The Harem Wife

The Night at the Well (Revised)

Sabaji couldn't believe what her eyes were seeing. A man, wearing only the tattered remains of a dhoti, lay prone beside the oasis well. His dark eyes pinned to her, alert, wary, full of pain. Agony and exhaustion were etched into every inch of his sharp and rugged features, his large body taut, each muscle flexed, as if ready to leap into action. To attack her or anyone else who'd ventured down the sandy path through the long grasses in the growing dark of the night.

Her breath still lodged in her throat, she couldn't speak, only stare. His hair was long, brushing down beyond the rim of his shoulders. Dark as the night around them, and gleaming like polished ebony in the glittering torch light. The beard on his face was long, wild, reaching down over his corded neck to his collar bone.

"What is it, girl? Never seen a bloodied man before?" His voice was rich, decadent velvet, sliding over her skin, licking at her nerves languidly.

Suddenly, his words took root in her mind.

Bloodied?

Tearing her eyes from his darkly beautiful face, she studied the rest of his impressive frame.

There, on his belly, was a long, jagged slash, blood trickling from the edge to pool on the ground beneath him.

Gasping, the hurried to him, caring nothing for the fine clothes her mother had insisted she wear that night. Her knees scraping over the sandy ground, the smaller gravel pebbles chipped off from the old well digging into her tender skin, she didn't pay the pinching and pain any mind.

"What has happened to you?" she asked her voice husky from being out of breath, not bothering with common greetings expected of a desert prince's daughter. The man was wounded, he cared not for the façade of niceties.

Without thought, Sabaji placed a trembling hand on his stomach, her fingers dancing over ridges of muscles she'd never seen before. Were all men as well developed as he was? She pressed a shaking hand to the red and raging flesh of the wound, and jerked back when he hissed.

He cursed, then grit his teeth, his nearly black eyes narrowing at her.

"What are you doing, foolish girl? Can't you see that I am already wounded enough?" he snapped.

She nearly recoiled from the violence in his voice...but...for some inexplicable reason, she felt safe with him. Like he wouldn't hurt her.

Dragging in a deep, fortifying breath, the taste of dry desert air and fragrant blooms on her tongue, she said, "I am sorry, I only wish to help." Unbidden, her gaze dropped to the man's impressive body. Though he was wounded, he was still large and astonishingly male. She swallowed. "I've never seen a wound like this before," she admitted. Living among tent dwellers far from the healers in larger settlements, Sabaji and the other women were often called upon to help dress wounds, treat ailments, or prepare the nearly dead for their final journeys. She knew her way around common wounds, like blisters, small cuts and punctures, and the odd knee scrape. But this...she had no idea what to do with this, she only knew that the man was bleeding out at the foot of a well, in the dark, alone.

She had to help him, and gods, she hoped she survived the immodesty of it. He was bare chested, his dhoti ragged around his slim waist and thick thighs. He laid, almost reclined, against the base of the well, like a deity lounging on a richly upholstered couch, basking in the attentions of his worshippers.

And, oh, how she would worship a man such as him.

The man grunted, leaning up to plant his elbows in the ground, the wound on his stomach oozing blood all the faster.

"No, you must not move. You have lost much blood," she admonished him. "Have you anything I can use to bandage the wound?"

He grunted again. "Do you see anything, girl? If I had my belongings, I wouldn't be hiding out by this well, praying to the gods that I survive until morning when I can get the fuck out of here."