I won't deny the attraction. She's beautiful, and what I've seen of her body makes my mouth go dry and my c**k hard. I've managed to keep her from noticing, but I have to keep my eyes off her when she forgets I'm here and changes in front of me, or cleans up in front of me. She's used to being alone. She forgets I'm here and then remembers, blushes, gets angry at my presence, at my eyes on her. I can't help looking at her. I try, but I can't. There's no privacy in this little house. No door on the bathroom, no curtain, nowhere to change. When she strips her shirt off to change it, I try not to watch her full br**sts sway in the dim light. She peels her skirt off, and I try to stare at the wall or the floor, but my eyes are drawn to the dark triangle between her legs, the swell of her hips.
She's all woman, but she's...forbidden fruit. Her clients are enemy soldiers, officers, insurgents. We must be near a base of operations or something. I don't know.
All I know is I shouldn't want her. But I do.
She's sitting beside me, staring at me. Her brown eyes are narrowed and inscrutable. She's within reach. I could stretch out my hand and touch her knee, her slim thigh. My hand trembles beneath the blanket, straining against my self-control.
She saved my life. I owe her.
She doesn't want me. How could she? I'm an American, a man, a soldier...for all I know, I may have killed someone she loves.
My hand slips out from beneath the blanket to rest on my knee. Rania is watching me with a guarded expression, concealing her thoughts, her feelings. My hand moves toward her, and I sense her freeze. She was already stone-still, but now she's not even breathing.
I can't help it. My fingers touch her knee. Just her knee. No higher. Her eyes burn into me. Dare me to go farther, yet beg me not to. So conflicted, both of us. She wants, doesn't want. I want, don't want.
Her skin, so soft. So delicate.
Rania gazes at me, sighs gently, a sound of resignation, then grasps the bottom hem of her shirt and lifts it up, crossing her arms to draw it off. I'm the one frozen now. Her br**sts, unhampered by a bra, are round and full, with small ni**les surrounded by wide dark fields of areola.
My hands move faster than my lust, quicker than my desires. I want to keep looking. I want to touch her. I want her to keep stripping. Instead, I grab her wrists and pull them down. She fights me, trying to pull the shirt off. I'm weak right now, each motion causing excruciating pain, but I still overpower her easily, without hurting her. I force her hands away and pull her shirt down so her magnificent br**sts are covered once again.
She stares at me in confusion. My hand has landed on her knee once more, and she looks at it pointedly. I withdraw my hand and she breathes a sigh, whether in relief or disappointment, I don't know.
Rania stands up and storms away, out the door and into the heat and brightness of the afternoon.
* * *
When she comes back, she won't so much as look at me. She's ignoring me.
I give her some time—there are no clocks here, so I have no way to measure the passage of time except the rise and fall of the sun—and then decide to break the ice.
"Rania," I say. She ignores me. "Rania. Please listen to me." This is in English.
Her shoulders flinch when I say her name, but that's the only recognition I get. I'll have to claim her attention, then. I learned how to say "I'm sorry" the other day. It took a lot of miming, but I think that's what she was getting at.
I lever myself to a sitting position. My broken ribs scream, send lightning bolts of agony through me, so blinding I have to stop and pant to keep the breath in my lungs. My shoulders hurt, too, but that's a dull, constant pain, not like the sharp spikes that pierce me when my ribs are jostled. I wait until my stomach is no longer about to revolt from the pain, and then I force myself to my one good knee. More panting, more gasping, sun-bright lances of pain. Eventually I make it to my feet, or rather foot, and hop and hobble across the room to Rania's side. I'm without anything to balance me, as she's sitting cross-legged on the floor away from the walls, doing nothing. Just staring out the window at the cloudless blue sky.
I move so I'm standing in front of her. "Rania."
She ducks her head to stare at the floor. I growl in frustration, hopping in place to keep my balance. Eventually, I have to put my other foot down, but it collapses under me and I fall to the ground. Rania's expression is shuttered, and I can tell she wants to move to help me but isn't letting herself. I lie gasping, stunned, fighting the pain, and then work back upright onto my ass, game leg stretched out in front me.
She doesn't look at me, but now I know she's aware. Listening.
"I am sorry, Rania," I say in Arabic, and I know I've butchered it, by the way her lips twitch.
I'm not even sure what I did to piss her off besides touch her. I didn't let her strip. I think she meant to have sex with me, thinking that's what I expected. But why is she mad? I'd think that would be a relief, knowing I don't expect it from her.
She finally looks at me, brown eyes searching mine.
"I won't touch you again," I say in English.
Time for an Arabic lesson. I touch my knee and say "touch." I touch the floor, which she's told me the word for, and repeat myself. Touch various things within reach, repeating the word "touch."
Eventually she gets it and tells me the word in her language.
I know I'm going to butcher the grammar on this one, but I say it anyway. It's important that she trusts me. I don't know why, but it is.
"I not touch," I say, in halting Arabic.
She frowns. Shakes her head. Thinks.
She touches her chest, our symbol for "I," then produces a carefully folded bill from her pocket and holds it up, points to her crotch, then to me, then gestures with the money. Says a word.
Prostitute. Whore. She's telling me what she is. No. Not what she is. Not who she is. What she does. There's more to her than that.
I shrug, pause. Then point to her: "Rania."
I don't know what my point is. Maybe that I see her, not her job. It is a job for her, I realize. Not a profession. Not a lifestyle.
She stares at me in confusion. Says something, a long sentence in which I catch a reference to herself, the word she'd used before, which I take to mean "whore." And then points next door, where she entertains the johns, and says "Sabah." It's a name. I know that much. Then she gestures to the house around us, and says "Rania."
It takes a while to comprehend her meaning. I think she's saying she uses a different name for the johns. To them, she's Sabah.
I point at her. "You Rania," I say. "No Sabah."