by M. C. Cerny
Asshole should have checked the dark web for my hidden bank account and the duffel bag stashed in the garden shed behind a stack of pallets a dozen deep. I even had a spare key for the Bentley nestled in the heel of an Aquatila fall bootie in my closet. It’s nice what money can buy you when you bribe a nice kid at the library to run an errand or two you can’t be seen doing. Playing the bored little housewife left me with a lot of free time on my hands and a generous allowance.
“Elizabeth!” Adam called and I jogged out slipping on the silver Jimmy Choo kitten heels.
“Ready.” I pasted a fake smile over my face.
“Darling, I need you to hold this for me.” He held up a silver thumb drive. My heart thudded while the drive reflected the overhead light.
“What is it?” I stuttered taking it between my numb fingers turning it over. I couldn’t believe I was holding the fucking thing in my hand. My palms sweated and I feared I’d drop it and the jig would be up.
“That my darling is going to pay for all your pretty gifts I’m going to give you after this trip.” He tapped my nose lightly and I slipped the thumb drive into my purse pretending to fumble with it.
“Hurry up and fix your mascara. It’s a little on the light side.” He leaned in kissing my neck with lingering lips and a tongue that tasted my fear. I scurried to the bathroom shutting the door behind me. I broke open the tube switching out the thumb drives. I squinted my eyes and ran cold water over my wrists trying to get my shit together. Fuck. Mascara. I grabbed a second tube from my toiletry bag and swiped that on thick. Perfect.
I was only in there a minute when he called telling me to hurry.
“Better?” I asked forcing air in and out of my nose so I didn’t look crazy and out of breath which I was.
“Absolutely.” Adam charmed me with his offered arm leading me down the steps of the jet. His steps were eager as I took in the sight from the tarmac. Hot desert wind whipped our faces and we walked to the black limo waiting to take us to Sheik Abu Rahms.
The palace stood amid the desert with white stone columns and tall green plants filling the entry way. It was an Oasis from my fantasy built into a nightmare.
“As-salam ‘alaykum, so good to see you again Mr. Huntley.”
They clasped arms and embraced familiar with each other in what I assumed was a friendly greeting.
“Sheik Rahm, wa ‘alaykum as-salm, it’s always a pleasure.”
“Who is this lovely gem?” His hand reached for me and lifted my face up. The Sheik’s dark and coldly calculating glare kept me silent. Obedient. He licked his fleshy lips smacking them loudly in the silence.
“This is Elizabeth, my darling wife.” Adam’s hand rested on my back, a subtle reminder he was there.
The Sheik’s eyes scanned me and my stomach cramped making me fidget on my heels.
“Finally, a worthy payment, Huntley.” The men laughed leading me toward a full tea service welcoming us. A low table with colorful silk cushions covered the floor. Spices filled my nose with exotic scents. Servants pours cups and filled plates with candied dates and other delicacies I didn’t recognize. My stomach rumbled low and I dipped my eyes down doing my best to avoid any unwanted attention.
“I’m afraid not Sheik. I still enjoy her company.” Adam shifted pulling me under his arm and weakly I smiled.
“You won’t give her up, will you? I could use another pretty wife, maybe she gives me blue eyed babies, no?”
Both men laughed and he tugged me under his arm close.
“I swear she’s worth more than a hundred camels, diamonds, or oil fields, but you’ll be the first to know when I tire of her.” Adam joked squeezing my hand in his punishing grip. I bit my cheek saying nothing. Let him have his fun, if all went well this would be the last of my torture.
I would endure.
“Hmmm. Precious indeed.” The Sheik murmured cocking his head before raising his hands motioning for a servant. The uniformed man leaned down and they spoke words I didn’t understand before the Sheik sent him away again.
“Is the shipment ready to be moved?” Adam inquired.
The Sheik shook his head. “So impatient my American friend.” He clapped his hands startling me. “Come let us rejoice and celebrate our meeting before we conduct our business.”
“Of course.” Adam gritted sipping his tea with a sour face that was hard to miss.
He hated tea and inwardly I enjoyed sipping mine. The Sheik did not seem perturbed at all by this and made small talk with Adam.
“I’ll have one of my wives, perhaps Sadira entertain yours while we talk.”
I learned that Sheik Rahm kept several wives, though only a few were in residence here at his summer home. The rest were elsewhere forgotten, or with his children in London. Part of me grew jealous with my dreams to be ignored.
“Elizabeth, why don’t you go with Sadira. Join the women in their quarters and I will come for you later.”
“Alright.” I got up from the floor ready to follow a young woman around my age down a long hallway.
“Darling.” Adam’s voice halted me mid-step.
I paused frozen and turned toward him.
“Your purse, please.” He held out his hand and I shook off the nerves remembering that the broken tube was back in my toiletry bag with the real thumb drive.
“Of course, my love.” I handed him the beaded bag and he nodded quickly dismissing me emerged in his business dealings.
My steps heavy, my bones old and brittle from the stress of living a life full of lies while my heels clicked against the patterned tile. I bet these floors survived centuries of bearing witness to human struggles while the men continued drinking and laughing. The ghoulish sounds diminished the further inside the palace we went.
“Hello, Elizabeth?” Her English was flawless and hinted of an accent that made her voice easy on the ears. Her head was covered, but her hair reached her hips peeking out from the decorated head scarf in ropey braids.
“Yes. You must be Sadira.” I held back my gasp.
The dark beauty with caramel skin turned her face to me. A jagged scar puckered the skin from her temple, down her cheek uplifting her smile awkwardly on one side. A sad crease of her lips nodded. She would have been stunning were it not for the disfigurement. It was the kind of injury man made. I shuddered thinking of the ones we left behind celebrating their business successes.
We reached a set of double doors opened by intimidating guards. Stepping through the doorway, I found myself locked inside an indoor paradise. A lush pool filled the center of the room, greenery and flowers bloomed in the humid air that wrapped around me in a hug. Childhood memories of sitting in a pile of warm unfolded laundry reminded me of the few times my mother was home and sober. It lingered as one of my few positive memories of her not tainted by alcohol or drugs.
Various women lounged on divans in various states of dress. I smirked realizing I was in an honest to God real harem. I spun around taking in the colorful transparent dresses inside the sanctity of the marble walls. The joke was on Adam unless this Sheik had male quarters identical to this.
The women, each exquisite looking in her own way vacillated between ignoring me and staring at me like an exhibit in a museum. I was the only Caucasian pet in this menagerie. The female form didn’t bother me the way the male one did because of my years at the all-girls boarding school. We often changed together in the locker room after physical exercises and the showers were open. Watching these women was nothing shocking and I felt relaxed within the walls of the palace. To them this was probably as much of a prison as mine at home had become.
My tour guide, the lovely Sadira pulled me up and whispered against my ear, “Is your husband a bad man like mine is?”
Her face clouded and the scars more monstrous when she frowned. I wondered how she knew. Mine was an international arms dealer and wanted by the US government and Interpol. The more I learned about him the more hate festered. Hers was a terrorist who liked to i
nvade villages and brainwash men and children into joining his cause. Both hurt innocent people. Who was I to judge?
“I think bad is a relative term. Feels like all men are evil, aren’t they, Sadira?” Dark eyes nodded and she turned away from me slowly unveiling the top of her dress.
I gasped when I saw the intricate branding that covered her shoulder to shoulder and reached the top of her back.
“Sadira! You mustn’t.” Another woman, this one older tried to ward me off. She brandished a handheld club attempting to hit me. I held my hands up and backed away. The unexpected move forced me to my knees. Sadira cursed spitting words at her and reached for me, half covering my body protectively. The harem didn’t seem so safe after all. The eyes of others watched us, sitting up, they waited.
Sadira hissed, “Her husband has brought the weapons. The ones that killed our people.”
“No matter. She can’t be trusted.” The woman pulled Sadira back.
“Please.” I climbed up from the floor and reached for my host, my fingers reaching to trace the pattern of pale scars on her back. “What did he do to you?”
“It’s what he let them do to me.” Her sobs made broken hiccups.
“You’re from the village. The one that was bombed?” I asked.
She nodded. “What village of my people hasn’t been bombed or violated by men in rich suits.”
“Your face–is that how that happened?” I reached for her check. I should have been appalled asking so bold a question. I would have never done that on my own.
She rested her check in my hand. “Yes, among other things.” Her eyes were fathomless depths. I fell deeper in the well unable to surface from the pity and shame.
“I am so sorry. I don’t know what I can do.”
“Maybe we can help each other.” She took my hand in hers pulling me toward the pool.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know how to swim.” I locked my legs stopping in fright at the edge of the clear water and tiles. Sadira nodded.
“We won’t swim, but it is a tradition to welcome a stranger by washing their feet.”
“Oh.”
“Come. You must come.” She waved the women over to help her tugging me forward.
Surprise and shock found me pulled toward the inlayed pool filled with clear steaming water. Women swam in translucent silks while other went sans clothing altogether. Several women gathered trenchers of fresh flowers and bath beads to the smaller heated pool where we headed hand in hand.
Hands lifted my dress over my head leaving me in my underthings. My limbs froze and I let them do what they wanted. My shoes were slipped from my feet and left by the edge to sparkle like lonely stars in the night sky. Sadira took my hand walking into the water with me and when we reached a depth that was thigh high, I shivered despite the heat. A few licked their painted lips surrounding me. Several of the women shucked their silk dresses, the fabric billowing in the water like exotic jellyfish, seductive and deadly. I felt like the cream in a cookie center waiting for them to nibble on the edges before tearing me apart.
I couldn’t have been more right.
I wasn’t big on cultural practices. That was something I missed with the nuns in Vermont. Since internet wasn’t permitted unmonitored, I had no way of know if this was legitimate. I had a feeling these ladies scripted something different in their welcome ceremony, but it went something close to an orgy. More hands than I could count touched me, massaged me and took liberties that confused me. They washed more than my feet with lingering hands. When Sadira reached for my lingerie I held her hands to stop her.
“My husband.” I whispered feeling panicked backing away until my calves abutted the edge of the pool forcing my knees to bend and my legs to give as I sat on the cold tiles.
Sadira leaned over me, her companions flanking her. “Husbands have no place here.” Her hand reached for my hair pulling pins out letting the heavy curls tumble past my shoulders. Her hands lingered on my necklace eyeing the symbol that rest between my breasts on the chain. Her nails fingered the figure eight symbol and I bit down the curious what she knew but afraid to ask.
My hand covered hers removing the poisoned charm from her grasp. “My brother.” I’d never get out of the palace alive if I did something to her. I surrendered to the idea of merely surviving.
She let go and motioned for a serving girl to join us. A hand offered me a golden cup filled with liquid, blood red and sweet in taste.
Someone whispered, “Pomegranate nectar.”
I swallowed the drink down along with the hesitation leaning back as I went. I glanced over my shoulder and the harem seemed empty of my naysayers leaving just a handful of us in Sadira’s pool. Hunger I couldn’t explain clouded their eyes as well as something else, a carnal knowledge perhaps I had yet to learn, or a lesson.
“We are the same, you and I. Denied until our hearts burn.” She pounded her fist against her chest and stepped close. I felt her heat against me while cool water from the pool lapped at my legs.
“I don’t know what this is.” I whispered feeling the effects of whatever she’d given me in the drink. I couldn’t even feel anger, merely solace and peace that this was how it would end. I deserved this, traitorous wife that I was harboring shadowy secrets so thick they could block out the sun.
Sadira licked her lips hovering over me, her hand trailing a path down the center of my chest between my breasts. Our eyes met and I followed her gaze watching her hand cup my tit rubbing the nipple between her painted nails. Shudders racked my body and then her friends, handmaidens, I don’t know who or what they were to her followed her lead and I laid back mute letting it happen. I shut my eyes and let them consume me breaching my walls with their fingers and tongues tasting and biting until the pleasure blackened my vision and I cried out.
Voices echoed as my pleasure waned, questions repeated as orifices were massaged. My body held apart, examined, and tormented until they were pleased with my verbal acquiesce. I don’t know what I said under the influence, and for a brief spell I didn’t care.
Sadira was right.
Adam denied me much, but the ache Sadira awakened inside me was worse because I didn’t know how to turn it off. My brain couldn’t wrap around the idea because I didn’t gravitate that way. If anything, an all-girls boarding school taught you to figure that out pretty quickly. I couldn’t picture a man either because Adam tainted everything with his poison, and yet I wondered what it would be like to feel the balm instead of the burn. Agent Jackson came close, but there was a debt to be paid with that liaison, and I wasn’t willing to trade one cage for another.
Adam might kill me for this, heck, he could kill me for a lot of things at this point, but I prayed he’d never have to know. What happened in the harem would stay in the harem. He’d never hear it from me. Sadira and the women worked me over until I lay limp and sedate at the edge of the pool. If this was punishment, I’d take it tenfold. If it was an education, I’d revel with it and replicate it often on my own. I no longer feared my body’s responses. This was pleasure and I would use it to my advantage and benefit. Twisted, I was caught in a terminal web.
17
Adam
“Your wife is obedient.” The Sheik commented and I choked the tea down as best I could without insulting him. The pain had been getting less manageable with the medications, and keeping up appearances increasingly difficult. I let the foul tea slide down my throat warming my chest and settling in my stomach like acid. The only good thing would be on the return flight, my wife would be more medicated than I, and not have a damn clue anything was wrong.
I clenched my jaw.
“She is a rare gem that’s for sure.” She’d be safe in the harem as long as she behaved. The Sheik had spies everywhere including pitting his wives against each other which was fucking genius. The last thing I needed was Elizabeth opening her mouth or insulting one of them, but she was timid enough I didn’t let the thought cross my mind a second time.
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��Let us get down to business, my friend. I have the money for transfer but I want the weapons.” His manservant brought out a metal suitcase popping it open. A computer screen was inside with a keyboard. Apparently, we were going to James Bond this shit to my En Swisse Banka account.
“I will transfer the money and you will give me the weapons.”
I held up Elizabeth’s beaded purse.
“I always let my wife carry the important stuff.”
The sheik nodded. “I know how that is my friend. Let them think they have all the control, but none of the decision making, yeah?”
“Exactly.” I saluted him with the tea cup choking another unpalatable sip down my throat. If I could have slit his throat with the fine bone china, I would have done it and taken my leave of this place.
“But first, I am curious, tell me what this General has done to piss you off. He leaves troops in my territory. His men fuck my women and they make nice with my children bringing toy tanks and dollar bills.”
“I always wanted to get one over on dear old dad. Let’s call this move checkmate.”
“Ah.” He laughed as if he knew the scope of what was going on. He had no clue the shady mother fucker General was selling out his own country. His own weapon deals killed troops and civilians in untold numbers. I was no saint, but I certainly wasn’t a terrorist. An opportunist, sure, but never a traitor. My mother might have been a whore, but even she was an opportunist trying to make ends meet and get by. I hated her, but I still respected that she did what she could even if she abandoned me and died having my brother. We’d meet our maker and sort this shit out then, but for now I wanted to make sure the General got fucked in the process. I’d use my wife, my brother, anyone to make sure it happened.
“Let us eat and enjoy the quiet without the women.” Servants brought dish after dish replacing my plates with something new. Out of respect I sampled each one until sufficient time had passed, perhaps an hour or more.
