Damnation, he had known that restraint would be difficult, but this was far worse than he had expected. She would not be responding so wholly if she did not trust him to be master of himself, yet here he was, on the verge of doing the same thing that he had done to her before. What was it about Sara that had such an extraordinary effect on him? Swearing under his breath in Kafiri, he closed his eyes and ordered his racing heart to slow to a more manageable level.
Deciding that it was time to return to a more intellectual plane, he opened his eyes and gave Sara a crooked smile. "Human intercourse is a reflection of cosmic balance, like the mating of earth and sky. When men and women join, it is a solemn spiritual duty. Taoist masters wrote books on the subject of achieving balance."
Her eyes wide and dazed, she said gamely, "Their books must have been very popular."
"Very." Unable to resist the lure of Sara's silken skin, he reached for her again, moving the blanket aside as he stroked across the subtle curve of her abdomen. Surely it was safe to touch her as long as he remembered that he must stop.... "The Chinese are very fond of poetic imagery, though many of the terms are amusing when translated."
He laid his hand over the triangle of soft, ash blond hair at the junction of her thighs, and felt the beating of her blood against his palm. "The female organs, for example, were called names such as the Open Peony Blossom and the Golden Lotus." His fingers probed through the fine curly strands to the moist, acutely sensitive folds of flesh below. "The Cinnabar Cleft."
"A-h-h-h..." Sara's eyes shot open. "I... I've always been very fond of poetry."
"Then you will be interested to know that this"— he located the most sensitive nub of all, and gently began stroking it—"is called the Jeweled Terrace. It is vitally important, for the Taoist masters believed that a woman's yin energy is strongest when she also finds satisfaction in mating."
Sara moaned and arched into his touch. "What... what is the male organ called?"
"Various things. The Vigorous Peak. The Swelling Mushroom. The Coral Stem." He racked his brain, knowing that there were many terms, but finding it difficult to remember or translate them under these conditions. "The Jade Stalk."
That briefly penetrated Sara's sensual haze. Her brow furrowed. "Since jade is green, that sounds odd. I like the other names better."
He chuckled. "Jade comes in many colors, including white, tan, and brown. That must be the sort of jade meant."
Sara was feeling more yang by the minute, but even so she was surprised to find herself reaching for the sash of his caftan. "Lecture is less effective without demonstration."
Shy but determined, she untied the sash, then separated the velvet panels and spread her hands across his chest. The dark hair tickled her palms with delicious roughness. Drawing her hands the length of his torso, she reveled in the feel of hard muscle and bone.
The coarse dark hair thickened as she moved lower until she reached the Coral Stem and clasped it between her palms. His flesh was jade smooth and very warm, hard yet subtly yielding.
When she gently squeezed, Mikahl groaned and moved against her hand. Sara was delighted to learn that she could affect him as powerfully as he affected her. As her fingers tightened experimentally, a shudder ran through him.
He rolled onto his back so that they were no longer touching. His chest heaving, her husband said with glass-edged precision," It is time to end the lecture, sweet Sara, for we have reached the limits of my restraint."
He was keeping his word, but was that what Sara wanted? Realizing that her earlier trepidation had burned away like morning mist, she said, "Don't." She touched her tongue to her upper lip. "Don't restrain yourself."
He studied her expression for a long moment. "Then let us return to the Jeweled Terrace." He turned onto his side and resumed his intimate caresses, saying unsteadily, "A woman is a never-ending source of yin, and this increases her potency."
His expert touch produced waves of pleasure so intense that Sara wondered if she would dissolve. But this was not what she wanted, for he was holding himself away from her, giving without letting her give in return. She reached for him, saying, "Wouldn't it be more harmonious to join yin with yang?"
He stopped her before she could touch him, a film of sweat covering his face and throat. Deadly serious, he said, "Sara, don't think that you must do this for my sake."
"I don't." She grasped his shoulders and fell back on the pillows, drawing him down on top of her. "I merely find Taoist theology more interesting than Hindu restraint."
"Ah, Sara, Sara..." he whispered. Words ceased as he kissed her, his mouth wide open on hers. Separating her legs, he moved between them, then slowly entered.
Not quite able to forget the first time, Sara tensed at the first moment of invasion. But this time there was no pain. Instead, there was completion.
Enchanted, Sara rolled her hips against him, savoring the splendid new sensations of slick friction and sliding depths.
"You are a natural Taoist philosopher," he said with a choke of laughter, "but this will last longer if you slow down and move in tandem with me."
Obediently she did as he suggested, and found that the natural rhythm of thrust and response began taking on a life of its own. In the garden she had been frightened and overwhelmed by his strength, but this was different, for now they shared their energies. His strength was hers and hers was his, and in the blending was joy.
The black velvet caftan fell around them, a shadow-soft cocoon. Sara slid her arms beneath the robe and wrapped them tightly around his waist, tasting the saltiness of his shoulder against her mouth, feeling the hard flexing muscles of his hips and buttocks, sleek sweat contrasted with unexpected roughness.
Then all thought disintegrated in a vortex of demand and reward. When she cried out, he drove into her one last time, his own body convulsing around hers. And in the final, shattering moment, for an instant Sara found the harmony of the masters.
* * *
Sara drifted to sleep in her husband's arms, face-to-face, her body intertwined with his. The velvet caftan enfolded her, providing the only other warmth needed on a mild night.
She was not sure how long she slept. Two or three hours perhaps. When she slowly floated up into consciousness, the lamps still burned, filling the room with soft light. Outside the window, the night sky was still cavern black.
Sleepily Sara thought what a delicious intimacy it was to sleep within the shelter of Mikahl's robe. Perhaps an Arab prince and princess might sleep side by side like this, beneath the star-strewn skies of the desert? Probably not, but it was a pleasant fantasy.
She shifted position a little, and his eyes opened just a few inches away. Greatly daring, she slid her hand down his torso, curious about what she might find.
With a lazy smile, Mikahl said, "Though woman's yin essence is inexhaustible, the same is not true of male yang essence."
She chuckled, intrigued by the way his body changed at her touch. "Perhaps not inexhaustible, but I think not yet exhausted?"
He laughed. "Many Eastern religions believe in reincarnation—one soul living many lives. If so, you must have spent a life or two as a courtesan."
She stopped and asked uncertainly, "Should I not do this?"
"That was a compliment, sweet Sara," he said swiftly. "By all means, continue."
She gave him a mischievous smile. "You wanted me to learn to love your body, and I find that is very easy to do." An enticing idea occurred to her, so she propped herself up on one elbow. "Since you viewed my body earlier, I now claim the same privilege."
An undefinable change came over him, a subtle withdrawal without moving a single muscle. Wondering if she was imagining the reaction, Sara glanced in his eyes questioningly.
"Fair is fair," he said in a voice of absolute neutrality.
She considered retreat, but having been granted permission, she could not resist the opportunity to see all of him. Mikahl was lying on his side, so she pulled his caftan down his arm, th
en pushed it backward so that he was naked before her.
To her surprise, Sara saw that his complexion was almost as fair as hers. Because his face and hands were a weathered tan, she had thought him dark, but his skin looked white against the black hair that arrowed down his chest and flat stomach.
She stroked the silky hair appreciatively, then touched a round, angry-looking mark on his shoulder. "This is an odd bruise."
"You did that, my little vixen," he said with amusement.
"I did?" Then Sara remembered how mindlessly she had behaved, how frantically her mouth and hands had worked and she blushed. To cover her embarrassment, she ran one hand down his powerfully muscled arm, thinking that he had the fitness and perfect proportions that Greek sculptors had immortalized in marble. But he was far more beautiful, for he had the supple warmth of life.
Her admiring hand paused on the side of his hip, where she found a faint, jagged mark shaped like a sprawling W or M, as much tattoo as scar. Curiously she traced the shape.
His muscles went rigid under her fingers. She glanced at his face again, wondering what was wrong. She could not believe that he suffered from either shyness or excessive modesty.
Mikahl said nothing, just watched her with the wariness of a trapped animal.
Beginning to feel uneasy, Sara skimmed her hand over his shoulder and along the back of his ribs. Her fingers encountered an unexpected texture. Where the skin should have been smooth over taut muscle and bone, there was roughness.
She frowned, remembering that she had vaguely noticed the same thing when they were making love. Sitting up, she tugged her husband more onto his stomach. He cooperated passively.
Sara leaned over to investigate more thoroughly, then caught her breath, frozen in shock. Mikahl's back was a tapestry of crisscrossing scars, some so faint as to be almost invisible, others long, wicked ridges of gnarled tissue.
"Dear God," she whispered, knowing that such scars could only have been caused by ferocious, near-lethal whipping. She looked down into his face and saw that he watched her with hooded eyes that gave nothing away.
Intuitively she knew that these scars were, in a different way, as traumatic for him as hers were for her. "What—what happened to you?"
"I was a slave.'' His voice was quite without inflection.
Sara swallowed hard, her gaze returning to the scars. "I don't suppose that you were very good at taking orders."
"No." The flat syllable was like a granite wall.
Faced with the reality of how unimaginably different and difficult her husband's life had been, Sara wanted to weep for the second time that night. There was only one possible response, and she made it with all the growing love of her heart.
Leaning forward, she kissed the deepest scar. The ruined flesh was rough beneath her lips.
"Perhaps, for a while, someone had dominion over your body," she whispered, her hands and mouth tenderly moving across the obscene lines that marred his beautiful body. "But I cannot believe that your spirit was ever anything but free."
A spasm ran through him. Then he rolled onto his back and pulled her down into an anguished kiss. There was nothing playful or erotic about his embrace. It was a desperate bid for oblivion, a desire to drown an unspeakable past.
Before tonight, Sara would have been terrified by his raw masculine power, but she had learned much in the last few hours. When she had faced the pain of her scars and her anger, Mikahl had solaced her with tenderness. Now, if it was what he wanted, she would solace him with passion.
It proved easy to give him what he desired, for even though he flailed at inner darkness, he did not use her with blind selfishness. Earlier he had taught her with gentle caresses; now his hands and mouth wooed her with the compelling force of molten lava.
Sara responded with all her love and all her fire, and she was ready, more than ready, when he rolled her over and buried himself inside her. It was primal, savage sex in the shadow of the volcano. She met him thrust for thrust in a wild, wordless joining, wrapping her legs around his, wanting to give back some of what he had given her.
Such a rage of passion could not last long, and he culminated quickly, his ragged, heart-deep groan drawing her with him into a shuddering reality of fusing flame. In the aftermath Sara lay limp, her limbs trembling and numb, her chest heaving as she struggled for breath.
Still without speaking, Mikahl rolled to his side and drew her into his arms, burying his face in her hair. This time when they slept, it was in the depths of exhaustion.
* * *
Peregrine woke slowly and found that he was lying with his head pillowed on his wife's soft breast, his arms encircling her. It was dawn, and the lamps had burned out. Sara still slept, her heart thumping slow and steady beneath his ear. He lay motionless, not wanting to disturb her because he needed to think through the events of the night before she woke.
What the devil had he got himself into? He had desired Sara and felt some sense of obligation, so he had married her without a single serious thought about the consequences.
Vaguely he had assumed that marriage would be rather like one of his brief, intense affairs. He had always subordinated sex to business; when convenient, he would indulge himself with high-level courtesans who enjoyed their work and knew better than to ask questions. Over the years, there had been a few special women whom he would see regularly whenever he visited their cities. He had looked forward to their company both in and out of bed, and had thought marriage would be much the same: amusing, physically satisfying, and uncomplicated.
Instead, marriage seemed to involve a mutual peeling away of masks and a shocking amount of vulnerability. When he had discovered Sara's buried pain over her old injury, it had seemed natural to comfort her. Yet in some mysterious fashion, comforting her had weakened his own defenses.
His scarred back was a perverse badge of honor, an indelible reminder of what he had suffered and the vengeance he would exact. The only way to conceal the disfigurement from a bedmate would have been to limit intercourse to furtive, mostly clothed grapplings, which he had no intention of doing.
But since it had been inevitable that his wife discover the scars, why had he been so profoundly disturbed when she did?
Because he usually knew what he wanted, he seldom wasted time analyzing his own motives, but now he probed the depths of his mind, trying to learn why he had reacted with such violence.
Sara's tenderness had touched a long-buried chord, he realized. The boy who had been whipped so many years ago would have appreciated some kindness, but had known none. Sara's sweet caring had released that child's anguish, and Peregrine the man had lashed out with terrifying force.
Like an earthquake, it had been an interesting experience, but it was not one that he was anxious to repeat.
Propping himself on one elbow, he looked down into Sara's face. She looked absurdly young and innocent, her golden hair spilling across the pillow like tangled sunbeams. Yet within her slender frame was a lion-hearted woman with the resilience and compassion to respond to his furious demands, even though she was the next thing to a virgin.
Perhaps he should be ashamed of how he had used her, but he had not been too distraught to notice that she had responded with eagerness. Her tenderness had touched and softened something deep inside him.
And that was dangerous, for he could not afford softening. In the future, he must keep his guard up, keep Sara at enough of a distance that she could not slide under his skin again. But that should not be difficult. The risks were not so great that he dare not allow himself to enjoy her sweet warmth.
Issues resolved, he leaned forward and gave Sara a light kiss. Her eyelashes fluttered open sleepily, and she gave him a slow, shining smile. "Good morning, husband."
He stroked her hair back from her temple. "Good morning, wife." He wondered what he should say if she asked about his period of slavery. While he would rather not lie to Sara, he couldn't tell her a truth that might shatter the growing intimacy b
etween them. Some things were best left hidden in the darkness where they belonged.
Uncannily, the deep sibyl eyes seemed to see and weigh his internal questions. He had the absurd feeling that Sara had judged and decided that silence was better than lies.
"Let's keep the other chamber as a sitting room," she murmured, her eyes teasing. "I've decided that sharing a bed is much nicer than sleeping alone."
"Agreed." He lay back on the pillows, and pulled her on top of him for a more serious kiss. As the embrace began to develop into another energy-balancing session, he knew that he was a fortunate man to have a wife with the sense to know what things were none of her business.
* * *
Charles Weldon had several offices, but these days he spent most of his time at the L & S Railway. As managing director, he had to make decisions about everything from finance to the design of the railway carriages being built in Yorkshire.
The company secretary had learned to have a pot of tea and a newspaper waiting for him in the morning,. As he drank his tea, Weldon skimmed the headlines to see what was happening in the world. He usually skipped the society notices, but this morning his eye was caught by the word "Haddonfield," so he stopped and read the brief announcement. Lady Sara St. James, daughter of the Duke of Haddonfield, had three days previously married Prince Peregrine of Kafiristan.
Weldon's lip curled when he read it. They hadn't wasted any time. He wondered if the silly bitch was pregnant.
The two had better be enjoying their honeymoon, because their time together was going to be limited. Laying the paper aside, he began reading through the morning post.
It was midday when the bad news was delivered by his personal secretary, Kane. A man of few words, Kane had dropped uninvited into a chair and said tersely, "Trouble."
Weldon leaned back in his oak swivel chair. "What kind of trouble?"
"Remember you sent me to Hampshire with the right-of-way papers for that farmer, Crawley, to sign?"
"Of course—we're going to be starting construction there in a few days. Is he still trying to get more money? The oaf should realize that he's lucky to get anything."