Sweet Revenge

filled the screen with its stunning beauty, its sharp sexuality. Phoebe Spring, the American actress, the woman men both desired and feared for her lush body and innocent eyes. Abdu was a man accustomed to having the best, the biggest, the costliest. He had wanted her then in away he’d never wanted another woman. He had found her, courted her in the manner a Western woman preferred. He had made her his queen.
    She had bewitched him. Because of her he had betrayed his heritage, defied tradition. He had taken for his wife a Western woman, an actress, a Christian. He had been punished. In her his seed had produced only one child, a girl child.
    Still, she made him want. Her womb was barren but her beauty taunted him. Even when his fascination turned to disgust, he wanted. She shamed him, defiled his
sharaf
, his honor, with her ignorance of Islam, but his body never stopped craving her.
    When he buried his manhood deep in another woman, it was Phoebe he made love to, Phoebe whose skin he smelled, Phoebe whose cries he heard. That was his secret shame. He might have hated her for that alone. But it was the public shame, the one daughter only that she had given him that caused him to despise her.
    He wanted her to suffer, to pay, just as he had suffered, just as he had paid. Taking the sheet, he ripped it aside.
    Phoebe awoke, confused, with her heart already pounding. She saw him standing over her in the shadowed light. At first she thought it was her dream in which he had come back to her to love her as he once had loved her. Then she saw his eyes and knew there was no dream, and no love.
    “Abdu.” She thought of the child and looked around quickly. The bed was empty. Adrianne was gone. Phoebe thanked God for it. “It’s late,” she began, but her throat was so dry the words could barely be heard. In defense, she was already sliding backward, the satin sheets whispering beneath her as she curled into herself. He said nothing, but stripped off his white
throbe
. “Please.” Though she knew they were useless, the tears started. “Don’t do this.”
    “A woman has no right to refuse her husband what he wishes.” Just looking at her, at the way her ripe body quivered against the pillows, he felt powerful, in charge of his own destiny again. Whatever else she was, she was his property—as much as the jewels on his fingers, the horses in his stables. He grabbed her by the bodice of her nightgown and dragged her back.
    In the shadows by the bed, Adrianne began to tremble.
    Her mother was crying. They were fighting, shouting words she couldn’t understand at each other. Her father stood naked in the moonlight, his dark skin gleaming with a film of sweat that sprang from lust rather than the sultry heat. She had never seen a man’s body before, but wasn’t upset by the sight. She knew about sex, and that her father’s manhood, which looked so hard and threatening, could be used to dig into her mother and make a child. She knew there was pleasure in this, that the act was something a woman desired above all else. Indeed, she had heard this a thousand times in her young life, for the talk about sex in the harem was incessant.
    But her mother could have no more children, and if there was pleasure here, why was she crying and begging him to leave her?
    A woman was to welcome her husband into the marriage bed, Adrianne thought as her own eyes filled. She was to offer him whatever he desired. She was to rejoice to be desired, to be the vessel for children.
    She heard the word
whore.
It wasn’t a word she knew, but it sounded ugly on her father’s lips, and she wouldn’t forget it.
    “How can you call me that?” Phoebe’s voice hitched with sobs as she fought to free herself. Once she had welcomed the feel of his arms around her, delighted in the way his skin would gleam in moonlight. Now she felt only fear. “I’ve never been with another man. Only you. It’s you who’ve taken another wife even after we had a child.”
    “You gave me nothing.” He wrapped her hair around his hand, fascinated by it yet detesting its fire. “A girl. Less than nothing. I have only to look at her and feel my disgrace.”
    She struck him then with enough force to snap his head back. Even if she’d been faster, there would have been nowhere to run. The back of his hand smashed across her face, sending her reeling. Driven by lust and fury, he ripped the nightgown from her.
    She was built like a goddess, every man’s fantasy.