Charlotte looked at Patrick’s navel, then quickly away. “Everyone?” she echoed, annoyed. “Someone might have told
me
there was going to be a wedding. I thought I was about to be tied to a pillar and whipped or something.”
“I’m sure that idea has already occurred to Khalif at least once,” Patrick agreed blithely. Charlotte had half expected him to pounce on her and subject her to all those glorious sensations he had taught her to want so shamelessly. Instead, he turned away to stand looking out a window.
She retreated awkwardly to the center of the huge couch. “You needn’t carry this charade any further, Captain—we both know you only went through with the wedding to save me from being beaten. You’ve done the chivalrous thing. Now, if you’ll just take me back to the Continent, and direct me to an embassy…”
Patrick was facing her again, and the expression in his ink blue eyes was a disconcertingly determined one. “ ‘The chivalrous thing’?” he asked, raising one eyebrow. “Charlotte, I’m no knight in shining armor. I married you because I wanted the privileges of a husband. All of them.”
She swallowed, started to move into retreat again, but Patrick bent down and clasped her firmly by one ankle. His thumb moved in a small circle on the tender arch of her foot for a moment, then he pulled her toward him.
Bending over Charlotte, bracing his hands on either side of her, Patrick took her mouth boldly with his own. She resisted only until she felt his tongue seek entry, then parted her lips in surrender.
While he kissed her, Patrick molded her breast in one palm, then caressed her hips and buttocks. She clutched at his back, plunged her fingers into the thick, soft hair on his chest, ran her hands over his rib cage.
She lay breathless when he released her mouth, willingly submitting as he removed her gauzy robes and looked at her
with an expression of rapt passion. Then, muttering a hoarse word she didn’t understand, he curled one strong arm under her waist and raised her off the couch so that he could take one of her nipples full into his mouth.
Charlotte cried out, enraptured, clinging to Patrick with both hands as he feasted on her. She wanted desperately to give herself, to be taken, but somehow she knew her husband would insist on preparing her first.
Patrick splayed his hands beneath her shoulder blades, holding her easily to his lips, like a chalice. He attended the first nipple thoroughly, then went on to the second.
His bride writhed in pleasure as he drank from her, whimpered with need when he let her relax against the couch and began undoing his breeches. He was half kneeling, half bending over her, naked and magnificent, when he spoke.
“Charlotte—”
She touched his splendid mouth with two fingers to silence him. “I know, Patrick—it will hurt a little because I’m—because I’ve never been with a man before—but I want you to take me fast and hard.”
He groaned, and she had a glorious revelation that he wanted her as desperately as she wanted him. “Charlotte, I—”
Brazen in her desire, letting her yen for adventure guide her actions, Charlotte reached out and closed one hand tightly around Patrick’s erection. She felt her eyes widen and her heart lurch as she comprehended his size.
Patrick gave her no time to wonder how she would accommodate him; he pushed her legs apart with one knee and lowered himself to her. “After the pain will come pleasure,” he told her. “I promise you that.”
She clutched at his lean hips, wanting him inside her, and with a moan of surrender he gave her his length in one smooth, irrevocable stroke. There was a tearing sensation and considerable soreness, and yet Charlotte felt as though some vital, long-lost part of her had been restored. Yes, the invasion hurt, for Patrick filled her completely with his masculinity, but beneath the pain coursed a river of incomprehensible joy.
Murmuring gentle, raspy, senseless words, Patrick began to move upon her, taking her, giving her up, taking her again. Their gazes seemed locked together, just as their bodies were, and a soft, crooning sound flowed from Charlotte’s throat as she and Patrick found the ancient rhythm.
He conquered her, released her, conquered her, relentlessly.
“Patrick,” she whispered, pleading. “Patrick—”
“Soon,” he vowed. “Just keep rising to meet me—like that—oh, God in heaven, Charlotte—”
The conflagration began as a burst of flame in Charlotte’s soul and quickly spread to the temporal part of her, knotting her loins into a hard, smoldering knot of fire, then releasing them in a storm of sensation.
Both her neck and back were arched as she convulsed in Patrick’s arms. He guided her patiently through the experience, then delved deep inside as he made his own surrender.
Charlotte was stricken by the power of his body as it flexed against hers, by the glazed ecstasy she saw in his eyes.
“Patrick, I love you,” she blurted out, before she could stop herself.
He fell beside her in sated exhaustion, arranged her so that he could kiss her nipple between periods of gasping to get his breath. Charlotte curled her hand behind his head to let him know he was welcome at her breast. She hoped that, in the delirium of his passion, he hadn’t heard her foolish declaration.
Patrick slept, awakened to kiss her breasts for a few minutes, then slept again. Charlotte marveled that this strong, magnificent man could be so vulnerable, and want such a simple comfort from a woman’s body. After a time, she shifted, and teased his mouth with the other nipple until she felt him drawing at her once more. She could blissfully have gone on attending her husband like that forever, but the time came when he wanted to take command.
Lying on his back, he set Charlotte astraddle of his hips and toyed idly with her well-suckled breasts. When he had her moaning softly and writhing a little, he spread one hand over her belly and found her magic place with his thumb.
With slow, circular motions, he teased her until she
stiffened, rising high on her knees, and then began to jerk helplessly against his hand. When the pleasure released her at last, she sagged forward, sprawled over his chest like a harlot.
And there wasn’t another place on earth she’d rather have been—not the Continent, not Quade’s Harbor, not even heaven itself. Finally, after years of imagining herself joined with this very man, she had experienced the reality, and it was better than any fantasy.
They lay still for a long while, not speaking. Patrick played idly with Charlotte’s hair, removing the decorations one by one, while she marveled at the sheer glory of being a woman.
At dusk they ate fruit and cheese and pastry from a giant platter left for them earlier. Then, when Charlotte was hoping Patrick would make love to her again, he took her hand instead and led her outside, into a small, private courtyard. There, another tile-lined pool waited, the water comfortably heated by the sun.
Tenderly, almost with reverence, Patrick bathed Charlotte, purposely arousing her, pausing between latherings and caresses to kiss her until her knees seemed to dissolve. When she was dazed with need, he leaned against the side of the pool, turned her so that her back was to him, and teased her with the promise of another taking.
“Love me,” she finally pleaded, curving her feet around the backs of his knees and rising high to offer herself.
Patrick lowered her slowly onto his shaft, nibbling her nape and the side of her neck as he guided her toward excruciating pleasure. He fondled her breasts as he filled her, rolling the nipples between his fingers like hard little berries, and Charlotte threw back her head and groaned as the bright desert stars began to play tag with one another.
She did not simply respond in Patrick’s arms that night; she performed breathless operas, and he made no effort to muffle her cries of delighted submission. She had her vengeance, though, by disengaging herself before he’d been satisfied and repaying him for the bath he’d given her earlier. When she knew he was ready, that as strong as he was, he’d nearly reached the breaking point, Charlotte
maneuvered him onto the smooth steps at the shallow end of the small pool and knelt between his knees.
The water seemed as warm and soft as a blanket around them.
“Charlotte,” Patrick groaned, and she didn’t know whether he wanted her to stop or go on, she only knew he was begging.
She remembered the exquisite, almost torturous pleasure he’d subjected her to the first time they were together, weeks before, and she had come up with a variation. After taking him firmly in her hand, she took him just as firmly with her mouth.
He gave a long, strangled moan, but Charlotte showed him no mercy. She worked his senses as ruthlessly as he had hers, running her hands over his belly, along his thighs, and under his buttocks while she tormented him.
At last, with a broken cry, he freed himself, hauled her onto the sun-warmed tiles surrounding the pool, and plunged into her. Charlotte had not expected to respond again, she’d thought he’d wrung every imagining of passion from her already. Still, when she felt Patrick stiffen violently, felt his warmth spilling into her, she was seized by a spasm of release so sudden and so violent that she actually lost consciousness for a fraction of a second.
They lay entwined on the tiles for a long time, until the breeze from the desert began to grow cool, then bathed each other again and returned to Patrick’s room. After blotting herself dry with a towel, Charlotte reached for the white robe, understanding now that it had been chosen for its resemblance to a wedding dress.
Patrick stopped her by taking her wrist in his hand. He didn’t need words to tell her he found her body too beautiful to cover; his eyes told her that.
Much later, on the velvet couch, with a covering of some gossamer fabric over them, Charlotte dared to ask the question that was uppermost on her mind. “You are planning to take me with you this time, aren’t you?”
He hesitated before replying, “Yes. After tonight, I don’t think I could be noble enough to leave you behind.”
Charlotte might have raised herself on one elbow to look down into Patrick’s face if he hadn’t held her so close to his side. “Noble? You think it’s
noble
to abandon a woman in a sultan’s harem?”
Patrick chuckled. “I would leave you in only one harem in the world, Charlotte—Khalif’s. Except when you took it upon yourself to strike out for the desert, you were safer here than you would have been anywhere else.” He threaded the fingers of one hand through her tangled hair. “Remind me to scold you for that, goddess. You could easily have died out there.”
“My intentions were good,” Charlotte insisted, her hand spread comfortably over the hard, muscle-rippled surface of his belly.
“Exactly. Your intentions were good when you decided to visit the
souk
that day, too, weren’t they? And I’ll wager you’ve done a lot of other rash things in your time, as well, Charlotte Trevarren.”
She liked the sound of her new name. Sighing, she cuddled closer to Patrick’s side. “A few,” she admitted. But the topic of Bettina had been brought up, however indirectly, and she couldn’t ignore the terrible guilt that followed. “I can live with what happened to me,” she confessed, in a small voice, “but I have nightmares about Bettina. She didn’t want to leave the house, but I insisted, and now God only knows what kind of unspeakable things she’s gone through.”
Patrick cupped Charlotte’s chin with a callused hand and turned his head to look into her eyes. “Is that your friend you’re talking about? The one who was with you in the marketplace?”
His frown nearly stopped Charlotte’s heart. Did he know something dreadful about Bettina? Perhaps he was about to confirm Charlotte’s worst fear—that the poor girl had ended up in debauchery and degradation.
“Yes,” she managed to say, her eyes burning with tears. “Bettina Richardson is her name. She’s probably a slave somewhere now, thanks to me, if she’s alive at all—”
Patrick gave her face a little shake and kissed her briefly
on the lips. “Miss Richardson is not a slave of any sort, goddess—except, perhaps, to fashion. I saw her myself, and paid a boy to take her home.”
“What?”
“I was in the
souk
that day, too, remember? Apparently the kidnappers only needed one woman to fill their quota for the day, because they left Miss Richardson standing in the alleyway, screaming her throat raw. I looked all over for you, but by then it was too late. Then you turned up in my cabin like a captured mermaid.” He smiled at the memory, and Charlotte punched him lightly in the ribs.
Her relief that Bettina was safe was dizzying. She took a few moments to absorb the knowledge, then poked Patrick in the side again, remembering something else about that day.
“You were consorting with that dancer,” she accused, hating the idea of Patrick with another woman, even if it
had
taken place before they’d become close. “No wonder you failed to rescue me. You’d used up all your strength.”
Patrick laughed. “Consorting,” he echoed. “Yes. You could say that. As for using all my strength—you’d be surprised at how much I have.” He bent, uncovered one of Charlotte’s breasts, and kissed the rounded top, venturing perilously close to an already-straining nipple.
Charlotte wanted some assurances first. She wrenched the cover up again. “You’re captain of a clipper ship,” she pointed out. “Does that mean you have a woman in every port? I won’t tolerate a faithless husband, Patrick Trevarren, and I don’t care how fashionable it is!”
He kissed her again, very gently. “Fashionable?”
She nodded. “Yes. You know as well as I do that men in the United States and Europe—all over the world—think it’s perfectly all right to take a mistress—”
“Does your father have a mistress?”
“Of course not,” Charlotte snapped. “My stepmother would go after him with a hunting rifle. Besides, he’s very happy with Lydia.”
“Then why all this concern about philandering husbands?”
“I’m not as naive as you think, Patrick. I have a good education and I’ve traveled—I’ve even been thrown into a harem, for heaven’s sake. I’ve seen enough of the world to know that my father and my uncle are exceptional men, at least when it comes to keeping their marriage vows.” She paused for a breath. “Even Mr. Richardson was sneaking out of the hotels in France and Spain, when Mrs. Richardson was suffering from one of her sick headaches. More than once, I saw him walking with a strange woman.”