The Book of the Seven Delights (17 page)

"So she named 'im after th' Greek god Apollo." Crocker finished for him.

"Apollo-dorus," one of the others said, thumping the tabletop. The others picked it up. "Apollodorus…

Apollodorus…"

The men of Smith's old company were still chanting his name as they staggered through the streets, escorting Smith and Abigail back to their hotel. The doorman of the Raissouli spotted them coming and called the manager, who confronted the crowd of drunken Legionnaires in the lobby and insisted they vacate the premises.

Smith was sober enough to prevent the others from starting a fight that would only get them all thrown in a cell for fifteen days. They swore they didn't mind doing a little time if it was the price of teaching the hotel man a lesson. Smith declined the offer and gave them each a fierce hand clasp and hug, vowing to see them again on his way back through Marrakech.

Abigail fought the wine-warmed steam in her senses to watch him part from his friends with glowing eyes, scandalous language, and a booming laugh. He charmed them the way he did her, with his curious blend of educated gentleman and hard-scrapping line soldier. It was clear he felt deep respect and affection for these men with whom he had shared hardship and adventure. His loyalty, once given, was apparently steadfast. In their company she began to understand that his arrogance indeed came from hard-won experience and his stubbornness could be viewed as survival-honed tenacity.

And yet, he sat in a cafe drinking whiskey and casually acknowledging that he had been in prison for a killing…

She watched until the Legionnaires left, staggering out into the street and calling a gallant good-bye. Then she requested her key and headed down the corridor that led to her room. Her legs felt rubbery and the walls around her didn't seem to be as straight as they should be. As she leaned against a pillar to get her bearings, Smith came up behind her and lifted her into his arms.

"What do you think you're doing?"

"God, you're heavy," he muttered, breathing hard as he carried her across the courtyard and down the loggia near her room.

"Then put me down." Frantic to avoid being dropped, she slid one arm around his neck and hung on. "I can walk."

"I saw how you walked on the way back to the hotel." He sobered quickly under the exertion of carrying her. "I never met a librarian yet who could hold liquor."

"Oh? And just how many librarians have you met?"

"Counting you?" he said, glancing down at her.

She nodded.

"One."

He had her lean over to unlock the door to her room and he carried her straight to the bed. She didn't release him quickly enough as she fell back onto the mattress and he was pulled down with her. He caught himself on an arm and a knee above her.

The inches between them were suddenly filled with charged potential… attractive force… a raw magnetism that excited both her senses and her fears. He was big and hot and full of a kind of experience she hadn't considered acquiring until—

She arched her back and scowled, fishing behind her for something. A second later, she dragged her gun from behind her and held it up.

"Give me that thing," he said, taking it with two fingers and dropping on the floor by the bed.

She looked up at him, knowing what would happen, wanting it to happen… afraid to let it… afraid to prevent it…

"I don't think—"

"That a girl. Don't think." His mouth lowered toward hers. "Damned annoying habit, thinking."

Before she could respond, his lips covered hers and pleasure washed through her, saturating every tense and tingling part of her body. So this was what she missed the other night… this lush, possessing warmth swirling in her blood… this soft, sensuous kneading of her lips… this ache rising in her skin for closer…

fuller… deeper…

Deeper trouble
. Something in her mind refused to dissolve heedlessly into that hypnotic flood of sensation. And as he shifted more of his weight on top of her, the shock of such intimacy helped her remember what it was.

"I have to know, Smith," she gasped out, dragging her mouth from his.

"Know what?" He kissed his way across her face and fastened his lips on her neck just below her ear.

Ripples of excitement washed the underside of her skin and she shivered eloquently, trying to remember what she meant to say. Her very bones seemed to be melting.

Go on. Ask.

Just shut up and enjoy something for a change.

Do it now or you'll be kicking yourself later.

Don't do it, or you'll regret it for the rest of your life.

You can't turn your back on the truth and pretend it doesn't matter.

It bloody well doesn't matter—not now!

When will it matter? When you're in the desert and there's room for either a chest of gold or you
on the only horse ?

"Who did you kill?" She swallowed hard, half hoping she hadn't said the words aloud. "When they put you in prison… who was it you killed?"

He raised his head. His gaze was dark and only half focused.

"I have no idea." He lowered his mouth toward hers, but she avoided it.

"No—" She pushed on his shoulders to open some space between them. "Flynn said you killed someone."

"Ancient history," he said, dropping kisses down her chest as he released the buttons of her shirt.

"Tell me." She caught his face between her hands and raised it. He stilled and searched her for a moment as if deciding how much to say.

"It was a bar fight. They said I killed somebody."

"Who said?"

"My jailors. And the Legion recruiter." Heat began to drain from his face. "I don't remember anything from that night. I was drunk as David's sow."

"Then what did they say at your trial?"

"A trial? In Morocco?" He gave a sardonic laugh. "No such luxury."

"But what about the Consulate? Surely they allowed you to speak to—"

"Look, I woke up sweating in a metal box in a prison yard. They told me I killed someone and was sentenced to life in prison unless I joined the Legion. After some pretty uncomfortable 'persuasion,' I signed the damned papers."

"You never even had a trial?" she said, trying to comprehend the outrage that represented and how he could now speak of it almost casually.

"Or a visit from my uncle or the blessed British Consul." He stared at her, then shifted onto his elbow and pushed up to a sitting position.

"Your uncle?" That "family matter" he spoke of earlier, she realized. He'd come back to confront—"You have an uncle here, in Morocco?"

"So it seems."

"And he didn't try to help when you were arrested and put in prison?"

"Regrettably, no."

She studied his hardening face, feeling conflicted… needing to know more, but already feeling the distance her demands were putting between them. She had to understand, had to risk one final question.

"Why not?" she asked.

"Next time you see him, why don't you ask him?" he said swinging his legs off the side of the bed and standing up.

"When I see him?" She scowled, watching him swipe his hair back from his forehead and adjust the belt of his trousers. "The only other person I've met is"—it hit her and she blanched—"Ferdineaux LaCroix?"

"One and the same," he said with a fierce glance, heading for the door.

She slid from the bed and darted around him, inserting herself between him and the door handle.

"Why didn't you tell me?" she stared up into a face dusky with an altogether different passion than had filled it moments ago.

"Would you have believed me?" He leaned into her with his body, pushing her back against the door.

"Do you believe me now?"

For a moment he let the hot press of his body against hers speak for him and watched her response in her eyes. Her doubt, fears, and desire were all there for him to see.

"Proper and precious Miss Merchant. You're not sure if you should let a killer touch you like this." He dragged his knuckles down the side of her cheek. "You're not sure if you should take pleasure in a murderer's kiss…" He dipped his head and caught her lips with his, delivering a kiss so hot that it all but melted her bones. When he lifted his head, she slid down the door and he caught her by the waist and held her, his breath quick and ragged.

"But you want me, Boston. No matter what I may have done."

She knew she should protest that, but a strange tenor to his voice stopped her. It was a pained quality that kept his statement from sounding like intolerable arrogance. It was doubt. His own.

"They said."

"
I don't remember
…"

"Do
you
think you killed someone in a fight?" she asked.

Emotion welled in him as he pulled her against him and kissed her quick and hard. Then he set her aside and walked out the door, slamming it behind him. She staggered to the bed and collapsed on the side of it, staring after him.

He honestly didn't know if he'd killed someone or not. But he'd lived with it and paid for it with five grueling years of Legion service. His reaction just now showed that it weighed on him. Relief released the last of her control and she fell back on the bed with her eyes burning.

He was right. She did want him. With everything in her.

She touched her throbbing lips.

And after what she'd just done, he might never touch her again.

Damned impossible woman.

Apollo stormed blindly along the corridor, intent on waking up the entire hotel if necessary, to find a bottle of good Irish whiskey. He was going to get roaring drunk and…

And what? Forget that the instant his lips touched hers, something in his blood ignited? Forget sensations he'd never felt before cascading through him… spreading along the muscles of his chest… raking his skin into gooseflesh as they flowed down his belly?

He stopped at the edge of the main courtyard, his fists clenched and his chest heaving. He saw again, felt again the way her mouth had reached for him.

Nothing in this world or the next could have prevented him from pouring a kiss over those soft lips and into the wet velvet heat she offered.

It shocked him at first how her tongue darted and explored and tasted him. She was a librarian, for God's sake. How did she know how to do that? Did somebody write books on it? Every flick and stroke of her tongue had sent another swirl of pleasure spiraling through his body. It felt like his whole being had begun to melt—lips first—into hers.

And
her
. For a few stunning moments she had been soft and lush and feminine. No more prickliness, no more intellectual disdain, no more resistance.

Then she opened her mouth and demanded to know the name of the man he'd killed. She wanted to know, maybe needed to know. But he couldn't help feeling she had used her questions to fend him off, to keep him from—no, to keep
herself
'from having to surrender some of her precious self-control.

"Dammit, Boston—"

He looked down at the hot bulge in his trousers and groaned. The whiskey would have to wait. He bolted out into the starlit courtyard, where he removed his boots and climbed clothes-and-all into the middle of a mercifully cool fountain.

Abigail woke the next noon facedown in her own bed, fully clothed and wearing her riding boots. She had a pounding headache, grainy, light-sensitive eyes, and a tongue that felt like a caravan of camels had trekked across it. With supreme effort, she pulled off her boots and dragged herself from the bed.

She managed to find her dispensary and headache powders and downed a healthy dose. The wages of sin. Clearly.

It took effort to piece together coming back to her room last night. The shards of memory lying on the bottom of her mind had smudges of Smith all over them. And the evidence both for and against his character seemed to change from minute to minute.

Whether he had killed someone or not, it was a relief to learn the
entire
French Foreign Legion wasn't after him. Apparently only part of it wanted to arrest him for not being genuinely dead. But, if that was the case, why didn't he just go to Legion headquarters somewhere and straighten everything out?

Because there was more to it. How much more, she didn't want to think. Was there anything about the man that was clear and straightforward?

She cleared the haze away from the last few moments before he stormed out of her room, when he'd held her against the door.

There was
one
thing that was perfectly clear. He wanted her as a woman. All right,
two
things. He was right when he said she wanted him.

When she had collected herself enough to face him again, she left the hotel for the horse
souk
, which was where the Raissouli's head porter informed her Smith had been bound when he and Haffe left that morning.

Just like him, she muttered to herself: spending her money without a single thought of consulting her.

Wretched man. With each step she dug in her heels a bit harder.

Apollo had difficulty concentrating on horses that morning. His head felt like a brass-smith's anvil and every throb in his temples generated a taunting echo in his oversensitive loins. He struggled to keep his mind on number of teeth, hoof and tendon condition, and water consumption, instead of his testy mood and his equally testy partner.

Damned woman. Dredging up all kinds of internal misery he thought he'd made peace with long ago. He didn't have time for taking her on a tour of the worst moments of his life and justifying his existence. He had business to take care of today… the kind that didn't allow for distractions.

Midafternoon, as he and Haffe were nearing the hotel, leading an Arabian-Barb and two mules, he caught sight of
her
striding toward them and stopped in his tracks, preparing for an onslaught of temper or temptation. Or both.

"You bought these?" she asked, ignoring him as she circled the animals. She was dressed in a brown split skirt, starched white blouse with a brown velvet ribbon laced through the standing collar, and her customary riding boots. In the afternoon heat, she looked fresh, composed, and maddeningly self-contained.