Viking Ecstasy (19 page)

❧

Elsewhere in the palace, the occupant of another steaming bath was smiling and finding it particularly pleasant that the Egyptians took as much pride and pleasure in the production of beer as the Scandinavians did. He drank heartily from a gold goblet; and each time he brought the goblet away from his mouth, a young, bare-breasted servant quickly refilled it from a large urn.

"You are sure there is nothing . . . more . . . we can do for you?" a servant asked, kneeling at the side of the tub near Tabor's shoulder. She could not imagine the high priestess succumbing to desire, and consequently never dreamed she might be intruding with a subtle, sexual invitation to the big foreigner with the most beautiful blue eyes she had ever seen.

He looked up at her, understanding most of the words she'd spoken. But when he looked into her eyes, whatever words he did not quite understand were easily translated when she glanced into the steaming water and smiled.

"No, nothing more," Tabor replied, wishing now that he'd paid as much attention to learning Tanaka's language as she had to learning his.

He leaned his head back against the edge of the bath, closing his eyes. A moment later gentle hands carefully lifted his head, then lowered it back down again upon a pillow.

"That should be more comfortable," a rich, feminine voice said.

Tabor opened his eyes, looking straight up at a woman he had not seen before. His first reaction was one of anger, though no one would be aware of this, since his expression did not change at all. It infuriated him that someone had entered the room without his hearing her.

She smiled down at him. The servants who had been assigned by the pharaoh to stay with Tabor were moving quickly from the room.

"I don't think you'll need those young girls any longer . . . now that I'm here." She knelt near Tabor's elbow, taking the goblet from his hand. There was amusement in her eyes as she sipped the brew, eying him over the golden rim. "A woman is not supposed to drink spirits. But then, a woman is not to be taught any thing other than how to care for a man. I am not a usual woman. I have been taught many things." She smiled wickedly. "Some more interesting than others."

Tabor could not keep the smile from his lips. He understood every word she'd spoken, and now realized that he had the most trouble with the native language when it was spoken by someone who had not been given a formal education as Tanaka and this woman obviously had.

This siren who'd entered his quarters was past thirty, he guessed, was exceptionally attractive, and carried herself with a confident poise that was both shocking and stimulating. There was an openness to her sensuality that far exceeded that of the servants who'd been all but throwing themselves at Tabor since he'd been left alone with them, but the openness was tempered and heightened by her lack of haste. It was as though this strange, enigmatic woman had made a decision that affected Tabor greatly and had confidence that her plans wouldn't fail.

"You are — ?" Tabor asked, quite suddenly wondering what she would think of him as he struggled to pronounce the words as Tanaka had taught him.

"Lysetta." With the back of her hand, she wiped water from Tabor's shoulder. "I live in the palace."

"Are you a high priestess, like Tanaka?"

Lysetta's eyes hardened for a second at the sound of the name, but they softened just as quickly. "No. A pharaoh has but one high priest or priestess. I live in the palace, that is all."

"Then you do nothing?"

She understood that Tabor did not intend insult with his choice of words in the foreign tongue. "I do everything" she corrected, a sultry purr to her tone as she began connecting drops of water on Tabor's thickly muscled shoulder. "I always have."

Watching her hand moving along Tabor's right biceps, Lysetta could not help but think that he must surely be the strongest man in the world. There was a devilish, evil quality to Kahlid that Lysetta had always found fascinating and exciting; Tabor had a raw, animal magnetism. It drew her to him. Even if she had no ulterior motives for seducing Tabor, she would have wanted him in her bed. On a purely physical level, she had never seen such a man, and her active and erotic imagination was already conjuring up scenarios of the pleasure that would be hers to revel in while he labored above her, giving himself to her for her pleasure.

"If you would like to come out of the water, I can show you what . . . everything involves," Lysetta said softly, her gaze locking his with challenge and promise. "Or, if you prefer, I will enter the water with you."

Her gaze shifted from Tabor to the soapy water. She wished that the soap hadn't been lathered so thickly, making it impossible for her to see deeper into the water. An explicit mental image of Tabor flashed in her brain, and she shivered with imaginary satisfaction.

Several seconds passed and neither one said a word. Tabor looked at Lysetta. He wanted her. Though she was a decade older than the nubile, naked servants who had crowded his chambers earlier, she represented a much greater threat to his willpower and to the promise he had given Tanaka.

"I'll take no answer at all to mean yes," Lysetta said with the simple, self-serving logic which had served her well all her life.

Tabor slipped away from the edge of the bath, moving to the center, knowing he should tell this seductress that she must leave, knowing, too, that he was curious to see how far she would go and that he wanted her to stay ... at least until he had a look at what she was offering. Looking isn't the same as touching, he told himself, and thinking isn't the same as acting.

She stood slowly, her dark eyes pleased. The garment she wore, a shimmering silk robe dyed the color of rubies and emerald, signified her wealth and station. Her education and bearing told Tabor that Lysetta was a force within the palace, even if she did "nothing" and "everything" at the same time.

Lysetta loosened the small knot at her left shoulder. Her robe fell to the sash at the curve of her hips. Her breasts were rich, lush mounds that gripped Tabor with invisible tentacles, though his connoisseur's eyes told him that her breasts were neither as high, nor as round and firm, as Tanaka's.

"You needn't go any further than that!" Tanaka snapped, striding angrily into the room in a flurry of white silk robes that fluttered about her legs like the wings of some angry dove. "No answer does not necessarily mean yes with every man in this palace."

Tanaka stood at the edge of the bath, more furious than she could ever remember being, wishing more than anything else in the world that she could be as calm and aloof as she had been when she noticed Tabor's eyes straying toward the servants.

"Hello, Tanaka," Lysetta said quietly. She intentionally avoided using Tanaka's tide. She made no effort to hide her breasts. "I didn't expect to see you here."

"Obviously," Tanaka shot back. She glanced down at Tabor, who was now leaning back against the opposite side of the bath, the gold, beer-filled goblet still in his hand. He looked like he was anticipating a sporting event, and Tanaka's anger flared even hotter.

Turning away from the high priestess, Lysetta gave Tabor one final look at her breasts before readjusting her robe. "Perhaps we can speak more later," she said to Tabor. "Sooner or later, Tanaka won't be around to disturb us, and then we can get to know each other much better."

"Get out of here." Tanaka pointed a trembling finger at the doorway.

Lysetta walked from the room, her head held high. She had flustered Tanaka, which was a significant accomplishment; and she had learned that, no matter what Tanaka said to the contrary, she harbored powerful emotions for the tall barbarian from across the seas. It would be doubly sweet, Lysetta thought, to seduce Tabor, injure Tanaka in the process, and watch the high priestess fall from grace.

As she made her way down the hall, ignoring the frightened faces of the palace servants she passed, Lysetta smiled confidently, feeling superior because she knew that unlike Tanaka, she had no emotions, no love, and no remorse, to get in the way of her plans for the future.

❧

The depths of the hurt that Tanaka felt could not be exaggerated. She had hoped so much that her return to Tabor's quarters would be joyous. She had wanted to please him, but instead had found him ogling Lysetta, a serpent of a woman.

And —worst of all —Tabor had enjoyed the argument she'd had with Lysetta. A smugness in his expression told her he would enjoy seeing who was the victor in this fight for his attention.

"You are mistaken," Tabor said, still leaning against the wall of the bath.

"I know what I saw. My eyes do not deceive me."

"It is not what you saw that deceives you. It is what you think."

Tanaka didn't want to ask another question. Tabor was too smooth with his words, even in a foreign tongue, too quick with explanations that made sense at the time they were given, for her to want to ask. But, as so often was the case when she was near Tabor, she did what she promised herself she would not do.

"How does my thinking deceive me?"

"You think that I would have taken her into my arms, into my bed. That is how you are deceived. She showed herself to me. I did not turn my eyes away, just as I did not turn my eyes away from the young servants who were in my quarters." Tabor paused to sip his beer, but he did not take his gaze away from Tanaka's, holding her in place through the sheer, immutable force of his will. "If I told you that I do not enjoy looking at pretty women, I would lie, and you would know it to be a lie, since you are a pretty woman . . . the most beautiful of all." He smiled then, showing even white teeth and an easy, facile charm, the charm of a man who had soothed the battered egos of many women who were angry with him for showing attention to others. "And since you are the prettiest of all, I enjoy looking at you most of all."

"Do not trick me," Tanaka said, her voice a tangled whisper of confusion and conflict.

A moment earlier she had been furious with Tabor for having destroyed the entrance into his chambers that she had wanted to make. She had imagined the look of pleasure that would be in his eyes when he saw her in the sartorial finery of high priestess. Now, despite his enormously inappropriate conduct with a woman Tanaka loathed, she was unable to maintain the grasp she'd had on her fury.

"After all we have been through, Tanaka, and still you accuse me of trickery. What have I done to make you so distrustful?"

"You were looking at her."

"And that surprises you?"

"No."

"Then why this anger?"

Tanaka huffed with indignation. Why had she ever thought that this man—this maurading Viking barbarian — was capable of feeling? It infuriated her that he wasn't apologetic. In fact was behaving as though she were the one acting inappropriately.

"I expected you to look at a serpent like Lysetta," Tanaka said at length. "I had hoped, however, that you wouldn't." She cast Tabor a withering, condescending look. "Obviously, I was hoping for more than you are capable of."

It was not a taunt that Tabor could let pass. He set the gold goblet upon the edge of the bath and began to rise, and Tanaka immediately took a step away from him.

"What are you doing?"

"You question what I am capable of," he explained calmly, moving toward Tanaka's side of the tub, his lower body still hidden beneath the soap bubbles. "I intend to show you."

"No, you won't."

"Yes, I will."

"I don't want you to."

Tanaka turned her back to Tabor when he placed his hands on the edge of the bath, about to lift himself out. She had seen him before, of course —many times. But she did not want to look at him now because she was angry with him and she wanted to continue being angry with him. If she gave him half a chance, or loosened the feverish hold she had on her anger even the slightest, or let her body do her thinking for her, then she would forget about the anger that justifiably bloomed in her breast.

She heard the splash of water as he lifted himself from the bath, then the splatter of drops upon the smooth stone floor.

"This isn't what I wanted," Tanaka whispered.

There was something in the tone of her voice that stopped Tabor. Rather than placing his wet hands upon her shoulders to push aside the silk gown she wore, he picked up a large, square cloth that had been laid out by the servants for him to dry himself with. He wiped his hands dry, then carefully pushed her ebony hair away from the base of her neck before kissing her there.

"What did you want? Tell me, and I will make it so," he said, momentarily forgetting that he was in Egypt and that she was the one who had the power to change the surroundings, not he.

"I wanted . . ." Tanaka began, then her words died away.

It was futile, she told herself, to try to explain anything to Tabor. He understood fighting and warfare, it was true, and he understood how to give a woman pleasure when he touched her. He knew how to make a woman feel as though she alone held the secrets to truth and beauty within her honorable soul. But what Tabor was utterly and completely incapable of understanding was that there were times when a woman was not confident in herself. A lack of confidence was as foreign to Tabor as the land he now stood upon.

"What did you want?" Tabor asked, his tone deep, husky, his breath warm against the back of Tanaka's neck.

"I wanted to make this special for you," Tanaka continued, disappointed that she had to put to words her wishes. She'd much rather Tabor simply, magically, understand. "Special for both of us. I feel. ... I feel pretty. I finally feel —after so long —like I want to feel, Tabor."

"For the first time since you were captured," Tabor said, wondering if it would even be right for him to remind Tanaka of that episode in her life.

"Yes."

"I have told you many times that you are beautiful."

Tanaka turned slowly, but she made a point of keeping her eyes upward so that she wouldn't be too greatly affected by Tabor's nudity. She looked into his eyes, once again aware of how enormously different they were.

"Your telling me that I am beautiful is not the same as my believing that I am beautiful, feeling that I am beautiful . . . feeling it in my heart."

"Now I understand," Tabor said.

But Tanaka was not so sure. Tabor was a man of rough edges and lethally-honed fighting skills. Could he truly understand the tender feelings within a woman's heart? Was he capable of even feeling tender emotions . . . emotions like love?

She pushed his hands from her arms, turning her back to him once again, taking several steps away. Why did it always have to be so difficult whenever she was with Tabor? Why was she always riddled with questions whenever she looked into his eyes?

"You worry that you are not beautiful, and that is not surprising," Tabor said.

Tanaka made a bitter, derisive sound. "Thanks. That makes me feel much better." The Viking was incapable of sensitivity!

"You suffer the same as beautiful women in many lands," Tabor continued, moving closer, looking at Tanaka in the exquisite silk robe, wondering what the look in her eyes would be like when he removed the robe from her and proved to her how greatly her beauty and spirit affected him. "You worry about your beauty. You don't believe that you are beautiful. It is only beautiful women who do not know they are beautiful. The women who believe beyond question that men cannot resist them. . . . they are the women who are unattractive, both to the eye —and to the soul —of a Viking warrior."

Sensation fluttered to life within Tanaka. What Tabor said touched her deeply, at the core of her being where secret fears lived. All her life she had been praised for her sense of spirituality and for her appearance, but Tabor's words—even with his thick accent that sometimes made his Egyptian difficult to understand —were the most precious ones ever spoken to her.

"Turn. . . . turn and face me," Tabor said, his voice a passion-husky whisper. "Let me look once again at a goddess."

"I am a priestess, not a goddess," Tanaka corrected.

"You are my goddess."

Tanaka turned slowly, already reaching for the knotted sash at her hip.