The Sheik Retold(46)

He would not learn anything from me that might injure Ahmed, though I feared the price I might pay for my silence. My breath came faster, but my courage still held. I clung desperately to the hope that Ahmed would come in time. I forced down the torturing doubt that he might come too late, that when he did, I might be beyond a man's desire.

Dear God, there must be some way to escape!

Omair abruptly ceased his questioning. "Later, you will speak." I shuddered when his hand passed over my arm, my neck, and down the curve of my body. I turned away, but he forced me to face him again with a muttered ejaculation. I writhed in his grasp. The hateful words in the guttural voice, his vile French, the leering mouth, and the light of lust growing in his eyes, were all a ghastly nightmare.

With a sudden desperate wrench, I freed myself, but Omair caught me with a swiftness of which I would not have thought him capable. He dragged me back to the divan where I lay still, reserving my strength for the final struggle. "One hour, my little gazelle, one hour—" he said hoarsely and bent his face to mine.

I flung my head aside and strained away from him, fighting with the strength of madness, kicking and twisting until my feet rested on the ground, but his grip never relaxed. His hot breath was on my face, the sickening reek of his clothes in my nostrils, but my strength was almost gone. My brain was growing numb again as it had when he had murdered the woman before my eyes.

"Ahmed! Ahmed!" I sobbed his name. He would never know that I loved him. Oh, God! I loved him!

"You think that Ahmed Ben Hassan will come? Little fool! He has forgotten you already. There are plenty more white women in Algiers and Oran that he can buy with his gold and his devil face. The loves of Ahmed Ben Hassan are as the stars in number. They come and go like the swift wind in the desert, a hot breath—and it's finished. He will not come, and if he does, he will not find you, for in an hour, we shall be gone."

Omair had not shaken my faith, but in my agony the thought of him was only further torture. I knew Ahmed would come, but he would come too late.

The sheik forced me to my knees, twined his hand in my curls, and thrust my head back. There was a mad light in his eyes and foam on his lips as he dragged the knife from his waistcloth and laid the keen edge against my throat where he turned it in his hand, caressing up and down my neck with the flat of the blade. I shut my eyes. The metal was cool and hard against my skin, but I did not flinch.

He gave a horrible laugh. "You will do as I say, or I will slice your throat. You understand? Open your eyes, English whore. I want to watch them as you take me in your mouth."

Keeping one fist in my hair, he raised his robes to expose a small pink, semi-flaccid penis. I gave it a long, contemptuous stare. "My mouth?" I met his gaze with another hysterical laugh. "I suppose there is not enough of it to go anywhere else."

He struck me hard across the face, just as he had done to the Arab woman. But it was what I wanted, what I had sought. If I could only enrage him enough, I was certain he would cut my throat and end this horrific degradation. If he did not, I swore I would bite off his disgusting little phallus if he put it anywhere near my mouth. Yes, he would surely cut my throat then, but he would suffer an even worse fate.

In the midst of my maniacal and homicidal thoughts came a sudden uproar and the sharp report of rifle fire. "Diane! Diane!" Ahmed's powerful voice reached me.

"Ahmed!" I screamed before the chief's hand dashed once more against my mouth. I grabbed it, opened wide, and bit his hand clean to the bone. His blood mixed with mine. He gave a snarl of rage and wrenched it away.

I shrieked again, "Ahmed! Ahmed!" But it seemed impossible that my voice could ever be heard above the deafening din outside the tent. I tried to call once more, but the chief caught me by the throat just as he had caught the Arab woman. Just as she had, my hands tore vainly at his gripping fingers.

Ahmed had come. Ahmed would surely kill him. The reward for me meant nothing to a dead man, so he would seek his retaliation wherever he could find it —and I was close at hand.

His fingers crushed my throat until the blood beat in my ears like the deafening roar of waves. He choked me with an agony that made my lungs feel as if they were bursting, and a grey film crept over my eyes. My hands fell away, powerless to my sides, and my knees gave out beneath me. The only thing keeping me upright was his hand clutched on my throat. The veins stood out in his neck, and sweat beaded his greasy face with the effort of squeezing the life out of me. The drumming in my ears grew louder. The room darkened. The tent was fading away into blackness. Omair's mouth moved, but his voice seemed as if it came from a great distance.

"You will not languish long in Hawiyat without your lover. I will send him quickly to you." I was barely conscious when the sneering voice broke and the deadly pressure on my throat relaxed, but he still did not release me. Instead, he swung my limp, almost-lifeless body in front of him. Through a blurry haze, I discerned the outline of a tall figure in the ripped-back doorway. Ahmed!

The silence within the tent dominated all the tumult without. I wondered numbly why my sheik did nothing, why he did not use the revolver that was clenched in his hand. Then slowly I understood that he dared not fire for fear of striking me.

Holding me as a shield, Ibraheim Omair moved steadily backward in an attempt to escape. I could do nothing to hinder him beyond slumping in his arms, but that's all it took. With his attention on me, he misjudged the position of the divan and stumbled backward. Ahmed reacted instantly, leaping over the divan to press the cold cylinder of steel against the robber chief's forehead. For a moment the two men stared into each other's eyes until the certain knowledge of death leaped into Omair's eyes. With the fatalism of his creed, he made a gesture of surrender and released me.