Page 64 of Sands of Sirocco
Coming closer, she tugged on Noah’s shirt.“Sit up.Remove the tunic.I’m treating you.”
A smile curved at the edge of his full lips.“You don’t need my tunic off to treat my hands and forearm, do you?”
Laughter escaped her, her cheeks warming.“I wanted to check on your shoulder.See if it’s healing well.”
Noah sat, pulling at the tunic.Under it, he wore white baggysirwaltrousers.Even in his current state, she felt the pull toward him, the magnetic draw that made her core seem to turn to liquid.Noah smiled as she knelt on the bed beside him.He cupped her face in his hands before she could even glance at his shoulder.He lowered his lips to hers.
She returned his kiss, relishing the way his touch made tingles spread sensuously through her body.He is a remarkably gifted kisser, she decided, not that it seemed that unusual for him.Noah didn’t seem to do anything truly badly.She pulled away from him and draped her arm over his shoulder.“Do you think I’m a bore?”
He laughed and gave her a look that made it clear he’d rather continue kissing her.“Why on earth would I think that?”
She rose and crossed the room toward her door and locked it, then turned back around.The sight of him reclining on her bed brought her more happiness than she probably deserved, considering what her mother would say if she knew Noah was here.But if she was being honest, the thrill of having him to herself for the first time since she’d come to Cairo was intoxicating.
Especially now that they were married.
She crossed her arms.“You didn’t answer my question.”
Noah sat, the taut muscles of his torso rippling as he did.In the shadowy light provided only by the lamp at her bedside, the scars on his shoulder and chest from where he’d been shot in the spring were more visible.She tried not to react to either of her observations, though her body betrayed her.He held a hand toward her.“Come here, and I’ll show exactly how interesting I find you.”
“I know you well enough to know that you’re quite skilled at changing the subject when you’re trying to evade my questions.”She went over to her trunk and pulled the lid open.Her medical kit was near the top.Finding a bottle of iodine, a bandage, and an ointment, she glanced at him.
An amused look played in the bleariness of his eyes.“Yes, darling, you’re quite boring.You jump headfirst into the intelligence world every time my back is turned, don’t question running at an assailant when necessary, and you’re one of the few women I feel I can speak with plainly about political intrigue.”
She sat beside him and lifted his left hand, then poured iodine on his burn.Noah sucked a breath in through his teeth as it stung.“You’ll need to change the bandage on this twice a day and layer the ointment thickly.”
Noah smirked.“The man who branded me told me to rub lemon and salt into it a few times a day, let it re-scab several times.”
She winced, shaking her head.“I won’t say his methods aren’t useful if you want a deep brand.”She wrapped his arm.“But they also increase your chance of infection.”She finished the bandage and put her materials down.
Noah slid his free hand around her waist, tracing his fingers down the small of her back, then smoothing his palm over her curves.She twitched, catching her breath with anticipation, then lifted her eyes to his.“You’re determined to distract me, aren’t you?”she said.
“You’re determined to take care of me.I’m simply arguing with the methods you’re employing.”Noah’s lips nuzzled her neck.“When you’re this close to me, lips parted with concentration, your scent driving me mad, it suddenly makes me very jealous of all the men you spend your days with.How many marriage proposals have you fended off?”
Given his state of inebriation, Noah’s tongue was looser than usual, and she grinned.Hewould bea chatty drunk.Alcohol had a way of bringing out the side an individual normally restrained.
She kissed his jaw, then caught his earlobe in her lips and gave it a teasing tug.“I’m not finished examining you yet,” she whispered in his ear, attempting to draw back.
He groaned, his hands like steel around her waist.“Of all the ways I’ve been tortured, this may be the cruelest.I come to you in need, heart devastated—” He winced as she peeled his hand from her hip and then cleaned the cuts on his knuckles.
She raised a wry brow at him.“How is it you’re devastated?”
He blinked at the backs of his hands.“Nearly beating a man to death with your bare hands is …” Then he trailed off, closing his eyes.Pain etched his face but not from his physical wounds.
The darkness into which he’d taken his soul had to be a consuming.Ginger had seen the near euphoria of men relishing in the kills they’d made during battle.
Kill or be killed.
But it was more than that.The adrenaline that pulsed through them was their bodies’ way of surviving and rationalizing the darkness.
And Noah seemed all too aware of that fact.
That he’d taken such a risk for Victoria made her throat clench.She pushed the thought away.
She held his face, kissing his closed lids.His breath faltered at the touch of her lips.The response of his body to hers had always aroused her.When she dropped her lips to his this time, she made no attempt to pull away quickly.
Her lips parted over his and her tongue dipped against his, teasingly, then coaxing.Ginger slid her arms around his neck, caught in the wild, passionate kiss she’d been dreaming of sharing with him since she’d first arrived in Cairo.
Noah’s hands slid over her thighs and pushed up her skirts, his hands moving more boldly now.“Noah,” she whispered hotly as her senses got the better of her, “my family could be home at any minute.My sister has to walk by my door to get to hers.And the”—she gasped as his roving hands slid firmly around her backside—“the servants.”
