Читать книгу Penny Jordan Tribute Collection - Пенни Джордан, Penny Jordan - Страница 23

GRIMLY Petra blinked the slight grittiness from her eyes as she studied her reflection in her bedroom mirror. She had barely slept, and when she had she had been tormented by confusing dark-edged dreams in which she was being pursued by a white-robed persecutor, his features hidden from her. In her nightmare she had called out to Blaize to rescue her, but although she could see him he had not been paying any heed to her pleas, had instead been engrossed with the scantily clad bevy of women surrounding him.

Only once had he actually turned to look at her, and then he had shaken his head and told her cruelly, ‘Go away, little virgin. I do not want you.’

And now, even though the night was over, Petra felt as though its dark shadow still hung over her. There was hardly any time left for her to convince Rashid that she was not a suitable bride, and once again Blaize had made no attempt to get in touch with her.

Lethargically she moved away from the mirror. She had already packed an overnight bag, as instructed by the fax she had received from the tour operator, and she was dressed in what she hoped would be a suitable outfit of short-sleeved tee shirt and a pair of khaki combat-style pants with sturdy and hopefully sand-proof trainers. She had, as instructed, a long-sleeved top to cover her arms from the heat and the sand, a hat, a pair of sunglasses and a large bottle of water. But the sense of adventure and intrigue with which she had originally booked the trip had gone, leaving in its place a lacklustre feeling of emptiness.

Because she hadn’t heard from Blaize? A man she had known less than a week? A man who quite patently cynically used his sexuality to fund a lifestyle that was in direct opposition to everything that Petra herself believed in! She couldn’t possibly really be trying to tell herself that she was emotionally attracted to him? That in such a short space of time he had become so necessary to her that a mere twenty-four hours without him had left her feeling that her whole life was empty and worthless?

Now she was afraid, Petra admitted shakily, and with good reason! What she was thinking truly was cause for the horrified chills running down her spine! There was no way she could allow herself to be in love with Blaize.

Be in love? Since when had love entered the equation? she tried to mock herself.

Only two days ago she had been finding it hard to admit that she just might find him sexually attractive. Two days before that she had barely known that he existed. Yet here she was, trying to talk herself into believing she loved him! No, not trying to talk herself into it, trying to talk herself out of it, Petra corrected herself swiftly.

Her telephone rang. Quickly she picked up the receiver. It was the front desk informing her that her transport had arrived.

Picking up her overnight bag, Petra told herself sternly that a little breathing space would do her good. What a pity she was living in the modern century, though, and not a previous one where it might have been possible for a traveller attached to a camel train to pass through a country’s borders without the necessity of producing a passport…

A group of newly arrived holidaymakers were filling the foyer, and the concierge staff had no time to do anything more than point Petra in the direction of the waiting vehicle she could see outside, a logo painted on its side.

Even with her sunglasses the sunlight was so strong that she was momentarily blinded as she headed for the four-wheel drive vehicle, and it was whilst she was still trying to accustom her eyes to the brilliance that she felt strong hands relieve her of her overnight bag, and then grasp her waist to help her into the front passenger seat of the vehicle.

She heard the slam of the passenger door, and then the closing rear door. As her driver climbed into the driving seat she turned her head to look at him, her eyes widening in shock as she realised just who her driver was!

‘Blaize!’ she exclaimed weakly. ‘What are you doing here?’

Petra tried to drag her gaze away from him as she gulped in air. Her chest had gone so tight it hurt, and she could feel the heat surging through her body as it reacted with telltale swiftness to his presence.

‘You booked a trip into the desert,’ he told her laconically as he set the vehicle in motion and drove off.

‘Yes… But…’

‘But what?’ he challenged her with an almost bored shrug. ‘I thought it made more sense for me to take you. The desert can be a very seductive place, so I’ve been told, and your intended isn’t going to like knowing that his bride-to-be has spent the night in the desert with another man. How did you get on with your grandfather? Is all forgiven?’ he asked her flippantly.

‘My mother is the one who is owed forgiveness,’ Petra told him quietly. ‘And she died believing that he had stopped loving her.’

There was a small silence before Blaize responded in a voice that sounded unfamiliarly serious.

‘Then I imagine that your grandfather will find it extremely difficult to forgive himself.’

‘His feelings are of no concern to me!’ Petra told Blaize angrily, and then stopped speaking as an inner voice told her that she was not being entirely truthful. ‘I thought that he was pretending to be ill,’ she heard herself telling Blaize.

‘And was he?’ he asked.

‘No,’ Petra acknowledged. ‘But that still does not mean he has the right to do what he is trying to do to me—use me for his own selfish ends.’

‘Perhaps he thinks this marriage will be beneficial for you,’ Blaize suggested. ‘His generation still believe that a woman needs a protector, a husband, and it would keep you here, close to your mother’s family, and provide for you financially.’

‘What?’ Petra stared at him in disbelief. ‘How can you say that after what I have told you? My feelings… my needs… are the last thing he is thinking about.’

‘You mean you believe they are! If you were to leave Zuran now, what would you do… where would you go?’

Petra glared at him. Why was he suddenly trying to play the devil’s advocate? For amusement?

‘I would go home… to the UK. I’m twenty-three, and although I have a good degree I would like to get my Master’s. There’s so much social inequality in the world that needs addressing—working in the field for the aid agency showed me that. I would like to do something to help other people.’

‘As a rich man’s wife you could do far more than as a mere fieldworker.’

‘I’ve already told you—I could never marry a man I did not love and respect. And from what Saud has told me it sounds as though I would be expected to treat Rashid as though he’s a minor god! Saud hero-worships him, and can’t wait for me to marry him so that he can officially claim Rashid as a relative. And of course he isn’t the only one! From the sound of it, my whole family are delirious with joy at the prospect of this marriage. All I seem to hear is “Rashid this” and “Rashid that”…’

‘Your cousin seems to be a positive wealth of information about the man.’

There was a certain dryness in Blaize’s voice that made Petra frown a little. ‘Saud is young and impressionable. Like I said, he obviously hero-worships Rashid, and thinks he can do no wrong.’

‘A young person sometimes benefits from a role model and mentor.’

‘Oh, I agree. But if a man who quite plainly divides women into two separate groups—good and bad, moral and immoral—whilst no doubt maintaining for himself the right to live exactly as he chooses, is not, in my opinion, a good role model—’

‘If you look to your left now, you might just catch a glimpse of the royal horses being exercised,’ Blaize interrupted her calmly.

Stopped in mid-tirade, Petra was tempted to continue with her diatribe—but then she saw the horses and their jockeys, and the sheer thrill of seeing so much power and beauty kept her silent as she inwardly paid homage to the spectacle they created.

‘You are still totally opposed to this marriage, then, I take it?’ Blaize asked her several minutes later.

‘Of course. How could I not be? I can’t marry a man I don’t love.’

‘You might find you could come to love him after the marriage.’

Petra gave him a scornful look.

‘Never,’ she denied vehemently. ‘And anyway even if I did, I somehow doubt that the Sheikh is likely to return my feelings. No, all our marriage would mean to him would be the successful conclusion to a diplomatic arrangement. I’ve got to make him change his mind and refuse to even countenance the idea.’

‘Have you thought that he may feel the same way about this situation as you do yourself? Have you thought of contacting him and perhaps discussing things with him?’

Petra gave him a withering look.

‘Unlike me, he has had the chance to refuse to become involved! After all, without his tacit acceptance the whole situation could simply not exist. Anyway, why are you suddenly so keen to promote him? Don’t you want to earn five thousand pounds any more?’ she demanded.

Or was it perhaps that he wanted her out of his life because he had sensed how she felt about him? A man like him would quite definitely not want the complications of having a woman fall in love with him!

Fall in love? But she hadn’t done that, had she? Petra closed her eyes in helpless self-anger. Hadn’t she got enough unwanted emotional pain to carry through life as excess baggage already, without deliberately inviting more?

‘Hang on tight. We’ll be leaving the highway soon and going into true desert terrain,’ Blaize warned her, without taking his eyes off the road.

Petra gasped and clung to her seat as they veered off the road and crested the first of a series of sand dunes, following what to her was a barely discernible track—although Blaize did not seem to be having any trouble in finding and following it.

Within minutes it seemed to Petra the road had vanished and the landscape had become a vast expanse of sand dunes, stretching from horizon to horizon. A little anxiously she swivelled round in her seat, craning her neck to look in the direction they had just come.

‘How… how do you know the way?’ she asked Blaize a little uncertainly.

‘I can tell the direction we are travelling by the position of the sun,’ he said with a small dismissive shrug, and then added derisively, ‘And besides, these all-terrain vehicles are equipped with navigation systems and a compass. Essential in this type of country. A bad sandstorm can not only reduce visibility to nought, it can also wipe out existing trails. See that over there?’ he commanded, pointing in the direction of where a bird was hovering motionless, a mere dot in the hot blue emptiness of the sky.

‘What is it?’ Petra asked him.

‘A hunting falcon,’ he told her, reaching into the compartment between them. As he did so his fingertips inadvertently brushed against her knee and immediately her body reacted, pouring a lava hot molten tide of sharp longing through her. Petra could feel her whole body tightening in wanton hunger for him. If she turned to him now, covered his hand with her own, his mouth with her own; if she reached out and touched him as she wanted him to touch her… But it was too late. He had already moved away and was producing a pair of binoculars, which he offered to her. Binoculars! When what she wanted him to offer her was… was himself!

‘Take a closer look,’ he instructed her. ‘It will probably be a trained bird. A number of Zuran’s richest inhabitants maintain their own falconries, where birds are reared and trained. It’s an ancient craft which is still practised here.’

As Petra watched the bird suddenly turned and wheeled and was quickly out of sight, as though responding to some unseen summons.

‘They often have displays of falconry at the desert village where we’ll be spending the night,’ Blaize informed her. ‘Most people find the birds too fearsome to approach, but in actual fact the camels are probably more dangerous.’

‘So my mother told me,’ Petra replied.

She was finding it a little disconcerting that Blaize, the beach bum, should so suddenly and unexpectedly prove to be so knowledgeable about the local culture and history. Not wanting to be outdone, she was quick to remind him that she was, after all, a part of that culture, even if this was the first time she was experiencing it firsthand.

There was quite definitely a stirring awesomeness about the desert, but Petra was finding it difficult to give her exclusive attention to her surroundings because of the effect that Blaize himself was having on her.

But that did not mean that she had fallen in love with him, she reassured herself fiercely. Just because her heart was beating with an unfamiliar speed, and she dared not look properly at him because when she did she wanted to keep on looking… and do much, much more than just merely look, she admitted breathlessly. But that did not mean… anything. In fact it meant nothing—nothing at all other than that she was physically aware of him.

Aware of him and responsive to him… And surely, if she was truly honest with herself, not just physically…

‘You look flushed,’ she heard Blaize telling her brusquely. ‘You must make sure that you drink plenty of water. The desert is the last place to get dehydrated.’

Perhaps she ought to be glad that he believed her heightened colour was caused by the sun’s heat rather than guessing that it was caused by the unwanted sensuality of her own desire for him, Petra reflected inwardly.

She had believed that her mother’s reminiscences of her own childhood trips into the desert had prepared her for what she might expect, but Petra still found that she was holding her breath and then expelling it in a sharp sound of excitement as they crested yet another sand dune. There before them, shimmering beneath the sun’s heat like a mirage, lay the oasis and the encampment which had been recreated to give tourists like herself a taste of what desert living had been all about in the days when Nomad tribes had still roamed the desert, travelling from one oasis to another.

Several other four-wheel drive vehicles were already parked close to one another and Blaize pulled up next to them.

‘Wait here,’ Blaize told her. ‘I’ll go and find out which tent has been assigned to us.’

To them? Petra’s stomach muscles were quivering with the effort of controlling her emotions when Blaize returned several minutes later and she walked into what was more properly a pavilion than a mere tent, at the farthest edge of the encampment. She discovered that it was divided inside into three completely separate sections, which comprised a living room area, complete with rich, patterned oriental carpets and silk-covered divans, as well as two separated bedrooms. The shower block, Blaize informed her, was more mundanely housed on its own, and provided up-to-the-minute facilities.

Petra was only half listening to him. She had unfastened the doorway leading to one of the bedrooms and was staring in disbelieving delight at its interior.

Unlike her very modern bedroom at the hotel, this really was straight out of an Arabian Nights fantasy.

The interior ‘walls’ of the pavilion were hung with a rich mixture of embroidered silks in shimmering oriental colours, embellished with gold thread which caught the light from the lamps placed on low, heavily carved chests dotted around the surprisingly spacious room.

The bed itself, whilst only slightly raised off the rug-covered floor, like the walls was covered in beautiful silk throws, and from the ceiling there hung sheer muslin voiles, currently tied back, which Petra suspected would cover the whole bed when untied. The effect was one of unsurpassable opulence and sensuality, and Petra was half afraid to even blink, just in case she discovered that the entire room was merely a mirage.

‘Something wrong?’ she heard Blaize asking from behind her.

Immediately Petra shook her head.

‘No. It’s… it’s wonderful…’

‘Arabian Nights meets MGM,’ Blaize pronounced briefly and almost sardonically as he glanced past her into the room.

‘It’s beautiful.’ Petra defended her new temporary home.

‘Officially, it’s the honeymoon suite,’ Blaize informed her drily, adding, ‘But don’t worry—just in case they don’t get any honeymooners—or if they do but they fall out—they keep the other room kitted out as a second bedroom.’

The honeymoon suite! Why had they been given that? Or had Blaize perhaps asked for it deliberately, to reinforce the idea that they were lovers?

‘If you want to have a camel ride, now’s the time,’ Blaize was continuing, patently oblivious to the sensuality and allure of the silk-hung bedroom and the temptation that was affecting Petra so forcibly.

‘More coffee?’

Smiling, Petra shook her head, covering her cup with her hand in the traditional gesture that meant that she had had enough.

It was nearly eleven o’clock in the evening, and the dishes had been cleared away following their evening meal, ready for the entertainment to begin.

Petra could feel the excited expectation emanating from the gathered onlookers as the musicians changed beat and out of one of the tents a stunningly beautiful woman shimmied, dressed in a traditional dancing costume, jewels sparkling on her fingers and of course in her navel as she swayed provocatively to the sound of the music. Her body undulated sensuously, her dark eyes flashing smoky temptation above her veil as she rolled her hips, her whole body, and most especially the bare, smooth, taut brown expanse of her belly in rhythmic time to the music.

To one side of her a group of tourists were passing a hubble-bubble pipe between one another, the girls giggling softly as they breathed in the sweet taste of the strawberry-flavoured smoke. Its effect was supposed to be mildly euphoric, and Petra hesitated a little when it was passed on to her.

‘If you don’t try it you have to pay a forfeit and get up and dance with our belly dancer,’ the tour guide with the large party who had just passed her the pipe teased Petra.

Rather than appear standoffish, Petra took a quick breath, relaxing as she smelled the innocuous scent of the strawberries and then offering the pipe to Blaize, only to realise that he had got up and walked away. He was talking to the falconer, who was still holding one of his now hooded birds, the gold tooling on the leather gloves, gleaming in the firelight.

As she handed the pipe back to the waiting tour guide, Petra realised that she wasn’t the only woman there looking at Blaize. The belly dancer was focusing her gaze and her openly inviting body movements on him, ignoring the rest of them and turning to face him, moving closer and closer to him.

And as for Blaize…! A sensation of sheer white-hot jealousy knifed through Petra as she saw the way he was watching the dancer and smiling at her.

Petra had believed that she knew pain, but now, shockingly, she realised that all she had experienced was one of its many dimensions. Right now, watching Blaize look at another woman when she ached, yearned, needed to have him look only at her, unlocked for her the door to an agonising new world of pain!

Thoughts, longings, needs hitherto denied and forbidden broke loose from the control she had imposed on them, one after the other, until she was exposed to an entire avalanche of them. They buried for ever any possibility of her denying what her feelings for Blaize really were!

Frantically she struggled to make sense of what was happening. In the eerie pristine silence that followed the inner explosion, her thought processes were frozen.

How was it possible for her to love Blaize? Petra felt as though she had suddenly become one of those small figures in a child’s snowstorm ball, who had just had her whole world and all her perceptions of what was in it turned vigorously upside down. But say she had got it wrong. Say she did not really love Blaize. Mentally she tried to imagine how she would feel if she were never to see him again.

The intensity of her pain made her catch her breath. Was this how her mother had felt about her father? It must have been. But things had been different for her mother, Petra had to remind herself. Her mother had known that her love was returned… shared… That she was loved as much as she herself loved.

The music was reaching a crescendo, and Petra shivered as she felt and saw the raw sensuality of the dancer’s movements, her passionate determination to make Blaize notice her, choose her. Blaize himself had turned round and was watching her. The girl danced faster and faster, and then as the music exploded in climactic triumph she flung herself bodily as Blaize’s feet.

Petra could tell from the reaction of the guides and the robed men watching that this was not the normal finale to the dance. Instinctively she knew that the girl did not normally offer herself with such sexual blatancy to one of the male onlookers the way she just had done to Blaize, and immediately her own jealousy burned to a white heat.

She wanted to run to the girl and push her away—to tell her that Blaize belonged to her. But of course he did not!

The audience were good-humouredly throwing money onto the floor for the dancer, as they had been encouraged to do, but the dancer remained prostrate in front of Blaize, not acknowledging their generosity. It was left to one of the male fire-eaters who had been entertaining them earlier to pick it up.

As Petra watched Blaize watching the girl she wondered what he was thinking. He said something to one of the men he had been speaking with, who inclined his head as though in deference to Blaize before going over to the girl and bending towards her.

What was the man saying to her? Petra wondered jealously. What message had Blaize given the man to give her? Had he told her that he would see her later? The girl was getting up. She looked at Blaize, a proud, challenging flash of dark eyes, before walking slowly away, her hips swaying provocatively as she did so, her spine straight.

How could any man resist such an invitation? Petra wondered bleakly. Why would a man like Blaize even try to do so? And why, oh, why did a woman like her have to fall in love with him?

The evening was drawing to a close. People were finishing off their drinks and retiring to their pavilions.

Petra looked towards Blaize, who was still talking to the falconer and some other men. The dancer had disappeared, and Blaize was showing no signs of coming over to her or even looking at her.

Tiredly Petra got up and made her own way to their pavilion, collecting her things and then heading for the shower block. Too much was happening to her too quickly. Since arriving in this country she had been forced to confront aspects of herself and her feelings that it was very hard for her to accept.

Suddenly, standing beneath the warm spray of the shower, she longed achingly to be able to turn back the clock and return to a time when she had known nothing of the complexities that meeting her grandfather would bring. A time when she would have laughed out loud in disbelief if anyone had suggested that she would fall in love with a man like Blaize.

The camp was settling down to sleep when she made her way back to her pavilion. The soft glow of the lamps added to the air of mystery and enticement of its interior.

Someone had placed a dish of dates on one of the low carved tables in the sitting area, and silk cushions were placed invitingly on the floor in front of it, but Petra had no stomach for the sweetness of the dates—no stomach for anything, really, she admitted, now that her heart was soured by the anguish of her unreturnable love for Blaize. After all, even if he were by some impossible means to return her feelings, how could there be any future for them?

It wasn’t a matter of money. That didn’t come into it. Blaize could have had nothing and she would have loved him proudly and joyously. But how could she feel anything other than disquiet and distress at loving a man who used himself in the way that Blaize did? It was that which hurt her more than anything else! Even more than thinking about him with another woman? The belly dancer for instance?

Petra curled her hands into small fists. Where was he now? He was not in his room. The fabric covering the entrance to it was tied back so that she could see that the space beyond was empty.

Unlike hers, the ‘walls’ of his room were hung with darker, heavier fabric, which if anything was even more richly embroidered in gold than her own. Opulent fur-mimicking throws were heaped on the bed. There was a beautiful rug on the floor and a dish of sweet almond cakes on the table in front of the divan, along with a pot of richly fragrant coffee.

It was a setting fit for an Arabian prince, Petra reflected admiringly. And a retreat to which that same prince could bring the dancing girl of his choice, a dangerous inner voice taunted her.

Quickly Petra suppressed it. Blaize was no prince, Arabian or otherwise, and as for the dancing girl…

But where was he? Virtually the whole camp seemed to have settled down to sleep, and yet there was no sign of him.

Restlessly Petra paced the small pavillioned sitting area, tensing as the opening flap was abruptly pushed back and Blaize came in. He was stripped to the waist, a towel round his shoulders, his hair damp, and as he came in he brought with him the scent of the night and the desert—and of himself.

Petra felt her insides turn softly, compliantly liquid, longing pulsing through her as she gazed helplessly at his body.

She hadn’t truly appreciated its magnificence the first time she had seen it, hadn’t been able to sense its male capacity for sensuality and female pleasure, but now she could.

Abruptly her eyes narrowed, her gaze focusing on the angry claw-marks on his arm, which were still oozing blood slightly. Immediately the earth rocked beneath her feet and she was savaged by her own jealousy.

He had been with the dancer, and she had clawed her mark of possession on him!

Her mark of passion!

Before she could even recognise what she was doing, never mind stop herself, Petra had clenched her hands into small fists and advanced on him, demanding furiously, ‘Where have you been? As if I didn’t know! Was she good? Better than the rich tourists who pay you for your favours?’

‘What…?’

Like lightning the changing expressions chased one another across his face, frowning disbelief followed by a warning, taut concentration. In its place followed an even more dangerous flash of sheeting anger and his mouth compressed and a tiny nerve pulsed in his jaw.

But Petra was in no mood to heed warning signs, and her eyes glittered with a fury every bit feral as his as she stated sarcastically, ‘Silly me! I thought the whole purpose of us being here together was to convince the outside world that we are lovers! But obviously I was wrong and it’s not! No—what’s obviously far more important to you than honouring the arrangement we made is enjoying the… the sexual favours of an… an oversexed belly dancer. But then of course the two of you have something in common, don’t you? You both sell your sexual favours for money and—’

Petra gave a small squeak as she was suddenly lifted off her feet. Her arms were in a vice-like grip as Blaize held her so that their eyes were on the same level.

‘You should check your facts before you start throwing insults like that around,’ he told her, biting the words into small barbed insults, his mouth barely moving as he hurled them lividly at her. ‘If you were a man—But you aren’t, are you?’ he demanded, his voice suddenly changing to a soft sneer as he added, ‘You aren’t even much of a woman… just an over-excited, over-heated virgin, aching with curiosity to know what it’s all about. No, don’t deny it. It’s written all over you—all over every single one of those big-eyed looks you keep on giving me when you think I don’t notice. You’re just desperate to find out what sex is, aren’t you? Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you, but you just don’t have what it takes to encourage me to let you find out!’

Every single word he had uttered had found its mark, and Petra felt as though she was slowly dying from the pain of the wounds he had inflicted. But there was no way she was going to let him see that—no way she was going to stop fighting…

‘You mean that I haven’t offered you enough money?’ she taunted him recklessly.

‘Enough money?’ To Petra’s disbelief, he threw back his head and laughed harshly.

‘Despite what you so obviously think, it isn’t money that turns me on, Petra, that makes me want a woman, ache for her so I can’t rest until I possess her in every way there is. Until I wake up with her beside me in the morning, knowing that her body still wears my touch, inside and out, that she is so much a part of me that she still smells of me. But you don’t know anything about that, do you? You know nothing about a man’s desire… the compulsion that drives him to want a woman. Shall I show you? Is that what you want?’

Petra knew that she ought to deny what he was saying… refuse what he was offering her. But all she could do was let her gaze cling helplessly to his, her body motionless in his arms as he lowered his head towards hers!

As his lips touched hers she made a tiny almost mute sound at the back of her throat. Now she knew what it was like to be driven by a need, a thirst so all-consuming that it burned the soul as well as the body—to crave something, someone, to the point where the pain of that craving was an eternal torment. No Nomad lost in the desert could crave water with anything like the same intensity as she craved Blaize right now!

She moaned as he kissed her, wrapping her arms as tightly around him as she could, savouring the hot, deep thrust of his tongue and pressing close to him.

She could feel the anger pulsing through his body, but she was beyond caring which emotion drove him just so long as he never, ever lifted his mouth from her own.

And then, before she could stop him, he was wresting his mouth from hers, telling her savagely, ‘Why the hell am I doing this? I must be going crazy! The last thing I need—or want—right now is—’ He had stopped speaking to shake his head, but Petra could guess what he was thinking! What he had been about to say!

The last thing he needed—or wanted—was her!

Driven by the pain of his abrupt rejection of her, held deep in the grip of a primitive urge, an emotional, immediate reaction to his cruel taunting words she couldn’t control, Petra lashed out at him, her hand raised.

And when, more by accident than anything, her hand hit the side of his jaw his own shock was mirrored by the expression in her eyes as they rounded and darkened. She shuddered convulsively, as though he had been the one to hit her.

She felt him release her and her feet hit the ground. She knew she must have moved, because suddenly she was in her own bedroom, lying curled up in the centre of the lavish bed whilst her whole body trembled with shock and pain, but she had no awareness of having got there—no awareness of anything since that awful moment when she had felt as well as heard the crack of her open palm against his skin.

How could she have done such a thing? She was totally opposed to all forms of violence. It disgusted her to the point where she felt physically sick that she had acted in such a way, but her dry aching eyes refused to provide her with the comfort of cleansing tears to wash away her guilt.