Sinan said, “Her name’s Shellah. A Taureg girl, a slave. She sometimes acts as guide or messenger in the palace. She’ll take you to the harem quarters.”
The girl was smiling boldly, letting her dark eyes drift over Fletcher with calculating slyness. There was impudence in her smile and in her lazy stance. When Sinan shouted at her in Turki, she shouted back at him, baring tiny white teeth.
“Desert harlot!” grumbled Sinan. “Remember what I told you, Stefan. Don’t let these little kalfas get their claws into you, or you’ll wind up blind in chains, hung upside down over a rat pit! Remember! Now, go with Shellah.”
It was not a difficult command to obey. The Taureg girl carried something of the wildness of the desert in the spicy smell of her thick hair and in the warm glow of the eyes. She glanced slyly at this big, yellow-haired man as she padded beside him, and she let the misty kalak slide a little, baring her supple brown back.
Her giggle came into the silence between them as they mounted the wide stairway to the harem rooms. Now the Taureg girl grew coquettish. Her arm brushed against him as they walked.
Once she said something in the Bedouin tongue that Fletcher did not understand. When she realized that he could not comprehend her desert jargon, she laughed softly. She spoke again, and though the words were strange, something in their inflection made Fletcher flush.
His hands closed on her wrist and he brought her to a halt, swinging her in against him. With one hand he caught the thick black hair, twisting his fingers in it, and held her face motionless.
“I don’t know your game, little one,” he told her, staring down into the bold eyes that never flickered, though his grip on her hair stung her scalp. “Maybe Sinan told you to act up, to test me. Or maybe it was the pasha, or even that favorite wife of his. I’ve been a slave a long time. Too long. I’ve almost forgotten that I’m a man, too.”
He paused and grinned down at her soft red mouth. The palace was silent all about them. From where they stood, at the top of the tiled stair, Fletcher could see the length of the empty corridor before him. His pulse was beating faster now that her soft hips and legs were wedged so closely against him. Suddenly rebellion leaped in him—revolt against the subservience he must observe, against the irony of his position. Here he was, a strong man with a noble weapon at his side; but instead of fighting lustily for his country, he must waste his manhood protecting a group of pampered harem women.
“If you want to run to Sinan or the pasha or his wife,” he went on conversationally, “and tell them what I’m going to do to you, go ahead. I have a sword at my hip again. This time they won’t take me alive, to hang over any rat pit.”
He kissed her roughly, hungrily, holding her head hard between hands, while his savagely seeking lips bruised her mouth. The Taureg girl took his kisses in a soft, sweet surrender. She melted against him with a supple twist of her slender body that told Fletcher she was enjoying this moment, whether or not she betrayed him later.
As he let her go, Shellah whispered something in her Taureg dialect, her eyes hot on his face. With fingertips tinted a bright red by henna paste, she drew her thin, revealing shawl about her body, and moved on. Her bosom was leaping with her hurried breathing, but the only sound was the musical tinkle of the silver chains about her slim ankles.
When they came to a door inscribed with geometric inlays and set with two-round gold hoops for handles, Shellah put her fingers on one of the grips and lifted her dark eyes. “Enter, Stefan. And do not worry, Shellah is no mewling spy, to go running when a man kisses her.”
She saw his amazement at her knowledge of the English language, and paused, still holding the doorpull. “I was captured when I was very young, at the oasis of Kufra. They found me intelligent, and taught me many things. Your language was one of the things I learned. Now go in, and say no more of what happened between us.”
The Taureg girl tugged and the door swung outward.
Fletcher stepped into a domed room, its walls ornate with delicate plaster friezes in bold reds and blues and golds. Tall archways led back into gloomy recesses, and the last red rays of the dying sun came thrusting through the iron fretwork of the windows. He saw low sofas, heaped heavily with pillows and silk cushions, an occasional table and coffer of inlaid teakwood, a few upholstered benches and ottomans.
Lying at full length on one of the low sofas, her right hand draped lazily from the cushions so that her fingers could scratch and fondle the head of a white kitten, was Marlani Chamiprak. Her gaze was fastened on the silken veils that floated from the ceiling overhead. As Fletcher stepped across the sill, she arched her slim body, revealing that her only article of clothing was a pair of loose, silken trousers of royal green.
Marlani said sweetly, “Did the nasrany give you any difficulty, Shellah?”
“No difficulty, highness,” replied the girl, entering behind Fletcher and closing the door.
Apparently still entranced by the dangling lengths of red, blue and yellow silk floating in the eddies of air above her, the kedin laughed softly. “He is a disappointment. I was hoping that hot red blood ran in his veins. It seems I made a mistake.”
Her hand came away from the kitten and gestured lazily. “Come stand before me, nasrany. I want to see what my new guard looks like.”
Fletcher went to the foot of the divan and let her stare at him. Admiration shone in her yellow cat eyes as she examined his deep chest and bared midriff. He was a big man, Fletcher, towering tall and muscular among the scented cushions and silks. His height made Marlani look up at him, and now the American could read the wanton hunger in her eyes, the hidden desires and emotions that must be veiled everywhere but in the privacy of her harem boudoir.
The woman writhed, stretching. Laughter gurgled deep in her throat as she saw his eyes drawn instinctively to the hard brown breasts thrusting up at him. She whispered throatily, “You are mine now, Americano. You belong to me. Here in the selamlik my word is law. Even Yussuf does not interfere with what I do.”
She came off the low, cushioned sofa with a flash of shapely brown legs and walked toward him, hips rolling easily, a smile twisting the corners of her red mouth. Lightly, she scratched her fingernails, sharply pointed and coated with silver dust, across his chest. Her yellow eyes brightened, glowing.
“He does not interfere at all! Whatever I do here, is my own business!”
Fletcher thought numbly that the pasha of Tripoli would make it his business if Fletcher dared to do what the bold yellow eyes invited him to do. For the first time since the Philadelphia went down, there was good food in his belly and clean clothes on his body. If this wanton with the kohl-darkened eyes and the musk-scented hair were to have her way with him—and the pasha learned of it—he would be strung up by his heels over a slow fire.
Marlani Chamiprak read something of this in his stony face. The yellow eyes narrowed. The red lips drew back a little, to show even white teeth. “You are a coward! You are afraid of Yussuf. And I thought all you Americanos were brave men!”
Marlani let the tide of her desire run wild in her, making no attempt to check it. Never before this moment had she felt like this. Never before had a big blond American stood in her boudoir, fighting for control, forcing his eyes away from the body she exhibited so shamelessly.
Before she had been wed to Yussuf Caramanli, Marlani had been a dancer at the court of Sultan Selim III of Turkey. Long ago she had learned the ways of pleasing men, and with her lessons had come an avid addiction to the art. She had been faithful to Yussuf, but since he had begun this stupid war with the United States, he had become more and more neglectful of her.
She laughed softly, throwing her head back. Then she swirled, arms spread wide, and went dancing about the room, her thin silken trousers billowing outward. She danced nearer