Expecting him to force himself on her again, she is surprised when he just waits patiently, his arms relaxed at his sides. She sighs as if with pleasure and cradles his erection in her right hand. She begins stroking him slowly and gently, the thumb and index finger of her other hand forming a ring around his head she slips on and off him swiftly, subjecting him to contrasting rhythms that mysteriously work together. When he is nice and slick, her right hand begins massaging him more firmly, making him more and more tense as she strives to bring him to a climax with just her fingers. She surrenders herself to the task, remembering how Richard’s pleasure always affected her like an electric current, like lightning forking through her womb and exciting her entire being. She still wants him so much her body cries blindly for him now, so that the wet warmth between her thighs has little to do with the man coming in her hands.
Chapter Ten
Less than an hour later they are en route to the Sound and Light Show at Karnak Temple. It was Mark’s idea that the spectacle would help take her mind off the sinister events surrounding her.
He sits across from her in the carriage, a twilight breeze playing through his damp hair like a goddess’ invisible admiring fingers. “A pyramid for your thoughts, princess.” His elbows on his knees, his black-clad body merges with the seat as he gazes across the Nile at the sunset.
“Doug lives on the West Bank?” she asks.
“Yes, with a bunch of other crazy Egyptologists.”
“I’d like to spend a night on that side of the river.”
“Then I’ll arrange it.”
His easy consent surprises her. “I thought you wanted to leave Thebes as soon as possible.”
His eyes are all that is left of the daylight sky. “I changed my mind.”
She is glad but still curious about his reasons. “Why?”
“Because you’re right—there’s no point in running away. Your greedy brother-in-law will just follow you, so I intend to flush him out right here.”
Shivering, she zips up her leather jacket and then runs the fingers of both hands through her hair to lift its damp weight off her scalp for a moment.
“Cold?” he asks, gazing at the setting sun—a small, darkly glowing red sphere like the end of a cosmic cigarette.
“A little, but it’s nice. A hot shower and now a cool evening breeze…” She sits back contentedly. “I love sensual contrasts.”
“Like pain and pleasure?”
She glances up at the crescent moon cutting its way through the thinning atmosphere at the sky’s zenith. “Yes.”
“I’ve never met a woman like you before, Lucia.”
“What do you mean?” It is too dark for her to discern his expression.
“I’ve been with a lot of women but I’ve never wanted any of them for long. They were…” His silhouette shrugs. “Shallow, even the smart ones. I’m not talking about intelligence here. With you, it’s like your body and your soul are…I don’t know. I just know that when I fuck you it’s something else. I’m not a word man like Richard was.”
“I’ve never been able to separate my body from my soul,” she says softly. “And they’re both yours to command, Mark.”
He replies just as quietly, “That’s not a very feminist attitude.”
“I don’t care. It’s the truth. The earth needs the sun yet it’s not inferior to it. There’s no such thing as inferior and superior in metaphysical relationships.”
“Like the one you’re trying to have with Richard now?”
“I’m not—”
“Don’t lie to me, Lucia.”
“He’s dead, Mark.”
He suddenly grasps one of her hands and raises it to his lips.
“Do you really believe in the soul, Mark?”
The gleaming silver river is tarnished with darkness like the blade of an ancient sword.
He lets go of her hand and sits back. “Does it matter?”
“Yes.”
“Why, does what I believe affect the nature of the universe?”
“Actually, I think it does.”
“We’re almost there.”
“You’re changing the subject.”
“No I’m not, just postponing it. We’ll have plenty of time to get the universe straightened out.”
The carriage turns away from the Nile and, after a few minutes, begins trotting up a broad avenue lined on both sides by ram-headed sphinxes. Symbols of Amon-Re, they guard the approach to the temple, and she finds herself half hypnotized by the curving horns as they flow by, the pale stone from which they are carved seeming to glow in the deepening darkness.
A gathering of black carriages at the entrance evokes a Victorian funeral.
Mark jumps out and turns to help her down, gallant as an old-fashioned gentleman even though society no longer encumbers her with long skirts and petticoats. She is, in fact, lithe as a cat in her black leggings and leather jacket.
Hand in hand, they follow a respectfully hushed group of around fifty people into the Temple of Karnak, where over an archaic sound system pharaohs with pompous British voices boast of their military and architectural achievements as sections of the ruined temple are flooded with a sickly yellow light.
The horribly uninspired spectacle drags on and on.
“Nefertari.” Mark points out a figure perched on the colossal stone feet of Ramses II, her head on a level with his knees.
“That’s nice,” she says and during one of the pauses in the lifeless script her stomach growls audibly.
“Was that thunder,” he teases, “or are you hungry?”
“I’m starving!” she whispers. “I was starving before we left the hotel.”
“Well, we can go have dinner now if you don’t mind missing the rest of the show.”
“I don’t mind at all!”
“Let’s turn back then.”
They are walking deeper and deeper into the temple toward the Sacred Lake and the show’s climax.
“Can you find the way?” she asks.
“Trust me.”
They are trailing behind the crowd, so it is an easy matter to just turn around and begin retracing their steps and sections of the temple are still lit up so they can see where they’re going. Behind them the spectacle continues but the lifeless script is soon swallowed up by a profound silence.
Rows of papyrus columns are bathed by floodlights in a ghostly reflection of the sun’s life-giving rays and a row of sphinxes crouches in front of them, all but one of them beheaded by the centuries.
She says quietly, “Isn’t time a strange thing, Mark? I mean, the way a day can seem to last forever yet thousands of years pass in the blink of an eye?”
“Mm.”
The sky above and beyond the columns is positively bursting with stars, imbuing the dead temple with a haunting pulse.
Mark abruptly grabs her arm and stops walking. “Did you hear that?” he whispers.
Her heart starts racing. “Hear what?”
“Stay here,” he commands and before she can stop him, runs off into the darkness.
Her heart protesting violently, she nevertheless stands there obediently for a long moment. “Mark?
She calls softly. “Mark?”
“My love.”
She turns to face the blessedly familiar voice.
Richard is standing at the far end of the row of columns where the light bathing them ebbs back into the night. All she can see of him is the pale egg of his face, cracked by a sinister goatee.
She takes a tentative step toward the impossible then another one and another one, amazed that he is still there, that he doesn’t vanish as she expects him to at every second. She doesn’t take her eyes off him as with each step she labors to accept this dark miracle. She can’t stop herself from blinking yet this time her lashes don’t just brush him away. He is still there, waiting for her. She longs to say his name but her throat is sealed tight with emotion…until her mind suddenly accepts the inconceivable and gives her
body permission to do what it has longed to do since she saw him. She runs toward him, prepared to run straight through him.
When he catches her in his arms and presses her face against his hard, very real chest, disbelief paralyzes her. All she is aware of is the miracle that they are together again. At the moment it hardly surprises her because her heart is beating hard and fast enough to sustain them both.
“I’m coming for you, my love,” he whispers, so softly she wouldn’t be able to hear him if her spine wasn’t an antenna tuned to his beloved frequency. Then his arms are no longer around her and stars break on her vision like sea foam as a deliciously warm darkness floods all her senses…
Stars send fervently concerned arms into her eyes. Then a silhouette absorbs part of the universe.
“No, don’t try to sit up yet,” Mark says gently.
Tentatively grasping her head in both hands, she disobeys him. Her skull feels as heavy as a rock, impossibly held up by the delicate flower stem of her neck.
He is crouching down beside her. “Lucia, are you hurt?”
“I don’t think so.”
“What the hell happened to you?”
“I’m not sure.” And it’s true, she has no idea what energies Richard’s personality is composed of now. His new tailor works with a material far superior to the frail cloth of flesh and the easily torn threads of veins.
“Easy, baby.” Mark helps her up.
“Did you see anyone, Mark?”
“No, but I’m sure you did.”
A totally unexpected rumble of thunder echoes the blood pounding through her heart and she suffers the thrilling impression that her sensuality no longer ends with her body. Suddenly the sky feels like a curving extension of her chest, which makes the earth’s atmosphere a powerful layer of her own skin and the crescent moon shining over the columns her own pale shoulder, caressed by the dark fur of a passing cloud. All because she knows, because she is sure now, that Richard hasn’t left her forever.
“The little bastard was here wasn’t he, Lucia?”
“No, Mark, it wasn’t Julian.” It was Richard who held her in his arms. Nothing else can explain the almost orgasmic warmth that seemed to replace the very marrow of her bones just before her consciousness blinked out.
“What happened to you, Lucia? What did he say to you this time?” Mark clutches a handful of her hair and tugs painfully on her roots as if reaching for her thoughts. “Answer me.”
She tells him all in one breath, “He said he was coming for me, I felt him, he held me!”
He lets go of her hair. “You let him touch you? You played right into his hands? You let him get close enough to do whatever he wanted to you? You bought this ridiculous masquerade?”
“Mark, it wasn’t Julian,” she insists desperately, yet her memory of those magical moments is frustratingly hazy, as if what she experienced was too intense for her brain to record properly, just as too much light can overexpose film.
“Maybe I should leave you two alone.”
“Mark, please.”
He shrugs her hand off his arm. “I’m getting out of here, Lucia. You can come with me if you want to.”
“Of course I want to!”
“You don’t know what you want.”
“This isn’t my fault,” she protests half-heartedly.
“I’m not so sure about that anymore.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t think I feel like talking to you right now.”
* * * * *
Back in their room Mark closes the door behind them and leans back against it while she goes and sits on the edge of the bed, weak with hunger and a growing despair at her own behavior. She can’t seem to hold on to the reins of her feelings, which keep leaping back and forth between rational skepticism and passionate belief in a way that can only prove destructive.
“I can make you come,” he crosses his arms over his chest, “but I can’t make you tell me the truth.”
She clenches her hands between her knees and looks up at him miserably. “I’m sorry.”
“Just how far did you let Richard go, Lucia? And I’m not talking about tonight.”
“He never really hurt me.”
“I don’t believe you. I think all he did was hurt you.”
“That’s not true. He loved me and I loved him.”
“What you loved was not having a will of your own, Lucia.” His hands fall to the buckle of his belt and his voice becomes a menacing undertone as he approaches her. “You lied to me, baby. If you really respected me you wouldn’t lie to me.” He grabs her arm with one hand, pulls her to her feet, turns her around and shoves her face forward across the bed. “I have to teach you to respect me, Lucia.”
She closes her eyes because strangely enough nothing makes her feel more at peace than the sensual hiss of a man’s belt coming off.
He tugs her leggings down just far enough to expose her ass and she rises up onto her elbows, hanging her head. The searing agony of leather slicing into her sensitive skin stuns her into breathless submission.
After six swift, excruciating lashes he pulls her up off the bed by her hair. “Undress,” he commands.
Feeling unsteady on her feet, she bends over to take off her boots and pull her panties and leggings off all the way. Then, with her eyes lowered, she removes the rest of her clothing, tossing it on the bed behind her and, without waiting for him to tell her what to do next, she walks over to a clear expanse of wall. She raises her arms, plants her palms against it and holds her breath.
He doesn’t hesitate. He swiftly covers her back with burning trails that all converge between her legs, where how much she wants him deepens with every stroke.
Finally she hears the belt slap against the mirror over the dresser like a snake hitting ice as he tosses it away from him.
“I can’t believe you let me do that.” His cool tone feels like acid poured across her burning back. “I’m surprised you don’t have any scars.”
She turns to face him, trembling with the need to have her suffering redeemed by his enjoyment, without which it is meaningless and therefore unendurable. “Stop it!” she begs.
His sardonic smile hurts infinitely more than his blows did. “Now you tell me to stop?”
She looks around the room for something to throw at him but there is nothing suitable within reach.
“Is this what your marriage was like, Lucia?”
“No,” she says passionately. “Richard never made fun of me like this!”
His smile vanishes like a trick of the light. “Is that what you think I’m doing, making fun of you?”
“I don’t know what you’re doing!”
“Yes, you do.”
She returns to the bed, sits weakly on the edge and lets her head fall into her hands from its own weight. She cannot believe what is happening, his detachment makes her want to die.
“I should leave,” he says.
“What?!” She stares up at him in disbelief. “You beat me and now you’re just going to leave?”
“You wouldn’t like that, baby?”
“No!”
“You want me to fuck you?” He comes and stands over her. “Is that it?”
“Yes,” she whispers.
“I didn’t hear you.”
“Yes.”
“Say it.”
“I want you to fuck me.”
“My name is Mark.”
“I want you to fuck me, Mark.”
He takes a step back. “Did Richard always beat you before he fucked you, Lucia?”
She closes her eyes in despair. “Oh God.”
“Don’t you mean ‘oh Richard’? He’s so powerful now he can even take form and hold you in his arms again.”
“It had to be Julian,” she admits hopelessly.
“Was it? You didn’t seem to think so in the temple. Every time Richard shows up you don’t think clearly at all. He still has power over you, Lucia. He has so much power over you
that his brother can manipulate you just by flashing some pictures around and mimicking his voice. You’re an intelligent woman but not when it comes to Daddy. You’re just a lost little girl when it comes to Daddy. Go ahead. Cry. You should cry. I just beat you, for Christ’s sake. I hurt you and I’m still hurting you by trying to beat the truth into you. The reason you’re so obsessed with Richard’s ghost is because you don’t have a will of your own, Lucia. You buried it with him. That’s why you want me to be like him, so you won’t have to take responsibility for yourself. Think about it. He taught you to enjoy pain by fucking you afterward as a reward and that’s why I won’t. I intend to break all the patterns he addicted you to and find out what you’re really like, how you really feel.”
Her heart is beating as if she is trying to run her way out of a labyrinth. “Mark,” she takes a deep breath and meets his eyes, “help me!”
He reaches down for her hands and draws her, very gently, up into his arms.
Chapter Eleven
The hotel lounge is as dark as a cave in which glass-enclosed candles glimmer and flicker like stars reflected in a nocturnal pool. Two figures are seated at the bar.
Lucia pauses on the threshold just in time to see Mark lean toward the woman and whisper something in her ear.
She’s been buffeted by so many conflicting emotions lately that the wave of jealousy that hits her meets with no resistance, as if she is only dreaming, and this almost enables her to enjoy watching Mark caress the woman’s long blonde hair.
True to his word, he did not make love to her after whipping her with his belt. They had come downstairs for dinner instead, where she had wolfed down her chicken and couscous, wishing they were filet mignon and lobster. He had then suggested they hit the bar for a nightcap and she had agreed even though she would have preferred going straight to bed. On the way she had stopped to use the bathroom. But now she turns away and hurries toward the elevators.
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