by Cerys du Lys
He slumped back onto his knees, and El was able to wriggle free.
The branding iron was supporting itself now, burned deep into Jeremy’s abdomen and the shaft sticking out.
He looked at her, as if in disbelief, and then his expression went blank.
11
She didn’t have time to gather herself. Didn’t have time for the shock to register.
She looked up from Jeremy’s blank face and there was Bruno, striding across the room. He stopped by Jeremy, caught his shoulder as he started to crumple to the floor, and then looked at El.
She had only one option.
She stepped forward, reached for the branding iron’s grip and heaved it with all her strength.
It wasn’t going to budge. It just shifted slightly in Jeremy’s innards.
Bruno started to straighten and she heaved again.
The iron came free, and swung back behind her with the momentum of her effort to extricate it.
Without pause, she swung it forward again, heaving it like a sledgehammer around and down, hard, onto Bruno’s skull.
It struck with a heavy jolt that jarred through the handle and up her arms.
He collapsed to the floor beside Jeremy, and El stood there, still clutching the branding iron.
When she smelled more burning she realized the brand was burning through Bruno’s shirt where it rested against him.
She pulled it clear and rested it on the floor, leaning on it like a walking stick.
Now she could pause. Breathe.
Now she could take in what had happened.
Jeremy: dead. There could be no doubt of that.
The man.
Gone.
§
A noise at her shoulder brought her to her senses.
Keira.
El turned and forced a weak smile. “It’s over,” she said. “It’s all over.”
Keira’s eyes narrowed and then she threw herself at El.
“Really?”
El pulled back and swung, her fist balled, slamming into that always-open sex-doll ‘O’ of a mouth.
Keira fell, groaning.
El went to her, took her by the wrists and hauled her across the floor and out of the side-room. Dumping her against one wall of the main basement area, she found one of the iron loops set into the wall. A chain hung from it, attached to a pair of cuffs. She snapped one around Keira’s wrist.
Bruno was much heavier than Keira, but somehow El found the strength to drag him through and secure him with the other cuff.
Then she went across to the bench.
Rob was staring at her, watching her every move.
She came to stand before him.
“You remember that offer you made me?” she said. “The one where you were going to get me the Hell out of here?”
Silent, he nodded.
“If I can get you unlocked from there, do you think you could make that happen?”
§
Cautiously, they went up into the main part of the villa.
Danny was still unaccounted for. He might not be here at all, off on some errand for Jeremy, but they couldn’t take the risk.
He made it easy for them.
When they emerged into the main lobby area at the top of the stairs he was standing there, a pistol hanging casually from one hand.
He raised the gun briefly, still not pointing at them – a simple gesture to make sure they acknowledged the balance of power.
He shook his head. “It’s fine,” he said. “I’m not going to use it unless I have to. Not because I don’t want to. It’s a simple choice, though. I was monitoring the CCTV. I saw everything. I know all this is over. If I kill you it just complicates things for me. I’m not stupid – despite what you’ve always thought. Me? I’m out of here, you know what I mean? I’m taking one of the cars and I’m out of here and I don’t give a fuck what you do. Okay? Are we good?”
El glanced at Rob, then back at Danny.
All this time with revenge on her mind, but now all she wanted was get as far away from here as possible.
She took a step towards Danny and spat. A trail of spittle shot through the air and left its shiny trail down his shirt.
He tensed, half-raised the gun, held himself. She could see the muscles in his arm flexing, the twitch in his jaw as he ground his teeth, the narrowing of his eyes. He was so close to losing it, but he managed to hold himself back.
She met those blue and green eyes and gave a brief nod.
“We’re good now,” she said. “We’re done.”
Epilogue
El stepped out of the doorway of the small cabin, onto the veranda. The air was full of the high-pitched drone of cicadas, and the occasional raucous cries of cockatoos. Peering up through the scattering of pine trees, she saw a sky that was deep blue, flawless.
A track ran past the front of the veranda, leading to more cabins like hers. Children raced past on bicycles and scooters, and the family with the big camper van over the way had a barbecue smoking already. She tried not to make the obvious connection, still so gut-wrenchingly vivid even now.
She stepped down onto the track, and walked a short distance to where wooden steps cut down through the trees to the beach.
Two and a half years ago, she’d had it all. A husband, a successful career, a house far too big for the two of them. She’d dressed in Helmut Lang and Muubaa and barely given a thought to how thin was the civilized veneer that kept her from the real jungle of life.
Now... all she had were the few possessions in the holiday cabin and the battered old Fiat she had been driving around New South Wales for the past six weeks. It was a life stripped bare, and it was so much the richer for that.
She stepped down onto the beach and white sand instantly spilled into her flip-flops – or ‘thongs’ as the lady in the shop had insisted on calling them when El bought them a while back.
She paused and surveyed the small knots of people on the beach, and then her eyes lighted on a tousled blond head bobbing up and down in the waves.
She smiled.
He was out swimming with the manta rays again.
§
When she and Rob had emerged from La Casa Blanca into the afternoon sunlight, they’d paused and Rob stood facing her, holding both her hands so she had to pay attention.
“Listen,” he said. “I meant what I said. You need to get out of here and get your head straight. I don’t know how long that’ll take, but I want to help you. Nothing more than that. No strings. I just want to make sure you’re okay. Will you let me do that?”
That was when she recalled words spoken to her by Inge, the cook down at La Taberna.
Leave now, while you can. There is a whole world out there. You are young and beautiful and intelligent. You have so much ahead of you. So go.
They’d taken one of the two remaining cars and driven down into town to gather a few things, and then they’d left altogether, driving up the coast and into France, where they stayed for a few days before booking flights to Sydney.
“Places I know,” Rob had told her. “Places I lived before... well, before I started to make some bad choices.”
‘No strings’ had lasted for a while. It lasted all the way to Australia, but then in another cabin by a beach a couple of hundred miles north of here ‘no strings’ had suddenly become tangled.
She’d gone to him in the night. She’d been unable to sleep. The cicadas, the scuttling of possums in the roof cavity, the heat. The thoughts in her head, the growing realization that ‘no strings’ just wasn’t working for her.
He’d been awake, too. As she approached his bed he pulled back the thin sheet so she could climb in.
Bare skin against her felt so good. The mix of incredibly smooth and the coarse rasp of body hair. The hardness of his muscles. The way he started to respond, flaccidity filling out, becoming firm, nuzzling up against her so that they had to move briefly apart in order for his shaft to lie up against her belly, fully h
ard.
Just holding herself there, tucked into his arms, not moving.
So much skin-to-skin contact.
Pressing harder, then. Feeling the base of his shaft against her smooth mound, sliding that fleshy hood that covered her clit, his balls sagging down to press against her thigh.
Reaching down to wrap fingers around his shaft. Steering it downwards. Raising a leg slightly so she could position him against her wet opening. Feeling the slight twitch in his shaft as they held themselves there, resisting the growing urge to start moving.
The sudden give as the bulbous head of his dick pressed against her opening and then pushed inside. The sense of being filled as he slid ever deeper.
No strings.
In that moment ‘no strings’ had simultaneously become both simpler and so much more complicated.
§
She stood on the beach, waiting until he spotted her.
The breeze was gentle on her bare shoulders, and now she reached up to tease the bobble out of her hair so she could shake her long copper locks free.
She tipped her head back and realized she was smiling.
A big, wide, stupid smile.
She was free.
For the first time in years, she was truly free.
The Author
Writing under other names, PJ Adams is a successful novelist, with several novels published by major publishing houses and optioned for movies. As PJ Adams, she writes in the genre closest to her heart, erotic romance – love stories with that added heat, including the international bestsellers Winner Takes All and The Object of His Desire. Working as Polly J Adams, she writes best-selling erotica, relationship stories crammed full of explicit sex. Among Polly’s most popular stories are the Girls’ Club series, and Wings of Desire, the story of a young woman’s relationship with the wealthy owner of a New England sex club.
You can find out more about Polly and her writing on her website, on http://www.facebook.com/pollyjadamswriter and on Twitter as @PollyJAdams.
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Uncover Me
by
Linda Barlow
Author’s Note: Uncover Me is based on a traditionally-published romantic suspense novel that I wrote many years ago (Hold Back The Night). It has been completely rewritten. The current version is much darker than the original, with stronger language and scenes intended for mature audiences.
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Chapter 1
Ellie
With his wind-tangled yellow hair and his tall, golden body, he looked like an ancient hero or a mythological god. But his weapon was that of a 21st century thug. Staring down the muzzle of his gun, my first thought was that my mother was bound to say, “I told you so.” My second was more somber—by the time Mom had anything to say about the matter, I’d probably be dead.
She had been against the idea from the beginning. “Single women don’t ride off on motorcycle tours of Turkey,” she’d told me. And she ought to know; she’d spent much of her professional life in the Middle East, working on various archaeological digs.
“It’s reckless,” she’d lectured me as we’d dined two nights before in the rooftop dining room of her Istanbul hotel. Through the windows sprawled the lively city where East truly meets West, the only city in the world built upon two continents. In the half-light of dusk, I could see the mosques and villas that dotted the green hills of Asia across the Bosporus. “The Turks still look askance at young women traveling alone.”
“I’ll be fine, Mom. Don’t forget that this is my adopted country.”
“Even so, it’s not wise. Lately I’ve been hearing reports of smugglers operating on the western coast, lawless ruffians running everything from guns and drugs to art objects. It’s not the most sensible way for my daughter to be spending her vacation.”
I swallowed a delicious stuffed grape leaf, and then poked my fork into my Circassian chicken. I love Turkish food. I’d missed it. “It’s not precisely a vacation. I have an assignment to shoot some pictures for a travel website. And I’ve been wanting to return to the ruins I remember visiting with you—Perge, Ephesus, and especially Troy.”
“Really?” Mom leveled her all-too-shrewd blue eyes at me. “You’re sure you’re not running away?”
Jeez! I attacked a stuffed eggplant. Was I running away? I preferred to believe I was finally living out my dream of being a free spirit. An adventuress. For that, I needed an adventure.
“Is it forbidden to inquire what happened to Mark? I thought you two were pretty serious.”
“We broke up.” I didn’t want to discuss Mark—or think about him, either.
“What went wrong? You’d been together for quite a while. I thought things were settled.”
“Turned out I wasn’t ready to settle down. Why the big fuss? You’re single. You travel the world, going wherever your work takes you. You’re independent and accountable to no one. Why should you object if I do the same?”
Mom leaned over and stroked my hand. Her face was vulnerable in a manner that I had rarely witnessed. “Because it’s a lonely life. I want something better for you.”
Whoa, that was a surprise. I squeezed Mom’s hand as hard as I could. I noticed with some alarm that her skin was older and drier than I remembered. She was pushing 50, and, as far as I knew, there was no significant other in her life. I’d always thought that she liked it that way.
“I’ve got time, Mom,” I told her. “Please don’t worry about me.”
She patted my hand briskly, and changed the subject.
“I hope you’ve brushed up on your Turkish,” Mom said the following morning as we said our farewells on the edge of a noisy Istanbul street. I was off to rent a motorcycle and Mom was heading to the airport to fly back to Ankara, where she was doing some research on the Hittite collection. “I know you used to speak it fluently, but it’s been a while since you’ve had any practice.”
“I hung out with a Turkish friend yesterday. I’m rusty, but it’s coming back fast.”
“Well, iyi yolculuklar,” my mother said. Bon voyage. As I hugged her, stepping out of the way of a honking, careening taxi and nearly bumping into a man grilling shish kebab on the sidewalk, Mom added, “Be careful. Don’t get into any trouble.”
Of course not, I’d assured her. What sort of trouble could I possibly get into?
The trouble started at dawn. I’d stuck my head out of the flap of my tent and squinted at the early April sky, which was rosy with the promise of the kind of day wayfarers yearn for—warm but not too humid, breezy and fresh.
Scrambling out of the tent, I stood and stretched, gazing out toward the Aegean, enjoying the sparkling view of hills and rocks and sea. It was a pleasant change. My plane had landed a few days ago in Istanbul in a rosy-brown haze, my view of the city distorted by dust, diesel fumes and the belchings of the numberless factories that had transformed the country into a modern, industrial society. Clean air was getting to be something of a luxury in Turkey. I sucked it into my lungs, reveling in the light scent of olive trees and wildflowers.
Scooting back into the tent, I dressed, then took down the tent and stowed it with my sleeping bag at the rear of my bike. I sat down in a small olive grove to eat a quick breakfast consisting of the crusty bread, white cheese and black olives I’d purchased yesterday from a village along the road.
I would have liked to make a fire and warm some water for tea, but since I was not camped in an official campground, I decided against it. I’d had some engine trouble with my bike the day before, and dusk had fallen before I reached the campground where I’d intended to spend the night.
When I finished my quick breakfast, I checked my camera battery, and then spent several minutes checking my various lenses. I hoped to rea
ch Troy today and photograph the ruins. After twisting the telephoto lens onto the camera body, I went to the edge of the olive grove to shoot several pictures of the grassy hills that sloped down to a peaceful, sheltered bay. What a lovely spot. The dawn sun was slowly climbing, although it was out of sight behind a hillock at present. The water was glowing apricot and gold with refracted sunlight.
I got several excellent shots. My view of the Aegean was marred only by an occasional scrubby bush or outcropping of rock. The entire area seemed untouched by human activity. Yet I knew that humans had wandered here for millennia. There were ruins all along the Aegean coastline, the remains of Greek, Roman and Selcuk Turkish cities. Not far from here, according to Homeric legend, Menelaus’s army had marched to invade Troy. Warriors might well have landed here before beginning their assault on that ancient city. Their warships would have been decked out with colorful sails and fully equipped for battle.
The whimsical image had barely crossed my mind when a sail rounded the rocky point to the right of the bay and directed its course landward. I felt like a magician with the power to call up an object from my imagination and give it form.
But the illusion was dispelled as the boat drew nearer. It was real. A single-masted sailboat, it was graceful as it cut cleanly through the rough sea. A beauty. I aimed my camera at the yacht. Through the telephoto lens, I could see the figures of two men, one at the helm and the other moving about on deck, pulling in the sails as they neared the shore. The first man was dark, the other golden haired. The dark one could have been a Turk, but the man with the wavy gilt hair and sun-bronzed skin had more in common with the god Apollo.
Many modern Mediterranean guys were dark-haired. This fair-haired man might be a foreigner. Twirling the dials, I focused on him. He was in his late twenties, I estimated, with high cheekbones, deep-set eyes and an austere, yet sensual mouth. For some reason his face startled me. It wore a cold expression, yet something about its lines hinted at underlying wellsprings of emotion. A beautiful face—the sort one rarely gets to photograph, because in real life such a face simply doesn’t exist. An angel’s face.
