Chapter 14
Mahmoud Taluffah was very angry. In the flat in which he'd taken refuge, he and Rolande were listening to the shamefaced account of the attempted beat-up by the two would-be beaters who narrowly escaped becoming victims.
"How would a man like that have a gun?" he snapped, immediately on the crucial point, after the resume had been made.
"He said he was in advertising," said the girl. "Those big business men usually have something to protect themselves, particularly hanging around these quarters."
Mahmoud Taluffah sneered at her.
"They need to protect themselves from incensed cuckolds," he snapped, forgetting in a fresh pang of wrath the presence of the two men.
The girl went silent and he turned his gaze slowly back to the two men, the sneer still on his lips.
"I didn't think I'd have to use Mohammed Arab just for a beating-up," he said. "But I see that nobody else is to be entrusted with any task set them, however simple."
"He was like lightning," one of the men said. "We weren't expecting that."
"Three to one," Mahmoud Taluffah murmured, as if to himself, and then he added in a louder voice: "Was Ben abed dead?"
Neither of them knew, although it was probable, they said, at that range.
"He'd better be," Taluffah said softly. "But we'd better stay here for a day or two."
He remained thoughtful for several minutes while they all kept silent, waiting for him to speak. Then he said: "He's not getting away with this. Keep a watch on his home. Tomorrow he'll see that he can't meddle with me and get away with it."
The two men left and Mahmoud Taluffah sat in a meditative silence for a while. He'd been told the man's wife was lovely. He smiled to himself. An eye for an eye ...
Then he took hold of Rolande and led her submissively into the bedroom. She'd caused him more trouble than he'd ever expected. The knowledge of that made him angry and the memory of how it had started made him want to keep fucking her until he'd wiped away the infidelity, of hers, as if it would take so many times of making love to erase the traces of her one-night lover.
When he got the other woman tomorrow he'd show her an old Arab custom which her husband probably hadn't taught her. In the meantime he'd have to wreak his vengeance by proxy on Rolande.
He pushed her down roughly on the bed, let her lie there while he stripped and then pulled up her skirt and thrust into her without further ado. For some time she lay under his drubbing, simply gasping with pain as he chafed into her, but after a time her sexiness overcame her desire to remain cold and aloof and she began to buck with him, moaning with a growing passion. After all, the fuck was the thing, she told herself. Nothing else really mattered.