The Devil She Knows (19 page)

“W
hat beautiful tulips!” Portia exclaimed, more than willing to feast her eyes and soul on innocent delights. “Hyacinths and daffodils, too! You never mentioned them to me.”

She tried to glare accusingly at Gareth. It was difficult when all she wanted to do was turn around and stare out the window again at Yildiz Palace's glorious gardens. So many tall panes of glass allowed the midday sunlight to pour in, until the garden seemed only a breath away.

“They are beautiful, aren't they?” Adem agreed smugly. “My father says our Sultan kept the best of the old hunting park when he built only a small palace—”

“Small?” muttered Gareth.

“Plus scattered pavilions for himself and key government functions,” Adem finished, and made only the smallest of rude gestures at Gareth.

“It's truly, truly lovely.” Portia sighed happily. “Thank you for bringing us to this isolated corner. After traveling in Egypt's deserts, these gardens are especially wonderful.”

“Anything to make a lady happy.” Adem bowed, adding a flourish he must have learned in France.

She strongly suspected he'd actually brought them there to show off the room's martial decorations. But she nodded back to him and returned to happily eyeing the spectacular blooms. Even this wilder section must be tended by an army of gardeners, to achieve such perfection.

This pavilion at Yildiz Palace was part of the administrative offices, not the Sultan's personal quarters. The second floor room was apparently designed as a minor functionary's office but dusty and unused at the moment. Even so, the walls were elegantly paneled and the doors so beautifully made that it was hard to see where one began and the other ended.

The room's biggest distinction was the knives and daggers spiraling around the corner pillar like scorpions on the alert. Centuries and continents had combined to build the collection into spikes and curves, a rippling river of potential murder from Asia to Africa, Europe to America.

Gareth walked his fingers up to another sharp-edged toy and slid sideways, wiping his reflection from the window in front of her.

Portia rolled her eyes. Gareth would probably still be playing with knives in his coffin.

“What do you think of them?” Having satisfied his excuse for being here, Adem headed toward his friend. “Have you seen all of these before?”

The door slammed open, banging against the wall like a drum. Almost simultaneously, another door slid open in the paneled wall like a glimpse into hell.

A half dozen, masked young men poured into the room. They had the thick muscular bodies of men willing and able to use their strength, not cheapened by wealth or alcohol.

Adem whirled to face them. Before he could even shout, two of them charged him and brutally, efficiently, knocked him out with small wooden clubs.

Her skin froze onto her bones.

“Portia! To me!” Gareth was free of the pillar, a weapon flashing in each hand.

Her feet took her to him, not her mind. Safely behind his back, her heart slamming against her chest, she tried to think.

She could help. She had to help. But how? Attack somebody—but with what? Call for help—but who would hear?

“What do you want?” Gareth was speaking French, his tone as rigidly precise as an executioner's blade.

She had to watch so she slowly turned around, grateful her walking dress didn't drag on the floor to kick up much noise.

“Give us the trunk and we'll let you live,” ordered the one wearing a red mask.

“If I do not?” Gareth sounded calmer than when he was cutting cheese.

“We will kill you then seize the woman and the trunk.”

“Oh no, you won't, my friends.” Gareth shook his head slowly. His expression hadn't changed at all.

“You are only a puny westerner and we outnumber you six to one. You have no hope of defeating us.”

“What do you know of me?” Gareth countered—and spun the knife and tomahawk in his hands. Her bowie knife, which she'd given him so many years ago, and a tomahawk snatched from the wall. Bright blades flashed in front of his fingers then came to rest once again, ready to kill.

Only long familiarity would permit that move. He'd marked his turf and announced how nastily he could defend it.

Their attacker stared at the tomahawk's broad head, good for both crushing and cutting. Several of his followers backed up a step.

“The chest is our path to the future.” Their chief attacker snapped his shoulders back and popped a knife out of his sleeve. “We will do whatever is needed to obtain it.”

“Blood feud?” Gareth inquired. Icy shadows lurked in his eyes.

Portia's knees were shaking. He didn't sound or look as if he cared, at least not for himself.

One attacker crept closer to him and Gareth whirled his tomahawk over his finger toward the fool.

The young man froze, his eyes very wide. Then he slid back into place, tidy as a sardine tin being returned to the cupboard.

“Blood feud,” the leader asserted and sneered at Gareth. “You westerners know nothing of the fighting which comes from the heart, not the mind. If it takes every man in my clan, we will win.”

“You can try.” Gareth's lips curved into something a shark would have admired. “When you do, be sure to remember I come from two centuries of war between tribes. When I was twelve, I saw my mother and sisters burned alive—yet I alone survived.”

Portia's heart wrenched in two. She started to reach toward him to comfort him then yanked her hand back.

Oh, my poor darling, no wonder you never talked about your parents.

“I killed every murderous bastard in the other family and became my clan's only survivor.” For the first time, Gareth's expression turned lambent with the need to fight. “I was adopted by a far greater clan of warriors, to which this lady belongs.”

Appalled realization swept through their enemies' eyes and made more than a few feet shuffle.

Gareth's chuckle held more anticipation than mirth.

Dear God, she couldn't allow him to be hurt.

Portia frantically looked around once again.

“You are welcome to try to kill me.”

Surely Gareth didn't want them to, no matter how careless his shrug.

“Even if you do, I will take many of you with me to my grave—then laugh when her family tramples on your remnants.”

Portia snatched a massive bronze lamp off the desk next to her and hurled it through the window, which exploded into a glittering cascade.

Two uniformed gardeners strolling past outside, with baskets for flower cuttings, looked up in amazement.

She shrieked, hurling her terror for Gareth into the note.

The men yelled something in Turkish at her then ran toward the building.

Their chief attacker glared at her then saluted both her and Gareth with his knife. An instant later, he and his band disappeared as invisibly as they'd entered.

Only Adem, barely stirring on the floor, proved the thugs had existed.

Plus, the sickening lurch in Portia's stomach whenever she remembered how Gareth had terrified even those brutes.

G
areth rubbed the back of his neck and reluctantly studied the bathroom again. Logic said he had to leave Portia alone sometimes, such as now. The prospect made his gut turn itself inside out, faster than anything from the Apaches.

Worse was the certainty that mentioning his mother's and sisters' deaths out loud was always followed by nightmares, not that his problems mattered tonight.

Portia's courage that afternoon simply made him want to cherish her more. She'd never screamed, turned hysterical, fainted—done any of the nonsensical tricks a girl had a right to pull when faced with six armed kidnappers. She'd been as brave and quick-witted as ever.

Damn, she'd even been the one who'd defeated the brutes. Maybe someday he'd laugh when he remembered how their expressions had looked when the window shattered. For now, his hands were still shaking at how close she'd come to dying. They could never have afforded to let her live, once they had the chest.

Christ, what the hell would he do without her?

She'd always been important to him, but he'd spent years thinking of her as William Donovan's niece. Now she was more important than what little soul he had left.

Ice scuttled over his skin, faster than any poisonous scorpion.

He passed his hand over his eyes and sank into the tub, letting the silly bubbles splash over his knees and chest. Kerem Ali Pasha's bathroom had enough marble on the walls and floors to allow a herd of elephants to splash without harming anything.

Maybe the hot water would relax him. It would certainly remove the reek of fear.

Gulls sang to each other in the distance about twilight and last meals. Water splashed against the yali, in a siren call to take a boat and go somewhere, anywhere else. Europe, Algeria, Indochina, even back to Arizona where he'd ruined her life.

He'd always run whenever anybody got too close. But he couldn't do so now, not when St. Arles was still in town, hunting Portia.

Somebody scratched on the door and he frowned. “Enter.”

“Hullo.” Portia cautiously poked her head inside the room. “May I come in?”

He started to sit up, caught a draft on his belly, and shoved his hips back under the scented water. His eager cock complained vehemently, more interested in shoving its heated length into her than in frivolities such as the air temperature.

“Would you like some wine? It's a good Riesling, the same vintage we always drank in Arizona.” She offered a silver ice bucket on a tray with two glasses. More importantly, he'd swear she wore nothing underneath her silk kimono.

His heartbeat lurched into a fascinated trot.

Her smile came and went between her small teeth nibbling on her lower lip.

He dragged some air into his lungs and tried to regain his wits.

“Of course I would.” He waved vaguely toward a corner or two. “Please have a seat and join me.”

“Thank you.” She carefully set down the tray on the small rolling cart beside the tub. A moment later, she sat down beside him on a stool originally meant for servants.

She poured the wine with the concentrated attention of someone who'd rarely done so, measuring the exact angle from the bottle's lip to the glass as if one false move could send a fountain pouring onto the floor.

Her frown called to him to be kissed away. He closed his eyes and recited long-forgotten multiplication tables.

“Here you are.”

His eyes snapped open to find the fragile crystal only inches away from his fingers. “Thank you.”

“Did I do it right?”

He almost dropped the delicious beverage into his bath. How the devil could she do it wrong, assuming nothing broke?

“You did it perfectly.” He tried to fill his voice with the same robust assurance he'd give a tenderfoot just starting to learn how to drive an eighteen mule hitch.

“You didn't watch.”

Her foot swung back and forth, betraying her naked calf. Good God almighty, she truly was wearing nothing underneath the kimono except possibly a chemise.

His chest tightened as if baked in the devil's own oven.

How did he tell her that if he had observed her, she'd be in the tub with him right now, soaking wet and very thoroughly fucked?

He opted for tact and discussing only her question, not his endless hungers.

“You were just as slick as when you told the Sultan's guards this afternoon our attackers were radical revolutionaries, determined to make an example of the old office.”

“It was the first excuse I thought of.” She flushed and hid her face.

“They believed you.”

“Especially when you mentioned Adem's valiant defense of the Ottoman crest.”

“Which he was clever enough not to deny, thank God,” Gareth agreed. “After he finally came round, that is.”

“Making him the true hero.” She took another sip of wine. Her kimono slipped down her sweating shoulder, revealing bare skin.

No chemise at all.

Most of his wits dived for his cock and started a raucous clamor to taste her.

He gulped his wine and tried to remember when dinner would be served. Would they be interrupted?

What would Portia think if he tried to seduce her? She certainly seemed to have enjoyed last night, although they hadn't discussed it. Or had he behaved too much like St. Arles?

“Of course, you were the true hero this afternoon,” she remarked. Her eyes trapped his, blue as diamonds, blue as truth, blue as hope. “Just the way you were back in Arizona, when you knocked me out to save my life.”

He could only stare at her. His heart was caught like his breathing, somewhere between now and forever.

“I'm sorry. I wish I'd told you that long ago, when I first realized it.”

He managed to shake his head, refusing to step onto a new path.

“I knew before I left on my wedding journey with St. Arles.”

“But I didn't stop you.” The damning words hung in the air yet again, as they'd haunted so many nightmares.

Her eyes were soft with forgiveness. “You couldn't save me from myself. Nobody could.”

She planted little kisses along his forehead and the bridge of his nose, like a gardener cherishing his favorite fields in the springtime.

Then her mouth found his, awkwardly at first.

Shock that she'd be this generous froze him in place.

She angled her head and shaped her lips to match his. Her breath melted into his, warm and spicy like life itself.

He caught her by the shoulders and claimed her.

His tongue swept deep. She gave a low moan and moved closer still, rubbing herself against him. He scooped her into his arms and held her tight against his heart. His chest was rising and falling faster than when he'd fought Victorio's army.

She was all hot, wet, living silk, branding him with life and femininity everywhere she touched—from her fingers threading through his hair to his scalp, to her breath sighing his name against his cheek when he turned his head to nuzzle her throat, to her breasts plumping to fill the crook of his arm.

Dear Lord, how her kimono thinned into transparency then dived off her shoulder when wet. How could a man resist such a display of fragrant temptations, especially when they belonged to his wife?

His wife, the only one he'd ever have. For the few days or weeks their marriage would last, she was his alone.

He yanked her sash open and was fiercely grateful he hadn't had to exert force on the supple fabric. God forbid he frighten his darling in any way.

“Ah, Gareth.” Her fingernails scratched his shoulder until they drew a few crimson drops.

Hunger surged deep, stampeding his blood through his veins. He rolled her out of the tub and onto the floor, landing on the mat with a splash that sent water cascading across the marble.

Portia stared down at him, her blue eyes enormous with excitement—or fear?

Gareth paused, still holding her by the waist. He would never use force—but, damn, how he needed her.

Mischief teased her mouth.

He frowned, his cock still straining to reach her.

Both hands on his shoulders, she leisurely undulated down his front. Every movement's friction forced open her kimono more and more until she was completely naked. Her nipples were small, fiery diamonds firing his lungs into cauldrons of lust, her supple ribs continually caressed his core, and her belly—Dear God, his cock rested against her belly in the smug assurance it would be warm inside.

Still holding his eyes, she rocked her hips against him again, painting herself with his dripping shaft.

He bit down on his lip hard enough to draw blood, forcing pain so he wouldn't seize her.

“There are condoms in the cart.” She caressed his cheek. “If you still want one.”

She was willing to take the chance of a child?

The habits of a lifetime sent his hand into motion long before his brain caught up.

Her eyes flickered and she silently shifted to give him room.

But he couldn't read her expression, didn't give himself time to, before he'd rolled the damn contraption on.

She wrapped her hand around his shaft an instant after he'd tied the condom on.

He strangled himself with his own breath.

She pumped him a little, very gently. “Do you like that?”

“Hell, yes!”

She chortled softly, her eyes dark. While he'd been donning the preventative, she'd doffed the silk robe to become more enticing than ever. Her breasts were cream and rose confections, tipped with nipples perfectly formed to be suckled. Her waist was a narrow enticement above her mons' golden curls and her legs' long ivory lengths.

Ah, the hours he could spend exploring new ways to tumble her into ecstasy using every inch of those delights…

He slid his hands over her hips and allowed himself to blatantly enjoy her sweet rump's curve.

She arched her back and purred—then squeezed him lightly.

Blood and seed lunged upward to meet her.

“Portia, how long do you want me to remain polite?” Amazing that he could still speak.

“I don't.”

Truth blazed in her eyes, a step behind hunger.

He flipped her under him and she clung, warm and completely willing. Mouth met mouth once again in a mating dance older than time, truer than recriminations or apologies. None of that mattered, not anymore, not with her sweetness to keep the nightmares at bay.

He knelt above her and she spread her legs, stroked his back, arched her hips to make his possession easier.

His woman, his.

He surged into her and their bodies knotted together like a lock and key.

His blood screamed at him yet his heart told him to stay precisely here.

Time could stand still for only so long.

“Gareth.” Her voice was a beacon in the night.

He began to move, slowly at first then faster and faster. She hissed at him to hurry and gripped his back in ecstasy. Lust perfumed the air and sang in the heavy music of their bodies straining against each other.

His finger found Portia's back entrance and she shouted in startled delight. Ecstasy seized her and her inner muscles clamped down on him, irresistibly demanding that he too tumble over the precipice.

He gave himself willingly, spinning into an exuberant orgasm that pummeled his senses like running the rapids. He extravagantly shot his seed into Portia's warm depths again and again.

Afterwards, he had barely enough sense to carry her to bed and tumble in to join her. Thinking about what had happened, especially what she knew of his background, was a nightmare more distant than those her sweet loving had banished for the moment.

God forbid those specters—of all the men he'd hunted down like animals, because that was the only way to slay his family's killers—didn't visit him tonight. He didn't want to wake up screaming with a red mist clouding his eyes and crimson dripping from his fingers.

Not here, not now, now with delicate Portia who'd already endured so much.

He turned his face into her hair and inhaled her scent, pure and fresh, inescapably hers.

She muttered something and her hand clutched at his hip, pulling him closer. Their lungs matched, sending air back and forth between them like the gift of life.

Obscurely comforted, he crept into sleep as if he was pulling a blanket roll around himself—pleased to be there and praying not to be disturbed.