Salvation

"Leave me"

Outside the hardy creatures of the desert had been invited out by the moon to engage in their nightly frenzy of scuttling, crawling and singing for a mate, in the few short hours of grace before the ferocious heat would send them back seeking earth and wet and cool. She might have heard them if she had been listening in the darkness of her rooms, the only glow from candles flickering in the incense soaked breeze, but instead her mind wrestled between hope and fear. She had slipped down into jasmine laced water and let it relieve her of the dust that seemed to find every pore. She had allowed and welcomed the soft gentle hands that dried her, polished her, and scented her skin with the oils of persuasion and hope while she sunk deeper still into sex drowsy memories of sun baked Ibelin and his bed. Now with henna patterned fingers she drew with kohl around her eyes.

He had smiled at her and loved her with an intensity she could hardly bear to look upon. Surely he could not now refuse her, refuse her brother, refuse a king? She would stand before him naked in Queenly robes, layers of State and formality that barely covered her raw exposed need for him. Her hands struggled with their duty, preferring to remember the smooth hard of his body, tracing over his back and his belly and down to where he wanted her most. If she shut her eyes she could still hear him moan, feel him move to cover her.

The clatter and murmur behind carved wood screens broke his spell and hers. Balian, Baron of Ibelin, would not do the Kings bidding and she felt the ground fall from her feet. The horse was ready, trusted servants averted their eyes from her as she swung her leg over the exquisite saddle to race to the palace in a flurry of hard night hash breath and veils.

His love warmed soul leapt from his heart and into his mouth as her horse panted into the courtyard "Sibylla". The scent of her reached him first as she crossed the arch bounded square, musk and desert flowers that would have him fall again, but it was her stained mouth that demanded "Who are you to refuse a king?" She was too close now, her lips and her fingers on his skin pleading and offering the world, enclosing him in silk caresses and asking him another question. His body strained to answer, to pull her to him, to taste her mouth and her sex again, to find its salvation in her kisses.

And was his soul not already damned? Destined to writhe in hell for eternity with his wife? Her sad death was no match for one blackened by illegitimacy, murder, adultery and doubt. Jerusalem had need of a perfect knight still.

He could feel her breath on his face, the quickening of his blood through veins, the swell of his body seeking hers and he closed his eyes to deny them both "May God forgive me…No"