White Moon Black Sea Read Online Free PDF

in defiance of all her newer instincts.
    “I don’t think I tell you often enough that you are the most beautiful and exciting woman in the world.”
    “No, you don’t,” she answered him with a dazzlingly sexy smile on her lips. “In fact, you rarely tell me anything as flattering as that.”
    “Oh, surely I do.”
    “Perhaps the first week we spent together. Many, many times then. But that was a very long time ago.”
    “But you have known?”
    “Oh yes, I have known.”
    “That’s all right then?”
    She did not answer but gave him another of her exquisite smiles. He raised both her hands in his and turned them over to kiss the palms and lick them with an eager tongue. She closed her eyes in ecstasy, so sensitive was she to his every touch. He looked up and whispered huskily, so the men in the front seat would not hear. “I want you so much, all to myself, and I will have you that way soon, very soon.”
    “Oh yes, please,” she answered as she opened her eyes.
    “Don’t you want to know where we are going?”
    She nodded eagerly.
    “To Xania. I have sold my house in the old port to Christos, and we are going to spend the last night there together. Just you and I and the servants will be there. Does that please you?”
    “I spent the happiest days of my life in that house and in Xania, Rashid. So many times I have wanted to return. Yes, it pleases me very much.”
    “Do you remember how we met?” asked Rashid. “The way I remember, as if it were yesterday? How I wasn’t home when my father arrived with you. I stayed away deliberately. I had seen my father and you together several times and from the very first wanted to snatch you away from him. He was so old, and you so young and fresh and beautiful. I could hardly believe you were to be mine. I wanted you, and yet I didn’t want you, because I knew you would change my life. I would no longer be as free with my friends. They would never understand our relationship. Remember how I made you promise you would never speak of it to anyone? But it has been good. Happy, no?”
    “Yes, from the very first,” she answered.
    Rashid kissed her again. Both were aware that there wassomething very different about them and the way they were relating to each other today here in Crete. Something had radically changed Rashid. Was it that for the first time sentimentality had entered their relationship? It made Humayun feel awkward, but she was helpless to pull herself from the past.
    “It was such an odd day for me too, that day we met,” she said. “I had been your father’s concubine since I was thirteen, and he had been good to me, so good that all I wanted to do was please him. I spent all my days and nights learning the art of lovemaking, just to give him pleasure — only to be told I was being educated in the world of erotica solely to become your sexual slave. When we found you away from home, he left me there like any old parcel, and with barely a word of farewell, just a warning to please you or bear the consequences.
    “That was the first time I realized I was no more than chattel. And so, while waiting for you, I made up my mind to be the most remarkable possession you would ever own. Hours went by, and I decided to go out for a walk, and to look for you and give myself to you.”
    The surprise in Rashid’s face did not go unnoticed by her. Of course it had to be there. She had rarely spoken so directly to him in all their years together. Was it her affair with Moses that gave her the courage now? Or was it these few moments of loving and caring, the memories, and Crete that opened her to him now?
    “I couldn’t find you,” she continued. “It was midday and, oh, so very hot. I headed back to your house. Somehow I became lost in the maze of winding back streets which flattened out at the back of the port. I was tired and hungry. I can remember that vividly. I passed several sailors in a doorway who were laughing and talking. One called out to