Dazzle The Complete Unabridged Trilogy (164 page)

He could see her unfreeze and sigh, the striped cotton caftan
moving slightly with each deep intake of breath.

'Daliah,' he began, 'if you ju—' Abruptly he clamped his
mouth shut with an audible snap. He had never called her by
her first name, and the fact that it had slipped out so unexpect
edly and unconsciously startled him as much as it did her. He
could see her jerk painfully at the sound of her name, and then
her shoulders squared under the caftan. She whirled around
so swiftly that a curtain of hair swung across her face. She
raked it apart with slashes of her talons, and he took an invol
untary step backward. She was the hellfire bitch again, and
her rage was monstrous.

It was demonic, this rage, all the more so as it had come
without warning. For a moment he had almost believed that
she was human and rational, that he could reason with her.
The next, the she-devil within her had taken control.

Her mouth curled down with loathing and her eyes blazed
with white fire. 'Get
out!'
she shouted.

He drew back slightly. 'This will take but a minute,' he said
quietly. He lifted the camera to his eye and peered through
the viewfinder.

'Don't you understand?' she roared. 'I don't want to see
you!'

He stepped closer to frame her in the picture, pressed the
button, and waited for the built-in light meter to adjust to the room's dimness. Suddenly the flash exploded in blue and the
mechanism whirred, feeding out the blank, milky picture.

'You bastard!' she flung herself at him, her fingernails slash
ing wildly. 'How dare you do that?' Her slaps rained against
his left cheek, his right, his left again. 'Leave me alone leave
me alone leave me
alone!'

'Daliah. . .
'

'How
dare
you call me by my first name! Filth!
Pig!'
She
smacked him again and again.

Najib did not move, he stood there frozen, stoically holding
the camera in one hand, the undeveloped picture in the other,
while his head swivelled from side to side with each stinging
slap.

'Hurt, damn it!' she panted.
'Hurt!
Why don't you cry or
moan or at least try to defend yourself, you
bastard!'
Her
mouth sprayed spittle, the tears streaked down her face, and
her slaps grew even wilder.

'Stop it.'

The deceptively soft note in his voice held such an undercur
rent of menace that her hand froze in midair, and the slap for
which it was poised never came. She stared at him with a
sudden stab of cold fear. His face, which had been a stiff,
immovable mask, seemed to have changed expression and
darkened, as though a powerful storm was flashing and rolling
just beneath his skin.

The fight drained out of her as his charged sexual tension
transferred itself to her. Her raised arm dropped weakly to
her side.

Under the caftan, she felt her sticky wetness trickling down
the inside of her thighs. Her brow furrowed in confusion. A
moment before, all she had felt was anger, and now it was replaced by an overt sexuality of such force that she could
barely control it.

Danger signals clanged in her head, and the air was hot
and alive, crackling with peril, as though a thousand lethal
rattlesnakes were coiled on the carpet all around her.

She felt her legs begin to tremble. What was wrong with
her? She couldn't understand what was happening. Never
before had such a torrent risen within her. It wasn't as if she
consciously wanted him. Why, then, had her awareness of him
as a man become so overwhelmingly heightened? She stared
at him. He was tall and strong and stood proud, and she could
sense the rippling of his muscles beneath his shirt and the
swelling of his manhood within his trousers. The room seemed
to tilt and recede. The strength and power of him was all that she noticed, and a hunger of wanting such as she had never
before known surged up in her. The heat within her was almost
unbearable. Her heart pounded like wildly hammering jungle
drums. A building pressure clogged her ears, muffling all
sounds except her own heartbeat. Without realizing it, she
had held her breath. Although her lungs were ready to burst,
she was almost afraid to breathe, as if that would somehow
convey her needs.

Tears of self-loathing squeezed out the corners of her eyes
and she shook her head violently. She
couldn't
want him!

She swallowed hard.

Anybody but him!

But she had sensed the male essence of him, and her body,
heedless of all her mind's railings, was already preparing itself
by lubricating her for him. She recalled, suddenly, how long
it had been since she had last made love—in Cannes, with
Jerome. But even then she had not felt such an overpowering
need.

God help me!

She stood there for a moment, frozen and indecisive, all too
aware of the muscular lines of his body and the heat emanating
from him. Moistness. As though to infuriate her further, ever
more sticky moistness trickled from within her, coating her thighs. The scratchiness of the nubby cotton seemed pronounced as her nipples thrust against the caftan.

No! No! No!

He locked eyes with her, communicating his intentions without words. From a primeval knowledge handed down through the millennia, she understood. She knew exactly how he would
drain off his rage. She was to be the outlet for the strong
pressures bursting within him.

She took a deep breath. He was undressing her with his
eyes.

'No!' she gasped, shaking her head. Sensing the purpose within him, she took an involuntary step backward, then
another, and yet another.

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.