By Desire Bound Page 24

"You just like looking, don't you? I should just get dressed and never be hard for you again."

  "You won't do that. You're about to burst from want­ing me. If you just touch me, you'll come like a fire­cracker. That's how much you want me. You don't care how much I look at you—or any other man—just as long as you're the one in bed with me. You'll probably gi

  Giles all the details tomorrow so he can salivate over the fact that you're the lucky one. Isn't that what you want? Isn't it?"

  "No," he growled, his control slipping. "You do—"

  All it took were her words . . . and the iron will that held him taut and erect as a pole wavered, and there a drop of his essence pearled up on his luscious tip.

  She rubbed it lightly over his head, and brushed her finger over her lower lip. "Take me."

  He wasn't giving in.

  "Beg me."

  "Your body is begging. It wants to come."

  His iron will slipped again, and another drop of ejacu­late appeared.

  "Don't waste it," she cautioned coquettishly. "I need it."

  He levered himself up to a sitting position.

  "And now you're going to get it. I'm finished playing with you. I'm hard. You're ripe. It doesn't matter where I spend myself. Get off the bed. I want you facedown over the arm of that chair."

  She bent over the arm, quivering with excitement. The angle of the arm elevated her bottom and she could feel his length against her crease.

  Oh yes . . . yes—all the games and words all to come to this . . . what they hungered for . . . the endless surcease of coupling their bodies . . . yes—

  She was canted perfectly to receive him. She clutched the cushion in anticipation as she felt him nudge her just there. There was no impediment to his possession. He stood behind, naked, erect, and holding her buttocks to position her, he entered, slowly, slowly, slowly, his body shuddering on contact with her heated wet deft.

  Don't waste it . . .

  I need it . . .

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  He almost blew.

  I must have noticed it since I'm talking about it—

  His resolve stiffened like a rock.

  He would make her forget other men altogether.

  He worked his shaft into her an inch at a time. He felt her shivering with anticipation, and wriggling against him, pushing her bottom to accept him, acclimate him and bring him in all the way to the bone.

  Don't waste it. . .

  The secrets of Eve . . . she knew them all, courtesan tha she was. She 'd take it any way he gave it, and he wasn 't coming till cock crow, and he had pounded her home.

  Don't waste it. . .

  She was so eager and so wet. She shimmied against him, enticing his thrusts. He gave them to her, hot, hard, emphatic; the same piston-like strokes that she loved, that she begged for. Long steady constant thrusts, in out, in out, holding her hips, in out, ab­sorbing her cries, in out, the center of her world, in out, the core of her being, in out, till she spiralled away, in out, he wouldn't let her go, in out, and she tried to get away, in out, wrenching her body, in out. relinquish his grip, in out, one more thick thrust, in out, pitching them into a storm of sensation impossible to control.

  It rammed her dead center, unexpected, unrelenting, pounding her like a hurricane, breaking over her like a dam; he swooped after her and willingly followed her over, and pitched headlong into his wrenching spuming release.

  And into silence. That lapping soul-sapping silence, that moment they died the little death.

  The only movement, his subtle withdrawal, and they collapsed together on the bed and into the deep swoon­ing silence where nothing needed to be said.

  "I can see Father Licasi alone," Con said the next morning as he sat at the edge of the bed. "There's no need for you to get up."

  She stretched luxuriously and reached for him. "I can think of one reason." She struggled to sit up. "In fact . . ." She slipped onto her knees in front of him, and grasped his jutting length in her hand. "I can think of two."

  "We don't have much time."

  "Then let me coat my nipples with your cream. That's the only thing I want this morning. You can give me that—" She circled his head and began to pump, arch­ing her back to give him an unobstructed view of her breasts. "There—" as he spurted. "There—" as she anointed her breasts, and she took him home.

  He left her a half hour later, lolling in bed. She felt pagan, primitive. Curiously sated. She wanted to lie in bed naked all day long, waiting for him. Impossibly, she wanted him again.

  Tomorrow, they would start the next leg of the jour­ney, north toward Omsk. Days and days of travel, with no time to give in to their desire. Of course, she wanted to have as much as possible of him now.

  She wouldn't let him leave the bed when he returned, she thought. She wouldn't even get dressed. Or pack. She wished she were certain he was thinking about her, that he wanted her.

  But there was something in him that enabled him to put all these things into different compartments to be examined one at a time. He could just remove himself from her, relegating her to the compartment marked satisfied for now.

  And now, he followed Lazarin's trail.

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  When he returned, she would make him forget all that. They had one more day . . .

  She awakened to the sound of a knock on the door— and she jumped out of bed. She didn't know how long she'd slept, but maybe that was good because he was back already, and sooner than if she'd spent all that time waiting.

  Stark naked, she pulled open the door and jumped back in shock.

  "Colonel Giles!"

  "Aren't you eager," he said, closing the door behind : him as she flew behind the dressing screen. "I love it when a woman is eager."

  "What do you want? Why are you here?" She had no clothes; nothing to wear. Frantically, she pulled on the wreck of a shirt and her skirt.

  "Don't hide from me, you little tart. I read the invi­tation in your eyes. I know what you want. I made sure to get your paramour out of the way. We have—oh— fifteen minutes, a half hour at the most." He tossed away the screen. "How much do you want?"

  "Are you crazy?" she shrieked. "Get out of here!" She dove across the bed and scrambled to her feet just as he pulled a short fat riding crop out of his boot.

  He's insane. Living with this deprivation . . .

  He smacked the crop against the bed. "Don't play coy, whore. Looking at me like that. Name your price, I'll pay it."

  "He'll be back sooner than that." She needed a story. She was Scheherazade, wasn't she? "He never leaves me alone for long. I swear to you, he'll kill you if he finds you here. If he says a half hour, you can be sure he'll return in ten minutes. He owns me."

  "Well, I'm going to possess you too, you little hot-tailed tart. Wriggling your bottom at me like you want it." He

  struck the bed again. "What do you expect a man to do? I can pay for it. But I'd love to force you. It's your choice."

  She stood shivering by the window, thinking that throwing herself out and landing on Con's head was easier than trying to reason with him.

  And that riding crop was scary. And he looked like he loved to use it.

  "Colonel, if you just leave this minute, I'll never tell anyone you came."

  "You're very very good at this, my lovely, just the right amount of indignation and outrage. Is that your act in bed? But—we're getting nowhere, and obviously—" he paced around to the foot of the bed, "you like it rough." He struck the footboard.

  She jumped onto the bed, putting the footboard be­tween them. But that was worse, cat and mouse. Either way she went, he could corner her, and she didn't see anything she could use as a weapon at hand.

  "Eager little piece, aren't you? Just lay down and re­lax, you strumpet, and I'll give you what you want."

  She eyed him war
ily; he just stood there, smacking the crop against his hand, waiting for her move. One way or the other . . . she couldn't just hold him there until Con returned.

  She made a feinting move toward the window side of the bed, and he took two steps around to grab her.

  She popped off the bed toward the door, reaching to pick up the screen. Anything, anything—too heavy— maybe she could jab him with it.

  He vaulted over the bed after her, and she lifted it, with difficulty, and swung it over his head.

  Wham! He collapsed on the mattress. Wham! To make sure he was unconscious. Wham! Her temper got the best of her. She dropped the screen on the floor and knelt beside the bed.

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  It was a lump of soggy manhood. She debated a mo­ment about whether to search him before she dragged his sorry carcass out of the room.

  Why not? He had no business being here. He was supposed to have met Con at the church to interpret for him with this Father Licasi.

  She rolled him over, and tapped her hands over his uniform; nothing obvious there. She unbuttoned his tunic, and folded it back to the inside pocket.

  Ah! Everything here.

  Just not what she expected. No military identification. No letters of commission. Nothing, except a passport in the name of Percival Giles—from a village in Crox-fordshire.

  Oh, this was getting crazy. They had relaxed their guard too much, never counting on Lavinia's arm reaching this far.

  They had to have been followed from Srinagar.

  But how? Sidhu had made the strictest arrangements. Had buried the grotto. Destroyed the clues.

  Had he?

  She didn't know what to think. She didn't have time to think. The only decision she had to make was whether to leave him for Con to see.

  And that was taken out of her hands moments later, when he appeared at the door.

  "Well, well, well Scheherazade; are you telling him bedtime stories too?"

  She wheeled around, startled. Thought fast. Didn't want him asking what Giles was doing here in the first place, but that was inevitable. But maybe she could de­tract from his questions by what she'd found.

  "It's worse than that, Con. He lied."

  "Oh, he did. He never showed up, and look where

  he is."

  "Listen to me. No more fun and games. He is not military." She thrust the passport in his hand.

  He scanned it quickly. "Oh Jesus." He tossed it on the bed. "Damnation. It gets worse. Father Licasi speaks

  English."

  "And?" She was pulling out their suitcases as he

  spoke.

  "He probably thought he'd seduce the thing out of you—" Con muttered. "I'll kill him."

  "Father Licasi?" she asked, grabbing whatever cloth­ing she found to hand and folding it haphazardly into

  the suitcase.

  "This piece of cow dung." He nudged the body with the toe of his boot. "Not so alluring now, is it? I think it's dead."

  She ignored that. There was no time for games. This was serious. "What did Father Licasi say?"

  "Father said all Russians are messengers of Death. And many itinerant priests have come through Tash­kent because of its direct route to Omsk and the Trans-Siberian railroad. He remembers this one, particularly because he was not travelling to St. Petersburg or Mos­cow. He didn't know his name. But he told the Father his calling was the Siberian village of Nadyl on the Nizmennost Plains of Siberia."

  She felt chilled down to her toes. The diamond was the key. And a sparsely populated area in which Lazarin could unleash its evil powers.

  "We can go by wagon and coach to Omsk. But it's a three-day journey. And probably that and more to Nadyl, by wagon or sled."

  "But he was here, Lazarin was here. And now Lavinia is in pursuit, sending this piece of offal, her agent."

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  "Which means—"

  "They were in Srinagar," Darcie finished for him. "And they know we're together."

  Worse and worse if that were true. She hadn't even considered that aspect, that Lavinia must see them as the guardians of two treasures to confiscate.

  She should leave him, she thought. They should sepa­rate. He could move so much better, so much faster without her. And there would only be one life and one thing of value on the line.

  Her hands trembled as she threw the last of their meager possessions into the suitcases.

  "I could . . ."

  Con closed the suitcase emphatically. "We go together, and leave him here. You saved me the trouble of killing him. We are in service of the diamond. You are the cho­sen; when the time comes, you must be at hand."

  "It's a lot of nonsense, mumbo-jumbo," she whis­pered. "Too much to risk when your life is at stake. And I'm scared to death of what the consequences will be of your covenant with Lazarin."

  "A devil's bargain," he said, shrugging. "He does give us what we want, but it was a gift."

  "Or maybe—" a thought suddenly struck her that was the most terrifying of all, "it was the only way for Lazarin to get possession of The Eye of God. "

  Lazarin had orchestrated the whole thing.

  They set off to Omsk with that awful conclusion hov­ering over them. Everything, from the entity Karun in his original guise as the deckhand, to the moment when they breached the tunnel and entered the grotto, it all had been planned and designed so that Con would come and liberate the stone.

  "We could ruminate on this for the whole three hun­dred miles of this trip," Con said. "There's nothing ra­tional about these events."

  "But now it starts to make some eerie kind of sense. You said yourself he couldn't move it. And he gave you back your sight. Why? Because he knew you understood his magic and that it had to be stopped. And how? By the power of the stone that only you could move."

  "But now you're in the equation, Darcie. And that's the thing that throws it off."

  "And Lavinia." She looked at the desolate landscape without seeing it. "But apart from her desperation to possess the stone and have an heir, where does Lavinia fit?"

  "Lavinia wants the stone and wants an heir. And maybe it's as clear cut as that."

  "But still—the cruelty toward you ..."

  "I was an arrogant beast, Darcie. But seven years in a dungeon makes a self-centered man angry, hungry, vengeful and mature."

  "She'd kill you in a minute, and maybe that was Giles' mandate today," she said thoughtfully. "But how—no, I won't think it . . ."

  "I've considered it. How did he get here before us?"

  "If Lavinia knows, then she has made a pact with that devil too."

  "Or," Con said, thinking the unthinkable, "it was Sidhu."

  They stayed overnight at a road inn in Karazhal, one )f several way stations on the journey to Omsk, where hey shared a sleeping dormitory with a dozen strangers.

  In the morning, they were given a breakfast of tea ,tnd cakes, and a coach accommodating six arrived

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  there at eight. It left within the hour, and within two, they were acquainted with their fellow travellers: a doc­tor, an English governess on her way to St. Petersburg after touring the Mediterranean; a banker; and an im­porter of Russian artifacts, jewelry and gemstones.

  Darcie clutched Con's arm. Dear God—he wasn 't saying it but what he meant was—diamonds . . .

  They were everywhere—

  But not by word or action did the gentleman betray anything suspicious, and Darcie thought that within such close quarters for so many hours, he would have let slip something.

  Maybe it was a coincidence. Maybe they were looking for demons where there weren't any.

  It was snowing when the coach rumbled into Omsk down the slushy main street in the center of the city. Here and everywhere, broomsmen wor
ked, sweeping the snow from the sidewalks, dodging sleds and wagons, and passersby. They passed block after block of shops, restaurants and a theater square.

  Beyond this was the railway station and a block of hotels, and the coach pulled in front of these.

  "Did you arrange your accommodations?" the im­port merchant inquired. "I can recommend one if you're going to stay a while."

  "Are you?" Darcie said. "Staying, I mean."

  "Oh no. No." He was a funny little man, plump, styl­ish and very precise. "I'm heading north in three days' time to the diamond fields of the Nizmennost Plains of Siberia." He leaned toward them confidentially. "I make my best deals with the natives, man to man, you understand. My little secret, so I trust you won't tell. But if you're not remaining in Omsk, you'd be just as comfortable at the Hotel Vyatka at the end of the block. I'm staying there myself. Good luck!"

  And he was off.

  "I don't think we can afford not to stay there," Con muttered. "I've got to find out who that man is, and why he's going north to Nizmennost."

  And there were other arrangements to be made: money to be converted; registering at the hotel; clothes for the icy climate; the rental of a drozhky; horses, furs, a driver who would take them as far as Okrug.

  The hotel cost two rubles a night for the most utili­tarian room. The transportation, more than a hundred times that.

  "It's worth it," Con said.

  "I'm impressed at your knowledge of Russian," Dar­cie murmured.

  "Enough to get by."

  They went to a nearby restaurant for dinner, tramp­ing in their warm mountain garments through the packed snow. No one looked askance. There were so many travellers passing through Omsk.

  And they needed to talk where they couldn't be over­heard.

  They took a table very far in the back near the kitchen with no one else near, and ordered a simple menu of soup, roast pork, potatoes and tea.

  "We don't even know what that man's name was," Darcie fretted.

  "I'll find him," Con said grimly, "and I'll find out what he's up to."

  "I'm scared."

  "We do not have a choice. That diamond is already split in two. The best we can hope is that we can recover both pieces."