“Are you going to break it
to them gently that you are to leave to be my queen?” he
snickered.
Aziza raised her brows but spoke
with controlled measure, holding back the barrage of acid she wanted
to release. “I might remind you I was promised to not one but
two kings. I realize of course you are hardly royalty,” she
said scathingly, “but it is not so ridiculous that I said
queen.”
Jamie closed in on her, drawing
a shadow over her by blocking the sun. “You would have been a
whore for the Lion Heart like you’re going to be a whore for me
like you were for the great Sultan Ayyubid Saladin. Only you would
have seen far less action with the other two as I know Saladin loved
his Queen dearly and that he hardly touched his other brides. And I
have it on good authority that the Coeur de Lion isn’t
interested in your types.“
Aziza stepped back as if he
slapped her. “What types would that be, Jamie? Black?”
The shift between them was
palatable. His body moved towards hers as almost in slow dance.
“How sweet my name sounds on your tongue. Lucky it’s just
the two of us. Don’t dare that again, am I clear?”
Aziza was silent. “I asked you a question. Do not keep me
waiting, mistress. Am I clear?”
“Yes laird,” she
said through gritted teeth.
His voice softened to a sultry
timbre. “Are you black, Aziza?” His fingers lightly
touched her forearm. “Bronzed, maybe? Cinnamon, hmm? Red sand
from the Nile?” He guessed and guessed and each time a little
more poetical. She could not help but be caught up a little by his
amusing flirtation.
“There is no red sand,”
Aziza almost smiled. The bastard was charming.
“Did I say red? I meant
blue.”
“Enough,” she rolled
her eyes trying hard not to show any trace of amusement.
“No, mistress. I was
referring to women. His highness doesn’t like women. No matter
how remarkably beautiful,” he stroked her cheek. “And it
seems my battle prowess gave him the perfect out. And so here you
are.”
“And I didn’t get a
chance to offer him my thanks properly,” Aziza replied acidly.
He stared at her. And if her
reaction to him hadn’t been so volatile, she could find his the
sweetest, most endearing face imaginable. He twinkled at her. Many
of the Scots did it. It was exasperating. “On second
thought,” he said, “You may remain at your place. For
now. I need to get settled anyway.” Now Aziza was annoyed he
was not in a hurry for her. He must have had plenty of haraam under
his belt to keep his appetite stayed no doubt. “We will come
together slowly. As you wish,” he continued.
As you wish.
It was as
she wished. For she remembered all was a sinking feeling. She
wanted a prince. She wished he was her husband. She feared she may
have cast a spell on him. Called to him and made him appear. “Yes
Laird,” she trembled.
“Done.” He pulled
her into his massive arms for a sweeping kiss. That was all the
proof Aziza needed. Her wish was coming true. She conjured this
beautiful demon to be her husband.
Aziza felt near flight and faint
at the same time. She was almost drunk with the range of emotions
she had experienced at this chance encounter, from shock to
attraction to anger most of all. But she had never been kissed
before, on the lips that is, and scarcely at that, but knew at once
no one else would ever kiss her like this. The taste of his tongue
inside her mouth was a sweet as the nectar of the tiny white flower
that carpeted the valley, the clung to her hair, her body, her skin,
with a touch that was both masterful and light. His body was as hard
as she felt limp, pliant, and supple. He cupped her breast with his
large, powerful hand and moaned at its bounty. He buried his mouth
to the curve of her neck.
“Oh please no,” she
heard herself begging.
“You better be glad it was
me who found you,” he scolded softly against her ear. Passion
was making him dance a little too intensely and he suddenly pulled
back, put his finger to her lips. He looked like he was about to
devour her. His breaths were as labored as hers, his agony the same.
The shock of the ceremony fused
with this passion equaled delectable excitement. Aziza had to
concede that she encountered the most charismatic person she could
imagine, second to the sultan. Instead of mitigating the torture of
the past year, finally meeting Jaime made it worse. He made it very
complicated to hate him.
“Laird, I can find my way
home. I don’t need an escort. I’m just a whore,
remember?
Haraam.
Better get used to hearing the word, hadn’t I if you’ve
brought it all the way back from the Crusades to me.
Jmylh
al-Khnāzyr
.”
Bite me.
Aziza
bowed to disguise her curse as a term of respect.
“Behave, mistress. I don’t
care what language you curse me in. It’ll get your mouth washed
out. You’d better go before I change my mind. Let me just-”
he said and with a quick maneuver her garments were righted. He
twirled her to face the path that led to home and sent her on her
way.
Aziza answered but her voice
shrilled and quivered with arousal so that her words were almost
indistinguishable. They sounded more like a whistle than anything.
She was sad. Very very sad that he let her have her way. For an
entire year she was angry with him because he made her wait to tell
him that she didn’t want anything to do with him. Now he was
here, appeared before her like a dream and as quickly, he let her go.
Leaving her bothered because however he did it, he made her want
him. And she was waiting again.
She wished she could turn back
the day and crawl back into the night to uncast her spells. They
made him appear. They enchanted him.
And he was enchanting her.
* * * *
Home. Another day, another
beating. How was Aziza going to be able to explain being out all
night? Of course it wasn’t as though either Gregor needed a
reason to knock her around. She once had a room in the main house
but she took her bedding to the barn to escape Mrs. Gregor’s
jealous wrath.
Aziza tried to explain to her
hostess that none of the Scottish men wanted her. That her skin was
too black for them though it was the color of sun roasted cardamom
.
It coursed over a perfect figure, naturally muscled and firm and
lean limbs but very round breasts and even rounder hips. She had
seen her face several times in a glass and had no problem liking what
she saw. Soft, sweet doe eyes and a straight nose that flared at the
base. Succulent full, defined lips. Her beauty became her reputation
and she was chosen for the sultan without even ever meeting him.
It was true no man had ever
touched her but not for lack of wanting. All of Laird MacDunna’s
men looked at her the way the laird himself just had. So it was a
complete lie Andrew Gregor didn’t want her. Aziza just had to
remember every filthy name thrown her way since leaving the sultan’s
palace to make herself sound convincing. She promised the lady of
the house she was not “fucking” her husband while having
the breath drilled out of her, and wondering what on earth she had
done to deserve the life she ended up with.
Instead of going into the house
and risking a thrashing, her ploy was to go directly to the goat pen
and pretend she had been toiling since sun up, hoping that her hosts
hadn't come to yet from the drunken night before.
But her host beat her to the
punch, literally. She entered the pen, bent over to pick up a trowel
when she felt herself shoved hard at her backside by his foot, into
the muck. Her face that had been so sweetly kissed by the most
handsome man she could ever imagine was now covered with goat shit
and rotten food scraps. And she would be lucky if she would be
allowed to break to wash. She would wear the stench and the filth at
least until her hosts were passed-out drunk again.
"Who have you been
fucking?" Andrew Gregor was a mean man frustrated by her to the
point of brutality. He used words like that with her all the time
though she had no clue what they meant. They managed to make her
feel dirtier than the muck smearing her, all the same. If she simply
answered "no one", he would have punched her for knowing
what he was talking about. If she didn’t answer him at all, he
would have hit her for not responding.
He nailed her, a right to the
face. Aziza laughed hysterically. Here she had told the laird she
was just clumsy and now she was getting the stuffing knocked out of
her in a pen full of dung mixed mud. She should be lying around on
tasseled satin pillows awaiting her turn to please her king. Or
right now, walking home on her giant’s arm. And instead for
the last year, this had been her life. As she rose from the ground,
she was slammed with a back hand. Andrew Gregor was frustrated by
her laughter. She braced herself for it. He was so predictable.
She floundered to the welcomed cushion of the thick curd that covered
the pen floor. It was preferable to some of the hard surfaces he
sent her hurling against.
When she came to, he had
thankfully abandoned her. She lifted her head. Scant syllables of
his grunting found their way to her ears from inside the house. She
gathered herself to her feet and ran.
The river water would be so
incredibly cold. No one went into the river in the spring months
because it was dangerous. The low temperature rendered a slumber of
death. People fell asleep from the cold and drowned. Aziza knew
this and thought that she could just float to the Afterlife. She had
had it suffering one more time the abuse of someone so completely
beneath her.
The water was calm but as crisp
as she expected. She deliberated whether she should strip and rinse
her clothes separately or simply dunk herself altogether. One step
on the squishy bank riled the memory of the floor of the pen so she
furiously pitched her body against the cold plane of the
imperceptibly shallow water, shift and all, and inadvertently
embedded the entire front of herself into river mud.
She would have drowned. She
would have suffocated had not so many countless prior fear-wrought
episodes with Andrew Gregor taught her to keep a cool head in the
face of imminent danger. She reserved her breathe and focused
herself on plying her body from the suction of the wet gripping gunk.
With conservative movements to the dry firm part of the bank, she
wiped the slime from her nostrils with the cleaner underside of her
garment. Once free and clear, Aziza gasped.
And sobbed.
It had been quite a night and
morning. She re-lived the sequence of the night before, of spying on
the line of people, the look on bride’s face as she walked into
the woods, as she writhed upon the sacrificial table. Which all
transformed into an exchange between Jamie and her. She felt an ache
between her legs as she involuntarily imagined she was splayed upon
the table waiting for Jamie to take her. She was begging for it all
ready.
She raised her dirty garment
over her shoulders and let herself hover at the surface of the frigid
water to rinse the mud from her. She waved the dress to and fro like
a water flag, cleaning it at the same time, all the while, wishing
herself to be unmagic.
The water ebbed against her
rhythmically in soothing laps. Its frigidity eased. The water
didn’t just warm but became hot. Steaming. As hot as any bath
she took in Egypt. Aziza looked up as though by assessing the sky
she would find an explanation as to why she was now enjoying a piping
hot bath courtesy of Mother Nature. To her horror, she realized she
was floating to a cove, towards the spray of a water fall. She was
at the base of the ravine. She did not come here on purpose. It had
come to her.
But she was exhausted, she
didn’t resist. On top of the otherwise undisturbed water, she
rested her eyes and drifted listlessly to the fall's roar. Her arms
lulled softly away from her sides and legs gently parted. Aziza was
by herself but she was definitely not alone. She felt the distinct
pressure of a phantom Jamie MacDunna's mouth at her neck but there
was no fear at all, just the solid reassurance of his body beneath
hers. She could feel his erection press against her buttocks as they
drifted. It made her want to back onto it. He strummed her skin,
encouraging her as she offered herself to the drive of the thundering
waterfall. His hands played the planes and curves of her body,
skimming it with one hand to the junction of her legs, while with the
other, tweezing her nipples as he lovingly bit into skin. Aziza
cried out. The sweet torture sent a flood from her body which he
masterfully plumbed with his long, powerful fingers. He worked her
in a wanton rhythm, both rough and gentle, directing her to the fall.
She could feel him smile, casting a spell every time he did so.
A barrage of turgid spray spiked
her entire body in relentless little bites, networking throughout and
pulled at her very core in a beckoning pressure. He seemed to know
this. He rubbed her more rapidly, incessantly pushing her to the top
of her climb. He splayed the soft tiny folds encasing her most
sensitive spot to receive the warm water massage with the precise
caress of fingers. At the first tremors, he turned her, put her mouth
on her and dined on her powerful climax as she came against his hot
mouth
.