The Book of the Seven Delights by Betina Krahn Page B

it to take a sniff at the barrel. "You shot at them? Dammit all—it's a wonder they didn't haul out the mobile artillery on us." He pried her taut, bloodless fingers from the pistol grip and dangled the gun between them. "Legionnaires don't like being shot at, Boston. They take it personally. And they make it a point of pride to return fire at a ratio of four-to-one ."
    "What was I supposed to do? Let them arrest me and send me to prison for the rest of my life so they wouldn't be offended?" She punched a finger at him. "This is all your fault. They broke down my door in the middle of the night and ran me out of my hotel room, my consulate, and finally Casablanca itself because of you ! You're a deserter]"
    He jerked his chin back at the charge and glared at her.
    "Well, at least I'm not a damned lunatic —charging off to Morocco by myself, nearly dying of seasickness, getting robbed before I even set foot on shore, and then taking on the French Foreign Legion singlehanded." He leaned steadily closer to her. "No, you're worse than a lunatic—you're a menace ! You're going to get somebody killed. But it's not going to be me."
    They faced each other, hands on hips, chests heaving, eyes hot… fear-fueled tempers roiling… pride burning. She had never been so exercised and overwrought, never vibrated physically with fury and leashed emotion before. She was desperate to do something and was terrified of what that something might be. He was so big and hot and angry and… and she was a hair's breadth away from grabbing him and… and…
    It was the uncertainty of and what ! that kept her from freeing that furious and utterly unprecedented impulse. She had no idea what she would do to him. Or with him. Her gaze fastened of its own will on his mouth. Her own lips began to feel hot, sensitive, and alarmingly conspicuous.
    "Get on the damned horse," he said with a growl, withdrawing and jamming the gun into his saddlebag and his foot into the stirrup. When he swung up and was settled in the saddle, he assessed both her and the situation. Looking as if it cost him a few years off his life, he stuck out his hand to her.
    "You ride with me or you walk to the nearest village. Which will it be?"
    It was a minute before she could bring herself to take his hand and use the stirrup he vacated for her.
    She struggled up behind him, and then found herself confronted with his big, overheated back. The only handhold seemed to be the rear of the saddle, but they hadn't gone a hundred yards before she was losing her grip and struggling just to stay aboard. He halted the horse and spoke through gritted teeth as he reached for her arms and drew them around his middle.
    "Hang on to me." He made a low, growling noise. "Just—keep your hands where I put them."
    That was how she came to be trekking through the equatorial noonday sun with her arms full of hostile, sun-maddened male and her own overheated body aching and burning strangely in some very alarming places.
    Heatstroke induced delusions… Medicine… the 600's.
    His back seemed as broad as the Sahara and she could feel the hard ridges of his ribs beneath her wrists. Every sway and shift of his body created a fresh awareness of the columns of sinew running up his spine and of the broad, smooth fans of muscles that stretched out to his shoulders.
    After a while she decided that even monosyllabic conversation was preferable to dwelling on the intimate details of how his muscular male body differed from her own.
    Comparative anatomy… Zoology… Mammalia… 599.
    "Where the devil are we?" she asked, squinting first at one side of the landscape and then at the other.
    Rocks. Hardpacked red and brown earth with the snowcapped Atlas Mountains in the background. The occasional stand of scruffy palms and parched grasses, and a sky as blue as polished turquoise.
    "Taking an alternate route."
    "To where? The back of 'beyond?'"
    "Marrakech."
    She absorbed that for a moment.
    "Well, where is Haffe? He