Chapter 6

Chapter Six

T he air in the galleries put the lie to her aunt's promise of unfettered breathing.

But the din of the party muted a little, even though it continued only yards away. The curtains lining the dim gallery muffled the noise, and surrounded them with a quieter dark.

As much as she'd longed to be alone with him, standing next to him now, she felt shy. "So democratic of the gentry, to allow so many kinds of people into their revels."

"They don't," he said shortly. "The tickets are not supposed to travel, but people play jokes. Alara."

It was too private a name in too private a place.

"John." She couldn't help the way it came out, softly released air.

"I am the world's biggest fool. I've thought of you—I cannot say how many times, because I have not counted them. If I had, I could have occupied all the years since we last saw each other."

That was too much. He was overwhelmingly large, and with his hat on, she could not see his face.

Perhaps his face was no badge of truth; but she'd once found it reassuring. "I'd rather see you than listen to useless protests. The years are gone."

That paused him, picking his way between the gilt chairs in the smoky red space to make a space for her. She heard him stop. "See me? Don't say that unless you mean it."

"I always say what I mean." She managed to toss him a little smile, even though the urgency of his words made her shiver.

He was so large, so rough with that worn coat hanging open and the faintest glint of silver from the lace at his throat.

Then he took off his hat, and his mask too.

The faint glow of the candelabras hanging in the middle of the vast room outlined a profile that seemed entirely new, yet at the same time familiar. Welcome.

Dear.

And he drew closer. "Then tell me you won't sail for Istanbul."

Could he see the way he made her heart stutter? Did it show through her skin? The closer he came, the more Alara felt soft, obvious, transparent.

And the heat in her body pooled in ways she didn't expect, and seemed to pull her toward him.

"That would be a promise," she said as gently as she could, "and one I cannot make."

"But why?" His voice was low, rough as nails. "Why go? You are of age. Surely your parents will not force you if you do not wish."

He was the first, the only person who had asked her that question.

He made it possible for her to answer.

"I am of age," she said, letting him draw so close she could see the scar on his chin from when he was eight and decided he could fly. "Old enough to make choices. My mother has arranged a house I can buy in Istanbul, and will no doubt find me a husband with a good place at court."

"And is that what you want?" His voice seemed deeper the closer he got. "You wish to be at the Sultan's court? A diplomat at heart, like your parents?"

"No." She could only whisper when he was this close. Even in the warm room, the heat that radiated from him made her want to press against him like she had below, like when he had kissed her. She licked her lips. "I want to be free to make my own choices. If I have money of my own, I have some control over my life. If I marry a Muslim man, the religious law would guarantee me the right to divorce."

"Interesting." The way he said the word flowed over her skin. The curious little boy had powers as a grown man that she could not have imagined. "And what would make you divorce a man, Alara?"

"If he hurt me." His growl might have been objection, might have been agreement; she went on. "If he did not let me have friends. If he did not let me have children." She kept talking to distract herself from touching. "If he stopped loving me."

"How could any man not love you?" he said, and his mouth captured hers again.

This kiss had no boundaries. His lips toyed with hers, touching her, tasting, from her mouth to the tip of her nose to her eyelids, each spot delicately adored. His hands, however, grasped her roughly, pulling her against him with no restraint. She might have felt caged with his hard arms holding her so tight; instead she felt like she was flying.

She pushed up on her toes, trying to get closer; he made that growling noise again. "I'm sure we should stop," he rasped, not sounding like he believed it at all.

"I'm sure that's true," she agreed, ignoring his words, ignoring everything but the feel of his coat buckles pressing into her skin, the heat of him, his muscled torso imprinting her with patterns she hoped would never fade.

One buckle caught a little on the lace; she ignored it.

"Alara," he said, reverently, and buried his face in her hair.

Everything in her tightened in anticipation of his touch. Everything in her melted as the warmth of his lips traced the outside of her ear, a tiny place to release so much heat, so much emotion.

The noise he made was one of pure animal triumph when she let her head fall back, let him see the length of her throat. The touch of his lips there weakened much more than her knees. It burned away any resolve she might have had to stop him.

Let him lay her back in the air and worship her. Let him touch all the places he made gold. As broad as the sky he was, and she would be the earth, welcoming his embrace.

A great deal of poetry she had heard in her life made sense for the first time, and the little explosions of pleasure in her mind only heightened the way he was playing her body like an instrument from the orchestra below.

"Alara," he said as one hand slid up over the swell of her hip through the dip at her waist and over her ribs to cup one aching breast.

He sounded as hungry as she felt, seemed to welcome her fingers tangling in his hair, pulling him closer. The gentle nips of his teeth trailed down over her neck to the lace-clad sensitive place it joined her shoulder, and she waited for his touch, his bite.

With a deceptively gentle touch, his teeth caught the lace, and she felt it gently tear.

He could strip this gown from her and do anything at all, she realized, with a tremor of emotions too complicated to untangle that traveled from her toes all the way up her body to pound in her chest. Standing still for him was an act of trust, one she'd never imagined before.

But she wasn't afraid.

After what seemed like a lifetime of waiting to see what he would do next, his mouth closed again—this time over the hard nub of her eager nipple.

She couldn't prevent the little cry she made, and it seemed to urge him on. His hot breath excited the skin as if the silk were not there, as if only lace brushed her with an unpredictable sensation of highs and lows.

"Please," she said, not knowing why, and he groaned for her as he pulled off a gauntlet with his teeth and dipped his knees enough to catch the hem of her gown, gathering it up so he could slide his hand below it, shocking, thrilling, till his heavy touch spread over the soft skin at the top of her thigh.

"I have learned a few things," he murmured into the lace over her breast, and it might have been a jest but he sounded deadly serious. "Let me show you."

"Anything you like," ignoring the little voice in the back of her head that said to be wiser, to think beyond the moment, to remember what she'd just said about control of her own life.

She didn't want that. She didn't want control of anything. She wanted him to do everything he pleased, to take her higher and higher to a place she was just beginning to imagine existed.

"Are you sure?" He sounded pained, rough. "I don't mean it as a joke, my angel, it could be?—"

She grasped his hand through the lace and moved it lower.

"Show me," she said, trusting again that he would take pleasure in giving her gifts.

The breath he let out, gasping, shaking, as his hand cupped her, gave her faith in herself, that she had done the right thing. He cared. He would never risk her.

He hungered for her, and as she knew she gave away by arching as he slid a thick finger inside a hot, slippery place in a way she had never imagined, she needed this too.

She was so soft, so slick, so trusting, so gentle. Even the way she pulled his head closer, urging him to feast on the curves she offered, was sweetly desperate.

He'd be a villain to take everything she offered. He might well be that much of a villain, he dimly realized as the pull of her slick folds drew him in, his hand closer, the swollen center of her pleasure against the heel of his hand begging him to press it.

He ought to be begging her now: to give up sailing away, stop saying she would marry someone else, abandon the right to divorce this nameless, faceless man who didn't deserve her. He would beg, once he could tear himself away from her lusciousness.

She ought to stay right here and let him adore her for the rest of her life.

What his parents wanted receded, disappeared in the faraway, popped like a bubble. What he wanted took precedence, and what he wanted was whatever she wanted, this beautiful woman who lit up his mind and his body and his life.

"I want you to have this," he whispered in the delicate shell of her ear, making her shudder in his arms, thrilling him, tightening his own pleasure till it strained against the rough trousers he wore. "Have you touched yourself like this?"

She was already flushed, blushing, the color on her cheeks high and red; now she flushed darker. "A little," she gasped, unable to catch a breath, the hitch in her voice matching the way his finger slid inside her, against her.

It was a feeling of unimaginable power.

She grasped his coat lapels. His honest Alara, always seeking what was new.

He pulled her more tightly against him, preparing to have her shake. "Was it this good?" he rasped into the hair at the nape of her neck.

"No!" She flung her head back, pulling at him, at his shoulders, trying to keep herself from flying apart as he pressed more deeply into her, against her.

Her hips rose to meet his thrusts, greedily, mindlessly, and he reveled in everything he could do for her.

"You are going to reach the peak," he told her, feeling her inside clutching at him, shivering.

"Are you sure?" and that was no jest either. She sounded anxious, rattled by the depth of her pleasure, truly balanced on the edge of a shocking discovery.

"Oh yes."

The sound of his voice, deep, sure, seemed to push her over the edge and she shuddered apart in his arms, barely balanced on her own toes, letting his strength hold her up as she reached farther, higher, the pleasure wringing through her from the inside out, her gasping, catching breath starting and stopping, her eyes closed as she surrendered everything to pleasure, to him.

Her arms fell limp as she fought for every breath, slowly returning to herself, and this close he could see the pulse fluttering at the base of her throat. He kissed her there.

Nothing in her life had prepared her for so much sheer sensation tearing through her all at the same time, threatening to take off her skin, her head, her very toes. The searing heat from his touch still concentrated in her core, where his hand still held her, and Alara realized with shocked horror that she would very much like to do that again.

There were sins one could easily abandon, and then there was pure greed.

Still, nothing felt as important in this moment than honesty. "I would like that again," she said simply, feeling his muscles clench as she said it.

"Alara," he groaned, taking a moment to clutch her to him with the arm around her back.

These were the pleasures husbands and wives owed to each other, Alara supposed, dimly realizing that she had crossed some boundary that she was not supposed to cross. It had felt too natural, too necessary, for her to feel worried. Whatever happened now, she had known this, and with him.

"If I take this any farther," he muttered against the lace over her chest, "I will lose all restraint."

"I'm very impressed by your restraint," she said, and meant it.

For some reason, that made him chuckle.

She felt it too, the bubbling joy that must necessarily follow pleasure so pure. She chuckled back, turning her cheek against his shoulder, content to let him hold her. Her feet were back on the ground—how poetic—but her weight was all against him.

She was unprepared for the intimate, startling sensation of his fingers sliding away from her. Instantly she felt that she'd lost something and wanted it back.

He only scraped his hand against his rough trousers, drying, she realized a little shyly, and pulled her to him again to kiss her with both arms around her back. She heard another little tear in her lace from his coat buckles.

The damp silk pulled across one nipple, and Alara did feel a slight horror that it might show.

"I want everything," he admitted with a raw vulnerability that tugged at her heart. "You know what that means?"

She didn't. "All I can think of is a poem about the kingdom of joy I never understood before. It says Do not go in the direction of darkness ," she whispered to him, cradling his head in her hands. " Suns exist ."

The way his arms closed around her felt more certain than words.

She let him lower them together, till he could sit with her on his lap. The hard proof of his desire under her thigh did not frighten her; rather, she wanted to give him what he'd given her.

But for now, she was content to rest with him, wondering when, or even if, they would find the words to say what they both now knew.

For herself, it was that she could not hold another man the way she held him now. Her Lord Harman, her John, was still the same person he'd been as a boy. This was where she felt safe. And if she never felt this way again, at least she'd had it in her grasp once.

And he would know she could not resist him.

"I shouldn't have let them keep us apart," he said, raggedly, as if the admission came out of its own will.

"Who?" she asked, nestling her head on his shoulder, feeling the coming chill of his words, not caring.

"My parents. They told me so many times when I was young that you'd soon be gone that I never looked for you."

"Why?" She didn't want to know; still, revelations tonight seemed as inevitable as breathing.

He sounded wounded, as if his chest hurt. "I think they imagined it would ruin my political chances if I married a woman who wasn't Christian."

A part of her broke and cried at that thought, but she put it aside, leaving only a tiny part of her mind and soul to grieve.

The rest of her examined the thought carefully, quietly, the way she was always wont to do.

"I suppose that's true," she said with calmness, only admitting something they both must know. If his work depended on popular opinion, popular opinion was swayed by such things. It was something fundamental to most people's notions of themselves.

Alara was not particular in her religious observations; she followed the footsteps of her mother. And though her mother prayed five times a day, reciting her own prayers, and had for twenty-five years, there were other observances she'd failed.

Zehra had never planned her journey to the holy lands; she gave alms and fasted when necessary, but she made no frequent profession of her faith.

And most importantly, she had married a man who was not Muslim.

Alara wasn't even sure how she knew that was forbidden. Her mother's lectures about marriage contracts had not said as much. Alara suspected, knew it was; and she knew that by hoping her daughter would return to the city of her birth, Zehra Chaush hoped Alara would do what she had not, and marry within her faith.

If John would have her, Alara could easily disappoint her mother in that goal.

But Britain, England, were different. The laws were different here, and the opinions.

And Lord Harman had been raised all his life not only to rule his lands, but to help rule Britain.

"It isn't right." There was a touch of petulance in his tone, angry, refusing, that she recognized from long ago.

"Perhaps it isn't right," she admitted, in the way of their old gentle arguments, "but it is likely true."

He held her so tightly against him she found it hard to breathe, or perhaps that was the pleasure still thrumming in her veins.

It wasn't timid to pause and think. If there was a solution, she couldn't find it by herself. And John had not asked her to stay since the heated moment had passed.

Surely it would take a little time to find out if he meant what he said, or had only offered it with a moment's thought, the way he'd once been sure the sky was blue because it was painted that way.

In this quiet moment, time slipped by them both, running into the river of forever, until someone else's voice broke through their silent, joint, contemplation.

A harsh voice from the shadows of their gallery. "An old friend would like a word."