The Sheik Retold(69)

***

I still cannot recall the minutes that followed as I floated in a mindless daze of total depletion. When I opened my eyes I thought I was alone, but then I heard movement. It was Ahmed returning from the salle de bain. My limbs were still too heavy to move, so I lay quietly and covertly studying him. He had a jar in his hand that he set on the bedside table.

Aware of my return to consciousness, he came to me with heavy-lidded eyes and a mouth relaxed in supreme self-satisfaction. "Alors?" He glanced down at me with a sardonic half smile. "You have come back from the dead at last?"

"More like seventh heaven," I replied with a smile of repletion.

"Once more you have surprised me, my dove, and I am not easily surprised." He dipped his head and claimed my mouth in a devouring kiss that left me breathless, bewildered, and wanting more. I still couldn't comprehend what had happened between us in the last hour.

"Ahmed, what have you done to me?" Even as the words issued from my mouth, I found myself on my back, caged between his arms with his mouth hovering inches from mine.

"The better question might be what I still wish to do." His soft smile grew to iniquitous proportions and his quiescent verge stirred back to life against my belly. "My mind has awakened to myriad new possibilities."

I had no answer to that. I was as shocked by his sudden gentleness as I was by my own earlier brazenness. His gaze softened, and he kissed me with a depth of tenderness that stole the retort from my lips and the air from my lungs. I kissed him back, passionately, but he recoiled with a hiss at the contact of my hands on his back.

"What is it?" I asked.

"Nothing!" he snapped.

In my passion, I had forgotten the flogging. "Please, Ahmed. Let me see your back."

When he turned away from me, I gasped at the devastation wrought by the camel flogger. I winced at the remembrance of my single lash. My own flesh still stung as though I'd rolled in fiery nettles, but my skin was unbroken. I knew then that he had held himself back when he wielded the flogger. The severity of the damage to himself was proof enough of the mercy he had shown to me—the mercy I had denied he possessed.

"The jar, is it medicine?" I asked.

He gave a curt nod. "Gaston brought some salve to me. The poor diable could not even look me in the face."

I experienced another sharp pang of guilt. I sat up in the bed and grabbed my robe. "Please. Let me apply it for you."

He shrugged his acquiescence and handed me the jar. He then sat on the edge of the bed with his back to me. I opened the container, gave it a wary sniff, and found it vaguely reminiscent of lavender and rosemary. I scooped some of the cool, gelatinous substance onto my fingertips but then bit my lip at where to begin. His back was a roadmap of angry red welts with jagged intersections of torn and bloody flesh. He winced at the initial contact of my fingers on his right shoulder, but he made no further reaction as I gently smoothed the ointment over the raw and exposed places.

"I don't understand you, Ahmed. Why did you do it?"

He stiffened under my touch. I thought for a moment that he would not answer, but then his low voice broke the silence. "I had no choice."

"What do you mean no choice?" I continued to minister to his lacerated back.

He spoke again after another long pause, "You asked if it made me happy to torture you… Perhaps it did once…but does no longer. Since it is my responsibility to uphold justice, I perceived no alternative."

I could not see his expression, but he relaxed infinitesimally under my touch. I heaved a sigh of mixed relief and regret. "Then it is best for both of us that this is finally over."

His entire body tensed, a reaction that filled me with a sudden unease.

"This is over now, isn't it, Ahmed?"

The seconds stretched out, and his insinuation of silence slowly sank in.

"B-but you promised to let me go."

His shoulders drooped. "You know I cannot."

"You will not," I corrected.

He raised one shoulder in a half-shrug. "It is the same, is it not?"

"But I did not fight you," I insisted. "I gave you what you wanted. Willingly."

"And in return I offered you a choice, ma belle—your release or your freedom. You chose the pleasure."

"Don't toy with me, Ahmed! I did nothing of the sort! I gave you what you wanted, and you promised to let me go."

"I promised nothing, my dove. I merely said that if you pleased me well, I might be disposed to consider it. Perhaps you should not have pleased me quite so well."

"You gave me your word, you black-hearted bastard!"

He laughed softly. "What good is the word of a devil?"

"You have to let me go!" I cried.

He turned around to face me. His expression was once more hard and merciless. "Do not press me, cherie. I have to do nothing!"

"Will you let me go? Yes or no."

"No…I will never let you go."

I will never let you go. He had tricked me into capitulation and then compounded it all with a lie. I was suddenly numb with desolation, despair, and disbelief. I mechanically replaced the lid on the jar and glanced to the bedside table. I rose, knowing what I must do.

My emotions raged as I struggled to feign a convincing surrender—a reluctant but credible acceptance of defeat. I turned my back to him with a genuine sob and advanced to the table, gripping the edge as if for support. "I cannot bear this anymore, Ahmed. If I must stay, will you at least be kind to me no?" I whispered my emotive appeal with downcast eyes while pulling the drawer open with quiet stealth. My hands closed around the jambiya I had secreted in the drawer so long ago. It slid easily from its sheath. I inhaled a sobbing breath. "I'll do whatever you want, if you will only desist with your cruelty." I slipped the dagger down to my side, concealing it in the folds of my robe. My mind raced, and my pulse pounded a frantic beat at the notion of plunging it into his back.