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  As she hung there, in such an ungainly manner, Mercédès began to wonder if she had been rescued only to be captured again! She was afraid to struggle and be dropped beneath the horse’s hooves, or in some other dangerous position.

  But at last, when she was just about ready to take the chance, their mount slowed and then stopped. She felt the jolt as he dismounted, and then the swoop as he tossed her over his shoulder like a sack of barley—which surely she looked like, still wrapped in the cloying wool.

  At that point, she began to struggle and kick again, and was rewarded by being dumped unceremoniously onto . . . not the floor . . . but something soft. Immediately, she began to fight her way out of the cloth.

  “I did not intend to frighten you,” he said in that odd accent; it wasn’t English or Italian or anything that she recognized. She felt him as he moved toward her, his hands sure and warm as they unraveled her from her covering.

  She looked up, pushing strands of hair out of her face, and gasped. Despite the dim light, she recognized the bearded man in Persian clothing from the docks. The one who’d reminded her of Edmond.

  He was looking down at her just as boldly as she gawked up at him.

  “You,” she began. “I saw you . . . at the docks.”

  “And I saw you.” His voice sounded uneven. “You were foolish to walk off alone. Where is your husband?”

  Mercédès realized belatedly that she had been tossed onto a bed covered with an array of large cushions and pillows, and she pulled herself into an upright sitting position. “He is not here,” she replied firmly.

  “Not here? He allows his wife, the Comtesse de Morcerf, to wander about Marseille alone?” His voice was smoother now, and there was a decidedly mocking tone beneath that lilting accent. Yet she sensed a tension underlying his sardonic tone.

  “How did you know my name?”

  He shrugged, spreading his hands nonchalantly. She noticed that his silken sleeves had been rolled up his forearms, showing thick golden bands at both of his wrists. His hands were wide and tanned, funneled with veins and tendons and rough from work, so different from Fernand’s soft lily-white ones. And so much like the sailor’s hands of her lost Edmond.

  What would it be like to have such rough hands smoothing over her skin again?

  “It was not so difficult to learn your name. You are a friend of the Morrels, and I have some acquaintance with them as well.” His eyes, dark in color, and lined with a narrow stripe of black around the lash line, were steady on her. The space in the room seemed heavy, as though pressing them together.

  “Then perhaps you might provide me with your name,” Mercédès replied frostily. Her heart still pounded rapidly, but her fear had begun to abate. Her mouth was dry, and she felt a subtle fluttering in her belly.

  “I am called Sinbad. Sinbad the Sailor.”

  Perhaps she shouldn’t have been surprised, but she was; after all, the man looked like the legendary Persian Sinbad. He wore a beard, and his skin looked as though it had been sunburned and then tanned. As she grappled with the web of thoughts spinning through her mind, she stammered the first one she was able to seize. “You . . . how did you come by the red velvet purse? With the money in it, for the Morrels? It belonged to Père Dantès.”

  Sinbad loomed tall over her, and she noticed the lean muscles of his forearms. “It was given to me by an old abbé named Faria. And so, Countess . . . where is your husband?”

  “He is . . .” Mercédès paused. If she told him that she’d left Fernand in Paris, and that he didn’t know where she was, what would he do? If he knew that she was alone and unaccounted for, would that put her in other danger? “He will be arriving from Paris tomorrow, with our son.”

  “Your son? And how old is this future count?”

  “Twelve,” she replied automatically. “He is twelve.”

  “And only one child, in how many years of marriage to this count of yours?”

  Mercédès thought she detected a hint of malice in his voice; but for what reason, she couldn’t fathom. “Nearly thirteen years,” she replied. Thirteen years of misery and humiliation and abuse. No, perhaps only twelve years. The worst had not truly begun for some time after their wedding. Yet she’d known pain and misery even before she agreed to marry Fernand.

  But that was not something to be revealed to this stranger, who looked at her with such an expression in his eyes . . . an expression that seemed to shift from heated to angry to uncertain, and then masked itself into a mocking one.

  “What do you want from me?” she asked suddenly, feeling the tension of the room bearing down on her again.

  “Want?” he asked, his voice liquid. His fingers closed; she saw them crumple the light silk of his trousers. “From you? Nothing, my dear countess. I want nothing from you.”

  But his voice had become steely and the expression in his eyes harsh. Suddenly Mercédès became frightened again, frightened, and yet . . . expectant. Apprehensive and . . . breathless.

  Yes, her chest filled and tightened, and she couldn’t breathe for a minute. And then she looked away, her heart slamming in her bosom, her fingers shaking behind the folds of her rumpled skirt.

  “Then I shall be on my way,” she told him, standing and starting boldly toward the doorway of the room they were in.

  Sinbad stepped to one side, blocking her path. He was much taller than she. Sturdy, muscular, and he smelled of the sea.

  “If you want nothing from me, then let me pass,” she said with a calm she did not feel. Her heart was racing, her palms damp, her belly aflutter.

  “You do not wish to show any gratitude to your rescuer?”

  She swallowed, refusing to look up at him. Instead, she focused her attention on the broad shoulder in front of her, covered by pale blue silk that clung to the muscles of his chest in a way that cotton and linen would not. The collarless shirt was buttoned up to the throat with simple silk knots. “I have a few francs with me, but more at the—”

  “My dear countess, I am in no need of your money. That is, in fact, the last thing I want from you.”

  Mercédès gripped her hands tightly in the sides of her skirt, feeling the pounding of her heart all the way down her arms like the beat of a funereal drum. She’d glanced up at his words, but the mockery in his eyes sent her gaze skittering away and suddenly she found it locked on his mustache and the hint of fine lips beneath it.

  He smiled and those lips stretched, quirking at one corner, drawing the dark bristles up and away in a fascinating, sensual movement.

  “Perhaps,” he continued in a low voice, “I should ask you what it is you want from me.”

  “Nothing. Nothing but to pass you, to leave.”

  “Then pass. Do not stand there like a frightened cat. If that is what you truly wish, then walk on by, Countess.”

  She hesitated only a moment, then stepped toward him. He’d positioned himself directly in front of the door; the only way she could move past would be to brush against him, to touch that silken sleeve, and for her skirt to bell over his slippered foot.

  “But I don’t believe that is what you truly wish . . . ,” he whispered as she came closer.

  She was touching him now. Her pink linen sleeve, which puffed out three times wider than her upper arm, was crushed as it slid against the blue silk; her skirt crinkled against his leg.

  He put out his arm between her and the door, effectively stopping her. “Is it?” He pivoted toward her, and so they were standing toe-to-toe, chest to bosom, silk brushing linen.

  She felt his warmth and smelled the sea tang on his skin and the gentle scent of man mixed with something like nutmeg. Edmond. Just like Edmond.

  “Kiss me, Countess,” he said softly. His flexed fingers trembled against the wall. “You want to.”

  She did want to. . . . Lord have mercy, she did.

  A woman who had never, despite all he’d done to her, betrayed her husband, wanted to kiss the silken-clad, salty, sweaty sailor who stood in fron
t of her. She wanted to lose herself in the memories, the faint familiarity he brought with him.

  “Let me pass,” she said again. “Please.”

  His arm dropped back to his side. He stepped away, leaving the doorway open. “You are a devoted wife, Countess. How fortunate your husband is.”

  She gathered up her skirts and hurried past him, her heart still slamming in her chest, and found herself in the same room she and Julie had been in earlier that day—where Julie had found on the fireplace mantel a red velvet purse filled with the miracle that had saved her family.

  Clearly this man was who he claimed to be—Sinbad.

  Mercédès turned back to see that he’d followed her, and stood in the doorway between the two rooms. He leaned against the opening, arms crossed over his middle, his eyes dark and their lids at half-mast. A fire burning in the fireplace gave off unnecessary heat and the only illumination in this room besides a small oil lamp.

  Before she realized what she was doing, Mercédès was walking toward him, back toward Sinbad and the temptation he represented: the mysterious pull, the incessant draw, the desire to indulge her sorrow and grief and memories.

  He straightened as she came toward him, understanding glinting in his eyes, but he said nothing. Only waited.

  His shoulders trembled when she spread her hands on the front of them, her fingers curling just over the top, skidding the fabric a bit against his warm skin. He didn’t move except to look down at her, and she couldn’t read—didn’t even try, truth be told—the expression in his eyes. She just raised her face, closed her own eyes, and brought her mouth to his.

  At first, she barely brushed against the soft bristles of his mustache and beard and the smooth line of his lips, just to see what it was like. It amazed her to feel the tremors in his body as she touched him. Then she pushed closer, pressing her mouth against his, angling to the side so that they fit together better, her lips parted just enough that his upper lip slipped between and she could taste him.

  Something happened, and a great burst of warmth, a rush of emotion and desire, trammeled through her as though unleashed. The pungent smell of the sea was in his hair, on his salty skin; his lips were moving beneath hers now, no longer tentative but hungry and demanding. She was lost in the kiss, caught in the swirl of sensations: her fingers slipping over silk, making warm friction, feeling the swell and dip of muscles beneath . . . the slick, hot dance of their tongues . . . his fingers clutching her waist, digging into her skin . . . the tightening and heaviness of her breasts beneath layers of corset and chemise and linen.

  Mercédès didn’t protest when he swung her up in his arms and brought her back into the room they’d just vacated, once again depositing her on the large cushionlike bed. But this time, he came with her, his hands holding her shoulders to the mattress as if to be certain she wouldn’t rise up and attempt to leave.

  But she had no intention of doing so.

  It—he—was so much like Edmond, her lost Edmond. . . . It was his rough fingertips catching on the delicate skin of her neck, and the salt on his clothes, the smell of his hair as she tugged it from its queue, and even that of his skin, moist there at the juncture of neck and shoulder. The way he tipped his head to kiss her . . . when she closed her eyes, and she let herself go, she was back on that hillside with Edmond on that last glorious day . . . .

  Her hands reaching up into the olive branches above, looking down at his dark, tanned torso and its little patch of hair down the middle of his chest. The lazy smile he gave her from below, his teeth gleaming and amazingly straight, the feel of him full and hard inside her as she rocked back and forth. His weather-beaten hands on the delicate skin of her breasts, the rasp of cracked and peeling knuckles as they turned to brush along the sides. . . .

  Now, though, brought back to the world she lived in today, Mercédès noticed the fumble as this man, this compelling stranger, worked at the mother-of-pearl buttons at the back of her dress. She felt the tightening and shifting of her bodice as he pulled and twisted to loosen it from behind, his hands smashed between her back and the cushion.

  At first, she tensed, turning her head to break the kiss. No, no, she couldn’t let him do that. . . . And as if sensing her reluctance, he stopped, moving his hands up to lift her shoulders, pulling her closer toward him. His hips pressed into the tops of her thighs, and she felt his erection straining beneath the silk of thin, loose trousers. A sharp spiral of surprise, and desire, shot down from her belly to her sex, where she automatically shifted to let him rub against her there.

  He murmured a soft groan against her mouth, and slid one hand around to cup her breast as he rocked gently against her. Mercédès gasped when she felt the awakening between her legs, the lust swell there, burgeoning and lifting after so many years of nothing.

  There were so many layers between his hand and her breast—corset, chemise, bodice—that she could barely sense the thumb that tried to stroke over the top of it, yet she felt the tightening and heaviness grow, the surge of sensation gathering in her nipple. She arched, bowing her back, pressing up into his palm, pushing away everything but the beautiful, living sensations channeling through her, all centering into the moist throb of her sex.

  Mercédès pulled at the tiny silk knots that acted as buttons on his shirt, looking up as he raised his face to the ceiling and released a long, shuddering breath as if recognizing her final acquiescence. Beneath the silk she found warm, smooth skin, the muscles there flexing beneath her fingertips as he held himself up on trembling arms.

  “Let me,” he said, rolling to the side, then off the bed, his shirt flapping with his sudden movements. He shrugged it off, and it fluttered down into the darkness beyond the bed as he came to kneel next to her. She saw his chest, the dark tan marks from rolled-up sleeves and the vee of an unbuttoned shirt, and the pale white of the rest of his skin, fairly glowing in the faint light. He was lean and rangy, with wiry muscles roping along his arms to the gold bands at his wrists, and boxy shoulders, and a flat belly with only the narrowest trail of hair leading down to his trousers.

  Pulling her to sit upright, he moved around behind her, and again she felt the tightening and loosening of her bodice . . . but this time she didn’t hesitate. Mercédès pulled off her slippers and unrolled her silk stockings as she felt the final give of her bodice. As it opened and fell away from its high neck and the covering of her shoulders and bodice, she was aware that he was already unlacing her corset, tugging and jolting urgently as if unfamiliar with such trappings.

  Suddenly, two warm, raspy hands slid around, cupping her breasts from behind. The chill of his golden armbands was a shock to her as they brushed against the sensitive skin beneath her arms, and she gasped . . . but then she forgot everything but what he was doing.

  The brush of long whiskers—softer than Fernand’s short, bristling mustache—and a warm mouth on the side of her neck, sucking and licking just beneath her ear, just at her most sensitive spot. . . . How could he have known? How could she have forgotten?

  He nibbled and sucked and licked, and she gasped and closed her eyes, feeling her pip swell even further, knowing that her legs were getting damp from its moistness. He caught each nipple between a thumb and forefinger, gently tweaking and caressing, teasing them into hard points and making her breathing come faster and harder.

  She twisted in his arms, her sagging dress and corset a bundle of confused fabric and lace and boning. Their mouths met again, and she slipped her hands down between them, grasping his heavy cock where it strained through the silk.

  Dios mio, she thought. . . . How could a man hide his arousal in trousers such as this? It was almost as if he were naked. She could feel the ridge of his head, slide her fingers along the sweet curve of the erection that jutted freely. The silk made warm friction, and he tensed and stilled as she thumbed over the foreskin of his cock’s head, down over the front, where she felt the smallest dampness, and back up and over.

  His breathing was hea
vy and raspy, and hers matched; the room was tight and close again, and suddenly he had her back on the cushions, pulling away from her teasing hands and lifting her skirts. He wasted no time, bringing his hands up her thighs, under the layers of skirt and crinoline and chemise, finding that pulsing wetness of her sex. She let her legs splay open and felt the weight of her dress and its undergarments lifted from her hips and piled on her belly. His hands were gentle but firm on the insides of her thighs, spreading them just at the juncture where her sex was now bare to him, to the open room.

  He used his thumb to slide up along the front of her sex, slipping and sliding sensuously, slowly and thoroughly between her labia, into their folds, and around her tight pip, down inside her quim. Mercédès moaned, closed her eyes, and let her hips thrash as much as they could under his relentless thumb. Up and down, around and down and in and out, it moved, slowly, easily . . . and she felt her pleasure gathering there, building and throbbing and pounding.

  Sinbad murmured something. She couldn’t understand what he said—it almost sounded like her name—and then his hands moved along her thighs back to her knees, as if in a gentle farewell. A low, frustrated wail built in the back of her throat, and her eyes flew open in time to see him whipping open the tie at the waist of his trousers, and in the low light, she saw the silhouette of his ripe cock spring free.

  After that, there was no hesitation. A lift of her hips, the grasp of her buttocks, and, kneeling in front of her, he slid inside.

  Mercédès cried out, shocked at the intense slam of pleasure . . . and then he pulled back, then filled her, then back, and in and out and in and out until it burst and she shuddered, crying out again, biting her hand to keep from calling the name on her lips.

  Edmond.

  He arched into her one last time, and with a sharp, pained cry came pouring into her, pulsing inside for a long moment. Sinbad’s hands had moved to the sides of her torso, and he bent over her, head sagging, hair hanging in long, messy strands on either side of his face as he breathed in and out as if he’d just run up a hill.