Desert Destiny

by Sarah Holland

  Suliman’s hoarse cries of pleasure were tortuous as he fought wildly to control his own needs, his fingers biting into her as she jerked blindly beneath him.

  Suddenly his control snapped. He gave a snarl of dark triumph and slammed into her, face contorting as the first surge of violent ecstasy flooded his body, making him twist against her, his heart thundering and his body shaking. His hoarse cries of pleasure mingled with hers, and as her eyes opened she felt such joy, such excitement to see him thus: out of control and all hers.

  As their heartbeats subsided and the waves of pleasure lulled them to rest, Suliman lowered his dark head to her throat, still breathing raggedly, and she felt the sweat damp on his skin. Her arms were around him, tracing the spine beneath her fingertips as they shared the silence. How quickly the pain had been forgotten. Yet how bitter-sweet that pain had been when he’d entered her. She remembered it as though it were fire, and as she did she saw a brief vision of herself as a phoenix, shot down in flames of agony to rise again from the ashes, her wings outspread in triumph as she took the crown of womanhood and changed from a princess to a queen.

  Now there was no denial. No more lies to tell herself. Not now, naked and spent in the circle of his arms. She could not stem the flood-tide of emotion and call it fear or anger or physical attraction; it was love.

  This is love, she thought; and I’m in it.

  ‘My love,’ Suliman nuzzled her throat with his mouth, ‘you died like a queen.’

  Bethsheba gave a husky laugh, studying him through her lashes. ‘Am I a woman now?’ she teased. ‘No longer a girl?’

  ‘You are all woman,’ he said deeply, raising his head, ‘as I knew you were when first I saw your face.’ He kissed her mouth gently. ‘These ripe lips invited me, this lush body tempted me…and those sun-ray eyes challenged me.’

  ‘Arabian poetry,’ she asked lightly, ‘or simple flattery?’

  ‘My lord,’ he murmured, a smile on his hard mouth as he looked down at her and added, ‘simple flattery—my lord!’

  She laughed softly. ‘Am I to call you my lord from now on? I don’t think I’ll be able to, Suliman.’

  ‘Not even here? In the privacy of our bedchamber?’ His eyes glinted with mockery. ‘Do you not think it fitting? After all, my love, it is here that I shall master you absolutely. And here that I shall make you do my bidding!’

  ‘As you did just now?’ She struggled violently to show her independence, her courage and her own proud arrogance, even though her heart leapt at the thought of more nights like this, more nights when control snapped and she was just a woman, possessed by her man and blind in the grip of her love. ‘No man is my master, and I will not do your bidding! I cannot accept it, and I cannot permit it!’

  ‘Can you not, bint?’ he asked under his breath. ‘I am your husband. Your king. You will call me lord voluntarily, or I will make you do so.’

  ‘Make me!’ Her eyes flashed.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ he said softly, ‘it will be so.’

  ‘You can’t make me do anything I don’t want——’

  ‘Can I not?’ The dark eyes mocked her, and as she stared into them she remembered how she had burned to have his mouth on her breast, how she had almost begged him to strip her naked, and how she had clamoured inwardly for him to take her finally, to fill her with his manhood and the power of his body and drive the sweet, tortuous heat to its dark, violent climax.

  He could make her call him lord and master. He could make her do anything he wanted her to, and that frightened her, for it showed her how complete was her surrender.

  She was desperately in love with him now: and there was no way back.

  CHAPTER NINE

  THE sound of prayer echoed in the ancient stone courtyard below the bedroom windows. Sighing softly, Bethsheba turned, her warm face nuzzling Suliman’s throat. Still half submerged in the deep primal waters of the unconscious, she found herself curving her nude body to his, her mind filled with images of Arabia, of Suliman and of sex.

  A hand stroked her tousled hair. ‘Are you awake?’

  Her gold lashes flickered as she said softly: ‘Mmm…’

  The hand continued to stroke her hair as the deep voice asked, ‘How do you feel this morning, my queen?’

  ‘Marvellous!’ she said with a sleepy smile.

  He laughed, the sound husky in his throat. ‘You are soft and yielding this morning, my love! I think the she-cat is tamed.’

  ‘I’m half asleep,’ she said, tensing in his arms, afraid he might have guessed her real feelings for him. ‘Of course I’m soft and yielding!’

  ‘Do not stiffen with pride, my love,’ he said deeply. ‘I want to see you like this. A woman has many sides to her—I want to see every side of you that exists.’

  ‘You’ve seen so many,’ she said, forcing herself to relax again, loving the feel of those arms around her and the feel of his nude body against hers. It was as though they had been lovers forever.

  ‘I wish to see many more,’ Suliman said. ‘You are seductress, warrior, she-cat, sated lover——’

  ‘And sleepy woman?’ she teased huskily, nuzzling his throat.

  ‘Soon, perhaps,’ he said deeply, ‘we will see the mother in you.’

  She tensed, staring at his throat. ‘The mother?’

  One strong hand moved to her belly. ‘You may have conceived last night. You may conceive to-night. Soon I may have the son I have yearned for, and——’

  ‘Conceived!’ She had forgotten all about that! In her blind passion she had welcomed Suliman’s hoarse cries of release last night without considering the fact that his seed was shooting irreversibly into her womb with each shuddering gasp. ‘I didn’t think of it! I didn’t think!’

  ‘Does the thought of bearing me a son fill you with such dread?’

  ‘You know it does!’ She felt such a fool! How could she have forgotten?

  ‘Yet you welcomed my body with the passion of a woman wailing for her demon lover.’ The strong hand cupped her chin, forced her to look at him. ‘What will you tell yourself if you have conceived? That I forced it upon you? That you were an innocent party in the conception?’

  ‘You know very well that I had no choice in what happened last night!’ she said, her cheeks burning with hot colour. ‘I admit, I did…I…I did enjoy it. But that doesn’t mean I——’

  ‘Do not lie to yourself, Sheba.’ The dark eyes seemed to probe her soul. ‘You are a woman now, and as such must accept that your mind knows exactly what it is doing: always.’

  ‘But you didn’t ask if I wanted a son!’ she said fiercely, her face burning now with resentment and embarrassment at his words. ‘You just thrust the decision upon me with no way out! It wasn’t what I wanted! It wasn’t what——’

  ‘I think you have conceived!’ Suliman cut in in a fierce whisper, his eyes intent as he stared at her flushed, frightened face. ‘You have!’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ she denied in a hoarse rush. ‘How can you possibly even——?’

  ‘You are a woman, Sheba, and it is your womb that will carry my son. How can you not know what is in your own womb? How can you not know the dark, primitive truths of your own body?’

  She stared at him, struck dumb with fear. He was just trying to frighten her.

  His hands covered her belly. ‘Your anger and fear stem from your knowledge of conception. Never before have you shown such a hysterical reaction!’

  ‘You’re mad!’ she whispered, hating him violently as she suddenly pulled out of his arms. ‘Mad!’

  ‘Hysteria means womb,’ Suliman said coolly, watching her. ‘Did you not know that?’

  Fury rose in her overwhelmingly as she sat up, eyes flashing. ‘If you think I’m going to stay here, trapped in this intolerable situation with a raving lunatic for a moment longer than I have to, you’re out of your mind! I wouldn’t give you sons if you went down on your bended——’

  ‘We are man and wife now,’ he cut in, eyes harde
ning. ‘You will stay here as my queen and conduct yourself as your new status demands.’

  ‘And provide you with a ready-made dynasty? Go to hell! What about my life? What about my career?’

  ‘The career you longed to escape!’ His eyes spat contempt. ‘Do not try my patience, Sheba! The life you led in the West was stifling you—killing the life force daily! That is why you ran to me when I called, and that is why you will stay.’

  ‘You forced me into a marriage I didn’t want!’ she cried bitterly. ‘You forced me to sacrifice my innocence beneath your insatiable demands! Now you would force a son on me that I——’

  ‘I did not force anything!’ he bit out, sitting up, eyes leaping with rage. ‘Nothing I have done has been against your will, and until you admit that to yourself and to me we will have no peace!’

  ‘I don’t want peace!’ she said furiously, hating him as she faced him across that silken bed, both of them naked and burning with a whirlwind of dark emotion. ‘I want to go home! I want to go back to Tangier and to the West!’

  ‘The West is closed to you forever!’ he snarled. ‘Why must you turn your face from the truth?’

  Rage exploded in her and she hurled herself at him, screaming senselessly, hitting out blindly, her hands beating at his chest and his shoulders, her nails trying to scratch his face as he fought her back, finally managing to catch her flailing arms, his fingers biting into her wrists as the air was fraught with bitter sounds of violent emotion from them both.

  He was breathing harshly as he took control of her. ‘You fight yourself, not me! Your own desires, your own needs, and your own secret wish to remain here with me!’

  ‘You’ll twist anything to your own advantage,’ she choked out, heart thundering as she accepted defeat bitterly, her hands clamped by his like man- acles on her wrists, ‘but it won’t change the way I feel! I hate you and I want to leave!’

  ‘My love,’ he said thickly, eyes fierce, nostrils flaring, ‘you only hurt yourself.’

  ‘Don’t call me your love!’ she flung bitterly, tears stinging her eyes. ‘You don’t give a damn about me! I’m just a possession to you!’

  ‘Possession,’ he said quickly, ‘is nine-tenths of the law!’

  ‘But it has nothing, nothing and nothing to do with love!’ she said rawly, and the tears threatened to engulf her, overwhelm her, choking her so violently that she felt her chest welling up with them, pain stinging her heart, her soul, her mouth, nose and eyes.

  Suliman watched her in tense silence for a moment. Then, ‘Love is the plaything of Western vanity. It has nothing to do with life or with the succession of a throne. You are not here to be loved, bint, but to be a queen.’

  ‘Oh, God, you bastard!’ she said hoarsely, fighting, with every ounce of pride left her, not to cry. ‘How can you sentence me to a loveless life of duty!’

  ‘Because it is written,’ he said tightly, mouth hard.

  ‘It is not written!’ Frustration made her voice choked with emotion. ‘It’s just a dusty old legend, and one I will not agree to play out with you. Do you call this freedom, Suliman? Is this the wonderful “freedom” you spoke of when we first——?’

  ‘We will not discuss this here,’ he bit out, and thrust her from him, getting out of bed, his nude body magnificent as sunlight touched its tanned, muscled, hair-roughened splendour.

  ‘When will we discuss it, then?’ Bethsheba demanded hoarsely, hating him as she sank back on her heels, watching him from the bed and feeling more frustrated and alone than ever in her life before.

  ‘This afternoon,’ Suliman said under his breath, and turned to look at her, dark eyes hostile. ‘I will send for you and we will talk.’

  ‘And in the meantime,’ she asked bitterly, ‘what am I to do? Sit in your harem and bathe myself all day?’

  ‘No, bint,’ he said bitingly, nostrils flaring, ‘you will bathe and dress immediately! Then you will be taken to the House of the Artist in the Seventh Courtyard!’

  ‘The House of the Artist?’ she demanded angrily. ‘What are you talking about now? What artist?’

  ‘You will find out, bint,’ he said tightly, bitterness in the hard line of his mouth as he snatched up a dark red caftan from a chair and pulled it over his head. ‘Until our appointment this afternoon, Sheba—I bid you good day!’

  ‘Wait!’ she cried in consternation as he strode to the door and pulled it open. ‘For God’s sake, Suliman! You can’t just walk out like this! Not in the middle of an argument as important as——’

  ‘I see you alter your tone, bint,’ Suliman said bitingly, turning at the door with hostile eyes, ‘but only when I alter mine! If you wish it to be this way between us, carry on! But it will be a marriage-bed of scorpions, and, believe me—I will sting you to death before I allow you to sting me!’

  The door slammed behind him so violently that the sound was like a slap in the face to Bethsheba, who flinched, staring at the closed door with tears burning her eyes.

  He didn’t love her! He only wanted her to bear his sons and be a constant living replica of a gold statue that his people worshipped! It was intolerable!

  She threw herself down on the pillows, sobbing uncontrollably. What a monstrous tangle she was in. Did he really think her pregnant? It didn’t bear thinking about. How could she possibly be pregnant…after only one night of lovemaking? She wouldn’t let herself be! She wouldn’t have it, wouldn’t let it…

  Sitting up, she took deep breaths, fighting for calm. Of course she wasn’t pregnant. It was just Suliman’s nonsense making her hysterical, fright-ening her out of her wits. If she was pregnant all hope of getting out of this without serious trouble would be finished: she would have to have the child, regardless of where she had it or who eventually looked after it.

  But I’m not pregnant, she told herself. I’m not pregnant and I’m not Sheba and I’m not staying here a moment longer than I have to.

  The women came to her within minutes of Suliman’s leaving. They took her to bathe in the presence of Sheba, and as she floated in the warm water she looked at her gold-skinned body and saw the marks of Suli than’s passion, dark and excitingly vivid on her flesh. Pride warred with anger, and passion tipped the balance as she looked down at those marks and shuddered with remembered excitement, closing her eyes, the steam rising to dampen her face and hair and make her remember…Oh, he had been so exciting, so masterful, so expert and so passionate!

  The House of the Artist was quite a long walk.

  The Great Palace of Suliman, she realised, was almost a city in itself. There were acres of corridors and colonnades, more gardens with statues and fountains than she could count. One circular pillared courtyard had a gold-domed roof and doors leading off it: doors with the sound of offices within which the sound of typewriters and fax machines and telephones made her stare in shock as the women urged her to follow them.

  Suddenly they were out in a vast sprawling courtyard. It was filled with noise and people and life. There were stalls of food, of ripe oranges and sticky dates and fat olives. The scent of fresh meat and fresh-baked bread filled her nostrils as she walked.

  People were everywhere, with dark faces and chattering voices. She passed a kissaria filled with a profusion of scents: jasmine and oleander, marigold and musk. There was a silk shop, and the array of wild colours made her stop, delighted as she fingered the fuchsia-pink and firecracker-red, the aquamarine and sunset-orange.

  A coffee-shop made her burst out laughing, staring at the ancient stone building with its jaunty Arabian sign. Chairs and tables sat outside it, brilliant white in the sun, and people sat there lazily, drinking spicy coffee and eating Turkish delight.

  Then they were walking down a long, cool stone alleyway. It had high crumbling walls, and Bethsheba’s dress rustled as she walked, her white silk head-dress and white yashmak hiding her golden hair and skin from the people.

  The Seventh Courtyard was utterly charming. With ancient yellowing walls and tiny hu
ddled houses, it had a lovely square with trees and plants, a circular fountain, and an ambience of artistic bohemia.

  The House of the Artist itself was a tumbledown building of yellow stone. A beaded curtain hung over the entrance, a dog sleeping in the hot sun outside it and the scent of coffee wafting from within.

  Bethsheba was urged inside.

  ‘Hello!’ she called, and her voice echoed.

  Her gold-sandalled feet click-clacked on the stone hallway, the cool air instantly reaching her as she heard, with some surprise, the hiss of air-conditioning.

  Walking through the first stone doorway, she entered a large airy room. Paintings and statues were stacked higgledy-piggledy everywhere. Some were unfinished, some complete. An easel stood by the window, sun shining on bright wet oil colours on the canvas.

  The style was recognisable. Edouard de Chanderay, she thought, staring in amazement. Whoever had done these paintings and statues was imitating de Chanderay with considerable skill.

  A footfall behind her made her turn.

  ‘Hello.’ A tall man with a red-gold beard and straggly hair stood in the doorway wiping a knife dry on a cloth. ‘You must be Sheba.’

  ‘Yes!’ Her eyes raced over him, recognition shocking her into silence.

  ‘I’m Edouard de Chanderay,’ he said, extending a clay-caked hand. ‘Enchanté, Madame El Khazir!’

  Silent, awestruck, she took his hand and shook it, still staring up at that familiar face, the fierce blue eyes brilliant amid that red-gold hair: a lion’s mane was so fitting for the face of a genius. He was one of the most respected artists of the time, and she felt herself deeply honoured to even look upon his face.

  ‘Forgive me,’ she said huskily when she saw his quizzical frown, ‘I’m staring, I know. But—but I can’t believe you’re here! It doesn’t seem real! How did you come to live in this place? Don’t tell me the sheikh kidnapped you too!’