The Champion Read Online Free Page A

behind her.
    Glancing around the salon, she found it empty, the bread and wine untouched. Watery noises echoed from the fountain room.
    She walked toward them, her breath burning in her throat. Through emerald stalks of bamboo, she saw him standing in the pool, tall and lean, his body naked in the faint light of oil lamps. He angled his head under the spill of water, scrubbing it through his hair, crystal beads dripping from his muscular arms, his wrists adorned with colored braids of thread. Her eyes darted down the wet shine slicking his narrow waist, to the fullness of his relaxed cock, water forming glittering rivulets from its rose colored tip.
    Leave, leave now, before he—
    He looked up, his gaze narrowing through shadowed breaks in the bamboo. She stood frozen in place, unable to move.
    He wiped the water from his face, his attention flitting to the swell of her breasts under the shining fabric of her dress.
    “And who would you be?” he asked.

    How could he have missed her? He’d checked the rooms, but perhaps not thoroughly enough. She was small, a pretty slip of nothing in beaded pink silk. If she’d hidden herself cleverly, she might have seen him taking the knives from his belt.
    “I am Nadira,” she said, speaking the same archaic but common language as the Sultan.
    “How long have you been here, Nadira?”
    Her lips parted, her eyes lingering on him, as if she couldn’t tear them away. “Long enough.”
    Not the answer he wanted to hear.
    Jacob nodded, stepping from the water and wrapping one of the starched white linens around his waist. He approached her, expecting her to back away, but she stood her ground, looking up at him with her honey colored gaze, a heated blush warming her cheeks.
    “Why?” he asked.
    “To talk with you.”
    “The Sultan sent you.”
    “It was my choice to come. I—”
    He waited for her to finish, then realized that she couldn’t, her purpose suddenly too much for her. “The guards let you in?”
    She shook her head, strands of diamonds glinting from her hair. “There are places in the walls.”
    The walls? He’d been a fool. “In all of the rooms? Secret doors everywhere?”
    “Just in the salon.”
    The place where he’d hidden the knives. Jacob kept his expression neutral through force of will. “And are there others in the wall? Someone watching us now?”
    She looked confused. “No.”
    Perhaps she was telling the truth, or perhaps she didn’t know. Either way, his simple plan had just acquired an unwelcome dimension. The woman had to be dealt with—in whatever way that fool Letoures would have dealt with her—in order to maintain the image of the man she and her masters expected to see.
    A drunken, thieving, gambling womanizer.
    “Do you they permit you to drink wine?” he asked her.
    “I come from the deep desert, from the ancient tribes. Our religion is older and does not forbid it.”
    “Well,” he said softly. “Allow me to pour you a glass.”

    Nadira followed him into the salon. The water was still slick on his broad back, the starched linen knotted at his waist reminiscent of the pharaoh images painted on tomb walls in the desert, the color of the threaded braids around his wrists as faded as their ancient bracelets. Placing two of the goblets by the decanter, he poured a half measure of wine in each.
    “You said that it was your choice to come here.” He held one of goblets up for her. “You enjoy the company of thieves?”
    “You’re more than a thief,” she replied, accepting the wine. “I’ve listened to stories about you for years. It always sounded impossible, the things you did…the chances you took. They should have killed you a dozen times, but you survive.”
    “And you admire that.”
    “It is not easy to survive.”
    He sipped from his glass, his gaze holding hers.
    “Perhaps you think I’m foolish,” she murmured.
    “No,” he said. “But you may have overlooked a few of my vices.”
    “I know what you