BUSINESS
Summary: The wife of the curator of the British Museum meets Med-Jai warrior Ardeth Bay. Ardeth, OC.
Category: Angst, drama, romance.
Rating: M
Author's note: Any feedback will be treasured for the rest of my life, and keep me going.
Chapter Twelve
She did not see him for a three days after their meeting in the souk, and the hours passed in a haze of books and plastic soldiers, and she realized that she was marking time by the presence or absence of Ardeth Bay, and that she had been doing it all along, since the first encounter.
So when she saw him again in the courtyard at dusk, standing at the opposite end of the fountain and conversing with an indigo-clad Tuareg, she closed the history book she had been reading and rose from Alfred's side.
He glanced up at her from his soldiers' game with Charlie. "Are you going in? It's cooler out here."
"The light's failing, darling," she responded, and walked into the lobby, past the porters and the English guests, past the guards preoccupied with the latest strings of gossip, until she ducked into an annex and descended into the cellar.
She waited, sitting on her book in the far corner of the room, for him to arrive.
He did.
The door opened, and closed, and she heard the click of the lock being turned. It was as dark as pitch, but she suddenly sensed his warmth at her side. He was sitting beside her but did not touch her; he only said: "So."
"That time, Ardeth, when you disappeared for weeks. Were you really in Alexandria, fighting the Belgians like my husband said? Or was it because of me?"
"Mrs. Harrington, do you also think that Mark Antony sailed to Egypt because of you?" he countered, but his tone carried no trace of anger. "Believe what makes you satisfied."
"I believe that you were squirreled away in your tent in the desert, pulling out your hair in la douleur d'amour."
The cloth of his clothing rustled, and then she felt the roughness of his hand enclosing hers, and he guided her fingertips through the collar of his tunic until she was touching the hot skin of his shoulder.
She felt the hard, textured contours of a thick scab, an inch in diameter, standing starkly against the curve of his collarbone.
"I was in Alexandria," he said.
He removed her hand.
"Does it hurt?"
"No."
She nudged him with her elbow. "You arrogant bastard. Of course it does. You were shot. The pain probably wakes you up at night."
"Perhaps."
"Did it hurt you when we were together in that alley?" she said, and he did not reply.
She said: "Do you feel guilty, knowing that you broke the contract because of me, and not because of your loyalties to your tribe?"
"There was no contract."
"You allowed my husband to keep the artifacts because you wanted me gone. You wanted this whole situation to end so I could return to England, out of your sight. Now you're breaking the contract because you want me to—"
"There was no contract," he repeated. She detected the suppressed tension in his voice. "The decision was made jointly by me and my brethren."
"You fancy me," she declared, "but you're going to say that you fucked me out of pity, because you saw my husband slug me in the jaw."
She heard the sharp intake of his breath, and sat waiting in the silence that followed. Then: "Who taught you to speak like this, Mrs. Harrington?"
"For God's sake, can you call me Marjorie?"
"No."
"You've already put yourself inside of me and yet you can't call me Marjorie?"
"Correct."
"Can you call me habibi, or desert rose, or your little pumpkin?"
"I could, if I needed to be cruel."
"Do you think that if you don't talk about it, then everything will resolve itself? Do you think that as long as you call me Mrs. Harrington, this entire thing wouldn't exist?"
"Mrs. Harrington, if you insist that I call you pumpkin, then I will gladly call you pumpkin."
"Go to hell, Ardeth." The anger that surged into her made her bold, and she fumbled for him in the darkness. This time, the belt yielded with a sharp jerk, and she snaked her hand inside and grasped him. "Why are you here?"
His breath hitched; he had hardened almost instantaneously with her touch, and now she softly explored the velvety warm length of him, from the nest of coarse, wiry hair to the delicate tip, which was moist with the drops of his arousal.
"Is this why you're here?"
He whispered words she couldn't understand.
Still bold, she nestled her body into him like a young thing, and he said, "Stop," and she expected that the arm he curled around her was to pull her away, but he merely left her there with her head nestled the space between his chest and his chin, and the arm remained wrapped around her shoulders. Not holding her. Just there.
She teased him with feather-light, infuriatingly slow strokes – brushing him rather than holding him – and she felt his frustration rippling tensely through his body.
He bucked his hips.
"Call me Marjorie," she said.
"No."
"It will be like this until you call me Marjorie."
"I can finish the task myself. I can go to the women in the streets."
"Then do it. Leave right now."
He remained still.
"You're here because you fancy me," she said, running a fingertip along the hill of a blood vessel. "You hate this but you fancy me."
"You have the soul of a scorpion, Marjorie." And he took her hand and brought it to her side.
He shifted his weight onto her, and laid her onto the concrete floor. She felt him lowering himself beside her. He propped his elbow upon the floor and rested his head in his palm, and with his other hand he traced her leg to dip into the slickness of her center.
And despite herself she cried out at the coarseness of his touch – so entirely different from her own delicate hand, and Alfred's – and he moved against her, gliding across the hard nub between the folds of her skin. And she felt her orgasm building under his slow rhythm, and she reached to take him back into her hands, and they moved closer, and then they were connected once more.
She was shuddering in her climax before he had slid entirely within her; he thrust into her, once, twice, and she felt the abrupt pressure of his release.
"Don't," she said when he began to pull himself away. "Not now."
They lay on their sides, her head atop his arm.
"I heard a rumor about you the other day," she said. "Alfred tells me that a woman by the name of Elaine Thurston fancies you."
"I do not know her."
"She knows you because she saw you several times at this hotel. She's twenty-five, and she married an old English professor in Cairo out of convenience. Every night she dreams of you inside of her, like this. She looks like Ophelia in the painting by Millais. Do you know the one?"
"No."
"She's extraordinarily beautiful. She's ten years younger than me, and she wants you. Should I be worried for my sake? Ardeth?"
She felt him trembling, and for a moment she wondered if he was cold against the concrete, but then she stroked the contours of his face and realized that he was shaking because he was laughing.
TO BE CONTINUED…