his, and settled down by his side, resting her head on his shoulder. ‘How is your own training progressing?’
He laughed sardonically. ‘Painfully. The running changeovers from horse to horse are the most technically difficult element. I seem to spend the greater part of the day sprawled on the ground.’
‘Poor Rafiq. Are you terribly bruised?’
‘Very.’ Her hair tickled his chin. He slid his arm around her waist.
She lifted her head. ‘Would you like me to kiss it better?’
‘Yes.’ He gazed into her big brown eyes. ‘Oh, yes.’
She kissed him gently on the lips. ‘Where is it painful, Rafiq?’
‘Here,’ he said, kissing her again, more deeply. ‘Definitely here.’ She tasted so sweet. He could drown in her kisses. He had been longing for those kisses all week. He ran his fingers through her hair, kissing her eyelids, her salty, tear-stained cheeks, then her mouth again, laying her gently down on the cushions, kissing her again and again. ‘I can never have enough of your kisses,’ he murmured. ‘Never.’
Her fingers were tangling in his hair. ‘Where else, Rafiq? Where else do you hurt?’
‘Here,’ he said, pulling his tunic over his head to bare the bruises on his chest, pulling Stephanie on top of him.
‘Oh, poor you.’ She kissed him softly, her hands fluttering over the purple-and-yellow bruises. ‘Poor you.’ More kisses. Her tongue licking over his nipple. His chest was heaving. He was achingly hard. Her touch was soothing and arousing at the same time. More kisses, tracing the curve of his ribcage. Her tongue dipping into his navel. She was setting him on fire. ‘Better?’
‘Not yet.’ He pulled her tunic over her head. Beneath the filmy fabric of her camisole, her nipples were alluring circles. He stroked them, feeling her shudder on top of him. When their lips met again, their kisses were deep, slow, drugging.
On and on and on their kisses went. She was lying on her side. He untied the sash of her pantaloons and slipped his hand inside her. She moaned. He ached for her. When she fumbled with his belt, he yanked it open. Pantaloons and trousers were discarded.
‘I want you so much. So much.’ Was that his voice?
More kisses. She was so hot and wet and tight. More kisses. ‘I want you more than words,’ she said in that husky voice that gave him goose bumps.
He lifted her to straddle him. He slid into her so sweetly that he thought he would come instantly. ‘Wait. Wait.’ Deep breaths. But the sight of her on top of him was too much. ‘Stephanie.’
He pushed himself deeper inside her wet, tight, heat. She moaned. He lifted her. She needed little encouragement. Moving on top of him. The frisson of her clinging withdrawal, the tightening when she sank on to him, drawing him inside her, arching her back, making him gasp at what it did to him.
She rode him, faster, held him tighter, until the first ripple of her climax set him over the edge, and with a hoarse cry he lifted her free just in time, and spent himself, pulsing, shuddering, shaken.
Afterwards, he reached for her blindly, pulling her close. He could feel her breathing slowing with his own. Only then did he realise how near he had been to losing control completely. What was he doing? What was he thinking?
Rafiq rolled himself free. He picked up his tunic and pulled it over his head. He couldn’t look at her. He couldn’t risk looking at her. ‘I’d better get out to the training grounds,’ he said more brusquely than he meant.
‘Yes, of course.’ He could hear the rustle of her clothing as she dressed.
‘Rafiq?’
He turned reluctantly.
‘Thank you,’ Stephanie said. ‘For trusting me. For taking my side again.’
Her lips were swollen with their kisses. He curled his toes inside his riding boots, as if that would stop him crossing the courtyard to wrap her in his arms. ‘Jasim gave me no option,’ he said.
Her smile became brittle. ‘Go and practise, you have a race to win.’
* * *
Stephanie tried to go about her business. She thanked Fadil for his courage and support, and discovered to her surprise that with a few notable exceptions, the stable hands were actually relieved by Jasim’s dismissal. Their trust in Rafiq’s ability to win the Sabr for them with or without Jasim was unquestioning.
She was restless. Her emotions were simmering just below the surface, waiting to erupt. She kept a lid on them by keeping busy. She had no right to be upset by Rafiq’s abrupt departure. She would be a fool to read too much into their lovemaking. Simply because it hadn’t been planned, because there had been no pretence that this was another experiment in pleasure, did not mean that it was profoundly different.
Unable to find anything in the stable to occupy her, she wandered through the cool of the palace in the heat of the afternoon, using the map which Rafiq had had drawn up for her. So many rooms, some guarded, others not. So many confusingly similar names. The Courtyard of the Princes, for example, which was a simple space containing a plain fountain and nothing else. The Princes’ Courtyard, on the other hand, was like the harem, an enclosed suite of rooms which, Aida informed her, had in the distant past been the domain of the unfortunate sons of the reigning Prince’s concubines. Here, the poor boys were confined for the duration of their lives, for it was thought too dangerous to allow them to leave the palace, lest they attempt to usurp their father. So legend had it, Aida had said.
Though she tried to hide it, Aida resented the removal of the harem’s lock and sentry. In Princess Elmira’s day, it would have been unthinkable to expose the future mother of the royal family to the risk of intruders. When Stephanie pointed out that any intruder would first have to pass through the fortress-like walls of the palace, Aida stubbornly refused to accept that it made any difference. The harem was a secure place. She never could understand why Princess Elmira wished to spent so much time at the stables. Though towards the end, the Princess had embraced the sanctuary of the harem as a princess ought.
Stephanie pushed open the door of what, according to her plan, was the Royal Banqueting Hall, only to find herself in yet another courtyard. This one looked abandoned. The water in the fountain was foul and stagnant. Weeds grew up through the cracks in the mosaic floor. The avocado tree had grown so tall that it reached over the courtyard wall. Withered green fruit and brown pits were strewn around its circumference.
Elmira, the Bedouin nomad, had learned to love the harem, according to Aida. Stephanie wasn’t convinced. She had heard some of the mystique of the Bedouin for herself at the horse fair. They considered themselves the aristocracy of the desert. Like Rafiq’s horses, the ancestry of each tribe could be traced back to a single person. As Rafiq had told her, they had a strict and unique code of conduct, and they prided themselves on being answerable to no one, though willing to co-operate with all, on their own terms. The desert was the Bedouin’s heart and soul, freedom to roam the desert defined him. Elmira was a true blue-blooded Bedouin. How could such a woman readily endure the confines of the harem?
Stephanie perched gingerly on the edge of the mossy fountain. The surface of the fetid water was alive with strange little swimming insects.
‘She paid the price
