finding pleasure in the pain of contact, in the bruising pressure of
his mouth against her lips.
She knew she was arousing emotions that soon would be beyond either of
their control, and the knowledge made her reckless and bold.
The thought occurred to her that she had it in her power to drive him
demented with passion, and the idea aroused her further, and
immediately she wanted to exercise that power.
She heard his breathing roaring in her ears, then realized that it was
not his it was her own, and each gust of it seemed to swell her chest
until it must burst.
It was so cramped in the cockpit of the car, and their movements were
becoming wild and unrestrained. Vicky felt restricted and itching with
constraint. She had never known this wildness before, and for a
fleeting instant she remembered the skilful, gentle minuet of formal
movements which had been her loving with Gareth Swales, and she
compared it to this stormy meeting of passions; then the thought was
borne away on the flood, on the need to be free of confinement.
Outside the car, the chill of the desert night prickled the skin of her
back and flanks and thighs, and she felt the fine golden hairs come
erect on her forearms. He flapped out the bed-roll and spread it on
the earth. Then he returned to get her, and the heat of his body was a
physical shock. It seemed to burn with all the pent-up fires of his
soul, and she pressed herself to it with complete abandon, delighting
in the contrast of his burning flesh and the cool desert breeze upon
her bare skin.
Now at last there was nothing to prevent the range of her hands and she
knew they were cold as ghost fingers on him, delighting to hear his
gasp again at their touch. She laughed then, a hoarse throaty
chuckle.
'Yes.' She laughed again, as he lifted her easily and dropped to his
knees on the bed-roll, holding her against his chest.
'Yes, Jake.' She let the last restraint fly. 'Quickly, quickly my
darling: It was a raging, a roaring of all her senses. It was an
aching, tumultuous storm that ended at last and afterwards the vast
hissing silence of the desert was so frightening that she clung to him
like a child and found to her amazement that she was weeping. the
tears scalded her eyes and yet were as icy as the touch of frost upon
her cheeks.
General De Bono's first cautious but ponderous thrust across the
Mareb River, into Ethiopia, met with a success that left him stunned.
Ras Muguletul the Ethiopian commander in the north, offered only token
resistance then withdrew his forty thousand men southwards to the
natural mountain fortress of Ambo Aradam. Unopposed, De Bono drove the
seventy miles to Adowa and found it deserted. Triumphantly he erected
the monument to the fallin Italian warriors and thereby expunged the
stain of defeat from the arms of Italy.
The great civilizing mission had begun. The savage was being tamed,
and introduced to the miracles of modern man amongst them the aerial
bomb.
The Royal Italian Air Force ranged the skies above the towering
