Panther's Prey (10 page)

“I talk to people like you whenever I get the chance,” he replied.

“While you’re abducting them? Short conversations, no doubt,” she said, yawning.

“Yes. None of the others have run off and given me the opportunity for such a stimulating and extended exchange. Go back to sleep.”

She sighed, her eyelids getting heavy. “Did you really come after me just for the money you can make when you sell me?” she muttered, her lips barely moving.

He didn’t answer, and then to his relief he realized she had fallen asleep. He put his head back against the tree trunk and closed his eyes.

He did not want to sell her, and that was a fact. To anybody. But the opportunity to obtain so much money for her had him more confused than he had ever been in his life.

When he thought of what he could buy for his men with that fortune his mouth watered. But when he thought of his captive being sold to some fabulously wealthy brute who would consume her as he did his dinner Malik almost went wild with rage and pain.

Anwar was right. He knew his friend, and he had known from the first that the American woman would be trouble.

Malik opened his eyes again and looked at the slight figure of the girl sleeping on the ground. She was certainly beautiful, but it was more than that which drew him to her. He believed in
kismet
, fate, and as he accepted that it was his fate to lose his family and fight the Sultan, it was also apparently his fate to desire this woman. What mattered was how he managed his fate. He had never had trouble doing that before, but this situation presented him with a new and different challenge.

She stirred and began to mutter in her sleep, becoming more agitated as he moved closer to her. He put his hand on her shoulder and she started, almost waking. He spoke soothingly and she settled down, turning toward him when he sat next to her. When he slipped his arm around her she murmured, sighed, and let her head fall to his shoulder. He held her in his arms, inhaling the fragrance of her hair, her skin, absorbing the warmth of her body into his own. He drew both blankets over them, wondering how long he could keep her safe before the reason he had kidnapped her became more important than the feelings she now aroused in him.

Finally, just as the sky was beginning to lighten, he slept.

* * *

When Amy awoke the next morning the sun was high and she was horrified to discover herself in Malik Bey’s arms. She sat up abruptly and he started, then settled back down again, still asleep. She realized that he had tracked her all day yesterday and then had been awake most of the night; even a man with his obviously strong constitution would be tired.

This was her chance to get away.
 

It was clear he had planned to be awake before she was, that’s why he had left her untied. If she went now she could get a good head start.

She grabbed his food bag, looking around for his horse, but when her mind caught up with her actions she sank to the ground next to him, distraught. She couldn’t ride his horse, she had seen it throw another man who had attempted to do so, to the vast amusement of the camp. The food bag was almost empty and her slippers were ruined. She couldn’t get far. He would just track her again, and find her again. She was no better prepared now to elude him than when she had first left the camp. And the thought of another night in the woods with the local wildlife was more than daunting.

The thing to do was go back with him and then get organized: hoard supplies, steal a pliant horse and a weapon, learn the escape route. It could be done but it would take time and ingenuity. And if she was sold before she succeeded, then she would just plot again and run from her purchaser.

She would get away eventually, but bolting without a plan was foolhardy. Her most recent adventure had taught her that.

Malik coughed in his sleep and she looked at him. The morning light made his black hair gleam like jet, and the lashes that lay against his dusky cheeks were as thick and curling as a child’s. She could see a faint pulse beating in his bare throat, exposed by the deep v of his thin cotton shirt. Her hand went to the woolen tunic he had given her; she realized that he must have been cold without it.

What kind of person would abduct a woman to sell her into slavery and then strip the shirt off his back to keep her warm? Was he really just looking to maintain her health so he could make a profit? Or could there be some chivalry, some compassion, in the character of a man who would do such a thing in the first place? She had never in her life encountered a contradiction like him.

But then again, she had never met anyone who had been so wronged. If the story he had told her about the Sultan was true, she could understand why everything in his life was secondary to his pursuit of revenge. If she had seen her family tortured and killed at the whim of a mercurial dictator, maybe she too would be willing to do anything, even trade in slaves, to effect that dictator’s fall.

It was a notion that upset her conventional ideas of right and wrong, and her first encounter with the blinding stranglehold of a vendetta.

A breeze whipped through the trees and she clutched at the neck of her gown, glancing down at her hand. It was filthy, the knuckles gray, which was not surprising when she considered how she had spent the previous day. Where was the brook Malik had mentioned? She looked in the direction he had indicated, remembering the lump of soap she had seen in his bag.

She would have a bath while he slept. She retrieved the soap and set off through the trees.

It was only minutes after Amy left the clearing that Malik sighed and opened his eyes. When he saw that the girl was gone again he felt like an imbecile for the second time.

Would she never stop? Was he destined to spend the rest of his life stalking her? And why hadn’t he tied her up when he knew that dawn would come and he was physically spent? Was she causing him to lose his mind? Irritated with himself and the situation, he charged to his feet and grabbed the water bottle lying on the ground, intending to refill it for the chase.

When he was a few feet from the spring he stopped short. She was already there, stripped to the waist, washing.

He looked away, feeling like a voyeur, but then looked back, compelled by a force stronger than gallantry to watch her.

What he saw caused his mouth to go dry and his pulse to quicken. She had tied up her hair with the neckline ribbon from the gown, which was now pushed down to her waist, leaving her torso bare.
 

She knelt on the bank and soaped her arms, and as she raised each one her breasts rose, the nipples puckering in the cool morning air.

Malik closed his eyes, his hands clenching into fists. He wanted to taste that silken skin, take those pebble hard nipples into his mouth, run his tongue into the valley between those creamy breasts.

When she bent to rinse the white, vulnerable curve of her back exposed the cleft at the base of her spine, and he imagined caressing it, then pulling the gown from her slender limbs and taking her on the dewy grass.

She turned to dry herself on his tunic and he stepped back, his heart pounding. He could not be found spying on her, he was too proud to endure even the thought of it, but he couldn’t tear his gaze away from the alluring scene. To his disappointment she loosened her hair and pulled up the gown, retying it at the neck. When he saw she was finished he retraced his steps, crashing through the underbrush loudly as he approached to alert her to his presence.

She was waiting for him when he arrived, shaking out her damp hair.

“Surprise,” she said. “I’m still here.”

He said nothing, kneeling where she had lately been and filling the water bottle.

“Didn’t you think I had run away?” she persisted, watching him immerse his head in the water and then come up, pushing back his wet hair.

“I thought your memory of last night would keep you with me,” he lied, rubbing the stubble on his face.

“Why don’t you grow a beard?” she suggested. “Wouldn’t that be a good disguise in your chosen profession?”

He shot her a look and said darkly, “The Sultan’s men wear beards.”

“But growing a beard would change your appearance,” she said logically.

“So would shaving it off,” he replied, pulling his shirt over his head.

“I think you’re arrogant,” Amy said, looking away uncomfortably as he splashed his torso. “I think when you rob a train or sabotage one of the Sultan’s outposts you want people to know it’s you. You see yourself as Robin Hood.”

“It’s the British papers who say that, not me,” he answered, rubbing his hair with the tunic she had discarded.

“But I’ll bet you love reading about it,” she said dryly. “You’ve had a price on your head for years and no one has turned you in for the reward.”

He stood and she watched the play of muscles in his arms and back as he donned the shirt again. “The Sultan is not popular,” he said. “Even those who are not actively working to throw off his yoke won’t betray someone who is.” He picked up his tunic and said, “Come on. It will take us most of the day to reach the camp, the horse will be slower with two on his back.”

As she came closer to him he took the rope belt from his waist and said, “Hold out your hands.”
 

“Oh, please don’t tie me up again,” she moaned.

“I don’t want the sunlight to make you ambitious.” He drew the knot tight and asked, as if he had just thought of it, “What is your name?”

“Amelia,” she said defeatedly, as he led her forward by a dangling piece of the rope. “Amelia Ryder.”

“What does it mean?”

She glanced at him. “Amelia?”

“Yes.”
 

“Beloved.”

He murmured something under his breath.

“What?” she said.

“There is a word for that idea in Turkish.”

“How do you say it?”

“
Nakshedil,
” he replied.

“Does it mean the same?”

“Almost. In Turkish it is more poetic.”

“In what way?”

“The literal translation is ‘ornament of the heart.’”

“How lovely,” she whispered.

“There was a great Sultana by that name, a Westerner like you. She was French and her given name was Aimee de Rivery.”
 

“
Aimee
means beloved in French,” Amelia said. “That is my name, you’re right.”

He nodded. “Nakshedil was from Martinique, she was a cousin of Napoleon Bonaparte’s wife. She was captured by pirates on her way to a convent school in France and sold into the harem at Topkapi. She spent the rest of her life there.”

Amy shuddered. “That’s awful.”

He smiled. “She was very happy.”

“How do you know?” Amy demanded.

“She fell in love with her captor.” His dark eyes met hers and she felt her face growing warm.
 

“It happens, I am told,” he added softly.

They reached the horse and he lifted her onto its back.

Chapter 5

Anwar Talit was worried. Malik had been gone since first light on the previous day, and still there was no sign of him.

Anwar knew there was reason for concern. He had seen the quiet ones before when they got the call, the cool ones who seemed almost indifferent to women until they met the single female who set them on fire. They became unreachable, transferring all the intensity they had previously devoted to a cause or a faith or a family to the object of their desire, drawn as if mesmerized to the person who would destroy them.
 

He had never known his friend Malik to look at another woman the way he looked at the American captive.

Anwar moved out of the cave to walk across to his tent when another of the rebels, a former slave from Slovenia named Yuri, trotted up to him.

“There’s a rider coming up the hill,” Yuri said.

“Alone?” Anwar asked.

Yuri nodded his head.

“Can you tell if it’s Malik?”

“I don’t think so, it’s not his horse.”

“You and Selim go out and get him,” Yuri said. “I don’t care if he’s by himself, it could be a trick. Take your pistols.”

Yuri ran off to obey and Anwar began to pace. Whatever this was, he would have to deal with it, since Malik was not available. He wondered who would be foolhardy enough to come into the camp unescorted, who would even know where it was. His mind ranged over the possibilities until he turned and saw the visitor, being dragged toward him by his rebel escort.

“Moamar Trey,” Anwar said. “What brings you to see us this fine day?”

Moamar shrugged off the arms holding him and drew himself up to his full height, which was not very impressive. Moamar was a part time thief and full time hustler, the illegitimate offspring of a British seaman’s dalliance with a Turkish bazaar girl. Moamar’s mother had hauled him with her as she plied her trade throughout the Empire. Because of his peripatetic background Moamar could speak many of the Empire’s dialects and had forged a shaky career as a go-between, trusted completely by no one but used by all sides because he could be counted upon to deliver a message for a price. He had no loyalties and in a perverse way that made him reliable.