Dazzle The Complete Unabridged Trilogy (158 page)

He turned around. She had uncoiled herself and gotten up
out of the chair and was standing, her legs planted in a wide
stance.

'Yes?' he said.

'Look.'

She whipped off the fur.

He started. She was stark naked, and her body was astonish
ingly sleek, as streamlined as an Art Deco statuette. Her
physical perfection was almost painful. Long coltish legs, gen
erously curved hips, flat, taut stomach, conical breasts with dusty-rose areolae, as though colour-coordinated to fit this apartment. From head to toe, she had all the makings of a
thoroughbred.

Now the battle to keep himself under control began in earn
est. 'If I were you,' he advised coldly, 'I would think carefully
before I did something like that. You are only asking for
trouble. Do not forget where you are. In this country, for such
behaviour you could be stoned to death.'

'Indeed.' Her lips were bared across her teeth. 'Well, then,
why don't you stone me and get it over with?'

'Hurting women is not my habit.'

'What is? Capturing them?'

Her taunts were starting to grate on him, and for a moment
his anger was so overpowering that he almost lost control.
Only through sheer willpower did he keep his rage subdued.
'You may soon wish it were,' he said darkly.

Then he sucked in his breath. She swayed salaciously toward
him, swinging her hips in a parody of Mae West.

He shut his eyes against the sight. It was not that he minded
her nudity. What he found so offending was the inspired ugli
ness of the parody. The outrageousness of its obscenity. The way it reduced her exceptional one-in-a-billion quality to a
level of the lowest street trash.

When she reached him, she stood before him, her hands resting on her cocked hips. 'Am I embarrassing you?' she
purred with a pout. 'Hmmm?'

His eyes snapped open and the explosiveness within him
ignited and flared. Suddenly he could stand it no longer. He
stared at her with a crazed wildness. Explosions were shatter
ing all around him.

As though in slow motion, the tip of her tongue licked her
lips.

'Harlot!' he shouted, his hand flashing in a blur.

If she saw it coming, she made no move to avoid it. His
palm cracked like a gunshot across her left cheek.

Wild things danced dervishes in his head as he watched her
spin sideways, stagger backward, and fall to her knees. She
deserved to suffer. Deserved to hurt.

She knelt there and slowly raised her head, looking straight
up at him, not with anger, or loathing, or even surprise. The
way she looked at him, despite her awkward position, was the
way a woman looked when she owned the world.

'You know what?' she said softly, her voice suddenly devoid
of mockery. 'I pity you.'

The genuine gentleness of her voice had the effect of oil
tossed upon stormy waters. The explosions in his head stilled, and he could feel himself tremble as the world turned back to
normal. For a long moment he did not move. Then, when the
last shards of insanity evaporated, he reached down and pulled
her to her feet.

He shook his head. 'Perhaps you are right,' he said tightly,
holding on to her arm. 'Perhaps I should be pitied.'

She averted her gaze and started to pull away, but he held
her fast.

His face was mere inches from hers. 'You have every reason
to hate me,' he said. 'I can accept that. What I cannot accept
is your stupid game-playing.'

'Who said they're games?' Now she raised her eyes to his,
and before he knew what was happening, she brushed feather
fingertips across his face. He drew in his breath sharply. Her
touch seared like a blowtorch, sent jolts of fire all the way
down to his feet. Now it was he who wanted to pull away,
but it was she who was holding tight. Her eyelids were half-
lowered. 'Am I making you nervous?'

'No!' he whispered fiercely, taking a staggering step back
ward. When she moved her hand up to his face again, he
swiftly turned away. 'Do not do that!' His voice was agonized,
and a kind of torture glazed in his eyes.

She looked at him with genuine surprise. 'You are afraid of
me,' she said softly. 'What do you have to fear from me? What
could I do to you?'

'Nothing . . .'Then his tortured voice cracked and he shook
her off.

'Why do you look away? Are you afraid to look at me?' she
said softly.

But he had already turned on his heel and was striding out,
his white robes flowing. Before he could even shut the door,
her reckless, taunting laughter followed him outside to the
hall. Angrily he thrust the key at Haluk. 'Lock it!' he ordered
tightly.

Haluk stared at him, and Ahmed quickly averted his face
to hide his grin. 'I think the hellfire bitch has found a soft spot,'
he murmured to Haluk out of the corner of his mouth.

Najib heard him and whirled. 'Shut your camel's ass of a
mouth before I stuff it full of dung!' he whispered. Then he
hurried off blindly.

When he was around the corner and out of sight, he slumped
against the marble wall and closed his eyes. Despite every
thing—her taunts, her mocking performance, even the way
she had crashed through his defences and fired his temper— despite all that, he could still feel the aching hardness beneath
his robes.

He rubbed his eyes wearily. He didn't understand what was happening to him. It was almost as if their roles had reversed.
Who, he asked himself, was really whose prisoner?

When he was gone, the real Daliah took over. She sank weakly
down into the nearest chair and buried her face in her hands.
She was emotionally drained. It had all been a performance—
the most difficult performance she had ever given.

The bravado, the taunts, the laughter—they had all been
one hell of an act.

In truth, she had never felt so scared and helpless in her life.

Chapter 15

Long hours after he'd gone to bed, Najib stared blearily up at
the dark ceiling. He was still awake. He'd tried everything— sleeping on his back, sleeping stretched out on his side, sleep
ing curled up in the foetal position, and finally, in desperation,
even sleeping on his belly.

But nothing helped. Dead tired though he was, as soon as
he shut his eyes, all he could picture were Daliah's eyes.

Cursing, he finally switched on the bedside lamp, got up,
splashed some Napoleón brandy into a glass, and prowled the
carpet restlessly, his body naked, the drink in hand.

He sipped and thought, sat and paced. He knew very well
what his problem was, although he kept pushing it away,
unwilling to admit it.

It was because of her. No matter how hard he tried, he just
couldn't exorcise Daliah from his mind. Whether he was trying
to sleep or moving about, all he could think of, hour in and
hour out, the only thing that seemed significant to him any
more was her. Her. Her. Her. Daliah Boralevi had taken
control of his life; she haunted his every hour and suddenly
took precedence over all else.

Her old films which he used to play and replay countless hundreds of times in order to nurture his hatred, and which
he had memorized, scene by scene, were now having the exact
opposite effect he'd intended. Each time he shut his eyes, the
same thing would happen. Long-memorized scenes from her
films would come rushing headlong toward him and flash past
with a
whoosh!
like the headlights of traffic in an oncoming
lane. They were Technicolour mental videos, and seemed
even more vivid and real than they had on film. One after the
other, the scenes rushed and jumped crazily: a flash of curved
elbow; a curtain of ebony silk hair; shiny, moist teeth.

A rage of helplessness rushed through him, and crying out
in despair, he flung his drink across the room and watched the
silk-clad wall explode in a wet stain and the glass shatter and
burst and rain down. Then he whirled around and pounded
his fists against the wall again and again. 'It's not fair!' he moaned. 'It cannot
be!'
Then, his fists slowing in futility, he
flattened himself, his forehead pressed against the wall, his raised hands slowly uncoiling, his fingers raking the silk. He was breathing heavily. Streaks of sweat were running down
his forehead.

And still the Daliah scenes keep flashing in front of him.
Daliah Boralevi was Helen of Troy, Cleopatra, and the Mona
Lisa, all rolled into one.

She was also the spawn of the butchers who had slaughtered
Iffat, one of the greedy hordes who had stolen Palestine from
his people. Even worse, she was an infidel.

So? a tiny voice whispered in his mind.
She didn't kill Iffat,
did she? She never hurt anybody. Did she?

Shut up.

He clamped his mind shut against the persistent voice, but
it kept creeping back in, whispering and taunting.
How could
she have stolen Palestine? She was a baby back then. Babies
are innocent.

Shut up! Shut up!

She's an infidel only by Muslim standards,
the sneaky
little
voice continued.
Sure, you're a Muslim, so it's easy to say she's
an infidel. But Jews believe in only one God too. And according
to both your religions, there is but one God
—

As if his anguish was not enough, he had that infernal voice
attacking him now too, like a hammer chiselling away at the
very bedrock of his foundation.