Blood of the Nile (14 page)

Perspiration
mingled with the fragrant scent of their combined arousal
while
his cock
pistoned
inside her again and again. Sweat
coated their bodies with a thin sheen of moisture. Instantly, the inner walls
of her pussy clenched, clamping down on his shaft with an impenetrable grip.

“
Ya
Allah!
I’m so close,
habibti
,” Ramses roared, his eyes opened abruptly and once
again, they had clouded over, transformed into a swirling, red haze. His hands
pinned both of her wrists to the mattress as she felt his claws extend. They dug
into her forearms, the agony in absolute contrast to the bliss his cock had
wrought. Yet for some inexplicable reason, the dual sensations served as the
ultimate form of stimulation.

By the time Ramses
sank his fangs into her neck, she was deliriously intoxicated from the mixture
of pain and pleasure that had taken over her body. As Ramses drank his fill,
every muscle in his body flexed, and his cock pulsed wildly against her
engorged clitoris. He growled as seed spewed into her core. Moments later, his
tongue swept across the twin pinpricks he’d left on her throat, clotting the
blood that flowed from within. Then, he rolled over onto the pillow next to her,
sporting a satisfied grin.

“I hope I wasn’t
too rough on you,” Ramses said, caressing her cheek. “I tried to hold back the
thirst, but I lost a lot of blood last night. My instincts prevailed.”

Maliyah smiled
back.
“Too rough?
Not a chance!”

Never in her life
had she endured anything like the erotic bite of a vampire. Even though she
knew her lover hadn’t slipped her an illicit substance, she felt a bit loopy,
her insides a muddled jumble of sorts. She tried to sit up and shake the
cobwebs from the corners of her mind, but the movement only caused her head to
spin all the more.

“Wow! I feel sort
of dizzy. What’s going on?”

“Relax and let me
get you something to drink,” Ramses replied, a worrisome expression pained his
face. “I may have taken a tad too much blood. You’ll need to rehydrate.”

 
Ramses switched on the lamp next to the bed,
then
strode naked across the room. Maliyah stared briefly at
his bare chest. Miraculously the bullet wounds had healed without leaving so
much as a scar. She found herself distracted by the beauty of his naked flesh,
enthralled by the firmness of his ass as he took one deliberate step after
another. The man had the body of an Egyptian god and she couldn’t help but
catch a glimpse. He slid open the closet door and pulled out a chilled bottle
of water from the small refrigerator that sat on the floor.

As he made his
back to the bed, she heard his cell phone beep and saw a message pop up on the
screen. Immediately, he picked it up, typed in a response, and then set the
phone back down on the nightstand.

“Who was that?”

“Andreas, just
making sure I’d had dinner.” Ramses smiled as he twisted off the top of the
water bottle and handed her a drink. “I told him you were happy to oblige.”

Maliyah grinned
from ear to ear. Then she downed several long sips, and leaned back into a mass
of pillows. She felt relaxed.
Content.
The light touch
of Ramses’ fingers swept across her forehead as sleep called to her once more.
Her eyes soon drifted shut.

“Get some rest,
habibti
,” he said, placing a kiss to the tip of her
upturned nose. “The search for your father’s killer resumes at sunset.”

Chapter Sixteen

The Betrayal

Forty
-
eight hours had passed and still, there
was no sign of
Anat
or the man that had enlisted her
to do his dirty work. The listening device Ramses planted in the house by the
beach emitted nothing but white noise. From a safe distance away, he and
Andreas cased the place out, searching for any indication that the couple might
return. But they appeared to have gone dark. With no trace of
Anat
or her accomplice, the two men were fairly certain
they’d made a hasty retreat following the shooting that had occurred.

Maliyah seemed to
be getting antsy too. Instinctively, Ramses knew that she wouldn’t continue to
sip Mai Tai’s by the pool, twiddling her thumbs with a pregnant vampire hunter
by her side. At least, not while her father’s killer remained at large.

Ramses understood
her
indignance
. He, too, had grown impatient. He
wanted to find the bastard responsible for his best friend’s death and move on
with his life. Hopefully, that life included Maliyah. Already, she’d surpassed
his every expectation. She was beautiful and smart, a freethinking, independent
spirit like no other woman he’d ever encountered. Ramses closed his eyes,
conjuring an image of Maliyah in his mind. He pictured
them
holding hands as they walked along the Nile. His lover’s long hair blowing in
the breeze, her slender shoulders a personification of poise and grace. In the
past few weeks, she’d proven her strength of will. She’d been apprehensive at
first, but then willingly surrendered, accepting him with all his horrific flaws.
It was the first time that the man and monster dwelling inside him had endured
a peaceful co-existence.
 

It wouldn’t be
easy for a mortal to share his or her life with a vampire. He’d known few
couples in the same predicament that could make it work. Ramses was no
exception to the rule. He knew he wasn’t boyfriend material. He’d spent too
many years obsessed with gluttony and the drive to seize all that his
supernatural powers had in store to care about what another person needed or
desired.

Ramses had been
careless with his acquisitions, too. He lost the majority of his wealth in
cutthroat gambling schemes and risky business endeavors. Unwittingly, irony had
dealt him quite the hand the day he’d staggered down a dark alley and came upon
Anwar al Aziz. The man had literally saved his life. Now, that same man’s
daughter, held his heart in her hands. She was the one woman with the capacity
to redeem his wretched soul, or send it spiraling into the pits of hell. Did he
deserve to be saved once more? Was it too much to wish for a happy ever after?

It was nearly
sunrise by the time Ramses and Andreas had returned to the hotel. As he stepped
into the elevator and pushed the button to take him to the fifteenth floor, Ramses
felt the vibration of the cell phone in his left pocket. He nodded to Andreas
as the other man hopped off a few floors before him. Then, he reached in and
pulled out his phone. There was a message from Boris. Quickly, his eyes scanned
over the text that flickered on the screen.

Check your email. Fingerprint match.

“Thank God!”
Ramses muttered aloud to himself. He kept his voice low as he opened the door
to the suite, trying his best not to wake Maliyah. He knew she’d be eager to
hear what Boris had dug up on her father’s murderer. Neither of them had slept
well since they’d arrived on the island. The stress of everything had started
to wear on both of them. Finding out that her lover was a blood-sucking vampire
surely hadn’t helped the situation.

Before he powered
on his laptop, Ramses peeked into the master bedroom. Maliyah looked like an
angel, lying peacefully on her side wearing a white cotton shift. Her chest
rose ever so slightly with each deep inhalation of breath. Thankfully, she’d
been able to fall asleep. Without making a sound, Ramses pulled the door shut,
and left only a small crack of light to seep in from the floor. Opening up a
web browser, he scanned through a long list of emails until he found the one
from Boris. He ignored the throng of other work-related communications that
seemed to unceasingly bombard his mailbox. They were a constant reminder of the
fact that for the past few weeks, Ramses had been neglecting his duties as CEO
of
Shakir
Shipping. Large commercial contracts and
mergers and acquisitions could no doubt be placed on the back burner. Maliyah’s
safety and the capture of the individuals responsible for Anwar’s death came
first.

Ramses clicked on
the attachment the private investigator had sent him. It was a profile compiled
by Interpol. Luckily, the fingerprints he’d lifted from the house in
Elephantine had produced an exact match. Right away, Ramses eyes focused on the
photograph on the monitor, tuning out all the other superfluous information
written in the report. It had to be an old photograph taken maybe twenty years
before. But for some unknown reason, a chill ran down his spine. The hairs on
the back of his neck stood on end. His sixth sense recognized the man from the
image, even if his conscious mind failed to make a plausible connection yet.

A middle-aged
gentleman of Middle Eastern descent, the skin on his face and neck appeared
leathery and wrinkled, ravaged by the brutal desert sun. His countenance was
covered in wiry gray facial hair. He possessed a sharp, angular chin and
crooked nose. But it was his eyes peeking out from underneath an earth-toned
turban, deep amber speckled with shards of emerald green that were most
familiar. They seemed to be the exact shape and color as his deceased friend,
Anwar al Aziz.

Ramses scanned the
text, trying to locate the name of the man whose picture had drawn his immediate
attention. It seemed this particular individual went by several aliases. Shahad
El
Mofty
,
Habib
El
Mofty
,
Habib
al Shahad,
Habib
al Aziz. The list was endless. But the name at the
bottom finally rang a bell. Shahad al Aziz. Although Ramses had never met him,
Anwar reportedly had a brother of the same name. The father of Maliyah’s cousins,
Salma and Husani, the man had abandoned his wife and children and was presumed
dead.

How could it be?
Anwar assumed his brother had died years before. Ramses recalled the night his
best friend received a videotaped message of his brother, his body bloodied and
beaten. In the background, the voices of unknown captors demanded a sum of two
million U.S. dollars cash in exchange for his safe return. Anwar had confided
in Ramses, asking for advice on how he should proceed. Shahad was his flesh and
blood, but after the shame he had inflicted on their family, the pain and
anguish he had caused his sister-in-law and her children, they were better off
with him dead. Ramses agreed and after Anwar refused to pay the ransom, no one
heard another word from the troubled al Aziz brother. Both men operated under
the assumption that he’d been killed, his body hacked into pieces and hurled
into the Nile River as fodder for the fish.

Suddenly Ramses
remembered the other image that Boris had sent him, the one of
Anat
and her accomplice sipping refreshments on the porch
of the shack they shared. He placed that image next to the one he’d just
received from Interpol and compared the two. While the man sitting next to the
maid looked older, the shape of his face and those same haunting eyes stared
back at him. No doubt, the man had to be Anwar’s long-lost sibling.

As Ramses shut
down the computer, he heard the door behind him creak open. He turned slowly
toward the sound as Maliyah crept softly toward him. Her eyes were at half-mast
and her hair tussled from sleep. She smiled, then wrapped her arms around his
shoulders and squeezed reassuringly. She looked so beautiful, smelled so
heavenly, Ramses wanted to lose himself in her. Closing his eyes tight, he
wished that he could wipe away all the bad things that had happened in the past
month and start fresh. He yearned to begin a new journey with Maliyah, if she’d
have him.

Ramses sighed,
debating whether or not to inform Maliyah about the most recent development in
the case. His instincts warred with his better judgment. He knew he should tell
her that her uncle was alive and most likely responsible for his brother’s
death. Yet, he felt a strong urge to protect her, keep her shielded from the
pain of family betrayal. But if their love was ever to blossom into something
substantial, he needed to be honest with her and let the chips fall where they
may.

“Ramses, come to
bed,” Maliyah’s fingers massaged his biceps as she kissed her way along the
slope of his neck and whispered softly in his ear. Her breathy declaration sent
an immediate signal to his cock, focusing his thoughts away from murder and
mayhem. Maliyah proved to be a worthy distraction from the inevitable; their
undeniable attraction a force Ramses simply couldn’t resist.

***

Ramses’ kiss was
intoxicating. His mouth moved from one erogenous zone to another – her throat,
her breasts, and then her navel. The overload of sensation sparked an erotic
fervor. Her nipples hardened into tiny rosebuds. Her womb clenched as moisture
coated the folds, preparing Maliyah’s body for her lover’s sensual assault. She
watched him intently, following his line of sight as he made his way to the
junction of curls below her waist.

Ramses spread her
thighs and nestled his head between them. His languorous tongue swept over her
clitoris, then sucked on the tiny nub that begged to be caressed. At the same
time, he inserted two fingers into her pussy. They drove inside her again and
again, until the fragrant proof of arousal trickled down her thigh and
permeated the air. Her womb convulsed as she lifted her ass off the mattress,
unable to keep her orgasm at bay. At last, she let out a muffled groan, which
signaled her release.