Devil's Daughter (Devil 2)

“Why not?”

“I have never forced a woman. I have no intention of starting now.”

She could not help herself, and the words flowed from her mouth unbidden. “No, but then again, a slave would have no say in the matter, would she?”

He said easily, “You are right, of course. But I have never used a woman, even one of my slaves, harshly.”

Arabella found herself for the first time seeing him as a man, seeing him as the man who would likely take her innocence. Before, she had recognized that he was as striking as a Viking warrior, his hair bronze and gold, his eyes a brilliant blue. His body was powerful.

Now he was a flesh-and-blood man. She observed his high cheekbones, his straight nose, his square, clean-shaven jaw.

“Do you like what you see, Arabella?”

She said honestly, without weighing her words, “I had not seen you as a man before.”

“And you do now?”

“It is difficult not to,” she said. “You are large and the room is small.”

“I see,” he said. He leaned back against the pillows, his eyes narrowing on her face. “There is no knife, and the fork is dull-pronged. If it is your plan to lull me, it will do you no good. And I might be tempted to break your beautiful neck if you attack me again.”

“No,” she said. “I will not try to harm you again.” She raised her eyes to his face. “I discovered that I am not a murderer.”

“I consider myself fortunate that you have some qualms, my dear. Odd, but you look like a queen when you raise your chin. A very cold queen.”

“I do not wish to fight with you. I wish only to make you understand, to make you believe that my parents are not what you have been told.”

Kamal raised his wine goblet and sipped at the sweet liquid, all the while his eyes narrowed on her pale face. “I’m listening,” he said.

“Lella told me that you lived for many years in Europe, that you are not like other Muslim men, that you are kind.”

“Ah, my sweet Lella. Did you despise her for her defense of me?”

“Perhaps,” Arabella said. “At least I disbelieved her. You have not been kind to me.”

“Would you have been kind to a wild creature who called you vicious names and hurled more insults than my soldiers have scimitars?”

“You had not been held alone in the dark hold of a ship for a week with naught but rats for companions.” She added bitterly, “I suppose I should thank your mother for making me look like a crone, else I would certainly have been raped by all your honorable men.”

“Yes,” Kamal said. “She did show some mercy, did she not? I wonder why. She has been single-minded in pursuit of her revenge.”

Arabella leaned forward to plead with him, but before she could open her mouth, he said, “Likely she didn’t want to take the chance that you would become diseased, and thus harm me. But then, of course, she could not be certain that all your dalliance at the court had not resulted in the same thing.”

She stiffened, jerking back.

Kamal frowned at the pain he saw in her eyes. “Why do you draw away at the simple truth?” he asked. “Why do you continue to act like the innocent maid? My God, woman, if you wish me to listen to you, you will cease this nonsense.”

Arabella choked back tears of frustration and dashed her hand across her eyes. It was an oddly childish gesture, and Kamal felt an instant of compassion for her. No, he thought, honest with himself, it was tenderness he felt, and it alarmed him.

“I should not have had you brought to me tonight,” he said.

“No. I mean that I wanted to see you.”

She seemed so damned transparent, so guileless. He shook his head, his shoulder reminding him that her guile could fool a saint.

“Why? To plead with me? To charm me into giving in to you?”

“I am not charming, at least with you,” she said, and he flinched at the open candor in her voice, the damned innocence in her eyes.