“We will talk about it in the morning.”
Chapter 27
Kamal poked a piece of pita bread into Arabella’s smiling mouth and lightly kissed the tip of her nose.
“It’s stale.”
“If you, cara, would stop holding me down, I could do some hunting.”
“No,” she said, “I would rather be hungry for food than for you.”
“Shameless hussy. You will kill me before I am thirty.”
She gave him a wide smile. “I am a woman now,” she said, immensely pleased with herself. “I am twenty. I was beginning to think that I was cold, that I would never find a man who would make me feel such marvelous feelings.”
Kamal leaned over and began to nibble her throat.
She threw her arms about him, knocking him off balance, and they fell together, Arabella sprawled on top of him.
“How could you ever have believed yourself cold?”
Arabella raised her head from his shoulder. “Well, there was only one gentleman who kissed me, and I didn’t like it at all. In fact, I kicked him in the shin.”
“I would have preferred the shin to where you kicked me.”
“I’m sorry. I was so afraid, and you made me so angry.”
“Arabella, will you give me your loyalty?”
She tensed at his deadly serious tone, unable to answer him. She pictured her parents, Adam, and Kamal’s mother. “How can I?”
He held her tightly. “I will not let you go, so stop fighting me. I will do nothing to harm you, Arabella. Do you believe that?”
“But if you harm my parents, you harm me.”
“I know. Will you trust me to put a stop to all the madness?”
“Do you now believe my parents are innocent?”
“If I believe them innocent, I condemn my mother as a vicious liar.” He sighed deeply wishing they could ignore, at least for another day and night, the reality that awaited them. He felt the fatalism that was inbred in his culture, beginning to seep into his mind, paralyzing him. “Dammit,” he said, pounding his fist against his open palm. He rose swiftly to his feet and looked down at Arabella. He saw fear in her eyes. Instantly he dropped to his haunches and drew her against him. “I love you, and I want to be with you forever. It will be so, Arabella, I promise you.”
Would wanting something to be true make it so? Arabella wondered.
They did not discuss the future for the remainder of the day. Kamal hunted, bringing back a rabbit for their dinner. They bathed together in the small clear pool, their enjoyment in each other taking on a nearly frantic quality. When they lay together that night in the tent, sated and languid, Kamal whispered against her temple, “You are so giving to me.”
“Yes. How else should I be when you wrap me in sunshine?”
“A witch poet,” he said. He pulled her robe away and rested his palm on her flat stomach. He splayed his fingers and touched her pelvic bones. He felt a jolt of fear, picturing her belly swollen with child. She seemed so narrow. “Are you built like your mother?”
“Yes, I suppose so.”
“Did she have difficulty birthing you or your brother?”
“I remember, long ago, hearing my old nurse, Becky, talking to my mother about being lucky in her husband. She said that he had stayed with her and helped her birth my brother. Why do you ask?”
“I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You are hurting me now,” Arabella said, pulling him closer to her.