Excerpt from She Who Laughs Last . . .
Jibril awoke in a state of aching arousal, trying to catch hold of the threads of the dream: A beautiful young girl whirling beneath a rain of falling stars; a maiden with waving hair of spun honey borne on the breast of a raging sea; a lover trembling beneath him as he sank into her welcoming virgin heat.
The threads twisted away and dissolved, leaving behind only the sound of light joyous laughter in the soft light of dawn. Jibril was suddenly aware now that the laughter was real, echoing in the stone corridor beyond the barred door of his prison. The Lady and her brother had finally returned. Excitement surged through him, but he feigned sleep as the door swung open.
"Let's tell him now," urged the boy.
"No," the Lady whispered, "let him sleep."
"Come on. I want to see his face when we tell him we got the ransom and didn't get caught."
It was all the prince could do not leap to his feet in surprise. The ransom had been paid. Somehow these two unlikely felons had outwitted the king and his troops. Jibril would have given anything to see his father's face at the exact moment he realized he'd been duped.
"Tell me, young ones," he said conversationally without opening his eyes, "how much am I worth?"
"A thousand gold discs," the boy crowed.
The prince sat up, adjusting the blanket to conceal the evidence of his waning arousal. He smiled at the two hooded figures. The boy positively vibrated with excitement and the Lady appeared relaxed, and something else -- perhaps just a little shy? "I find that rather flattering."
Before the woman could silence him the boy enthused, "We only took five hundred, but I bet we could have gotten a lot more. We should have asked for two thousand, then he'd have left one thousand in the tent."
Syrah steered Eben toward the door. "We have more than we need. I doubt His Highness wishes to hear himself discussed as though he were nothing more than a commodity to be bought and sold. His food should be ready by now. Bring it and start loading up the cart. You need to leave soon."
The sound of the boy's delighted whoops could be heard as he leaped down the stairs and dashed across the causeway.
"I must commend you, my lady. During your absence, it has become clear to me that you do not serve others but are the architect of my abduction. Your brother is an able second-in-command. Am I not correct?"
At first he didn't think she would answer him as she moved to the window and lifted down the wooden shutters to allow the sun to stream into the chamber. "Perhaps you have it aright, my lord, perhaps not. Soon we'll go on our separate ways and you will never know."
The prince laughed. "You think not? You have provided me with every comfort and accorded me the dignity of my station. Ah, but my pride, my lady, my pride has received a mortal blow. I will find you."
"From what I have observed, I suspect it will take a far more deadly weapon than any I possess to lay waste your pride," Syrah retorted.
"But that is where you are so very wrong," the prince said. He pressed his hand to his heart. "You are a weapon unto yourself. A beautiful woman can pierce a man's heart with far more ease than the sharpest arrow."
Syrah settled herself on the stone bench and folded her hands primly in her lap. "Beneath my habit I may be as beautiful as Helen of Troy or as scrawny as a plucked chicken; I may have spots upon my face and a wart on the end of my nose. In any event it does not signify. It is entirely possible that someday we will meet again and you will be none the wiser."
"I shouldn't count on it if I were you," he said as he rose and let the blanket drop to the stone floor. With apparent lack of concern that a lady was present, he arched his back and stretched his arms high above his head, then strolled to the corner of his cell where he poured water into the ewer and set about his morning ablutions.
He glanced over his shoulder at the sound of a horrified gasp to see the Lady leap to her feet and cover her mouth with both hands. He leaned nonchalantly against the bars.
"Is something amiss, my lady?"
Something was most definitely amiss.
A naked man was smiling at her. Naked. Smiling. At her.
A strangled giggle caught in her throat as Syrah froze, riveted by the astounding display of manhood jutting forth from a nest of curly black hair. Any questions she might have had about the "it" were forever banished, replaced by a sinful urge to touch it, stroke down its impressive length.
"My lady?"
Syrah willed her eyes upward to focus on his face. "No, nothing amiss," she said as she backed away toward the door to the corridor. Every bone and sinew in her body seemed to have melted into a pulsing puddle somewhere in the region of her groin.
Without warning, Eben came barreling around the corner and was only just agile enough to keep the tray from crashing to the floor as he collided with her. He took in the scene before him -- the grinning prince, his retreating sister -- and erupted into gales of laughter.
Syrah fled. Their rowdy amusement at her expense snapped her out of her mortified retreat. Dashing back up the stairs, she shot the prince a look that would have slain him on the spot had he been able to see her face behind the veil, gave her brother a swift kick in the behind, and stalked back down the stairs into the new day. |
