Tomb of the Sun King, page 53
part #2 of Raiders of the Arcana Series
He suspected why she had called him out here. Now that the immediate danger of the fate of the staff had been resolved, all the old questions about their future together were bound to come roaring back to the surface. The lines of Adam’s bruised, beard-shadowed face were uncharacteristically solemn.
Ellie’s throat tightened. She opened her mouth to speak, but he raised a hand—a pleading look in his eyes.
“Let me start—please,” he added meaningfully. “I just… want to get this out before it slips out of my brain.”
Ellie bit back her own words, recognizing the tight desperation in his tone.
“I’ve been thinking…” Adam began. “About what happened on that ledge. About how I didn’t even have to think to know that I was gonna put myself in the line of fire if it meant that you had a chance of getting out of there alive. I’d make the same choice again in a heartbeat, even though I know you’d be rightfully furious with me for doing it. And I’ve got to ask myself what that means, exactly.”
His lip was still scabbed from where it had been split. His eyes were tired—but his shoulders were straight, and there was nothing uncertain in the look he gave her.
“My dad never would’ve made a choice like that,” Adam went on. “He’d rattle off a hundred reasons why it wouldn’t make any sense—which’d all more or less amount to why saving his own ass was better for the greater good. George Bates has never cared about anything enough to give up his life for it. And I’m pretty damned sure he never will.”
He stepped closer to her, his voice softening as he gazed down at her through the twilight. “I told you I didn’t want you to be anybody other than who you are. But… it occurs to me I’ve been pushing exactly the opposite of that on myself.”
He lifted a tentative hand to her face, gently brushing a lock of hair back from her cheek. The gesture ached with a quiet tenderness.
“Maybe I don’t know where all of this is going to go,” he said, the words tight with feeling. “But I know that I’m in love with you. And even though I’m still not sure entirely why, I think you might actually love me too—just as the big, smelly, reckless lout that I am.”
A storm rose inside Ellie’s chest, a tumult like an untamed sea. It was too big for words—too wild, too immense, like trying to stuff a symphony into a music box.
She raised her hand and pressed it gently to the broad plane of Adam’s chest instead, just over his heart. Her palm lay there softly, where she could feel the deep beat of his pulse through his shirt.
“Not reckless,” she finally said when she could speak again, the words rough with feeling. “Quick-thinking. Selfless. Brave.”
“I haven’t been feeling very brave lately,” Adam admitted.
Still ravaged by the emotions swelling through her, Ellie raised her other hand to his beard-roughened face.
“We have been tying ourselves into knots over what our future ought to look like,” she said, meeting his gaze. “But how could we possibly know? I want time. Time for us to better understand what each of us wants. What we fear. What we need. But I do know that I want us to have a future together—desperately, with every bone in my body.” Her eyes narrowed, her voice sparking with a new ferocity. “And that I am never going to walk away from this, or you, no matter how hard it gets. Not without a monster of a fight. Because there is no one else in this world that I want like I want you—just you. Exactly as you are.”
His eyes were damp, his face drawn into lines of aching vulnerability.
“Ellie…” he began.
She raised her hand to his lips, stopping his next words with her fingertips.
“Just you,” she repeated forcefully as her own tears slipped down her cheeks. “Exactly as you are. Will you give me that, Adam Bates?”
He caught her hand, the gesture slow and careful. He took it from his lips, wrapping his warm, calloused fingers around it instead.
“Yeah,” he said, the word raw and uneven as it slipped from his throat. “Yes, Ellie.”
She brushed the moisture from her face and raised her chin. “Good,” she declared firmly.
He pulled her closer, slowly and tenderly. His lips brushed her hair, and then his head came to rest against her own.
She felt the uneven hitch of his breath through the circle of her arms.
“It doesn’t matter if we don’t know yet what it will look like,” she added pointedly. “We will figure it out together—in our own way. Not your father’s way or the way the rest of the world tells us.”
Something subtle shifted in Adam’s posture as she held him. It sparked a tingling awareness in her nerves, the first whispering intimations of a new heat.
“Been thinking about that too, as it happens,” Adam said, the words deceptively casual.
“You have?” Ellie pulled back to look at him, though the warmth and pressure of his hands on her waist still sent little shivering butterflies through her skin.
“About touching you,” Adam clarified, the words rich with a dark warmth.
Ellie swallowed thickly. “Oh?”
“Seems to me there’s two ways I could go about looking at that.” His hand began to move, fingertips tracing delicately up the line of her back. “There’s my father’s way—which says it’s a load of selfish impulse with no thought to the consequences.”
“I’ve told you—” Ellie began.
Adam stopped her with a finger to her lips. He traced it slowly down, catching the sensitive tissue along the rough surface of his skin.
“And there’s the other way,” he continued, softly relentless, gazing down at her with a cobalt heat. “The way that says I’m not taking advantage of you or lining you up for hurt—but giving you the kind of worship you deserve without demanding you change yourself in order to get it.”
The word—worship—shivered over her like another kind of touch, and Ellie’s breath grew a little shorter.
“Because that’s really what it comes down to, isn’t it?” Adam went on, moving his hand to the line of her jaw, then gliding it back to slide into the thick waves of her hair. “It’s that, or I’m just waiting for you to come around on this whole marriage thing—or settling for that goddamned ‘colleagues’ nonsense you tossed at me back in Luxor.”
He pulled her in with a quick flex of his arm and pressed Ellie against the lean, dangerous line of his body from chest to toes. His eyes glittered with a dangerous new intensity.
“I want you in my life, Princess—any damned way I can have you,” he said, the words low as a growl. “But I’d be lying to us both if I pretended I didn’t want that to include feeling you come apart in my arms.”
Ellie’s mouth was dry. Desire sparked through her, electrifying her skin. The ache for him came roaring back, dizzying her with the sheer force of her need.
“Adam…” The word was a plea.
He tugged irresistibly at the back of her hair, then softened, a flash of the old hurt and vulnerability mixing with the heat in his look.
“I’m not done yet.” The words sounded like both a warning and a plea. He closed his eyes, drawing deep. When he opened them again, Ellie saw a new kind of naked honesty in his expression. “You’ve told me how marriage is one kind of tyranny. But my father’s voice in my head—George Bates sitting up there, telling me I’m not good enough and never will be… That’s another. Even if it’s personal and not a whole damned institution. He doesn’t deserve to have that kind of power over us.”
“Over you,” Ellie corrected him, touching his face.
The old hurt tightened his expression, and he pulled her to his chest. Ellie let her head fall against his shoulder, holding him in return.
“We came pretty close to dying out there,” Adam said roughly. “More than once. And that’s got a way of putting things into perspective.” He brushed a hand down the side of her face, turning her chin up to meet his eyes again. “I can’t say how easy it’s going to be for me to shake it off. I spent a lot of years hearing those words—reckless and irresponsible. But if I’m going to be the kind of man you deserve, then I need to stop being afraid of who I am.”
“Who you are…” Ellie said, framing his face with her hands, “is everything that I could possibly want.”
The heat in his gaze intensified. His fingers trailed along her spine once more—this time triggering a cascade of shivers across her skin. “Guess that means I have to get used to being a bit of a cad.”
The words carried an air of wicked promise.
“How much of a cad, exactly?” Ellie pushed back hopefully.
Adam raised an eyebrow.
Ellie hurried onward. “It is only that Constance says her father has this very interesting book hidden in the bottom of his wardrobe that might offer certain… er, creative workarounds to the sort of practical considerations faced by a couple who choose to engage in extramarital activities.”
“You talking about what I think you’re talking about?” Adam returned carefully.
“I believe so?” Ellie hedged in reply.
Adam’s hand rose to thread into her hair again, sparking an electric awareness that coursed through her from her fingertips to her toes. “I think maybe I could manage being that kind of cad.”
“You could?” Ellie brightened.
“Worth a few tries.” Adam dropped his lips to her throat. “But we’re not going to need that book.”
“We won’t?” Ellie echoed a little numbly, her brain mostly subsumed by the exquisite sensation of Adam’s beard-roughed cheek lightly scraping against her jaw.
“Nope,” he confirmed easily as his mouth trailed lower—and his hands traveled up. “Because it turns out…” His lips trailed over her collarbone. “That I am very good…” His hand slid up to her breast, gliding across the curve through the fabric of her corset. “At improvising.”
“Thank God for that!” Ellie said fervently—and let him carry her down to the sand.
𓇶
Forty-Six
Ellie wasn’t sure how much sleep she managed to get after finally returning to the camp of the Ibn Rashid, but it certainly didn’t feel like enough. Her limbs were heavy as they made a warm departure from Sheikh Mohammed and his strikingly good-looking family—whom Ellie was fairly certain had not slept at all themselves, being too busy celebrating the wedding.
They had gained an extra member of their party in the process of their departure. When Adam had taken his leave of the scrawny yellow dog—a ritual which had involved him kneeling down on the ground and then flopping over entirely as the wriggling animal assaulted him with its tongue—the sheikh had made a declaration with a wave of his hand.
“That is your dog now,” his dashing brother, Samir, had succinctly translated for them.
Ellie’s stomach had sunk… but when Adam’s face lit up like a rising sun, she’d found herself incapable of making any protest.
When Adam had asked for the animal’s name—while vigorously rubbing at its ears as the beast gazed up at him in obvious bliss—Samir had told him Kalb.
“What does ‘kalb’ mean?” Ellie had quietly asked her brother.
“Er… Dog?” he replied awkwardly.
And so the dog—named Dog—trotted happily in their wake all the way to Al Mutiah, where Mr. Mahjoud booked them a pair of first-class compartments on the next departure up the now-repaired train line. Ellie had given in to the urge to close her eyes for a moment as they pulled out of the station—and the next thing she knew, she was blinking into wakefulness as the golden light of late afternoon streamed in through the window.
She was slumped against Adam’s shoulder. For something so solid, it made a remarkably comfortable pillow. Still, she sat up with a start, conscious of Padma sitting in regal splendor on the opposite bench of their compartment between Constance and Mr. Mahjoud.
Kalb looked up at her from where he lay sprawled across Adam’s boots.
“Goodness. I must have dozed off,” Ellie observed as the train jerked to a stop. “What station is this?”
“Cairo,” Adam replied wryly.
She looked up at him in surprise—and spotted a distinct damp spot on the pale fabric of his shirt.
“You’ve a bit of…” Ellie trailed off, her cheeks flushing as she realized the most likely source of the puddle on Adam’s shoulder.
Not that she was typically prone to drooling in her sleep.
Adam grinned back at her mercilessly as Kalb thumped his tail against the floor.
They disembarked quickly, as they had hardly any luggage to speak of. Even Padma had traveled exceptionally lightly, proving that she was quite capable of forgoing some of her usual finery when engaging in a pursuit.
They met up with Sayyid, Zeinab, and the other ladies out in the busy forecourt of the railway station, which was crowded with carriages, donkeys, and street vendors.
Ellie spotted a burly figure in a striped galabeya beside a cart full of little blue statues. She recognized her fake antiquities vendor and gave him a friendly wave.
The man’s eyes widened, and he quickly tapped his donkey, urging it into a trot that set his reproduction artifacts rattling as he made his escape.
Jemmahor sported a scrape on her chin. She wore it under her grin like a badge of honor. “You must promise you will not leave Egypt without seeing me again!” she threatened.
“Happily,” Ellie assured her.
“And I have not forgotten that you promised to teach me this jiu jitsu,” Jemmahor added pointedly to Constance.
“Oh, I think you will be absolutely splendid at it!” Constance assured her.
Umm Waseem stuck out her hand. “Allah yehmeeky, okhti. E'meli mashakel kteer.”
Ellie clasped Umm Waseem’s palm warmly. “But what is she saying?”
“She asks for God to protect you while you cause more trouble,” Jemmahor cheerfully translated.
“Ilâ l-liqâ’,” Umm Waseem finished with a hint of mischief.
She slung her canvas bag over her shoulder and slipped away, quickly indiscernible from the many other black-cloaked ladies that crowded the street.
“You all right?” Adam asked as Ellie watched the old smuggler go. “You look a bit like someone just made off with your puppy.”
“I was hoping to quiz Umm Waseem on the finer points of working with nitroglycerin compounds,” Ellie mused forlornly. “Only everything has happened so quickly.”
“Aww,” Adam said lightly. “What a shame.”
Ellie narrowed her eyes. “You don’t think it’s a shame at all.”
“I’m still recovering from the last time you got your hands on a pile of dynamite,” Adam replied. “Now come on. I think our ride is here.”
He steered her toward the Tyrrell carriage, which had pulled up to wait by the station door. They took a quick leave of Sayyid and Zeinab, who promised to rejoin them after they had checked on their home.
After all, they had a good deal to talk about.
⸻
Ellie could still feel the exhaustion in her bones as she trudged into the cool, palm-shaded courtyard of the Tyrrells’ Cairo house. The fountain tinkled musically beside the clean-swept tiles under the shade of the softly rustling palms.
Lady Sabita and Sir Robert sat at one of the wrought-iron tables. Sir Robert browsed a newspaper while Lady Sabita sorted through the post. She spoke distractedly as they entered, barely glancing up.
“Oh! Are you back from your excursion already?” she asked. “Was it very nice? Maa said you were going all the way to Aswan.”
Constance stopped short in front of Ellie, causing Ellie to nearly collide with her. She cast a quick and uncomfortable look over at her grandmother.
Padma had apparently taken the effort to concoct a cover story for them before setting out in pursuit.
The kumari smiled dangerously, and Constance blanched—undoubtedly considering how many more favors had just been added to her Aai’s count.
“Aswan! Yes!” Constance blurted out, flashing her mother a bright smile. “Ellie’s brother joined us, as you can see, and it was lovely. They had the most beautiful…”
“Temples to Ramses II and Nefertari,” Ellie filled in with a mutter.
“Some very nice quarries as well,” Neil added. “I have been wanting to see them. I mean—had,” he corrected himself with a slightly panicked look at Ellie and Constance. “Had been wanting. Because now I have seen them, and they were splendid!”
At Neil’s painfully awkward tone, Lady Sabita finally looked up from her letters. Her eyes immediately widened.
“But you look as though you have been through a robbery!” she exclaimed. “Has something happened?”
Ellie was conscious of the rip in her blouse and the scab on Adam’s split lip. Even Neil was showing the shadow of a beard—though it paled in comparison to the scruff on Adam’s jawline. They were all wearing the same clothes they had left in nearly a week before, which were looking significantly worse for wear.
They had acquired a scruffy dog.
“You wouldn’t believe it, Maa!” Constance cut in quickly. “All the better carriages were full, and we had to travel third class!”
“All the way from Aswan?” Lady Sabita exclaimed with obvious horror as she rushed toward them. “You poor things! That must have been absolutely dreadful. We shall have to coddle you soundly. Come—let’s get you all a change of clothes. And a wash,” she added awkwardly, stopping a few steps shy and giving them an unenthusiastic sniff.
“Sounds good to me,” Adam said happily. “I’ve been itching for another turn in that sauna.”
“Thank you, Lady Sabita.” Ellie forced a tired smile. “That would be lovely.”
⸻
A few hours later, Ellie stepped into the meshrabiyeh-screened salon on the roof to find Constance sprawled across the cushions, shamelessly stuffing her face with dates. The tortoiseshell cat had returned as well—if it had ever left. It dozed on a pillow above her head.
Zeinab sat beside her in a fresh galabeya of midnight blue embroidered with gold, with a hijab to match. She leaned tiredly against her husband. Sayyid’s fez was back in place, which he looked quite relieved about.
