"Maybe several days," he replied, purposely vague.
"Several days?" I bit my lip. Surely this was the opportunity I had sought. Was I bold enough to attempt a lone escape? "Might I still ride?" I asked. Until now, he had not allowed me to ride with anyone except himself.
He looked like he would refuse.
"Please, Ahmed," I cajoled. "Couldn't Gaston ride out with me? It makes my head ache to stay in all day. Please, Monseigneur," I pleaded again with downcast eyes.
"Do you intend to run away?" he asked bluntly.
I avoided his gaze. "No, I am not going to run away." Of course I lied, for that was precisely what I intended.
"Very well," he capitulated with an indulgent smile. "He will be delighted, le bon Gaston. He is your very willing slave, you know. He has a beautiful nature, le pauvre diable. He is not a savage Arab like me, eh, little Diane?" The mocking look was still there but also a hint of residual passion. He turned my face up to his and then kissed me hard. Bruisingly. It took little more than a look to reignite the fire he kept constantly smoldering inside me, but I ignored both his taunt and the heat in my belly.
"When do you leave?"
"At first light. Will you miss me, my dove? Will our bed be cold without me?"
Yes. I could not stand it when he was away, but I refused to stroke his inflated ego so I did not give him the satisfaction of an answer.
Then another thought, a horrifying one, suddenly descended on me. Raoul de Saint Hubert was a man who moved about in the world— in my world. Although we had never before crossed paths, it was nearly impossible to think he and I would not have mutual acquaintances. Our class of people was too small not to. The idea of meeting him here in these circumstances and the thought of anyone I knew discovering it filled me with panic and a profound mortification. I could already hear the tittering whispers.
The full implications of his arrival rushed over me. How could I bear to meet anyone of my own order in these circumstances—the haughty heiress Diana Mayo a mistress to a savage desert sheik? Yet it was all true. He had indeed reduced me to playing his whore.
"I don't want to meet him, Ahmed. I do not wish him to see me here. Not like this."
"You will meet him," my sheik said. "And I expect you to be the perfect hostess." He added with a sardonic twist of his mouth, "It is a role for which all you fine English ladies are bred, after all."
My anger and resentment surged. "It is too much! You cannot expect me to play ‘lady of the manor’ to your friends in this barbaric camp!"
His gaze narrowed. His lips compressed. "You will be cordial to my guest."
"Please, Ahmed." I clasped his bicep. "Have you no pity? Will you not spare me this ordeal? Do you not understand what it would mean to meet someone from my class, from my world? It would be too degrading. I cannot stand it!"
"You exaggerate," he said, impatiently brushing my hand from his arm.
"I do not! I could never face…" I buried my head in my hands. "Please, if you will only this once—"
He cut me short with a fierce oath. "If?" he echoed. "Do you think to make bargains with me? Have you so much yet to learn? Besides, you speak as if you plan to return to them. Do you still not understand I shall never let you go?"
"Then I am nothing but a slave to you! If that is so, when is it required of a slave to be cordial towards her master's friends?"
"A slave!" He threw up his hands and cast his head back with a roar of laughter. "Then by Allah, you are a spoiled one! Maybe you don't know that slaves are taught obedience with a whip?"
"Is that a threat, Ahmed?"
His mirth abruptly ended. His expression blackened, and with it the old cruelty surfaced. "By Allah, you know I do not make idle threats. I demand obedience. You will do as you are told!"
It was true. He did not make idle threats. He had shot his own horse when it refused to obey him. Later, I had seen him chastise a man who had been brought before him for judgment. While I did not understand precisely what the man's crime had been, the punishment seemed out of proportion to any offense I could conjure short of murder. I had watched, fascinated with horror, until at last he tossed away the murderous whip and had left the limp, blood-stained heap huddled on the ground. The sight had sickened and haunted me.
The sheik's new tenderness toward me had given rise to a hope that our relationship had become more than mere physical attraction. Although I had become so intimately a part of his life, it seemed I had deluded myself to think that he was even capable of something finer and better than the primitive desire I aroused in him. No, deep and lasting affection seemed to be beyond his ken—except of course for Raoul.
I suddenly hated this Frenchman in advance. In addition to the deep humiliation I would suffer at his coming, I was fitfully jealous of the affection my sheik had for him—the affection he had withheld from me. A great unrest and a dull aching entered my heart, followed by a terrible feeling of depression. Had the ramifications of my meeting his friend never even entered his mind, or had it just made no impression? After all this time, did he still have no regard for my feelings? Did he care so very little? I did not care how much I angered him. I refused to let him humiliate me. If I could not persuade him to spare me out of affection, perhaps he would act of out possessiveness, out of jealousy, instead.
"And your wish, your idea of obedience, is for me to please this Frenchman?" I said. "Have you changed so much, Ahmed? Not long ago you trusted no one but yourself to climb to my balcony in the hotel and now…did you wish me to please Raoul in the same manner I please you—in his bed? Is that what you want from me, Ahmed?"
The look that blazed in his eyes sent a shiver of terror through me.
I had sworn to rouse all the demons his jealous nature possessed, and by Jove, I had! But the triumph was like a knife in my heart. For weeks I had known wild happiness, at least in our moments alone. The black scowl I had learned to dread had not been directed at me, and the fierce eyes had only gazed at me with amorous passion shining in their dark depths, but now I had roused another passion altogether—a fearsome fury.
His tone was icy. Glacial. I had never seen such cold rage. "By Allah, you will never belong to another man. I would kill you first."
I winced as if he had struck me. All the gentleness of the morning had vanished, revealing only the savage, tyrannical despot underneath. But I knew that it was my own fault. I had knowingly and deliberately taken a stick and stirred the viper's nest.
"I have branded you as mine. You are for no other than me! Do you understand?" His fingers gripped my shoulders, digging deeply, painfully, into my flesh. "Perhaps you need a reminder, ma chère, lest you forget in my absence?"
He shoved me back upon the bed, and his mouth came down on mine, but there was no tenderness, no gentle lover in this kiss. It was brutal and bruising, bringing the taste of blood from my lips to my tongue. I did not resist, but neither did I respond. I merely submitted.
I refused to shrink as he came over me, as his intense blue gaze bored into mine, as he drove himself into me with a single ferocious thrust that impaled him to the hilt. Passive and subservient, I lay beneath him, as stiff and cold as stone.
"Is this what you want, Ahmed?" I whispered. "Is this the kind of obedience you crave?"
He hissed a curse I could not understand. "Allah! You know it is not!"
"You cannot command my emotions. You cannot treat me like this and expect my lo—"
The word froze on my lips. He stilled, buried inside me. His pupils flared, but he said nothing. Neither did I. For a long moment we lay there joined, but perfectly still. We didn't even breathe. Our combined heartbeats filled the silence, mine producing a dull ache in my chest. Perverse creature that I am, I knew that I was falling in love with him. Maybe I already had, for the word had only moments ago lingered on my lips. It lingered even now.
"Or is this what you prefer?" I finally asked in a breathless tone. I closed my eyes, concentrating on his verge pulsing dee
p inside me, and squeezed my inner muscles. The silence between us was broken by his sharp intake of breath. I once more had the advance of surprise, and I held on to it as I continued milking him in slow and deliberately cadenced contractions.
He still held my shoulders in a bruising grip. He gradually eased up, and then with a guttural groan, he began to move again. Slowly. Methodically. He receded by inches and then thrust back in. Deep and then shallow. Shallow and then deep.
He raised one of my legs, kissing the length until my ankle rested on his powerful shoulders and then repeated with the other, pausing to lick the hollow behind my knee. It was a sublimely sensitive place that always sent ripples of pleasure through me. Yes, my desert lover knew me well.
My climax coiled deep in my belly with this exquisitely sweet and slow ebb and flow, a purposeful plunge and drag. I was very close, and he knew it. He thrust deep and stilled again, his voice lowering to a tone as smooth as velvet. "You will do as I wish?" The words were posed as a question, but I knew the implied command. Still, I perceived it as an olive branch, another compromise, another truce.
"I have no choice," I whispered the lie.
I did indeed have a choice. I chose my freedom. As soon as he left the camp, I would make my escape. It had to be now, before I lost the desire…before I lost myself completely. I was already slipping away after allowing him to take possession of me in tiny increments. If I did not leave soon, he would own me in truth—body and soul.
For a moment he looked down at me with smoldering eyes. "Good," he said softly, all the former ferocity dying. "You do understand. Take care you do not wake the devil in me again, ma belle."
He then gave me three more hard and purposeful thrusts that sent me shuddering over the abyss and withdrew to spend himself on my belly, his gaze never leaving mine. It was a symbolic gesture. He was marking me as his own. A moment later, wearing the look of a satisfied lover, he cupped my face with both hands. This time his kiss was all that I could ever desire.
***
With his attention on a broken fingernail, Ahmed rose from the bed and padded to the dressing table for a knife. I followed his every movement, watching him with bemusement as he carefully trimmed the nail with his bejeweled jambiya. I had often marveled at, amongst myriad other things about him that puzzled me, the fastidious care he took of his person, especially his well-manicured hands. He had beautiful hands. Large palms with long brown tapered fingers, possessing brutal strength and exquisite tenderness.
He returned to me with the knife still in hand. I thought he intended to lay it on the bedside table, until he came over me with his mouth compressed and his brows drawn together with a murderous look. He raised the knife. "Do not move, ma chère, and it will be over quickly."
My heart froze. By Allah, I would surely kill you first. I closed my eyes and stifled a gasp.
A millisecond later the dagger plunged into the pillow beside my head.
"A deathstalker," he said. "Three times more venomous than a king cobra. One knows them by their bilious color." I gazed in horror and breathless shock at the deadly little yellowish-green creature impaled on the end of his blade.
"This is the second scorpion I have found in the tent this week. Zilah is too careless," he continued in his soft and lazy tone. "You must insist that she puts away your boots and does not leave your clothes lying on the floor."
His manner could not have been more casual! Although he had probably saved my life, I still flushed hotly at the nonchalant reference to the intimacy of our living arrangements and the implied continuance of it.
When he gazed at me again, his expression was once more stern. "I shall indeed bring Raoul with me to this camp, but I promise you, ma belle, were he not my lifetime friend, a man I implicitly trust, you would remain in seclusion for the duration of his stay."
I digested the words he spoke so blithely, appalled that he would even think to put me in seclusion like the women of a harem. But my sheik would always demand from me what I could never give, and he could never give to me what I would demand. We were from other worlds, he and I. Although we had collided with a violent passion that created matchless fireworks in the heavens, our lives could never merge.
Weeks ago I had left Biskra seeking adventure and had found far more than I'd bargained for—thirty days of searing heat and as many nights of scorching passion. But the month I promised myself was at an end. It was time to return to my own world and he had unwittingly provided the opportunity.
***
Later when I rose from bed, my gaze rested on the table beside it. There lay his dagger—the deadly jambiya. I picked it up, examining it slowly, reverently. The sheath alone, wrought of silver, was a bejeweled work of art. If weapons such as these were a show of a man's status, his was that of a king. But for all of its beauty, I was in even greater admiration of its lethal utility. I withdrew the ivory-handled blade and turned it over in my hands. The curve of it lessened the need to bend the wrist, making it a more superior stabbing weapon than a straight blade. The heaviness of it enabled it to inflict deeper and larger wounds, to cut with relative ease through muscle, and slit entire organs. Could I shed his blood with it if he tried to stop my flight?
My pulse raced, and my breath came quick and short at the notion of plunging it into his heart. Weeks ago I could have…and likely would have. But now? No. I knew I could not.
Part of me still hated him for what he had done, but that hate was tempered with a miasma of other feelings that I dared not even think about. I marveled that he would have left the knife behind. It seemed such a thoughtless act for a man who had professed to leaving nothing to chance. Nevertheless, I hid it away in the drawer lest it be found by Zilah or Gaston.
The remainder of the day I was mindful of planning my escape, yet I was equally overcome by curiosity, tinged with a bit of jealousy, about my sheik's dear friend, Raoul.
"Tell me of this Vicomte de Saint Hubert who is coming. You know him, I suppose, as you have been so long with Monseigneur?"
Gaston's face lit up with genuine pleasure at the mention of the vicomte's name. "I knew him before Monseigneur did. I was born on the estate of Monsieur le Comte de Saint Hubert, the father of Monsieur le Vicomte. I and my twin brother Henri. We both went into Monsieur le Comte's training stables, and then after our time in the Cavalry, Henri became valet to Monsieur le Vicomte, and I came to Monseigneur."
Fifteen years ago? Ahmed must have been only about twenty. Why should an Arab chief of that age, or any age, indulge in such an anomaly as a French valet, or for that matter why should a French valet attach himself to an Arab sheik and exile himself in the wilds of the desert? I could make little sense of it. The more I probed, it seemed the mysteries of my sheik only deepened.
"The family of Saint Hubert, are they of the old or the new noblesse?"
"Of the old, madam," replied Gaston quickly.
It was as I had thought. The vicomte was a man who moved about in my world. His family was wealthy enough to run a racing stable as a hobby, and he was a member of the dwindling class of ancienne noblesse. Gaston's answers had confirmed all my fears and cemented my resolve to leave before the vicomte arrived.
I decided against any more questions about Raoul. Gaston would naturally be as hopelessly biased toward the vicomte as he was toward his own master.
I was pleased when Gaston changed the subject. "At what hour does madam wish to ride tomorrow?"
"Later in the morning, following le petite dejeuner," I replied. "After we have seen Monseigneur off."
I knew I must be patient and wait at least a few hours after Ahmed's departure, but I had little fear of running into him. I already knew he was headed in a different direction, as he had said he was not traveling to Biskrah. Moreover, my sheik always rode like a madman. He would be thirty miles ahead of me before I even departed. I was certain that given the right direction, I could achieve Biskrah in two or three days. Now all I wanted for my escape was sufficient food, wate
r, and a compass.
I pled a headache to Gaston and took lunch in my room. The punctilious Gaston prepared a tray for me, but rather than sitting down to my lunch, I wrapped it in napkins to secrete in my pockets later. It wasn't much, but I would not perish in a day without food. Water was another matter. We always carried a water skin or flask even on the shortest of rides. I just wasn't certain how I would manage to take an extra one undetected, but surely I would think of something.
Lastly, I made a desperate search of the rooms for my compass. It was the one thing I still lacked, but I had not seen it since the night of my arrival. I knew Ahmed had taken it from me but hoped he had become as careless with it as he had been with the jambiya. I was not so lucky.
Nevertheless, I vowed to execute my plan. If I could judge direction by no other means, I would simply use the stars to guide me. I knew I had traveled southward when I departed from Biskrah, so I only needed to make my way north. If I overshot my destination, I would simply continue northward until I perished or made it to the coast. I even had vague hopes of falling in with friendly natives who might escort me safely for a promised reward. Most of them could speak a little French, and for the rest, my small stock of Arabic must do.
***
I rose early the next morning to watch him depart. I was standing in the doorway of our tent, when I noticed not only Shaitan of the ugly temper biting and fidgeting in the hands of the grooms, but also a detachment of the sheik’s men. Ahmed was preparing to mount when he turned to me and held out his revolver.
"Take this," he said. "The men of Ibraheim Omair, my deadly enemy, have been seen about. You will carry it always when you ride, and you will not venture more than one hour from camp. You understand?"
I acknowledged him with a nod and stared at the weapon in total disbelief. Not long past he had left the same revolver out to clean it, and the temptation had been too great for me to resist, but as my fingers closed on the butt, his muscular hand closed over mine. He took the weapon from me and jerked it open to show me the empty magazine. "Do you think that I am quite a fool?" he had asked. Now cleaned, polished, and loaded, the same gleaming little gun suddenly dangled from my hand. I looked to him in bewilderment.
The Sheik Retold Page 12
