Deception on His Mind (Inspector Lynley, #9)(56)

“To see to it that these bloody police track down the killer,” Muhannad said. “They'll try to pin it on an Asian, naturally. I don't intend to let that happen.”

The declaration pleased Yumn. She loved the defiant part of his nature. She herself shared it. She made the necessary sounds and gestures of obeisance to her mother-in-law, as required by custom, but she took great pleasure in rubbing Wardah's face in the ease with which the obedient daughter-in-law had so far been able to reproduce. She hadn't missed the brief expression of black envy that had passed across Wardah's features when Yumn proudly announced her second pregnancy twelve weeks after the birth of her first son. And she'd taken every opportunity that arose to flaunt her fecundity in front of her mother-in-law.

“But has your cousin your brains, meri-jahn?” she whispered. “For he has nothing else of yours, I think. Such a puny man. Such a little man.”

She walked her fingers downward from her husband's belly, curling the ever-thickening hair round her fingers and pulling it gently. She felt the insistent aching of her own desire. It grew until there was only one way to ease it.

But she wanted him to want her first. Because if she could not arouse need in him this morning, Yumn knew that he would seek arousal elsewhere.

It would not be the first time. Yumn did not know the name of the woman—or women, for that matter—with whom she was forced to share her husband. She knew only that they existed. She always pretended sleep when Muhannad left their bed at night, but once he shut the bedroom door upon his exit, she crept to the window. She listened for the sound of his car starting at the bottom of the street, where he'd let it roll silently. Sometimes she heard it. Sometimes she didn't.

But always she lay awake on those nights that Muhannad left her, staring up into the darkness and counting slowly to mark the time. And when he returned to her just before dawn—easing his body into their bed—she tested the air for the thick scent of sex, despite knowing that the smell of his betrayal would be as torturous as the actual sight of it. But Muhannad was careful not to carry to their bed the odour of sex with another woman. And he gave her no concrete evidence to work with. So she had to confront her unknown rival with the only weapon she had.

She ran her tongue along his shoulder. “Such a man,” she whispered. Her fingers found his penis. It was erect. She began to work him. She grazed her breasts against his back. She moved her hips rhythmically. She whispered his name.

Finally, he moved. He reached for her hand and clasped his own round it. He tightened her grip. He increased the pace with which she worked him.

Outside the bedroom, the morning sounds of the household intensified. The younger of her two sons wailed. Sandals slapped against the floor in the upstairs corridor. Wardah's voice called out something from the direction of the kitchen. Sahlah and her father exchanged quiet words. Outside the house, birds were chirruping from the orchard and a dog barked somewhere.

Wardah would be angry that her son's wife had not risen early to see to Muhannad's breakfast. Old woman that she was, she would never understand the importance of seeing to other things.

Muhannad's hips were jerking unconsciously. Gently, Yumn urged him onto his back. She flung back the sheet under which they'd slept. She lifted her nightdress and began to straddle him. His eyes opened.

He grabbed her hands. She looked at him. She breathed, “Muni, meri-jahn, how good you feel.”

She raised herself to take him inside her. But he slid quickly out from beneath her.

“But, Muni, don't you—”

His hand shot to her mouth and silenced her, fingers digging into her cheeks with such strength that she felt his nails like hot coals against her flesh. He moved behind her and pressed up against her, drawing her head back. His other hand felt for her breast, and between his thumb and his index finger, he pinched her nipple till she writhed. She felt his teeth on her neck and his hand, releasing her breast, travelled over her belly until it found her mound of hair. He grabbed this roughly. Then just as roughly he shoved her downward so that she was on her hands and knees. Still with his hand at her mouth, he found the spot he wanted and he began to thrust. He took his pleasure in less than twenty seconds.

He released her and she fell onto her side. He knelt above her for a moment, eyes closed, head raised to the ceiling, chest rising and falling rapidly. He shook back his hair and combed his fingers through it. Sweat gleamed on him.

He moved off the bed and reached for the T-shirt he'd discarded on the previous night. It lay on the floor among his other clothes, and he wiped himself with it before he threw it back where he'd found it. He picked up his jeans and stepped into them, drawing them up over his naked buttocks. He zipped them and, bare chested and bare footed, he left the room.

Yumn watched his back, watched the door close. She felt the slick deposit from his body oozing out of hers. Hastily, she reached for a tissue and raised her hips to work a pillow beneath them. She began to relax as she pictured the frantic flight of his sperm, seeking the solitary egg that lay waiting. It would happen this very morning, she thought.

Such a man her Muni was.



MILY BARLOW WAS PLUGGING THE FLEX OF AN oscillating fan into a socket in her office when Barbara arrived. The DCI was on her hands and knees beneath a table on which a computer terminal sat. The monitor of this terminal was glowing with a format that Barbara recognised even from the doorway: It was HOLMES, the program that systematised criminal investigations throughout the country.