Acts of Love (16 page)

Another sharp turn and she saw it, the Nile. They were just on the edge of the city, where Cairo stretched back as far as one could see: a low, concrete jumble of buildings, shining white against the horizon and broken by minarets and the odd tower block against a still-bright blue sky. Arianne felt a surge of excitement at the sight. She should have thought it ugly from where she was viewing it, but that was impossible for anyone who knew the city that could capture the heart and never let it go. Beyond her vision she could see in her mind’s eye, on the other side of Cairo, the
Sphinx and the three great pyramids of Egypt, and the desert further off; Egypt of the past through various of its glorious periods. The Mosques of Ahmed Ibn Tulun and Kalaun, the El-Azthar Mosque or Blue Mosque, the statue of Rameses II … The flowering trees, parks and palm trees, some bursting with clumps of dates … And could one forget the museums and their Pharaonic and Coptic treasures? The step pyramids of Saqqara?

All this was the background of the extraordinary sight of scores of feluccas a quarter of a mile or so down-river under a winter afternoon sun, gliding full sail south to Upper Egypt. They were spread out nearly the full width of the Nile, navigating the tricky currents, seeking stronger winds from a favourable direction. They seemed still to be jockeying for position. Arianne wondered where Ahmad’s felucca was. There was a big entry, that was for sure. The Nile looked nearly solid with sail for some distance back towards Cairo. Arianne felt the thrill of the race, of being in Egypt, of being a part of it and Ahmad’s life. She had that marvellous facility of being able to abandon herself to the moment, the experience and nothing else. She felt very alive and vital, incredibly excited and happy. She was right there in the moment.

They were on an even more narrow track now, running parallel with the river. On its banks were groups of people, jabbering excitedly. The missing villagers, thought Arianne. So that was where they had all gone, to wait for the race of the feluccas. Several hundred yards on the car stopped at a dangerously dilapidated dock that stretched out from the bank into the Nile. Tied to it was a large Chris Craft motor-boat, with two men standing at the wheel and another at the rear of the boat looking out for their arrival. He waved. And before the Rolls even cut its motor, the Chris Craft’s burst into life.

The passengers were quickly out of the car and on the edge of the dock. There was a great deal of fussing as to whether the dock would hold the weight of them all, and then more fussing about how to get Arianne down into the Chris Craft. But once one of the men in the boat had made it clear they had to get a move on or they would miss their chance to get Arianne on the felucca, all safety was abandoned and they marched on to the rickety dock. The chauffeur tossed Arianne’s travelling bag down the twelve
feet to one of the men in the boat. He caught it and stowed it away.

‘How am I going to get down there?’ asked Arianne.

Abdol looked very concerned as he told her, ‘Ahmad has worked it all out.’

Much shouting of instructions and arm-waving between the men in the boat and the men on the dock followed. It did little to put Arianne at ease. But she stood there patiently, leaving them to work it out, her eyes fixed on the fleet of sails coming up-river. The Chris Craft was disengaged from the dock and was manoeuvring into a new position. Finally Abdol approached her. ‘OK.’

‘OK what, Abdol?’

‘Just relax. You don’t have to do a thing. Muhammad is going to lift you up and lower you over the side. Then at just the right moment he’ll drop you. Ali will catch you. You’ll see.’

‘What if he misses, Abdol?’

‘That’s not in the plan.’

‘A ladder would be easier.’

Muhammad approached her. ‘You trust me,’ he told her. Then, he looked at her shoes, evidently seeing them as the only complication. She removed them. Before she realised it he had swept her off her feet with a vice-like grip around her waist, her back drawn in against him. He walked to the edge of the dock and lowered Arianne over the boat below, lower and lower as he went from standing to kneeling on the dock. Then, moving his hands to under her arms, he slowly lay flat out. She felt foolish dangling in mid-air with her shoes in her hand – foolish, but not unsafe. Ali in the bobbing boat, arms raised, awaited the right moment, found it and gave the shout. She dropped several feet. He made a perfect catch. It all happened so fast that Arianne barely had time to turn round to see Muhammad scrambling down the rotting wooden piles to grab Ali’s outstretched arm and leap into the Chris Craft after her. Handshakes and smiles as the pilot revved its motors and shot out on to the river. Abdol and the chauffeur shrank to small figures in the distance in what seemed a matter of seconds.

To those on the banks of the river it must have seemed as if the speed-boat had been devoured by the feluccas. It vanished among the fleet of wooden boats and triangular sails in search of
Ahmad’s felucca. Twice they circled crafts to ask where in the race Ahmad was lying and shot off again to find him in mid-fleet. She waved frantically to him and was thrilled by the look of pleasure on his face at seeing her. He was dressed in a pair of worn jeans and a denim shirt, with a red knitted sleeveless waistcoat over it. Around his neck a navy-blue cotton scarf with white dots was tied in a knot. He looked extremely handsome, very much the odd man out among the crew in their long white robes and turbans. But then again he seemed to belong, if not exactly where he was, most certainly in the exotic and privileged Egypt he was born to. His olive-coloured skin, black hair, sultry dark and sensuous eyes, all proclaimed unmistakably that he was Egyptian. Arianne felt not that she was seeing him for the first time, but that she was discovering him for the first time – a strange sensation for one who had once known him so intimately.

There were no greetings: haste forbade it. Everyone seemed bent on getting her on to the felucca. She assumed that the felucca was going to drop anchor and they would one way or another get her on board. No such thing. To bring her aboard the Chris Craft, there had been much chaos and shouting. There was none of that now. She knew the reason: it was Ahmad’s presence. Silently he demanded with utter authority that the job be done, quickly and with exactness. Everyone moved into position. Scarcely a word passed between them. Arianne, guided by Muhammad’s hand on her elbow, stood where he placed her. She and Ahmad engaged each other’s eyes while the speed-boat pulled parallel to the felucca and a mere six inches away from it. Tension. A palpable fear in the men of failing in their task. The fear emanated from Ahmad’s presence. Never before had she seen this hardness, such ruthlessness in him. But it was there, in his eyes. It gave her a fright, made her shiver. She grasped her hands and held them together to calm herself. Then it passed, this fear of Ahmad, as quickly as it had come. She saw in his gaze simply the smiling, sexy man who wanted her. She put the unpleasant flash of fear and mistrust out of her mind and attributed the experience to her own fear of being injured while boarding the felucca.

Success in the manoeuvre demanded that the pilot match the speed of the felucca and then maintain it exactly. No easy task when one vessel was under sail, the other powered by turbo
engines. What seemed an age passed, though in reality the pilot’s expertise quickly achieved the manoeuvre. Her hand luggage was tossed aboard the felucca, then her shoes. Two men stood next to one another on the felucca and leaned against the side of the boat, then Muhammad, without warning, hoisted her on to one shoulder and climbed on to the Chris Craft’s rail. He found his balance and kept it steady against the light winds. There was no time for Arianne even to muster her courage against her fear. She gathered what little daring she had before she was grabbed by the two men on the felucca and swung on to the deck.

Ahmad loved it. He clapped his hands and shouted thanks to the men in the Chris Craft, who waved to them both. The men’s expression declared their admiration for Arianne and how she had handled herself. That same admiration was evident in Ahmad’s face when he pulled her into his arms and gave her a huge hug. Together they watched the speed-boat shoot away. They felt the swell of the waves slap against the side of the felucca, rocking it.

‘You never let me down,’ he told her.

‘I think it’s called trust; I always trust you to get it right for me,’ she told him – hoping he was unaware that her knees were still shaking and her legs felt like over-cooked noodles.

‘You’re here and safe and we never lost speed. Quite an accomplishment. And …’

‘
And
, what?’

He placed an arm round her and whispered in her ear while walking her the few paces to Muhammad, who had somehow scrambled on board behind her: ‘
And
we are going to discover each other as we have never done. Before this voyage is over you’ll be mine as you have never been. I want to lay all this …’ – he waved an arm and she followed it with her eyes. She took in, once again, the grandeur, beauty and passion of the Nile, the many felucca sails in the soft, warm wind, the banks of green and the desert emptiness beyond, the clear blue sky. She sensed the mystery and intrigue of Egypt, the present, the past. An Egypt of the gods of antiquity, where life and death were entwined and revered – ‘… at your feet. So we can vanish together from the world and prying eyes. There’s a special, secret world I have planned for you.’

Seductive words. The promise in them … Arianne felt herself being drawn into his desire for her. ‘Is that where I want to be?’ she might have asked. Was there no hint of the sinister in his whisperings? But the time, the place, the man, were too attractive. She heard only what she wanted to hear, innuendoes of sensual delight, the appeal of love.

Chapter 12

Arianne took a position in the bow of the felucca out of the crew’s way. For the next few hours she and Ahmad put aside erotic yearnings while he and his crew jockeyed for position in the race. Periodically he would return to her, to place an arm around her shoulder and to point out their objectives, their rivals for a better position.

‘You sail as if you were playing chess,’ she told him, while she snuggled close into him, very happy to be in the race, but no less so to be in his arms.

‘And like a warrior going into battle.’

‘Yes, there’s very much that side of you.’

‘I always give everything – never less than my best shot. You know that, Arianne.’

‘And the lengths to which you will go to win. I know that too.’ She gave him a seductive smile. She had a frame of reference. Many times in the past, Arianne had seen him take extraordinary chances for something he wanted, or a prize he must win. Though he was a good loser, he was a much better winner.

The smile had been a flirtatious innuendo. She had been thinking of his erotic game-playing – the lengths she had seen him go to in winning a woman away from another man; the seemingly endless sensual pleasures he created for Arianne to keep her enthralled. He did not miss the allusion. It amused him that she thought she knew him well. And she did. Yet not so well as she believed. After all that had passed between them, she still had little idea of what he was capable of, when provoked. And she had provoked him once, by remaining in her deliriously happy marriage, despite learning that Jason had deceived her with another woman. In his heart Ahmad had hoped she would leave Jason for him; transfer to him such undying love and adoration.

Shortly before Jason’s death, Ahmad had sensed a change in him. Arianne had been blinded to it. Whatever the problem was, Jason did not allow it to disturb his marriage, which remained as solid and happy as ever. But Ahmad knew Jason very well. The signs were there. Something decidedly shady was afoot and a sexual restlessness Ahmad had not seen in Jason since before he had met and fallen in love with Arianne. It disturbed Ahmad. It was threatening the sexual
ménage à trois
, and he had no intention of letting that happen. Ahmad was too deeply committed to the licentiousness the relationship produced. It made all the other women and whores, the orgies he frequented, pale beside the erotic excitement the sexual triangle sated themselves upon. It also endangered his love affair with Arianne, and his role in a marriage he had become part of – a marriage that in a bizarre way was just as much his as theirs.

The girl was an eighteen-year-old, half black American, half Mexican beauty: dark and exotic with long, straight black hair to her waist; tall and slender as a reed, with voluptuous breasts; an impressive triangle of black pubic hair between long, slender and shapely legs that enfolded a wildly seductive cunt. Ahmad, having discovered them together, had watched Jason in the grip of lust for the girl. He could understand it. She was young, breathtakingly beautiful, and lewd.

Jason penetrated her again and again ruthlessly. With violent passion he heard her plead for everything sexual to be done to her and performed accordingly. At her bidding he sodomised her, evoking cries of pleasure and protestations of love and passion for his sexual prowess. She knew what it took to excite sexual pleasure in a libertine such as Jason. She led him further and further into a maddened desire for the ultimate orgasm into oblivion. Arora Rivera moved over, around and under Jason like a large jungle cat, a sleek panther. Together they were rutting beasts. Ahmad had listened to her demands, and to Jason professing undying love for her-and promising to run away with her.

Ahmad, having watched them long enough from the shadows of the balcony, had walked in on them. He had removed his clothes and joined them. Jason was angry but unsurprised at the intrusion. Jason’s and Ahmad’s eyes had met. The protest was
there in Jason’s, but it found no words. It was the girl who objected. Jason talked the girl out of hysterics and into accepting them both. Then he held her in his arms. She took his erect penis whole in her mouth, while Ahmad mounted her and they fucked in a passion for sex and the intoxicating sensation of orgasm to the exclusion of all else. Ahmad knew very well what he was doing: destroying Jason’s love for the dark temptress. There were no doubts in his mind that Jason, besotted by her, was crazed by a new love. But Ahmad was a devil in sex and knew well how to manipulate men’s lust for it. Skilled at destroying love? None did it better.

Several hours later, Ahmad saw the change in Jason. Gone was the role of lover he had been playing: the libertine Ahmad knew him to be shone in Jason’s face. ‘She’s not a whore, you know, Ahmad,’ Jason had said, somewhat pathetically.

Ahmad had answered, ‘She is now, Jason. Unless you’re prepared to give up Arianne and a marriage that is rare and has given you happiness and stability – Arianne’s kind of love that asks nothing and gives everything. That’s something neither of us has ever seen, let alone experienced in any other woman. Have you considered the loss?’ Clearly he hadn’t. Ahmad could see in Jason’s eyes that, confronted with the possibility of such a loss, there was no contest.

The two men used the girl for the next few hours. Then Ahmad charmed her into making a visit to a friend of his in Saudi Arabia, where, he assured her, she would be well cared for and happy. It took a great deal of talking by Jason to persuade the girl to go; promises, too, that only he and Ahmad knew Jason would never fulfil.

Ahmad thought about that incident now as he drank in Arianne’s insinuating smile. That had been the first time in his life he had experienced real jealousy. He hadn’t liked the feeling. It had also made him come to terms with the fact that he was not getting enough love from Arianne. He wanted more. Only his close relationship and love for his best friend had calmed him enough to accept happiness in what he could get from Arianne and the
ménage à trois
. However, somewhere deep in his psyche lurked an obsession to possess Arianne to an even greater degree than ever Jason had. He nurtured a plan. One way
or another he would find a way to exchange places with Jason in her affections.

Ever since that breakfast at Claridge’s he had known she would come to him. And when she did, it would be because the past was finally dead for them. She would be ready to live again and to want him more than any other man. Three years is a long time to starve a voracious libido. The sexual fire was raging in her, he had no doubt about that, nor about how much she wanted to give herself up to Ahmad and everything sexual. She was there in the bow of the felucca with him because she was ready to begin again. ‘Dead is dead,’ he wanted to shout. ‘And when we reach Luxor you will give me that same love and devotion you gave Jason, which I have coveted for so long.’

He pulled Arianne into his arms; he studied her face and touched her lips with his finger, caressing her lower lip with its tip, until she slowly parted them and sucked his finger into her mouth. How warm, moist and silky smooth was the inside of her lips as she sucked and ran her tongue around his finger. That cool and quiet beauty of hers, clothed in her Ralph Lauren elegance, sucking him so sensually. He gazed into her large grey eyes and could see in them the glimmer of lust that had been absent from them for far too long. She was slipping into that special kind of sexiness he knew she was so capable of enjoying. That finger in her mouth was cock – they both knew it was what she wished. He hugged her closer into him. ‘You feel so good in my arms,’ he told her and pressed a light, affectionate kiss on her lips. He could feel the hunger in her kiss, how much more she wanted from him. He liked her most when she was sexually hungry. He wanted her much more hungry for him than she was now. He would bide his time. He would cunt-tease her, toy with her, prime her with his seductive ways, his masculine charm. He wanted their return to lust and love and depravity to be splendiferous, beyond anything they had experienced together before.

He slipped his fingers in between the stiff, high collar of her jacket and her neck and he ran them round her neck, a sensuous caress that made her close her eyes and sigh. He unhooked the collar and several buttons of her jacket to make it easy. Reaching inside the jacket, he caressed a naked breast under the silk-knit pullover. She felt so good in his hands.

It was dizzyingly exciting to be petted by him on deck in the light breeze, racing against the other sails; to feel the pitch and roll of the felucca, the buzz of the race; to hear the flapping of the sails, the shouts of excitement in that oh-so-seductive Arabic; to see the thrill of people rushing about on the other boats to manoeuvre and challenge, with their own crew too busy to take notice of any passion but that of sailing up the Nile.

‘I promised myself I would not allow you to be a distraction. And I am already distracted.’ He removed his hand and buttoned up her jacket, hooked the high collar and smiled at her. ‘But tonight is different. Every night it will be different. We will sail only from sun-up to sundown and then …’

‘And then?’

Arianne wanted reassurance. He had to want her as much as she wanted him. That was important for her. ‘We’ll begin a Nile Odyssey that neither of us will ever forget. Isn’t that why you’re here?’

Arianne hardly knew how to answer that. It was of course true, although she hadn’t thought about her visit to Ahmad exactly in those terms. A series of wanderings? A long, adventurous journey? That was what an Odyssey was. And she had to face the truth: she was there because that was exactly what she wanted, a sexual odyssey with Ahmad as her Ulysses. She had thought she had come to Egypt to be with him, to find love again. She did so miss being in love and marriage. Could she have been so wrong about her intentions? Once again, without realising it, she had allowed Ahmad to take her over, seduce her into the erotic world she so craved. Love and marriage seemed suddenly not so important, because she knew they might follow. Certainly love with Ahmad had once before. She could happily settle for that if there was to be nothing else for them.

She gazed into Ahmad’s eyes. They promised sexual ecstasy and excited her imagination as to what was to come. Arianne placed her arms around his neck, her lips upon his. She licked his lips with her tongue and then kissed them. Her own lips trembled with anticipation. He placed his hands on her waist and pulled her gently towards him, rubbing her sensually against himself. He handled her body as if she were clay to be moulded to his will. She adored being created by him.

She gently pushed him away. She was flushed, and when she spoke there was a tremor of passion in her voice. ‘Yes, that’s why I’m here.’

He caressed the shoulder-length, chestnut-coloured hair and smiled seductively at her. ‘It’s a long time since I’ve heard lust in your voice.’ He stepped nearer to her. Gazing at her, he placed an arm around her shoulders. ‘I actually feared I would never hear it again. How good it sounds. I’ve waited a long time for you to return to me.’

Arianne felt weak-kneed. She wanted to weep with joy from the sheer relief of no longer being alone, of feeling once again that rage to live, at no matter what price had to be paid to do so. ‘You want me?’ Her eyes sparkled with life; she felt so very much alive.

‘I always want you. I can never get enough of you. But this time round I want all of you and just for me.’ With that, he raised her hand and lowered his head to place a kiss on it, then he was gone, back to his crew and sailing his felucca.

Arianne turned away from him to face into the wind. She placed her outstretched fingers at the temples of her head and ran them through her hair, pressing hard against her head. It felt good to take hold of herself. She thought she might otherwise dissolve into a pool of lust for Ahmad. Her mind was filled with erotic fantasies of long, luxurious orgasms, repressed longings set free by Ahmad, things carnal that she had thought were behind her forever, ended by the death of Jason. She sighed, happy, excited that sexual adventure had re-entered her life: desire, passion, the waters of life.

She sat on a timber that protruded from the side of the felucca and lost herself, less in erotic thought than in the sensational sight of the lateen sails making headway up the Nile. The sun was low on the horizon and the desert had replaced Cairo and its suburbs. Ten days to two weeks to Luxor, that was what it would take to win the race. Ten glorious days of sailing on the Nile by day and slipping into an erotic world with Ahmad by night. The
Osiris
, Ahmad’s felucca, was sailing all-out, surrounded by the other boats. Arianne made a full circle where she stood, wanting to absorb it all. Reality and the outside world were fast receding from her thoughts. They seemed so pale and distant, so empty and
loveless. What need had she for that world when she could feel as alive as she did at that moment in the bosom of Egypt, in the arms of Ahmad?

Her last thought of that empty world that had given her such a hard and lonely life these last few years, was not of anything or anyone that she was leaving behind. Or so she thought until sometime later, as dusk was closing in on the river, when Ahmad walked up behind her to wrap his arms around her waist. For a brief moment Ben Johnson’s handsome face, the warmth and macho charm he exuded, flashed before her. The vision was dimmed by a kiss on the back of her neck, a lick of Ahmad’s tongue on her ear-lobe, a whisper of love: ‘I adore you. I have always adored you. But seeing you here, alone with me on the Nile, that adoration is different. It’s more acute, if that is possible, more intense.’

He slipped a hand under her jacket and down beneath the waist-band of her trousers to caress naked flesh. Delighted that she was as he had always demanded of her in the past, naked, without undergarments, ready and waiting for him, he moved his hands down further to caress her voluptuous mound of dark, curly pubic hair. Fingers searched between her cunt lips and found her clitoris. He teased and tormented it with the thrill of masturbation. He felt his own excitement mounting. She could always do that for him when he had her in his power. How she loved being dominated by sex, in any form he could deliver. She embodied for him that lethal combination of a lady in the salon, a depraved whore in bed. How he loved her for that, and for knowing that there was always more that he could get from her. Arianne’s kind of love and passion gave and gave, until the last. And that was what drove his desire to take her further and further into sexual depravity.