Dazzle - The Complete Unabridged Trilogy

by Judith Gould

  Monika was armed to the teeth.

  Most of the men, on the other hand, weren't too bad, except for the little one named Ahmed. He had a nervous manner and never seemed to be able to keep completely still. He was always dangerously wound up; always bouncing up and down, as though dancing to some beat only he could hear. He also kept one hand in a pocket, blatantly playing with himself as he leered at her. Every time he grinned at her, his silent message was like a screamed threat: One of these times, I'm going to come in and stick it in you! Instead of checking up on her every hour or two, when he was on duty he kept popping in every fifteen or twenty minutes.

  Ahmed frightened her even more than Monika did, because she sensed he was genuinely crazy.

  The rest of them tended to ignore her, looking in on her at regular oneor two-hour intervals. Sometimes she could hear them swapping ribald jokes on the other side of the door or below her windows. Other times they played radios or tape recorders, and the music filtered in.

  Of one thing she was unarguably certain: she was being guarded around the clock. They were taking no chances that she'd escape.

  Not that she hadn't tried. Immediately upon her arrival, she'd gotten the bright notion to use her dinner fork to pry the security shutters loose. She'd received a rude awakening. The shutters were electrified: the shock hadn't been powerful enough to kill her, but she'd felt her hair stand straight up; then she'd been flung backward a good ten feet.

  The most obvious means of escape, those well-guarded Nevelson doors, were like the doors of bank safes: thick, impenetrable, and unyielding.

  Wearily she let her head drop to the back of the couch and gingerly felt her forehead with her fingertips. From the base of her temples all the way around the crown to the back of her skull, her head was beginning to pulsate and throb. There was nothing, she thought, quite like mental depression for manifesting itself into a very real physical pain. If your mind was fouled up with garbage, and things were beyond your control, the body picked up on the negative rhythms and never failed to get in on the act. She could feel a whopper of a headache coming on.

  She slid to the floor, knelt with her knees planted wide apart, and leaned her head back as far as it could go. But still the feeling persisted that, for once, her spirits were at such an all-time low that even the Ishagiatsu pressure-point exercises wouldn't help.

  One of Najib's earliest memories was of a time when he found himself alone in the little house at al-Najaf after his mother had sped to his grandparents' house across the way on an errand, giving him the opportunity to experiment with matches. He had become so entranced with lighting them and throwing the little flares around the room that he never even heard his mother return. The shock and horror she felt made themselves known in a punishing lesson: instead of spanking him, she simply lit a match, grabbed his hand, and grimly held it to his fingers until they blistered. After that, she never had to worry again. Having had his fingers burned once, he had gained a healthy respect for matches and was cured from playing with fire—forever, he'd thought.

  He was reminded of that incident now as he sprawled white-robed on an enormous low L-shaped couch. Was he begging to get his hands burned once again? he wondered. Had he not, after all, learned his lesson painfully enough when his mother had shown him what playing with fire could do?

  But this new fire to which he was drawn burned too alluringly for him to ignore. Najib knew he couldn't stay away.

  As inexorably as a moth drawn to a flame, he was drawn to Daliah. He couldn't explain it. All he knew was that something quite extraordinary was happening to him. No matter how he tried to shut his mind against it, Daliah's presence was a siren's call which stole after him wherever he went, and reached even to the furthermost reaches of the palace. He had the unnerving impression that he could have been halfway around the world and it would have followed him still.

  For two nights now, he hadn't been able to get more than a few scattered catnaps. As soon as he went to bed and shut his eyes, then her eyes, luminescent and full of wild magnificence, would spring up before him. Every waking minute, and every minute he tried in vain to go to sleep, all he had was Daliah on his mind. Daliah's eyes. Daliah's voice. Daliah's spirit. She was everywhere. She had him twisted up in knots. After thirty-seven hours of not having seen her, he was convinced that if he didn't go and see her immediately he was liable to go berserk. Finally, deciding that not seeing her would only compound his misery, he did the only sensible thing possible under the circumstances. He went to see her.

  As usual, two guards were posted in front of her door. As was also usual, they had pulled up chairs, propped their weapons against the wall, and were listening to music on a tape deck while leafing through dog-eared back issues of Playboy. On duty were Haluk, a big pockmarked Egyptian, and Ahmed, the tense, wiry little Syrian who looked like he'd really gotten into the music and was clicking his fingers crazily to the beat.

  They looked up at him warily.

  'Has she been giving you any problems? Najib asked, maintaining a noncommittal tone.

  Haluk, his eyes still on the unfolded centrefold, shrugged disinterestedly. Ahmed grinned at Najib, wiggled his eyebrows, and winked lewdly.

  Najib's hand caught Ahmed's fatigue shirt and half-lifted him out of the chair. The little Arab lost the musical rhythm, his eyes glazed and fearful. He tried to grin ingratiatingly, but it came off unconvincingly.

  'Do you want the key?' The slow-speaking, deliberate voice belonged to Haluk.

  It defused the tension. Najib felt the mad anger rushing out of him. He flung Ahmed back and let him slide down into the chair. Nodding, he took the key from Haluk and inserted it in the keyhole. For the barest moment he hesitated, his hand pressing down on the huge sculptured handle. Then swiftly, as though he wanted to get it over with before he could change his mind, he turned the key and pushed the door open.

  The first thing that hit him was the chill. She had the air conditioning turned up high, but otherwise, all was warmly feminine. The pink silk taffeta curtains were drawn tightly across the shuttered windows, relieving the bleak, dark view of the shutters, and the lamps were all lit, spilling soft pools of yellow light.

  He could almost feel her nearness. The air was electrified with her presence. His blood rushed crazily through him, and beneath his robes his penis grew rock hard.

  She was not in the living room.

  He went into the bedroom.

  The bed looked unslept-in; it was still flawlessly made, covered with the quilted pink silk spread. Quickly he looked around the room, at once feeling both alarm and wild hope that she had somehow managed to escape.

  Then he saw her.

  She looked anything but a hostage, slumped as she was casually in the fur-lined cocoon of a giant spherical fibreglass chair which looked like a hollowed-out pearlized pink egg. Her feet were bare, and she sat with one of them tucked under her. Her hair was loose and spilled down in a thick tangle over her shoulders, nearly to her waist, and her hands were tucked into the pockets of one of the Almoayyed wives' best Barguzinski sables. Of course, he thought; that was why the air conditioning was on full blast. To freeze her visitors out while she wrapped up in fur, didn't feel a hint of discomfort.

  Catching sight of him, Daliah raised her head aggressively. For an instant her face shone with a look of such pure steel that it could have killed; then, shrugging eloquently, as though he was not really worth the bother, she casually swivelled the chair around in the opposite direction, so that all he faced was the shiny pink fibreglass globe of the back of the egg-chair.

  He felt the colour rising to his face, and his cheeks prickled hotly. The unmitigated impudence! No woman had treated him so dismissively. Not ever!

  The need to lash out prompted his tongue. 'You bitch!' he said in an intense whisper.

  A staccato laugh trilled from the other side of the chair. Angrily he strode toward it. Then, as though through a miracle of theatrical timing, she whirled the chair back aroun
d just as he was about to touch it. She stared up, and he had the sensation that her pupils expanded and her green eyes glowed pitch black. Then she laughed again, and they receded to green.

  He took a deep breath. 'I do not see anything to laugh at,' he said with wounded dignity. 'Perhaps if you find something funny, you would care to share the joke with me.'

  'Hmmm.'

  Finger poised on her lips, she twisted the well-oiled chair lazily back and forth in silent little arcs, so that he found himself alternately looking left, then right, then left again, like a spectator at a tennis match.

  'You look tired.' There was not a hint of sincere regret in her voice. 'This little adventure seems to be wearying you.' She eyed him slyly. 'Maybe you should try to get some sleep.'

  He gestured at the chair, finding it impossible to focus his words at a constantly shifting target. 'In the name of Allah,' he said irritably. 'Can you not be still for an instant?'

  She raised her eyebrows. 'Why?'

  'This is not a game,' he snapped. 'It might be well for you to take this seriously.'

  'Of course this isn't a game,' she sighed. 'In case you've forgotten, it wasn't my idea to be here. I didn't ask to come. Did I?' Still she swayed back and forth. 'What do you expect me to do? Plead with you to let me go? Burst into tears? Beg for mercy on my knees?' She smiled. 'You would like that, wouldn't you?'

  He shook his head. 'As a matter of fact, no,' he said softly. 'I wouldn't.' His fists quivered at his sides, and he felt as awkward as he had felt two days earlier when he had first seen her downstairs in the foyer. Just as he had then, he was again convinced that it would have been better—far better all around—had he been able to shut his ears to that siren's call and stayed away. For some reason, she had the knack of reducing him to something gangly and all thumbs.

  Her eyes never strayed from his. 'Then let me ask you this: why are you here?'

  'I only came by to see if you were comfortable,' he said inadequately.

  The chair stopped moving abruptly and she stared, her head tilted sideways, her eyebrows arched. 'Would you care to repeat that?' She blinked rapidly. 'You want to know if . . . if I am comfortable!'

  He did not reply.

  She began to roar with laughter, 'I suppose the next thing you're going to ask is how I like it here.' She swallowed her laughter. 'But to answer your question, of course I'm comfortable. Any idiot could see that. Who wouldn't be in a cage of spun gold? I feel like the Queen of Sheba. The Maharani of Jaipur. The Begum Khan.' She gestured expansively around the room. 'Not happy, mind you, but comfortable. Now are you pleased?'

  'If you need anything,' he said stiffly, 'just tell the guards and they will let me know.'

  She extended one splendid creamy leg and twisted her foot back and forth as though admiring her toenail polish from afar. She glanced up at him. 'I suppose my telling you that what I need is my freedom won't cut any ice, will it?'

  He smiled sadly. 'I am afraid not. That is entirely beyond my control.'

  'Pity. I was always under the impression that you were so powerful.' She made a face and then shrugged diffidently. 'Oh, well, you can't win them all, I suppose. I know you would hate having to see me go. You see, I've been doing some thinking.' She knit her brows together. 'When you're locked up the way I have been, you have time to do nothing but think. And you end up thinking the craziest things.' She paused. 'Anyway, what I was thinking was . . . well, that I wish I had gone to the university and studied some psychology.'

  He raised his eyebrows. 'Indeed?'

  'Uh-huh. Because you see,' she said in a serious tone, although her eyes were alight with laughter, 'maybe then I could figure out why you can't stay away from me. Maybe then I'd know why you kissed me so savagely two days ago. It may come as a rude awakening to your overblown ego, but I'd really much rather be left alone. If I need you, I'll whistle.'

  'Then I shall leave you alone.' He turned and began to stride toward the living-room door. He had almost reached it when she called out coyly in sugared tones, 'Oh, Mr. al-Ameer?'

  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 astonishingly sleek, as streamlined as an Art Deco statuette. Her physical perfection was almost painful. Long coltish legs, generously 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 earnest. '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 ugliness 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 shattering 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 backward. 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 everything—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, sleeping curled up in the foetal position, and finally, in desperation, even sleeping on his belly.