Jake, the old Ras and Gregorius had taken out two of the armoured cars
and a camel patrol on a reconnaissance back towards the Wells of
Chaldi. In the same exercise, Jake was to train the new gunners in the
use of the Vickers machine guns. Gareth, as the military expert, had
been left to survey the gorge and to judge the ground for defence in
the event of a forced retreat up the gorge under Italian pressure.
He had been doing this when he had come across Vicky and the Galla
horsemen.
Sitting now beside the fire, under a sky that was suddenly very black
and half obscured by the mountains that towered over them, Vicky was
aware of a feeling of complete acceptance, an Arabic kismet of the
spirit, as though fate had arranged this moment and the effort of
avoiding it was too great.
They were alone, and that was how it was meant to be.
The deep physical arousal and feeling of utter commitment that she had
experienced earlier, on their escape from the threatening horde of
Gallas, still lingered still filled her body and her conscious mind
with an ethereal glow.
She ate a little of the grilled meat, hardly tasting it, not looking at
the man beside her, but staring dreamily at the brilliant diamond-white
sparkle of the stars above the dark peaks, yet fully and electrically
aware of him of the nearness of him, so close that although they were
still not touching she could feel the warmth emanating from his body
upon her arm like the caress of a desert wind.
She could almost feel his eyes as he watched her quietly. His gaze was
so compelling that at last she could no longer pretend not to be aware
of it, and she turned her head and met his eyes steadily.
The ruddy glow of the coals enhanced the clean regular lanes of his
face, and gilded the red gold of his hair. In that moment, she
believed he was the most beautiful human being she had ever seen and it
required an effort to tear her eyes away from him.
As she stood up and walked away she felt her heart hammering within her
chest, like a wild -animal trying to escape its cage, and she heard the
roar of blood in her own ears.
The interior of her tent was lit softly by the firelight through the
canvas, and she did not light the lamp, but undressed slowly in the
semi-darkness and dropped her clothing carelessly across the folding
chair beside the entrance. Then she lay down upon the narrow cot, and
the woollen blanket was rough against the naked skin of her buttocks
and back. Each breath was an effort now, and she lay rigidly with her
hands clenched at her sides almost afraid, almost exultant, her head
propped on the single pillow and staring down at her body, aware of it
as never before. Watching, with a sense of wonder, how each breath
changed the shape of her heavily rounded breasts and how the nipples
firmed slowly and thrust out, darkening perceptibly until they were so
tight and hard that they pained her exquisitely.
She heard the crunch of his footsteps approach the tent, and her
breathing jammed, and she thought with a small shock that she might
suffocate and die. Then the flap of the tent swung open, and he
stooped through and stood tall, letting the flap fall closed behind
him.
Instinctively she covered herself, one arm folding across her chest and
the other hand spreading protective fingers over the mound of fine
fluff at the base of her belly.
He stood silently, outlined against the fire glow on the canvas,
and she began to breathe again, quick and shallow.
It seemed that he stood there for ever, silent and watchful, and she
felt the skin of her arms and thighs prickle with goose-flesh at the
slow steady scrutiny. Then he unbuttoned his shirt and let it slide to
the earth. The fire glow flickered on his finely muscled arms, they
rippled with a red gold sheen, like wet marble, as he moved.
He came at last to her bed and stood over her, and she wondered that
the body of a man could be so slim and supple, with such lovely line
and balance then she remembered how she had once stood before the
statue of Michelangelo's David with just the same depth of awe.
She lifted the hands that covered her own body, reached up like a
supplicant, and drew him down upon herself.
She woke once during the night, and the fire had died away outside the
tent, but a bright white moon had sailed up over the mountains and it
glowed now with a silvery light through the canvas above them,
striking down directly upon them.
The strange white light divested Gareth's sleeping face of all colour.
It was pale now, like that of a statue or of a corpse and
Vicky experienced a sudden revulsion of feeling. There was a small
dull weight at the back of her mind. When she examined it closely, she
found that it was guilt and she experienced a mild anger at a society
that had burdened her with that guilt. That she could not enjoy a man,
that her body could not be used as nature had intended without this
backlash of emotion.
She raised herself on one elbow, careful not to disturb the man beside
her, and she studied his face pondering this new sense of guilt, and
