was me?”

  “From the moment you opened the door. And your mouth.”

  “So that’s why you said all of those horrid things about me! To torment me!”

  “Oh, no. I meant every word of it,” he said cheerfully. “You have a sharp tongue, a shrewish temper, and I’ve neve
r met a woman more likely to be a pain in a man’s back—”

  “I know I was a horrid pest when I was a little girl, but all I wanted was for you to look at me. To really see me.”

  “Oh, I saw you,” he said, his voice softening. The way he was looking at her in that moment made her feel as if she were the only woman in the world. “I saw how brave you tried to be when you lost your mother, how you slipped your hand into your father’s at the gravesite and tried to comfort him. I saw how badly you wanted to please him, even when it was such a challenge for you to play the part of the perfect little lady. I saw how you hated injustice and were always the first to champion anyone who was weaker or less clever than you.” He tucked a sodden strand of hair behind her ear, his touch playing havoc with her pulse. “I always saw you. It just took me a while to figure out what to do with you.”

  Hoping to hide just how breathless both his confession and his touch had made her, she sniffed and said primly, “Well, I still think I did a very creditable impersonation of a harem girl.”

  “You’ll get no argument from me on that. Aside from the part where you almost bashed in my skull with the pitcher, I was on the edge of my seat waiting to see what the next act of your performance would bring.”

  “Then how? How could you have known it was me?”

  “How could I not know? Have you forgotten that I’ve known you since you were barely old enough to toddle after me on your fat little legs? The first time I saw you, you were riding on your papa’s shoulders and using the poor man’s ears as a pair of reins! I know the timbre of your voice, the way you swing your hips when you walk.” The mirthful glitter faded from his eyes, leaving them oddly somber. “I know the feel of your hands against my skin, the rhythm of your breath … ” She stopped breathing altogether as he lowered his head and ran his nose along the damp column of her throat, inhaling deeply. “I know the scent of you, even beneath all of that ridiculous perfume and oil.”

  Her tumble into the pool had left her in an even more precarious position than before. The warm water had done nothing to dampen the brazen enthusiasm of her nipples. On the contrary, it had molded the silk of her bodice into a second skin that was even more provocative than bare flesh. All it took was the briefest downward flick of Ash’s heavy-lidded gaze for her to imagine his teeth tugging on her through the sheer silk just as they had tugged at her earlobe.

  He lifted his head, bringing their mouths back into dangerous proximity. “And I know the taste of you … ”

  As if to prove his point, he brushed his lips over hers in a feather-light caress, sending her already shaky senses reeling. It was as if their lips had never been parted. As if time had stopped and all the moments between their last kiss and this one had only been grains of glittering sand suspended in some frozen hourglass.

  Clarinda had no defenses against such shattering tenderness. As he deepened the kiss, sweeping his tongue through her mouth in a velvety caress, she was forced to curl a hand around the broad expanse of his nape and tangle her fingers in the wet silk of his hair just to keep from sliding back into the water. If she went under this time, she didn’t think there would be any saving herself.

  Her tongue welcomed his caress with a wanton flick of its own, eager to sample all of the delights she had been denied for far too long. No exotic spice or dish could compare to the flavor of him. Not the richest, darkest Arabian coffee or the flakiest ktefa drizzled with thick, golden honey. He was indulgence itself, and all she wanted was to gorge her starving senses, even though she knew from harsh experience that it wasn’t possible for her to ever get enough of him.

  The steam swirled around them just as the mist had swirled around them that morning in the meadow, making it even easier to believe they were the only two lovers in the world. With their bodies slicked with water and sweat and nothing but the thin layer of her silk trousers separating her softness from the hard, hungry heat of his lap, it would have been so easy for her to melt into him.

  And even easier for him to melt into her.

  He wrapped his arms around her and cupped the back of her head in his palm, tilting her head back to give him even fuller access to the forbidden delights of her mouth.

  His tongue grew bolder with each foray, making her more his own with each possessive thrust, carrying her back to a time and place when there was no Maximillian, no Dewey, no Farouk, no man in the world except for him.

  Which was why it took so long for the muted thud of a heavy door’s opening and closing followed by the sound of a man’s off-key singing to jerk her back to the present.

  I loved me darling Jenny

  She was a maiden fair and true

  At least ’tis what I believed

  Till I caught her dallying with you

  Turned out she was no maiden

  But a cheating, lying whore

  But when she showed me what you taught her

  I loved her all the more!

  Clarinda and Ash sprang apart, gazing at each other in wide-eyed horror. There was no mistaking that booming basso profundo.

  “Dear Lord, it’s Farouk!” Clarinda whispered, paralyzed in place by the disaster that was about to unfold.

  “We used to sing that ditty at Eton.” Ash scowled. “Damn it all. If we had to be caught in flagrante delicto by one of your fiancés, why did it have to be the one with the biggest sword? At least my brother would have only discharged me. Or challenged me to a duel, during which I could have winged him and then apologized profusely.”

  “We are not in flagrante delicto!” she protested.

  His deft fingers stroked the sensitive spot on her nape just below her hairline, the one that had always made her shiver with some unspeakable longing and tempted her to allow him far more than just stolen kisses. His smoky whisper filled the delicate shell of her ear: “Yet.”

  She shuddered, her breath catching in her throat. Was he right? After years of playing the role of proper lady with great success, had she actually been on the verge of surrendering herself to him after only a few well-timed caresses and a handful of kisses?

  There was no more time to contemplate her moral fortitude—or distressing lack thereof. Farouk was rapidly approaching through the veil of steam, his heavy footfalls slapping the damp tiles.

  “Go!” Ash commanded, reluctantly lifting her from his lap and giving her a frantic shove toward the curtained apse on the nearest wall. Despite their desperation, he was unable to resist giving her wet rump a fond pat as she scrambled out of the pool.

  Tossing him an outraged glare over her shoulder, Clarinda darted across the floor and ducked behind the curtain. She hunkered down on the floor, wrapping her arms around her knees to make herself as small as possible, and prayed Farouk wouldn’t notice the trail of water that would lead him directly to her hiding place.

  “Your Majesty,” Ash said smoothly, warning her that Farouk had reached the pool.

  “Good day, Burke,” Farouk replied with his usual impeccable courtesy. “I am glad to see you taking advantage of the pleasures of my hammam.”

  Clarinda doubted Farouk would have been so gracious had he realized just exactly what pleasure his guest had been about to take advantage of. She inched the edge of the curtain away from the rounded wall so she could keep an eye on the two men. Unfortunately, she did so just in time to see Farouk peel away the white cloth girding his loins in preparation for stepping into the pool. He did so without so much as a trace of self-consciousness, tossing the cloth aside and rearing back for a thorough stretch that left nothing to the imagination and little doubt as to how he managed to keep so many women satisfied.

  Clarinda didn’t realize she had gasped aloud until Ash aimed a murderous scowl in her direction. She ducked back behind the curtain and clapped a hand over her mouth, barely resisting the urge to giggle like a schoolgirl. Perhaps it would be wiser to remain where she could hear but not see.

  Water splashed as Farouk settled himself into the pool, his heavy sigh audible even t
o her ears.

  “You seem troubled on this fine day, my friend,” Ash said. “Is there any counsel I can offer to ease the burden on your heart?”

  Clarinda sobered, reminded anew that Ash’s aim was to earn Farouk’s trust so they could both betray him.

  “My heart is plagued by the same ailment that has troubled man since the beginning of time. Women! They are the most maddening of creatures, are they not?”

  “Indeed!” Ash agreed heartily. “Maddening. Infuriating. Exasperating. Stubborn. Untrustworthy. Fickle. Faithless. Easily impressed,” he added pointedly.

  Clarinda pressed her lips together, knowing that his recitation was for her ears, not for Farouk’s. She should have held his head under the water for a little longer. Perhaps for an hour or two.

  Ash’s enthusiasm for the topic showed no sign of waning. “Flighty. Vindictive. Mercurial. Vain. Illogical—”

  “Exactly!” Farouk exclaimed before Ash could come up with several more unflattering adjectives. “They are utterly without logic and impossible to understand, and yet we allow them to dictate our moods, our hopes, our desires.”

  “That we do,” Ash admitted ruefully. “It is our one failing as the stronger, more intelligent, and far superior sex.”

  This time Clarinda didn’t even try to muffle her disdainful snort.

  “I suddenly find myself questioning the wisdom of my forefathers in these matters,” Farouk admitted. “Perhaps you can shed some light on the darkness of my thoughts.”

  “It would be my honor to try.”

  Farouk seemed to be considering his next words carefully. “Here we are taught from the cradle that one man can be the husband of more than one woman, a belief that makes us little more than savages in the eyes of many in your own culture.”

  “You’d be amazed by how many men in London ascribe to exactly that same philosophy,” Ash said with a cynical laugh. “They just don’t call the women wives or concubines, but mistresses.”