Must Have Been The Moonlight Read online

  Chlorodyne drops!

  Gracie and all of her medicines. The last thing she wanted to do was fall asleep. She flung back the covers and locked the door. She’d saved the clothes Michael had given her in the desert, and stepped into the tunic and trousers. Adjusting the turban on her head, she walked onto her balcony and looked at the fifteen-foot drop before leaning forward to pull herself onto the nearest tree limb.

  Michael heard the scrape of footsteps in the stone enclave above him. The moon was a white face in the sky and lay a patchwork of shadow and light up into the stairwell. Music and laughter drifted from the coffee shop down the street, nearly concealing the faint rasp on stonework as someone moved. He stepped into the shadows, his hand easing his revolver from the holster at his hip.

  A slim white figure appeared at the top of the stairs, and Brianna stepped into the moonlight. An oath on his lips, Michael relaxed his grip on the revolver. He could have shot her. And how the hell did she get to his quarters in the first place?

  “How long have you been here?”

  “What happened to you?”

  They’d both spoken at the same time.

  “I’ve been here since eleven o’clock.” Brianna watched him ascend. “I didn’t know if you would be here. I’d hoped that you were alone. I mean”—she stretched to look around him as he stopped on the stair below her—“I don’t know what it is you do at nights when you aren’t out roaming the vast wastelands saving people.”

  Her gaze dropped to the rag that wrapped his knuckles. She lifted her eyes in question. He’d not moved. Then he ascended the last step and stood before her. “I’m alone,” he said, and drew a key out of his pocket.

  Opening the door, Michael stood aside and waited for her to pass. She stepped past him, her gaze on his as she entered. Once inside, he removed his holster and walked through his bedroom, then to his office. He peered out the blinds at the lake, then turned to face the nemesis in his dreams.

  “You’ve been hurt,” she said.

  He looked down at his jacket hanging open, the buttons torn from their moorings, probably lost in the alley where he and his men had been ambushed that night. “I’ll be all right, Brianna.”

  “And you don’t wish to tell me about it?”

  He hadn’t moved, but he did so now as he set the gun on the desk. “I don’t mean to be evasive, but I’ve been at the infirmary for the last two hours. Two of my men are there. It really is the last topic I want to discuss at this moment.”

  “Did you know there are crocodiles in that lake?”

  He paused in the act of lighting the lamp. The tunic she wore molded to her slender body. “The lake is part of the Nile waterway.” Peering at her, he blew out the match. “It would be to my utmost relief if you told me that you didn’t swim the channel over here.”

  “I borrowed a boat and rowed across the lake. It isn’t far if one can take advantage of the current.” She shoved the ragged length of the turban over her shoulder. “Do you hurt?”

  A grin touched the corners of his mouth. It was the first hint of emotion he’d felt in the last two hours. “Not in the places that count.”

  Her left brow hitched. “That’s good to hear…Michael.” She looked around her, and in her typical feminine inquisitiveness, asked, “Have you ever had a woman in this apartment? Nevermind. Don’t answer.”

  He didn’t.

  She turned into the archway, and Michael watched her gaze go over his bedroom. There were no decorations on the walls, no memorabilia that revealed any other existence outside the one he’d lived for the past few years. Even that was limited to one ceremonial spear he’d brought back from the Sudan, given to him as a gift from a tribal chief. His eyes held to her profile before dipping lower. Her arms remained folded over her torso. She’d rolled the length of her baggy trousers, and looked like something ethereal out of A Thousand and One Nights.

  They were like night and day, shadow and light. Yet, in some abstract way, he thought her the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.

  “The place is nearly empty. You’ve started to pack, I suppose.”

  “Why are you here, Brianna?”

  When she turned back into the room, her blue eyes seemed to radiate into his. Lamplight wavered over her slight form, displacing the shadows. And Michael was suddenly unsure of the tenacity of his restraint, of his emotions. It seemed as if for too many years his life had been nothing but shadows and death. He’d lived in the wake of both for so long that he hardly recognized the force that drew him forward. He was wary of his current turmoil. Wary of a heart that he’d allowed to escape from his grasp. Most of all he was wary of himself.

  For more years than he could remember, he wanted to make love to a woman almost more than he wanted to breathe.

  “I’m sorry that I missed lunch this afternoon.” She approached until she stood in front of him. “Had you been more specific in your acceptance, I would have been less forgetful in my attendance.” Eyeing the revolver on the desk, she ran her finger over the rag on his hand. “Are you angry?”

  “Do you mean could I have accidentally shot you?” His eyes continued to burn into hers for another fraction before he placed the gun on a shelf above his head. “I didn’t.”

  “I’m relieved. I’ve been told that I have a habit of doing a thing,” her voice warmed with her eyes, “then asking afterward.”

  “That’s a very bad trait, Miss Donally.” He slipped his fingers beneath the cloth wound around her head and leaned toward her. “I happen to know firsthand that such a characteristic can get one removed from one’s post in Egypt.” His lips brushed hers, not quite a kiss. “What are you going to do if someone finds you here?”

  Brianna rose on the balls of her feet and, caught in that familiar miasmic aura that hovered around her senses whenever Michael touched her, loitered in the warming mist. She knew she was drunk on the affects of the chlorodyne drops and warm milk. “You don’t think me too forward for coming here tonight?”

  “You’re the most forward woman I’ve ever known.” His lips lingered possessively over hers.

  “I know this is risky, Michael. But I had to see you.”

  “Why?” he whispered.

  She only knew that she didn’t want to be just another woman that he’d forget when he left. She’d always preferred to be fractious and unmanageable rather than insignificant.

  Insignificant terrified her. She tried to kiss him.

  “Why, Brianna?”

  “I want every woman you meet to come up lacking because you’ve had me.” Her eyes glittered with the unexpected tears of her jest. “Because thirty seconds yesterday wasn’t nearly enough time to ravish you.”

  “Christ.” His mouth smiled against hers. “You make me ache.”

  Totally conscious of the heat between them, Brianna no longer held her breath as his lips seized hers. The headache that had plagued her for the past few hours faded as his hands moved over her slim shoulders, pushing past her barrier of doubt whether he would welcome her tonight. She knew so little of his heart, and the control she imagined she’d possessed never materialized. His presence swallowed hers. Walking her backward, he slid his arm around her waist then curved both hands over her bottom. Her breasts ached to be touched. She placed her hands on each side of his face, his jaw rough against her palms, and kissed him as he kissed her.

  A deep groan sounded from within his chest. His hand went to her breast, her collarbone, then reached for the cloth wrapped around her head. A tug sent it unraveling to the floor. His mouth closed again over hers, and their tongues danced then melded, tasting and loving.

  “Raise your arms.” His hand fisted in the tunic and pulled the cloth over her head. Her hair tumbled over her shoulders to her waist. The tunic whispered to the floor beside the turban.

  Brianna’s fingers slid beneath his jacket and pushed it off his shoulders. It fell to the floor, unnoticed by either of them.

  He reached behind him and pulled the thin
shirt over his head.

  Her back hit a wall.

  So did his palms. Gasping for air, they stared at each other, silver eyes locked on blue, his dark hair disheveled. She opened her hands over the light spattering of hair on his chest. He smelled faintly of sandalwood and sweat. He was fully aroused against her. “Tell me, amîri”—his hands crushed the loose cloth of her waistband and slid her trousers far enough down to finish the descent with his boot—“tell me I’m not a fool for wanting you as much as I do.”

  His lips slid down her throat over her collarbone to the full slope of her breast. With feverish impatience, his hand was intent on unbuttoning the clasps on his trousers. A groan trapped in her throat, she dropped her head back against the wall. His mouth pulled first one nipple, then the other. Then he was lifting her easily, his other hand wrapped around his erection as he bent and guided himself inside her, filling her. Alive and hot, different than he’d felt when he’d worn the French lettre. Somewhere, a part of her brain rebelled that she wasn’t protected. The danger whispered, but Brianna reached to kiss his mouth in unthinking greed.

  With the throbbing tempo of her heart, he began to move in a slow rocking rhythm, forcing her weight upward and against the wall. “Tell me, Brianna.” His uneven words rasped against her ear, while his body continued in measured rhythm. “Tell me I’m not a fool.”

  Her palms gripped the corded muscles of his arms. She’d been the fool to come here thinking that she would be the one to seduce him. She had never controlled anything about this relationship. But she wanted him inside her. She felt protected in his arms, safe in his strength, and too far gone to think whether this union could result in a child. All of her well-planned precautions had combusted.

  She clung to his shoulders. “I want you, too, Michael.”

  “That’s good to know, amîri.” His breathing almost urgent, he returned his lips to hers. “Because I want to be deeper inside you.”

  He pushed her thighs farther apart. The wall braced her back. Brianna sought to embrace the subtle violence beneath his emotions. She only knew that he took faster than she could give in return, that he’d barreled through her control and the remnants of her defenses.

  She was no longer the simple romantic she’d once been, she realized in some hazy, detached portion of her brain that looked upon her complete submission to him with profound alarm.

  There was a darkness about Michael that frightened her; a life she knew little about, except that he had left a world he’d once known and never looked back. What kind of man could do that to his heart?

  Except perhaps a man who had left that heart in England.

  His arms crushed her against him, sliding her body to meet his thrusts. Her hair draped his shoulders. With a cry, she arched in his arms. Then he caught the back of her head in his palms so he could look into her face, and helplessly she slipped into climax.

  Michael watched her through smoldering eyes as she watched him, until her lids were too heavy to remain open, until he took her body to shattering completion and drank in her choked cry. And neither noticed when he finally sank to his knees.

  It was a long time later before he opened his eyes. Brianna was draped around him. He scraped the hair off her face and found her smiling. “You said that we have until the sunrise,” he said.

  “Yes.” She locked her ankles around his hips. “So you may get undressed and take me to your bed.”

  Michael cocked a wondering brow before he took her mouth in a deep, lingering kiss and finished his descent to the floor. He could feel himself sinking into the deep fire of her body. Yielding to her intimacy. She was sweet delicious torture, and he suspected that they wouldn’t make it to the bed for some time yet.

  Chapter 12

  Michael leaned a shoulder into the archway of the bedroom and raised a cup of coffee to his lips as he observed Brianna sleeping in his bed. He’d not shaved. Wearing a loose-fitting caftan open to his chest, and black trousers, he didn’t know how long he’d been standing there since he’d risen and dressed. He’d been unable to sleep.

  Daylight had begun to displace the shadows, bringing color to the murky gray of his room. Brianna’s dark, perfumed hair lay in waves over his pillow. A white sheet wrapped the long curves of her body, the rest of his bedcovers lying on the floor, her serenity contrasting with the wanton in his arms last night. A tremor passed through him that he was unused to feeling except when he was watching her climax beneath him. More and more these past weeks he’d found his mind drifting to her when he should have been working. Found his thoughts pulled by the primal realization that she belonged to him. She made him feel things he’d thought gone forever.

  Michael was a man without illusions about his character. He’d spent too many years of his life possessing no heart at all to believe in love. But he felt bloody damn sure that what he and Brianna shared was far better, and more potent, than love. It was more than most people started out with in a marriage—a marriage of his choosing—and now that he’d had the night to reflect on an uncertain future and the possibility of a child between them, he found that he wanted Brianna beside him. He liked the idea. They suited each other.

  She wasn’t tainted by the elitist circle of his past. She had courage and beauty, and strength of purpose enough to make a duchess. To stand at his side. Like solid eastern philosophy, their differing facets complimented and contrasted each other, yin and yang—the source of light, heat, and darkness that fit perfectly in one circle to make a whole. She’d been a virgin when she came to him, and whether he agreed with the idolatry of maidenhood or not, that act had had a profound affect on him.

  The thought of another man in her life, even one as benign as Cross, drove like a stake through his gut. He didn’t understand his need to possess her, and now that she could be carrying his child, he only knew that he couldn’t leave her in Cairo.

  His gaze went to the glass doors overlooking the lake. Sunlight began to turn the steel-gray sky gold, and in the amber mists of a new dawn, Michael watched the sun rise.

  “You look like a brigand.” The voice came from the bed and arrested Michael’s hand as he was about to drink his coffee.

  Brianna had turned her head and found him standing in the doorway. He peered at her with eyes that were filled with both tenderness and desire. “And you look like a well-pleasured houri slave girl.”

  Brianna rolled onto her stomach. Her hair fell in a tangled mass over her shoulders. “Am I part of your harem, m’lord brigand?”

  “Would you want to share me, then?”

  Brianna leaned forward on her elbow.

  She still felt the sluggish effects of the chlorodyne drops Gracie had given her as she watched Michael set down his cup. “Never.”

  “That’s good. Because I wouldn’t want to share you either.”

  But even as she sensed the tempo of Michael’s mood change, Brianna became aware of the sunlight on his hair, on the floor and walls. Her eyes returned with shock to the window. “You should have awakened me.”

  She swung her legs over the side of the bed and, dragging the sheet along behind her like a Nile queen, swept past him. She frantically searched for her clothes, snatching them off the floor. “This is Gracie’s whist morning at the consulate.” Brianna slipped the tunic over her head. “She thought I was ill last night and wouldn’t have tried to wake me. I still might be able to get back. Why didn’t you wake me?”

  Michael had moved to the doorway in his office. Beneath the loose-fitting caftan he seemed taller, less civil, as much by what his clothing revealed as what it did not. He was a man who appeared to have staked a claim, not only to the doorway, but to her.

  “I’ll take you home.”

  Brianna stumbled in place as she bent to slip on a sandal. And the awful thought struck that he’d allowed her purposely to sleep past dawn. Except she wouldn’t believe that he’d put her in that kind of dilemma. Christopher would never forgive her for this indiscretion. “That would be very un
wise, Michael.”

  His arm blocked her passage. “Brianna.” He tilted her chin. “You and I need to talk.”

  “No.” She knew what he was going to say. Knew where this conversation was heading. More than the realization struck that she’d had completely unprotected sexual congress with him last night. Numerous times.

  “Chrissakes, Brianna. I’m asking if you’ve considered the consequences of what we did last night?”

  “Yes.” She glared at the ceiling before meeting his gaze. “I considered it briefly.” She poked a finger at his chest, hor-rified that he might attempt something honorable, and blurted out the first thing that entered her mind. “And if I’d wanted to wed anyone, I’d have wed Stephan Williams years ago. At least I would have been assured of a normal life.”

  Her voice died as a pair of piercing eyes locked onto hers. “Is that right?”

  “I apologize, Michael. I shouldn’t have said that.” Her burst of panic gave way to misery. “But I don’t want some magnanimous sacrifice from you. I am not a brainless twit who can’t take care of herself!”

  “Your enormous wisdom in this matter is quite apparent, Brianna. I applaud your insight and perception with a standing ovation.”

  Despite herself, she felt a surge of fury. She felt betrayed by his mockery. She thought that he knew her. That they had reached a mutual understanding. She’d learned the veracity with which reality could tear everything away. Nothing was sacred and nothing lasted. She’d sworn never to fall victim to helplessness again. Never to expose herself to vulnerability.

  “In a few days you’ll be walking out of my life forever.” She dropped to her knees and looked beneath the bed for her other sandal. “I can live with that better than knowing that you sacrificed yourself because of some antiquated notion of principle and gentlemanly honor concerning your responsibility toward me.” Snatching her sandal, Brianna stood and looked around the room. She swept past Michael. “Where is my turban? Why can’t I find—”