Panther's Prey (23 page)

“This...it may hurt,” he said, barely able to speak.

She kissed him in silent assurance, and he entered her as she did, stopping abruptly as beads of sweat broke out on his forehead. The arms supporting him above her trembled with tension as he waited for her reaction.

“Yes?” he said, biting his lip, fighting the urge to plunge into her again.
 

“Yes,” she answered.

He moved again, experimentally, and her sigh of satisfaction reassured him. He relaxed and drew her into his rhythm, groaning deeply when her response increased his pleasure.

“I love you,” she whispered, tears seeping from the corners of her eyes.

“I love you, Amelia,” he answered, and proved it.

* * *

The sound of rain drumming on the roof woke Amy, and she stirred to find Malik sprawled across her, his head on her shoulder, his arm flung across her waist. She felt supremely happy and completely fulfilled, the slight ache in her loins reminding her of the experience she had just shared with the man in her bed.
 

Sleep wiped the care from Malik’s face and made him appear to be her exact contemporary, his slenderness and glossy, unkempt hair contributing to the effect. The sheet was twisted under him, the coverlet drawn over his legs, his boneless sprawl indicative of total relaxation. Amy hated to disturb him, but she wanted to make use of the basin and ewer in a corner of the room. She shifted Malik’s weight gradually, finally freeing herself as he slumped back to the bed, still asleep. She tiptoed over to the washstand and picked up the soap and towel, working away busily until she looked up to find Malik’s eyes on her.

“I saw you washing once before,” he said lazily.

“When was that?”

“The morning you woke up with me after you ran away. I came upon you when you were at the stream.”

“And did you watch?” she said teasingly, walking back across the room and slipping into the bed.

He seized her and rolled on top of her. “Of course. I had to tear myself away and then make a lot of noise so you would hear me coming the second time.”

“You are a sneak,” she said, kissing the side of his throat.

“I think I knew then that I had to have you,” he said quietly, turning to lay back against the pillows and pulling her into his arms.
 

“You put up quite a fight, anyway,” Amy said.

“It was clear to me from that morning that I would lose,” he said, tightening his grip around her. He waited a moment and then said, “Are you all right?”

“I’m perfectly fine, never been better,” she said, putting her head on his shoulder.

“I mean, are you bleeding?”

“I was, a little, but it’s nothing.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.” She turned to look up at him and said, “Malik, what are we going to do?”

“I thought you didn’t want to talk about it,” he replied.

“Not then,” she replied. “Not when I first saw you.”

“Yes, you just wanted to drag me into bed like a huzzy,” he said.

She sat up to look at him directly. “A what?”

“A shameless woman,” he said. “A huzzy.”

“That’s ‘hussy’, my friend. Do you speak English?”

“My English is far superior to your Turkish,” he said, insulted.

“Anyone’s English is far superior to my Turkish, and don’t change the subject. We can’t spend the rest of our lives in this bed. How are we going to see each other?”

“We’ll see each other. I’ll find a way.”

“You took such a risk in coming here. Why did you wait so long?”

“I wasn’t sure you would want to see me until I talked to Kalid Shah’s wife.”

“You went to Orchid Palace?”

He nodded. “I didn’t know where you were.”

“Of course not, when I left the camp you didn’t exactly ask for a forwarding address.”

“I tried to cut if off between us then, Amelia. I thought it would be best.”
 

“For me?”

“Yes, for you. Certainly not for me, I felt as if I had amputated my arm when you left.”
 

“But why? Why did you let me go in that cruel, impersonal way? I thought I would die of unhappiness.”

“Amelia, I’m a criminal in this country, a fugitive. I have nothing and I’m likely to have nothing for some time in the future. My cause is just, but I don’t even know if I’ll live to see it triumph. In the meantime I have to live from hand to mouth, from day to day. You saw that for yourself, you experienced it. I have no resources to provide for a wife.”

“A wife?” she said breathlessly.

“Don’t you want to marry me?” he said, watching her face.

She threw her arms around his neck. “Yes, yes!”

“You understand what marrying me would mean. You’d become a criminal too, just for sheltering me. Your life would be in danger, just like mine. You’d be on the move all the time, with no settled home.”

“I don’t care. I’d live in a tent with you.” She started to laugh. “ I
have
lived in a tent with you.”

He smiled. “And you survived it pretty well.” He pulled her back down on the bed and as she wrestled with him playfully she heard a slight growling sound.

“What’s that?” she said, drawing back from him.

“What?”

“That noise. Was that your stomach?”

He shrugged. “Probably.”

“When was the last time you had something to eat?”

He thought about it. “Yesterday?”

“Malik, for heaven’s sake. You must be starving!”

“Not for food,” he said, leaning forward to nibble the side of her neck.

“I’m going down to the kitchen to get you something,” Amy said, eluding his grasp.

“You can’t run around the house in the middle of the night,” he said.

Amy got up and took a dressing gown from the armoire, pulling it on, tying it at the neck as she stepped into her slippers. “Why not? I couldn’t sleep, I wanted a snack. In the unlikely event anyone else is awake at this hour that’s a reasonable excuse for a trip downstairs. Just stay in here and after I leave secure the door, the key is in the lock.”

He stood and grabbed her as she walked past him, wrapping his arms around her waist from behind and hugging her to him.

“Hurry back,” he said.

She turned and kissed him quickly. “Malik, let me go. Listak will be stirring in a couple of hours and you have to get away before then.”

He must have been really hungry, because he released her. She ran to the door, turning to hold her finger to her lips as he pulled on his pants. She pointed to the lock. After she went through the door she waited until she heard the key turn from inside the room before running along the gallery and then down the carpeted steps in her slippered feet.

James had turned the gas jets to their lowest setting, but there was still enough light to see as Amy made her way through the first floor to the kitchen at the back of the house. The servants’ rooms were just behind it, so she was careful to be very quiet as she went to the cold larder and quickly selected a leftover breast of chicken, a wedge of cheese and two apples, pushing aside a block of ice to reach a bottle of James’ lager as an afterthought. On her way out she grabbed three hardening biscuits Listak had set aside for bread pudding, wrapping the hoard in the skirt of her gown. She moved swiftly back through the silent house, tiptoeing as she passed the Woolcotts’ room and then gathering speed as she approached her own. She tapped lightly on the six paneled door and it opened instantly.

“Yes?” Malik said inquiringly, as if she were one of the Turkish bundle women who went from door to door selling their wares.

“Stop clowning!” she hissed, shoving him aside and barreling into the room, sure that James was going to walk into the hall at any moment.

“What’s clowning?” he said, watching with interest as she dumped her purloined goodies on the bed. He selected an apple and crunched into it vigorously.

“You know, acting silly, like a clown in a Barnum circus,” she replied, going back to the door and locking it.

His blank look conveyed the cultural gap which separated them; he didn’t know what a circus was. His English was so good and their mutual desire so intense that Amy sometimes forgot they were the products of two different worlds.

“Never mind,” she said, going to the French doors and pulling aside the drapes as he picked up the piece of chicken and attacked it, stripping it in seconds.
 

“It’s still raining,” she observed glumly. “You’re going to get wet.”

“I’ve been wet before,” he said, chewing industriously as he came to stand behind her. “Thanks for the food.”

“Consider it payment for services rendered,” Amy said, looking back at him mischievously.

He laughed, putting down the chicken skeleton to pop the cork from the lager. He took a swallow of it and then said, “Gah,” looking at the bottle as if it had bitten him.

“I’m sorry, that’s all James had in the larder. I thought it was English beer.”

“I’ve had English beer, and this is not it,” he replied, setting the bottle on her nightstand.

“Do you want me to get you some water?”
 

He picked up a biscuit and disposed of it in three bites. “No. I want you to come over here and talk to me.” He extended his hand and as she took it he led her to the bed.

“Talk?” Amy said. “We’re not going to talk here.”

“Yes, we are,” he said, settling back against the pillows and pulling her down with him. “I want to know what you have been doing with yourself this last month.”

“I have been following Beatrice’s plan for me, which is to attend boring parties in order to meet boring suitors.”

“Suitors?” he said, his eyes narrowing as he bit into the piece of cheese. “Men?”
 

“Of course, men. My aunt is determined to marry me off at her earliest convenience.”

He was silent, watching her, the food in his hand forgotten.

Amy sat up and stared at him, astonished. “Malik, you can’t seriously be jealous.”

“Do you think I enjoy the idea of you being pursued by a horde of very proper and very suitable men?” he said.

“As opposed to unsuitable you?” Amy suggested.

He said nothing.

Amy took the cheese from his hand and put it on the table. “Malik, don’t be ridiculous,” she said, amazed that he could even be worried about it. “I have been crying myself to sleep every night over you!”

“You never considered forgetting me and doing what your relatives want?”
 

“I tried. I really tried to put you out of my mind and move on, but it didn’t work. Some part of me was waiting, always waiting for you.”

“You knew I’d come?” he said softly, reaching up to touch her hair.

“I hoped and prayed you would.”

He pulled her back into his arms, looking around him at the well appointed bedroom. “This beautiful house, this comfortable life–how can I ask you to leave all of it for me?” he said. His worried tone indicated that her earlier dismissal of this concern had not entirely convinced him.

“Don’t start that again. Ask me. Just ask me.” She kissed him, then kissed him again, hoping that her ardor would convince him that his fears were groundless.

He responded avidly, rolling her under him and untying the bow at her neck.

“Malik, we can’t,” Amy protested weakly, wishing they could. “There’s no time.”

“We’ll make the time,” he said.

* * *

When Amy awoke again the sound of the rain was gone and a thin strip of sunlight slanted through the opening between the drapes. As she rolled over drowsily she heard the distant sound of carriages clopping past in the street and smelled the faint, but distinct, odor of bacon frying.
 

She sat bolt upright, looking at the ship’s clock ticking away on her fireplace mantel.

It was seven-forty in the morning. She would be expected downstairs at breakfast in twenty minutes. James and Beatrice were sure to be up and about, and Malik was still in the house.

She sprang into action, shaking his shoulder violently as she scrambled in the bed for her dressing gown.

“Wake up, wake up, we overslept!” she whispered, thrusting her arms into her robe and climbing out of the bed. She picked up his clothes and shoved them into his arms as he struggled to sit upright, blinking.

“Look at the clock!” she hissed.

He did so and then glanced back at her, fully awake. He jumped up and began to dress immediately. He had pulled on his pants and was yanking his shirt over his head when there was a knock at the door.

They both froze.

Amy recovered first. She looked at Malik, holding her finger to her lips, then called out, “Yes, what is it?”

“Miss Beatrice sent me to see if you were awake, miss,” Listak said.

“I’m awake,” Amy replied cheerfully.

“I have your coffee, miss,” Listak said.