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“I would never presume to advise you on how to conduct your private business, my Queen—”
“On the contrary,” Heba quipped, “I think you presume right this moment.”
Senenmut acknowledged the observation with a grunt, but he was not to be deterred.
“—but may I suggest that you take advantage of this journey away from home. You are amongst friends here. None of these men would say a word. They are loyal first and foremost to their Captain, and they wholeheartedly support you, my Queen.”
“You speak as if I have made a proposal, and the Captain has accepted.”
She sighed.
“I have not, and he has not.”
This time, the steward laid his hand on Heba’s forearm, his eyes crinkling with encouragement, and perhaps a little mischief as well.
“Well, as I always say—for those who desire greatly, there is no time like the present to pursue it. You never know when the last chance might pass you by until, one day, you look back with only regret.”
With those parting words, Senenmut toddled unsteadily away. Unlike Shai, and to a certain extent, Heba, the steward was not born with sea legs.
He left Heba much to think through.
Most of all, he’d lit a fire within her heavily fortified heart.
Chapter Nine
“Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.”
—Lao Tzu
Heba was driving him mad.
Shai didn’t know when things changed; he only knew that the effect was sudden and it left him dazed.
As the first day of their voyage across the Red Sea progressed, Heba transformed with the setting sun like a wild thing awakened in the darkening of night.
It was bad enough that she wore men’s clothes, left her skin bare of cloying augmentation and her hair free of heavy, elaborate wigs. Her natural feline beauty shone through, with cheeks pinkened from the sun and wind, eyes bright with excitement, and lips curled in a perpetual smile, as if the joy within her simply couldn’t be contained.
She appeared younger than her wizened twenty-two years, fresh and new. And when he met her gaze across the ship’s deck, her eyes were clear and unveiled, her expression unshuttered.
He could finally see into the woman beneath the mask of a distant ruler.
A woman who wanted him.
Badly.
Shai could barely draw breath for the impact of those needful, soulful, desirous dark eyes.
His body responded immediately. And he thanked the secure ties of his loincloth for keeping his reaction mostly hidden beneath his tunic. The agonizing ache, however, he could do nothing about.
But then, he was used to it after a lifetime of wanting a female he couldn’t have.
Finding a moment alone on the west side of the ship, just below the bow, while the men rested briefly with wine and good company, Shai braced his arms on the rough-hewn rail and looked out upon the endless waves into a dazzling sunset.
“Mind if I join you?” a lilting feminine voice asked.
She seldom asked, only commanded or stated. Thus, Shai knew that it was the woman who spoke to him, not the Queen.
He simply looked at her and shifted his arms closer together to make room beside him.
