parquetry flooring, watched the two sweating sumos inside the dohyo, the ring, watched them collide, grunting loudly as they did so.
Snay bin Wazir was also watching Rose, keenly aware of her reaction to the private demonstration he’d arranged for the two of them, alone, in the beautiful shrine he’d had built for his sumos. Her lips were parted and she was breathing rapidly. Her bosom swelled rhythmically. There was a light sheen of perspiration on her forehead. Far from being repelled by the sight and sounds of two nearly naked giants grappling with each other, she was, it seemed, decidedly excited.
The sight of her erect nipples, etched in perfect relief against the taut yellow silk of her chemise, was having an increasingly noticeable effect on the Pasha as well.
The Pasha looked down upon this growing evidence of passion beneath his robes and sighed. The potent admixture of desire and frustration was something he’d always dealt with badly.
All of his latest efforts to bed this most prized of all the hashishiyyun in his seraglio of assassins had failed. Since Francesca had arrived at his palace from Rome, he had plied her with jewels, enormous rubies and diamonds. One sapphire as big as a plum. Gifts of sable and myrrh and gold. Nothing, it seemed, had any effect on this most sublime of creatures. She was, as he constantly reminded himself, one of the world’s most beautiful and desirable women.
Francesca. Even her name stirred him, inflamed him, ignited fireworks of fantasy deep in his brain. Francesca. Sleeping alone in the desert, a fortnight ago, he’d written the word in the sand outside his Bedouin tent. Awakening, he saw the wind had erased her name. Why did he torture himself? It was foolishness. This forlorn desire of his did nothing but demean him. She was a world-famous film star with a considerable personal fortune. A creature of such transcendent beauty, she could bat one of her enormous brown eyes and instantly have any man she might desire groveling at her feet.
Hopeless!
He could not force himself upon her, she was far too valuable. Should he lose her, there would be hell to pay with the Emir, who rightfully considered her a great asset. Born of a Roman father and a Syrian mother, Francesca had grown up begging on the backstreets of Damascus. Abused as a child by her cruel Italian father, she had, since childhood, nursed a fevered hatred for the impious Westerners who ruled the world. Her celebrity cover, achieved over the last decade, was ideal. A rabid holy warrior in the guise of a glamorous Italian film star. It was too delicious for words.
Still, it meant he could not buy her affection with gems or gold. Yet there was something powerful between them. A bond. A thirst, a hunger that bound them together. A kind of lust, yes. Bloodlust?
He had been afraid this rejection was because of his recently acquired girth, his now enormous size. But, no, watching her watching the massive sumos, it was clear this was not the problem. Ah, well. This was not the first time he’d faced this insoluble and most distressing dilemma. Nor would it be the last. He could have as many wives as he wished, of course, as long as they were approved by Yasmin. And Yasmin approved only drudges and dogs. Thus, Francesca was forbidden fruit.
He was as eternally bound to Yasmin as the sea is to its bed, as the earth to its orbit, as the moth is wedded to the flame. Yes, he loved her, he supposed. In his way. And she him. But it was love without passion.
His anger for this gilded steel trap called his life, on the other hand, blazed with passion. Fueled each day as, in a thousand tiny ways, his wife Yasmin threw oil on the fire. A look, a word, a stare.
The Emir’s daughter was both his salvation and his doom. With all his money and power, he was still Yasmin’s slave. A prisoner here, inside his own palace. As long as he behaved himself, he could keep his head. Keep your head down and you might keep it, he reminded himself daily. Meanwhile, the Emir was biding his time, waiting for him to make a single misstep. Even a cross word with Yasmin behind closed doors somehow got back to her father. A word floated into his feverish mind, the word that came to him whenever the impossibility of his marital situation reared up and seared his brain.
Poison.
He wasted endless hours plotting his escape, as if it were remotely possible. Yes, he lay beside his wife, awake those countless nights, conjuring up accidents, mishaps, catastrophes that might befall this woman he no longer desired. Over the years, love had atrophied, which was not unusual. But resentment had grown in its stead. All because of her father’s sword, dangling over his head. A situation she never hesitated to exploit in even the smallest disagreement. Even though she claimed to love him deeply!
To the Emir, and to the Pasha’s world at large, they were a picture of mature wedded bliss. But, as the old saying has it, one never knows what goes on inside a marriage unless one sleeps under the tent. Unbearable.
So he fantasized endlessly of slips and falls; he conjured Yasmin’s tragic demise and his ensuing freedom. Yet, no matter how delicate and elegant the scheme, no matter how sublimely he plotted his dreams, in the end, the Emir always found him out. His would be just one more among the countless heads the Emir had sent dry and scuttling across the desert sands.
Now, if the Emir himself were dead…
Suddenly, he couldn’t breathe. His ribcage was taking a terrible battering from his heart, an organ that threatened to detonate at any moment. He looked down, startled and astounded to see Rose’s beautiful white hand resting lightly upon the folds of crimson silk that draped his thighs. The hand traveled upwards, the fingers parted, searching. He was hard as stone when the hand seized the object of its desire.
“My Pasha,” she said, turning those eyes toward him as she caressed him through the silk, wrapped him in it, tightening and then easing her grip.
He opened his mouth to speak, but she pressed a finger to his lips and stopped whatever mad, mindless, unspeakable words he was about to utter.
“No, Pasha,” she whispered hoarsely, taking his hand and crushing it against her lush bosom where he felt one nipple already engorged under the silk. “My lips will speak for both of us.”
He collapsed back against the pillows as she bent her head to his lap, parting the hem of his robes, yanking them upwards and then taking him in, her thick mane of blond hair cascading over the great expanse of his girth, her darting tongue everywhere at once.
Licks of fire.
Suddenly, her mouth was at his ear, nibbling, her breath hot and loud.
“I want you,” she whispered. “Here. Now.”
“But the sumos…Ichi and Kato…”
“In front of the sumos. I want them to see. Now.”
That night, the four sumos carried the lovers through the orange groves in the Pasha’s sedan chair. Once the sumos had been dismissed, the two alighted and walked deep into the heavily scented gardens. The evening sky was shot with stars, blazing in the clear mountain air. She was his now, and he took her, roughly, and pressed her to him.
“Put a dagger in my heart,” he said, “we might as well get it over with.”
“The two sumos’ lips are sealed,” she said. “She will never know.”
“Yasmin knows everything.”
“No one knows everything.”
“In this house there are no secrets. How do you know the sumos—”
“Trust me.”
He laughed then, almost giddy that such a woman as this could care for him, let alone exist. He could only imagine how she had managed to guarantee their silence.
“Venice was thrilling, but Paris was exquisite,” he said, kissing her forehead. “Grazie mille.”
“You enjoyed watching it, caro?”
“Yes. But, far more importantly, the Emir is ecstatic. He went so far as to say that it was good.”
“Grazie.”
He smiled at her and said, “She is first-rate, this Parisian one. This Lily. But, then, she learned from the best.”
“I thought the white phosphorus would be more cinematic on CNN than a simple shot to the head.”
