Viking Ecstasy (23 page)

❧

Tabor found Tanaka in a room filled with stacked piles of papyrus and small desks with backless three-legged chairs. Two men were with her, and Tabor was pleased that they were old men. When he entered the room, the scribes squinted to focus on him.

"Tabor?"

It was a simple question, and Tanaka's furrowed brows told him that she wasn't overly displeased to see him, but she wasn't altogether pleased, either.

"I must speak with you."

Tanaka looked at him, then down at her desk, which was scattered with papyrus. The thumb and first two fingers of her right hand were stained with pigmentation. Tanaka set her brush down carefully upon its holder, then opened and closed her hand several times in quick succession. She had been writing for some time, and the muscles in her forearm were cramping up.

"This really isn't the best time," she said.

Her eyes danced right and left to the men flanking her, silently indicating to Tabor that he must not say anything too intimate in front of them. Tabor wondered how boorish she thought he was, but he tamped his anger. It was not the Viking way to show powerful emotions, especially not in front of strangers.

"It is important," he continued, spreading his feet just a little wider apart, putting his hand on his hips. "I wish to speak to you privately."

Tanaka sighed wearily, then rubbed her eyes. She rose from her chair and spoke to her companions. The two scribes toddled out of the room on shuffling feet, their backs hunched from hours of work, their eyes red-rimmed with strain.

"How are you?" Tanaka asked when she was alone in the library with Tabor,

"Concerned. I believe there are people in this palace who mean you harm."

Tanaka moved closer to Tabor. She wanted him to kiss her. It didn't have to be the soul-searing kisses he was capable of, just a light one on the mouth or even on the cheek. She wanted a show of affection from him — something she hadn't gotten much of in the past week. It was thoughts of his kisses that prevented his words from registering immediately in her mind.

"What do you mean?" she asked finally, leaning back against the desk.

"I think you have enemies among your people."

"And how do you know this."

"I can feel it here," Tabor explained, touching his stomach. "People mean to do you harm."

It did not entirely surprise Tanaka. She had lived in the palace most of her life, and she would have needed to be completely blind to not know that all people in positions of power and influence had enemies. But she also knew that she was Pharaoh Moamin Abbakka's spiritual leader and personal friend. Anyone plotting against her would soon find himself at the public execution block. The pharaoh was protective of her, and it was Tanaka's awareness of this that kept her from worrying too much about the politics —and dangers —of her position as high priestess.

"There are enemies within the palace walls, I grant you," Tanaka said, smiling, touched by Tabor's concern. "Your intuition is correct, but I think you will find the anger and animosity is not directed toward me."

Looking down at Tanaka, Tabor felt a rush of emotion for her. He saw at last the strain of fatigue pulling at her soft features. She was unconsciously flexing her right hand and rubbing one forearm with the opposite hand.

"Perhaps . . . perhaps my feelings are not accurate," Tabor equivocated.

He normally saw his world as black and white, right and wrong, in absolutes that either were or were not. This change in him, this gray area of doubt, had never existed until Tanaka entered his life.

Tanaka took his hands in her own. "It is the Viking in you. You see treachery everywhere. You needn't worry I am very powerful here, and Ingmar is far away."

"No one is too powerful for treachery. And though I have fled from Ingmar, in the spring I will return to my waters, and Ingmar will pay with his life for what he has done."

"Would it be so bad to stay here . . . here with me?" Her hands went up to his chest. "Forget about Ingmar. I have."

It was not true. Sometimes, at night, Ingmar the Savage's face still flashed in her mind, jarring her awake, her body bathed in sweat, her heart pounding in her chest. She had not forgotten anything about Ingmar or her hideous ordeal. But the nightmares were becoming less frequent, their severity diminishing.

Tabor shook his head. "It is a matter of honor."

"Forget about honor. Stop thinking like a Viking."

With a wave of his hand, Tabor knocked Tanaka's hands from his chest, glaring at her. "Forget about honor? Stop thinking like a Viking? What makes you so superior, high priestess? You would do well to think of honor!"

Tanaka gasped. "Are you saying I am without honor?"

It was the worst thing anyone had ever said to her, and Tabor was the last person from whom she expected such angry words. Not even Ingmar the Savage had accused her of being without honor.

"I can be nothing other than the man I am, and the man I am is a Viking man."

In his eyes Tanaka read disrespect, and she was hurt, then angered. She was High Priestess Tanaka, she had lived through the hideous days and nights as Ingmar's captive; and now that she was home in her palace, no one was going to be condescending and disrespectful to her ever again.

"Be a Viking if you want to, but don't assume that my people are like Vikings! In this palace, we don't talk of peace, then kill by ambush! That's more than you can say about your precious, honorable Viking traditions."

Tabor did not respond. He turned on his heel and left the library, pushing the elderly scribes aside and nearly knocking them over when they inadvertently blocked his path.

Whether Tanaka believed him or not, Tabor sensed that there was mortal danger in the palace; and he would protect her, whether she wanted him to or not. Her naivete was something he could not fight, just as his intuition was something he had to heed. She had to look so weary in the library. He had wanted to comfort her, to rub her shoulders gently to ease the knotted muscles, and later, when she relaxed, to show her the ecstasy that even an exhausted body could feel.

But instead, she had let him know beyond all doubt that she saw him as an inferior form of humanity. Treachery, Tanaka believed, was something only Vikings were capable of. Ha!

When Tabor was at last outside the palace and able once again to breathe fresh air, he smelled the ocean on the breeze and headed toward the water. He followed his instincts, pulled by invisible forces of nature that gave him comfort and solace.

❧

Yasir rolled away, breathing deeply, and placed a forearm on his forehead. His body glistened with the sweat of sexual exertion. He felt drained, exhausted, simultaneously powerful and weak because of the woman beside him.

She was Lysetta, and she was the most beautiful woman he'd ever slept with. She was also the mistress of Kahlid, and if the priest ever found out about this tryst, he'd surely have Yasir killed.

Perhaps that was part of what Yasir found so exciting about Lysetta. She was dangerous, and that aura of spontaneous pleasure and sudden death made the blood flow hot in his veins.

He had been in the village square, idling away his time, when a small man approached him, asking if he was Yasir, the mercenary. Instinctively, Yasir drew his dagger, but the little man merely smiled and said that there was someone very rich and very powerful who wished to speak with him. Yasir at first refused to follow the little man through the winding, crowded streets of the village, fearing attack. But curiosity and the need for money forced him to put aside his caution.

She was waiting for him behind the wine merchant's shop, wearing a veil that concealed her identity. Yasir refused to speak unless she removed the veil. She did him one move better. She opened her robes to show her body, keeping on only the veil. Lush and inviting, her body promised extraordinary pleasure, and the look in her dark eyes just above the black veil that covered her face said she was the kind of woman who enjoyed such things.

Yasir ordered the little man to turn his back, and then he took the woman right there behind the wine merchant's shop, pressing her down into the dirty alley to have his way, not really caring that he couldn't see her face.

He reached his summit quickly, and he'd hardly gotten to his feet when she was up as well, readjusting her fine linen robes as though nothing had happened between them at all.

And then she began talking about murder, political assassination, and how Yasir had come well recommended. When she removed the veil, her smile was wicked and exciting and spoke of death.

The alley was not well traveled, but Yasir wanted to get Lysetta away from prying eyes. He was surprised when she quickly agreed to go with him to his abode.

Yasir had wanted her again when they reached his small stone hut, but Lysetta had refused him. She wanted to talk more, and since Yasir knew that she was refusing his sexual advances so that he had to listen to her, he didn't mind.

She mentioned no names and gave no specifics. Would Yasir be willing to assassinate several people in the near future? How great was his need for money? Had he killed anyone for money other than the three that Lysetta had learned about? Did he have loyalties to anyone? Had he ever killed a woman before?

Satisfied with Yasir's answers, Lysetta satisfied his body once again.

"You were good," she said, pulling her knees beneath her and crossing them. He hadn't been satisfying at all, but satisfaction wasn't what she'd sought in Yasir's bed. She pushed her fingers through her luxurious hair, smoothing the satiny tresses back, unmindful of her own nudity. "That impresses me," she purred.

Yasir moved his arm to look up at her. He smiled, gratified.

"There's something that I want you to do," Lysetta began.

"You want me to kill someone," Yasir cut in. "That's what people pay me to do." It was a flat statement of fact, as though his profession were no different from that of the village carpenter or the wine merchant or the fishmonger.

"Someone special."

"It'll cost you more." Some people were harder to kill than others. Difficulties cost money. It never occurred to Yasir that there might be anyone who could not be assassinated or someone who should be left alone.

"You will be superbly rewarded," Lysetta said with another sultry purr. "In many, many ways." She leaned over, kissed Yasir's naked, sweaty chest, then sat up again. "I want you to kill the high priestess. After that, there are more people who must die."

The high priestess? Yasir had killed a woman before—a wife who had become troublesome to a husband who had tired of her —but never a spiritual leader. Only briefly he wondered if his soul would have to pay a price for killing a high priestess.

"I don't care how you kill her, and I don't want you to do the deed immediately," Lysetta continued when she saw no negative reaction from Yasir.

"Good. I like to have a plan."

Never before had he killed anyone of such power and influence, and the truth was he had never before needed more than a few minutes to plan a killing and his subsequent escape. When he had killed the moneylender's wife, he simply covered his face with a hood, slashed her throat with a dagger, and darted away, disappearing into the crowd. All his assassinations had been handled in similar fashion, but there were too many bodyguards surrounding the high priestess for such a simple method to be successful. The assassination would be even more difficult because Pharaoh Moamin Abbakka was worried that Tanaka would once again be kidnapped by barbarians, so the guards were on constant vigil.

"Have you heard of the foreigner who returned Tanaka to Egypt?"

Yasir nodded. He'd heard the man was a giant with golden hair and that all women found him extremely attractive. This surprised Yasir, since he'd never believed that any woman thought any man was attractive.

"I'll want him killed, too. His name is Tabor. He's a dangerous man."

And you're a dangerous woman,
Yasir thought.

"But you mustn't kill either of them until I tell you," she said, thinking that it would be a crime to kill Tabor before she'd sampled the sensuality that he exuded.

"Or before you pay me," Yasir added. His senses were dulled slightly by sexual satiation, but not so completely that he was willing to murder without due reward.

Lysetta smiled at Yasir and nodded slowly. He was a repulsive, ugly man with thick lips unsuitable for kisses. It was uncomfortable to spread her legs for him, but nothing worse than that. Once his usefulness to her was over, he'd never touch her again; and she would hire another assassin to assassinate him.

But as long as she had found a killer to do her bidding, she was going to make the most of it.

"There could be others . . ." she said, letting the sentence trail off.

"If you have the money, then you have the services of my dagger." Yasir placed his hand on Lysetta's naked thigh. He might want her again, and he sensed that as the number of people she wanted murdered continued to climb, the more she would need him. He liked being needed by someone like Lysetta.

"If, perhaps, I could arrange it so that you have a private meeting with the pharaoh, would your dagger cut his throat as easily as that of a common man's?" She saw his eyes widen at mention of the pharaoh's name. She bent over to kiss his chest again. Her tongue quickly circled his nipple, and she was thankful that he couldn't see her grimace at the unwashed taste of his flesh. "And what about Kahlid? Can you kill a priest as well as a high priestess?"

Again, she felt Yasir flinch, but Lysetta was not concerned. She had the ugly little assassin under her spell, and she was certain that he would do anything she wanted.

Yasir felt her lips and tongue working on his flesh, and he closed his eyes. Killing a pharaoh was bad, he knew. Very bad for the afterlife. And what about killing Kahlid? He knew that she was Kahlid's mistress. She was dangerous — even more dangerous and deadly than he was —and even Yasir knew it. . . . but somehow that didn't really disturb him, especially not when she kissed him so intimately, purring words of praise, telling him how handsome he was, how virile, how lucky she was that he would allow her to touch him, kiss him. . . .

"Just tell me who you want killed," he heard himself whisper.

"I will. I will," she replied.