The Desert Virgin

The first time such a course appeared, Cam felt his stomach roll. He managed a polite smile, began to shake his head—and realized that a hush had fallen over the several dozen armed men seated at the long table.

Every eye was on him.

The sultan raised his eyebrows.

“This is a great delicacy, Mr. Knight—but we will understand if you are not prepared to partake of it. Not all men can be like the men of Baslaam.”

Hell. Was this going to be a pissing contest? A Baslaamic version of “I’m tougher than you are”? If so, Cam couldn’t afford to lose. He smiled, leaned forward and scooped a ladleful of the quivering mess on his plate.

“A delicacy, Excellency? In that case, I can’t pass it up.”

He ate quickly, tasting slime and something even worse on his tongue, keeping his gut from rebelling by reminding himself that he’d eaten things as bad in other places. A soldier in the field couldn’t be choosy. Bugs, lizards, snakes… Protein, he told himself, that’s all this was.

There was a perceptible murmur when he swallowed the last of the stuff. Cam smiled. Asaad didn’t smile back. His expression was ugly. The bastard had lost the first round and he didn’t like it.

“Delicious,” Cam said politely.

Asaad clapped his hands. A servant scurried in, carrying an oversize urn. “Since you enjoyed that so much, perhaps you would like to sample another of our delicacies. A drink, made from… Well, I won’t tell you the ingredients but I assure you, it is more potent than anything you’ve had before.” At his nod, the servant filled two cups with a brown liquid. Asaad took one, handed Cam the other. “Unless, of course, you’d rather not?”

It was a pissing contest. Juvenile, even pathetic, but what choice did he have except to accept the challenge? Any show of weakness and he could end up keeping his father’s rep company. Asaad needed his signature but there were ways to get it that didn’t involve pretending they were all one big, happy family.

“Mr. Knight?”

“Excellency,” Cam said, lifting the cup to his lips. The liquid smelled like rotting fish but he’d survived worse one long night in Belarus, when he’d downed endless shots of homemade vodka in a face-off with a thickheaded guerilla leader. He held his breath, tossed his head back and drank the swill in one gulp.

“Great stuff,” he said calmly, and held out his empty cup. Another murmur of approval filled the great hall. Asaad’s face grew dark as a thundercloud.

“Do you ride horses, Mr. Knight?”

Maybe the sultan was thickheaded, too. Asking a born-and-bred Texan if he rode horses was like asking a pigeon if it could fly.

“Some,” Cam said politely.

Moments later they were outside in a vast courtyard lit by torches, racing over the hardpacked sand on the backs of half-wild ponies in a game that involved sticks as thick as baseball bats, a leather ball and a looped rope hanging from a tree. Cam had no idea what the rules were but he stayed on his snorting mount, managed not to get clobbered by men wielding their bats with abandon, and whacked the ball straight through the loop.

The sultan’s men cheered. Asaad’s face turned purple. He shouted for silence.

“You are a worthy opponent,” he said in a voice that made clear the statement was a lie, “and I shall reward you.”

With what? A knife across the throat? A bullet in the head? Lose the game and you were dead. Win, and you were dead, too. Asaad was a psychopath, and capable of anything.

Cam’s muscles tensed and he fought to keep his tone calm.

“Thank you, Excellency, but the only reward I want is—”

The words caught in his throat. Two of the sultan’s men were coming toward them. They were big, bigger than the sultan…

Twice as big as the woman they all but dragged between them.

The first thing he noticed was that her hands were bound.

The second was that she was naked. No. Not naked. It was just that her skin was the palest gold and what little she wore was only a shade darker.

Gold cupped her full breasts; a gold thong rode low on her flat belly. A thin gold chain adorned her narrow waist; slender, twisted ribbons of gold hung from the chain and swayed sinuously with each thrust of her long legs.

Her feet were encased in golden sandals, the heels so spiked they could have been declared lethal weapons. Tiny bells dangled from the straps of the sandals and tinkled softly at her every step. Her hair was gold, too, and tumbled forward in silken disarray around her downcast face.

“Do you like your reward, Mr. Knight?”

“She is…” Damn it! Cam cleared his throat. He hadn’t expected anything like this golden creature and it had thrown him. The sultan knew it; he could hear it in the bastard’s oily voice. “She is an amazing sight, Excellency.”

“Indeed.” Asaad smiled. “I will have her brought closer, yes?”

The obvious answer was no. This woman was a trap. It didn’t take a genius to know that. Cam had been wined and dined; he’d been entertained with a crazy game of desert polo. Asaad had softened him up and now he was moving in for the kill. An hour with this houri and he’d sign the contract, no questions asked. He’d be too sated to do anything else.

At least, that was what Asaad figured.

And, damn, it was tempting. Cam could imagine what it would be like to spear his hands into that spill of hair, raise the woman’s face so that he could see if it was as perfect as the rest of her. He could imagine tasting her breasts, stripping away that gold thong…

“Mr. Knight?”

Cam shrugged as if getting a better look at the woman didn’t matter.

“As you wish, Excellency.”

The sultan snapped his fingers. The men dragged the woman forward. When they were a few feet away, she raised her head and looked straight at Cam.

His breath caught in his throat.

She had wide-set eyes the color of the Mediterranean, fringed by incongruously dark lashes. A small, straight nose. A delicate chin and a mouth—God, what a mouth! It was meant for things men dreamed of in the dark hours of the night.

Cam felt himself turn hard as stone, his erection so swift and powerful that he had to shift his weight to ease the discomfort of it.

Asaad barked an order. The guards shoved the woman forward the final few feet. She stumbled, then regained her footing. One of the men snarled a word and she obeyed what must have been an order to bow her head again.

“Well, Mr. Knight?” Asaad’s voice was a purr. “What do you think?” Smiling, he stepped closer to the woman, caught a handful of her hair and jerked her head up. “Is she not exquisite?”

“She is—she is very beautiful.”

“Yes. She is. She has spirit, too. A magnificent creature, yes?”

What was she? A woman from the harem? But her hands were bound. Why?

“She is, Excellency.” Cam paused. He didn’t want to sound too curious. If he did, Asaad would probably stretch out whatever game they were now playing. “Is she a prisoner?”

The sultan sighed. “Yes. Unfortunate, don’t you agree? What you can see of her is beautiful.” Asaad slid his meaty hand down the woman’s throat, over her breast, cupped first one mound of flesh and then the other. When she tried to jerk away, his fingers clamped around her wrist. “But her soul is ugly.”

Cam looked at the sultan’s meaty fingers, biting into the woman’s flesh.