by Judith Gould
He advanced with threatening deliberation, and she truly feared for herself now. Deep in his eyes she saw a savage hunger grow, and a cold, barely suppressed cruelty touched the corners of his mouth.
'So. You are in the mood for physical assault,' he said slowly, the words tripping softly from between barely moving lips. 'I wonder . . . how strongly will you resist me now?'
'Stay away from me!' she warned in a quivering whisper, and hated herself for the thick sound of fear.
'And if I don't?'
She kept retreating, taking another wary step. With her hands, she groped behind her back, feeling for obstacles. She wasn't about to turn around to look where she was going, because she didn't dare take her eyes off him. 'W-what do you want from me?' she asked shakily.
'You know very well what I want. You.' With every step she took backward, he was taking one forward. 'Do you think I am blind? I can see the passion in your eyes as clearly as if you spoke of it. Of course, you may pretend to fight me off. That is part of the game, isn't it?' She could hear the jeering humour in his voice.
'Keep away!' A redness crept up from her breasts to her throat and then up her face. Her mouth trembled. 'I . . . I'm warning you. I . . . I'll kill you if you touch me!'
'Kill me, then.' A fierce black fire flared in his eyes and seemed to leap out at her. There was potent desire mixed with contempt in his blazing gaze, and it seared her like a glowing brand. She nearly cried aloud, and took another quick step backward.
And then her hands felt the lacquered edge of a piece of furniture. She stifled a high-pitched cry. Unwittingly she had let him manoeuvre her into a corner. She was trapped.
Obviously relishing her predicament, Najib's eyes laughed derisively. Humiliation slashed at her as savagely as animal fangs. She trembled with a killing rage. He was laughing at her!
'It seems that I've got you,' he said, a diabolical gleam in his eyes.
Her eyes darted about in desperation. Then her breath caught in her throat. The bedroom door to the left of her was open! Perhaps ... if she could reach it and lock herself inside . . . Yes! She would find sanctuary there. Warily she looked at Najib, trying to gauge his moves. As though he sensed her panic, a cruel smile played on his lips. For a brief moment she was reminded of a cartoon cat the instant before it makes its move on the mouse.
Now! she thought.
She feinted to the right but lunged abruptly in the opposite direction, diving for the bedroom. The moment she was through the doorway, she slammed the door shut and pressed all her weight against it. With a sob, she realized there was no key. No latch. No lock.
Uttering an incoherent cry, she looked around wildly for something to block it with.
It was too late. With a crash, the door burst inward, sending her sprawling to the carpet. She scrambled to her feet, but his hands shot out and caught her roughly. Her hair whipped around and the air burst from her lungs in a gasp as he whirled her around to face him, jerked her closer, and pressed his mouth hungrily down on hers. It was more an attack than a kiss, and she recoiled as his tongue pried her contorted lips apart and slid into her mouth.
Daliah struggled against him like a madwoman, bending, twisting, and jackknifing every way to free herself from the steel of his arms, but he had one hand at the back of her head and held it in an iron grip, and the other, centred on her spine, crushed her against him so tightly, so roughly, that it hurt. She could feel the unyielding muscles of his rock-hard body. The strength with which he had planted himself firmly in a wide stance. The rapid tripping of his pulse. The angry, bulging tumescence of his groin.
'Let ... go ... of.. . me!' she gasped when she finally managed to pull her face away. She eyed him with loathing. 'You're an animal!' she hissed hoarsely.
His jaw tightened to squareness, and his eyes went silver. Something flickered within them and, gripping her head even tighter, he forced his mouth back on hers, cutting her curse short. In desperation, she clamped her teeth down on his tongue and locked her jaw.
An unholy joy filled her eyes as she tasted his coppery blood and heard his wounded grunt of pain.
Suddenly he retaliated, and with merciless strength wrenched a handful of her hair and nearly lifted her off her feet by it. Instantly her jaw loosened and her teeth let go of his tongue. Then her eyes widened and she screamed as she felt his hands tearing savagely at her caftan. The tick-striped cotton ripped noisily and her breasts, full and strong, leapt free, the nipples jutting forward from the dusty-rose areolae in conical points.
Almost in slow motion, the caftan slid down her body and lay on the floor around her feet.
She was naked, and her humiliation was complete. And yet the wetness still flooded her loins. Why won't my body repulse him? It isn't as if I want him! I hate him!
And then she was possessed of a force she could not control. Letting out a shrill scream, she curved her fingers into talons and slashed like a panther. He ducked, clamped his steely hands around her wrists, and slowly forced her arms down to her sides.
In desperation she spat into his face. He jerked his head stiffly backward, and she drew satisfaction from at least seeing him flinch.
Without looking, he kicked the bedroom door shut.
Her head jerked at the sound. There was so much finality in it.
He scooped her up, one arm under her knees, the other around her back, and swooped her high against his chest. Like a conqueror, he carried his struggling prize toward the altar that was the bed. She fought, kicked, and clawed to get loose, but to no avail. His arms were like vices.
With barely any effort, he flung her onto the bed. She landed on her back, bouncing on the mattress, one of her outstretched arms knocking the bedside lamp to the floor. The bulb went dark.
Now in half-light, he towered over her, one side of his face glowing golden, the other in purplish shadows. His lips were drawn tightly across his even white teeth, and she was suddenly aware of how tall he was. How potent and powerful he looked. His eyes flashed down on her, and the angles of his face seemed heightened. She let out a muffled groan when she saw what he was doing. His deft fingers were working at his shirt buttons and loosening his belt.
In a last-ditch attempt, Daliah scrambled across the bed, but he caught her by one ankle and heaved her back, her breasts sliding across the satin cover, her face hidden by her curtain of silky black hair. Hanging on to her ankle with one hand, he slid out of one shirt sleeve and let his trousers fall. Then, when he changed hands to slip his other arm out of his shirt sleeve, he rolled her over. Her breasts were heaving, and the taut convex of her belly rose and fell with every quick breath.
She stared up into his eyes. They were heavy-lidded and hazy. Then, as her eyes fell, she sucked in her breath. He had a sleek, elongated body, a sculptured chest and abdomen topped with flat brown nipples. Sinewy long brown legs. She stared at his manhood as though hypnotized. The angry monster phallus looked too big to be real.
'Please,' she begged in a throaty whisper. 'Don't. It's wrong.' She glanced back up at him. 'Don't you see? It's all wrong!'
He was deaf to her pleas. He had eyes only for her flesh, smooth and tan and satin, and her arrowhead mound, prickly with regrowing hair. An anguished moan escaped from deep in his throat.
She tried to crawl backward, but he flung himself down on top of her, one knee brutally parting her thighs, his hands seizing hers and holding them down above her head. Her breasts rose and fell. She could see the red pulse throbbing in his temples. Time came to a standstill. She lay there paralysed. 'No-no,' she begged for the last time, more weakly than before. 'No . . .'
And then, without warning, he lowered himself atop her. The smooth warmth of his body made her gasp. For an instant her blinding hatred receded, and then his tender kisses brought out a sweet agony in her.
He kissed her lips and her neck, her shoulders, her nipples. He drew the cup of one breast into his mouth and sucked savagely.
Her body throbbed.
Mo
ist threads of saliva were creeping down, tickling her warm breasts.
She clenched her teeth, torn between struggling anew and submitting quietly.
He forced his head into the cleft of her bosom and his tongue travelled ever so slowly down her body, darting moistly between her breasts, then encircling the areola of each nipple. He slid further down, licking at her belly, rimming her navel, then tonguing little circles on her shaved mound. She parted her legs in a V, and his head lowered into it, his tongue pushing through her opening until it was up inside. He rolled her clitoris very gently between his teeth.
She moaned and shuddered at the delicious sensations that darted through her like arrows of passion. Her fury was gone, replaced by a passionate urgency.
This—this is what making love must really be, she thought suddenly. Not playing perverse little games like Jerome, but this—an act which can soothe savagery and tame the hatreds of centuries.
She scissored her legs around his neck, trapping him as he ate his way up inside her, all his being intent on but one purpose. This time he was tasting of her, giving her pleasure as he took his own. He fingered her anus and she moaned again and rolled her hips. Then he slid around like an acrobat, all his weight on one hand as his legs moved lithely out from under him and his groin was above her face. She watched his penis lowering to her lips, and she opened her mouth. It entered smoothly, and at the same time, his head was between her legs. He kept his hips poised above her, and the only sounds in the room were those of his tongue and hers. The world was forgotten; the centuries-old barriers between Arab and Jew meant nothing now: nothing could touch them. They were invincible and one. All their concentration was on each other's fulfilment, on giving and taking and giving and taking again.
He balanced himself on his toes and, defying gravity, wedged the rest of his weight on his shoulders, then bent his head inward while at the same time he lifted her buttocks slightly off the bed. She let out a cry as his tongue momentarily brushed her anus. Then he was off her.
In a fleeting moment he was on his knees and straddling her. For a split second he was poised, his monstrous penis smooth and glistening wet, and then he smoothly swooped down inside her. She thrust her own hips up off the bed to meet him, and her legs dug into his sides. It seemed as if he was filling her completely.
She clutched him and then moaned, rolling left and right, rising upward to meet his thrusts head-on, and their rhythm became syncopated. As he moved faster, so did she, perfectly in tune until the hammering became a frenzy and both of them clenched their teeth as they grunted purposefully, striving to achieve that which joined them, searching for ever-higher plateaus of pleasure. For a moment, he slowed, his hips making circular grinding motions, his penis circling inside her; then he bent from side to side, sliding in and out of her at every possible angle. He slowed down as he felt his juices rising dangerously, then he continued to hammer. He leaned forward over her, his lips sucking on her nipples, kneading them with his lips, flicking them with his tongue. Then once again he would smoothly plummet in, ever more easily as she became wetter and wetter and the torrents of passion threatened to burst from within them like thunder.
Then without warning, her screams reverberated through the bedroom and bounced off the walls like infinite echoes of ecstasy. The heat within her was bursting, a sun flaring its delicious tongues of flame outward from the very core of her body. She was crazed with passion, and the orgasms were exquisite, washing over her, one after the other, while he smoothly slammed himself all the way up inside her, then all the way out again, then all the way up. His pounding was relentless, like the rhythm of her heart.
Frantically, like an animal, he settled down to his task and began to hammer purposefully at her, his thighs slapping noisily against hers, his breaths coming in quick, heavy pants. Gone completely now were the last remnants of hatred. She clenched her teeth, dug her fingers into his flesh with the frenzy of the moment. Her face grimaced determinedly, her body perspired deliriously as it shuddered and shuddered. She felt herself floating, and through closed eyes, lazy arabesques burst and receded like starbursts until she could bear it no more. Her lungs felt as if they were bursting. Drops of his perspiration rained down on her like liquid flames. She felt them sizzle on her flesh. She forgot where she was, who she was, what she was doing and with whom.
And then his convulsions merged into hers as his engorged penis thrust so deeply inside her that for a moment she was afraid she couldn't breathe. He let out a cry and savagely dug in as far as he could. Then he clung to her and shuddered uncontrollably as his juices burst forth. She felt his penis contract against the warm soft walls of her vagina, then expand, and the explosion was complete. Her insides seemed to rock, then go fluid and slack. His body slowed and he lowered himself on top of her, his breathing coming in gasps. He hung on to her until she could feel him growing limp inside her.
She opened her eyes, her breathing as laboured as his. For a moment she looked surprised, as though she did not know where she was. She let out a weak cry and drew back. 'Oh, damn!' she said softly. Her eyes were helpless. 'I didn't mean for this . . .' She shook her head to clear it.
His breathing was still rapid; she could feel his pulse racing. 'It was beautiful,' he whispered. He curled a tendril of her hair around his index finger. 'It was very, very beautiful.' He leaned forward to kiss her lips, but she drew back.
She shook her head again. It was good. God, was it ever good! The best ever. But still . . .
Still, it could not be.
'Please,' she said huskily. 'Go now. Get dressed and go!'
'Why? I love you, Daliah.'
'You . . . love me? You . . . cannot say things like that.' Her voice trembled and she clenched her teeth. 'You can . . . not!'
'Why can't I?' he asked gently. He drew up closer to her so that his face was level with hers. 'If it's the truth—'
'The truth!' Her voice was a plaintive wail, and she turned her face away as the tears rolled silently from her beautiful eyes.
'Do you not feel the same way about me that I do about you? Daliah . . . look at me!' When she refused, he reached out and turned her face back to his. 'Can you look me in the eye and tell me you do not love me back?' he whispered. 'After what we have just done?'
She heard his voice, but it sounded far away, muffled. 'Can you be impervious to the voice of your heart?' he was asking. 'You have every right to despise me. If I were you, I would probably want to kill me, and with all rights.' He gave a mirthless little laugh. 'But, Daliah'—his voice dropped to a whisper—'despite the nightmare you have been thrust into here, please, I beg of you: do not turn a deaf ear to your heart!'
Her eyes were like those of a somnambulist, curiously vacant and listlessly remote. I am not getting through to her. Something inside her has snapped, and she has switched off.
'I want you to listen to me, Daliah. I need for you to understand . . .' His heart pounded quicker inside him, but he forced himself to speak slowly. 'Then, afterward, when I have told you what I must, only then should you decide whether you should still hate me or love me. Are you willing to give me that?' He reached for her hand.
Her touch was cold and unwilling.
'It began long ago,' he started, speaking slowly and thoughtfully; then, gradually, the pictures of the past became clearer. His voice began to quicken with the events, his words sketching swift, lucid explanations. 'It was before either of us was born, you see. Our grandparents knew each other, Daliah. There was a time when they were friends.'
It was probably the longest monologue he had ever recited, and certainly the most emotional and tortured. He told her everything he knew—about his grandparents, Naemuddin al-Ameer and his wife, nursing Schmarya Boralevi back to health, the drain of Ein Shmona on the oasis' water supply, resulting in the slow but steady parching of al-Najaf. He told her of what he knew about Abdullah's long-ago attack on the kibbutz, and of the counterattack upon al-Najaf in which Iffat had been killed. He told
of Abdullah's sending him away to England to boarding school, and then to Harvard. He tried to explain, as forthrightly as he could, the vows which bound him to Abdullah, and the hold his half-uncle had over him. He left nothing out—not his previous loveless marriage, nor even the plot for vengeance he had become embroiled in. He tried neither to soften anything nor to paint himself better than he was. He was brutal in his frankness. He told her how Abdullah had gone a step beyond their planned vengeance, using her capture to increase his power. And last of all, as much as it hurt him to say the word, he told her, too, that Abdullah would never release her alive.
When he was finished, the silence was intense.
'Now you know everything,' he said at long last. He felt suddenly drained and yet exhilarated. The pain of laying open the truth was immense, and at the same time, he felt oddly at peace for the first time in his life. It was as though he'd been to confession and a great burden was lifted from his shoulders.
He took her hands in his, bent his head in a kind of bow, as though her fingers were something holy, murmuring, 'Now that you know it all, you can judge. If you still hate me . . .' He looked pained, but shrugged. 'Well, that is up to you. But if you love me, as I suspect you do . . .'He let go of her hands and rose to his feet.
Daliah had heard it all without moving. Her face had been totally devoid of expression, but her mind had been a frenzy of emotions, alternately surging with outraged anger, recoiling in shock, and burning with pity. But outwardly, no matter what he'd told her, she hadn't shown any reaction. Not even at the end, when he admitted that Abdullah would never release her.
Peculiarly, at the moment her own doom didn't seem to matter all that much to her. At any rate, there was little she could do about it. What did impress her was the candour, the unvarnished truth. Slowly she looked at him and thought: No man, ever, has been this frank. It took more than mere courage—it took guts. How many men like that could there be? One in a billion? Not even that?
