Blood of the Nile Read Online Free

erection came into direct
contact with her throbbing clitoris. Maliyah moaned as a gush of liquid
trickled down her thigh.
    Before Ramses
could distract her any further, Maliyah jerked out of his grasp. She stared
into his swirling, obsidian orbs. All of a sudden, she felt dizzy. Light-headed, as if she could no longer stand on her own two feet. She propped herself up against the rock and stared back at her captor. Provocative and defiant. “Sounds like an interesting
proposition. But there are more important things I’d like to discuss with you
first.”
    “Like what?”
    “Like what
happened to my father.” Maliyah said as she skidded away from the edge of the
rock and paced backwards across the sand, her eyes never leaving his gaze. Still,
she felt anxious. She wrung her hands together nervously, dreading his
response.
    Ramses’ eyes shot
open, one eyebrow rose higher than the other. “You have doubts about his
presumed cause of death?”
    “I do. At first, I
had no choice but to believe the initial explanation. But the more I think
about it, the more preposterous it seems. A heart attack? Really?” It was true. Once her cousins, Salma and
Husani, brought up the possibility of foul play, Maliyah just couldn’t imagine
her health-conscious father suffering a sudden heart ailment. It didn’t make
any sense. No wonder she couldn’t get any rest. It was near dawn, and she
hadn’t slept a wink.
    “The sun’s almost
up. Come on. Let’s get you home. I’ll hail a cab and we can talk on the way.”
    Once Ramses
flagged down a taxi driver, they hopped in and drove off. As the car rolled
down the deserted streets, an awkward silence fell over them. The thick,
unspoken attraction between the two of them was undeniable. Maliyah cleared her
throat, but before she could speak, Ramses broke the monotony.
    “That song you
were singing on the rock. It was hauntingly beautiful. What was it?”
    “Just a children’s
lullaby,” Maliyah said, shrugging her shoulders. “Something my father used to
sing to me.”
    Ramses shot her a
sympathetic grin. “You know, he loved you very much. You’re all he could ever
talk about,” he said. But then his expression changed. It looked almost
playful. Mimicking Anwar’s deep baritone voice, he proceeded to provoke her.
“Maliyah graduated from MIT. She’s got this great new job in Italy. She’s a
fantastic cook. Blah. Blah. Blah.”
    So he’s got a sense of humor, eh?
    Maliyah always
enjoyed a man with the ability to make her laugh. “Funny, he never mentioned you ,” she replied, ribbing him with the
same sardonic banter.
    “I’m not
surprised. I’ve got a bit of a reputation with the ladies and knowing Anwar,
he’d want to keep his daughter far away from the likes of me.”
    “Enough about you,”
Maliyah said, rolling her eyes. “Why is it that you question the nature of my
father’s death? If you have any pertinent information, you owe it to my family
to fess up.”
    “Maliyah, I worked
with your father day and night for many years. I knew him as well as, if not
better than I know myself. That man was as healthy as a horse. That fact alone
makes me suspicious. I don’t have anything else to go on at the moment, but if
I come across any leads, I’ll be sure to pass them along to Husani.”
    The cab came to
halt in front of her father’s house. Ramses stepped out and came around to open
Maliyah’s side of the door. “Husani? Why not me?”
    “Because
Cairo is a man’s world. You have no business
sticking your nose into matters that don’t pertain to you.” Ramses gruff voice
resounded in her ears as the meaning of the words he spoke finally sunk in. Not
only was Ramses a philandering womanizer. He was a sexist pig too.
    Typical Egyptian macho bullshit!
     
     
    ***
     
    Ramses watched
Maliyah disappear inside the house. He ducked under the overhang of the
apartment building at the same time he felt the radiant heat of the sun scald
the skin on his bare