Never: an erotic retelling of Peter Pan (65 page)

Was Sark planning to congratulate him on the success of his first field assignment?  Or was he considered a traitor, to be terminated 'with extreme prejudice'? 

And what of Wendee's fate?  He'd hoped to present her as an innocent victim.  But now...

The chopper lifted and Long Shadow closed his eyes. 

Self-pity snuck past his defences.  All this anguish, all this heartbreak, and they hadn't even caught DeMartande...

                                     
Chapter Thirty-Eight

"...and that's all I remember," Wendee said, noticing but not caring that the man seated across from her couldn't take his eyes off her breasts.

"I think you've answered all my questions, Ms Williams," Sark said, thick tongue wetting thin lips.

Dee looked down at her chest.  It was the sheer white cotton shirt the medic had put on her.  That was the problem.  Still, it was Sark's problem, not hers.

She looked back up at him and raised an eyebrow.

He cleared his throat, still staring unrepentantly at her breasts.

"What about the boy?" she asked.

That brought his eyes up.  "The hacker will go to trial.  He was an accomplice."

"I see."  Dee pushed down a pang of regret.  If Christophe hadn't tried to help her he might have escaped, as the others obviously had. 

All she could hope was that Long Shadow would remember Christophe's part in his escape and return the favour.  "But I'm free to go?" she asked, her thoughts returning to her own situation.

"Do you have somewhere to go?"

She hadn't thought of that.  Hadn't realised it mattered.  "I know someone in Cairns."

He looked down at his notes.  "You have a husband in Brisbane - "

"The Gold Coast," she corrected.  "And he's my ex-husband."

"Ex or not, the Cairns police notified him when you went missing from your hotel."  Sark was making a valiant effort to keep his attention on her eyes.  "He moved up to Cairns looking for you.  Wants you back apparently."  His gaze drifted and Dee felt a stirring in her abdomen - wondered what it would be like to have sex with someone she found unattractive. 

"...seems a decent sort," Sark was saying, "and who knows, you might get back into teaching - "

"I'm not interested in teaching young men Astronomy, Mr Sark," she said.

There was silence for a moment, then he cleared his throat.  "I still think you should consider - " 

But Dee saw a furtiveness in his eyes.  "You've already told him I'm here, haven't you?" she said.

Sark sighed, nodded.  "He's on his way." 

Dee closed her eyes.  Then she stood and walked over to the casement window, looking out but not seeing.  "Why did you do it?" she asked.

"I want to keep my agent," he said.  "But to do that, I have to get rid of you.  Safely."

Dee stared out the window.  Banana trees blocked her view of the house next door but she could see one of its residents, a young man, a native New Guinean with a machete in his hand climbing one of the trees.   

Something about the fronds swaying made her think of home, of the banana palms next to her pool.  The ones James had hated and she'd loved.  She sensed she should feel something, an emotion linked to the memory.  But there was nothing.  It was just a memory.

She turned back to Sark.  "You think if I go back to my husband, your
agent
won't come after me." 

"I believe so," he said.  "The kid's young, and - excuse me, Ms Williams - in this business we call it cunt-struck."

She nodded, uncaring of the crudity.

"But he's a good kid.  He'll do the honourable thing."

"Where you won't," she commented.

Sark practically leered, his gaze deliberately falling to the darkness between her thighs.  "I only need you to go home with your husband," he said, "What you do after that is none of my concern."

"Why should I do this for you?" she demanded, not having an argument against the idea, simply wanting to wipe the smirk off Sark's face.

"Not for me.  For the kid," Sark said. 

"You know what's best for him?"  She raised a haughty eyebrow, liking the way the sound of her voice seemed to intimidate Sark.  "I think you're being a little high-handed."

"What's the alternative?"

Dee gave up her power trip for the moment to consider that.  She'd heard the fanaticism of Long Shadow's
love
, had seen it in his eyes, didn't want to be imprisoned by it.

She shrugged.  "All right."  Why not?  One choice was as good as another at this point.  They all led towards death in the end. 

She'd felt that death briefly and was in no hurry to find it again.  But it was there.  Her mortality had crept up and embraced her.  One day, she knew, she would experience the orgasm of Death.  It would be the ultimate physical act.  But until then she had to do something to pass the time. 

"Shall I let him in now?" Sark asked.

"Who?"  She was momentarily confused.  Was James here already?

"Agent...  Long Shadow," Sark said, his hand on the door knob.

Dee frowned.  She felt sleepy.  Comfortably numb.  She didn't want to deal with Long Shadow's passion just now. 

"Maybe later," she said.  "I'm tired now."

Sark nodded.  Gestured at the narrow bed in the corner.  "Have a sleep.  I'll send him off to get cleaned up and eat something.  The poor kid hasn't moved from the door since we brought you here."

"Ever the Champion," Dee said, sauntering to the bed Sark had indicated.  She stretched out on the hard mattress and closed her eyes.  The door shut softly behind Sark and she heard murmuring voices receding down the hallway.

Sleep, she thought, but it was hot, uncomfortable.  Late afternoon sun slanted across her lower body and the cicada chorus outside was oppressive.

Dee was too sluggish to pull her shirt off so she fumbled with the buttons to open it, letting the faint breeze from the window slide over her skin.  Instinctively, her hands slid with the breeze, touching her breasts, her stomach, the tops of her legs and her inner thighs.  Then when she had awoken the flesh between her thighs, she touched herself there, finding it moist and receptive.

So sleepy, she thought as her fingers idly stroked her sex.  The sensations that drew her towards climax warred with a lethargy that was closing in fast.  She fought to stay awake, but her hand was slowing, her eyelids drooping.  It was too much effort.

Somewhere between oblivion and ecstasy, she drifted off.

                                     
Chapter Thirty-Nine

Pital hung precariously from the trunk of a banana tree, the machete in his hand forgotten as he stared at the woman on the bed.

He'd seen some interesting things since his family had come to live behind the little community house that was rented to visitors.  But none as exciting as this white woman who lay on the narrow cot and stroked herself as boldly as a prostitute.

She was no prostitute, though.  Pital was sure of that.  She was someone important.  He could tell that from the deference the men paid her.  The old fat man who had just been in her room had submitted to her will -  Pital could tell from the movement of their bodies and the look of their eyes.  Whatever the discussion had been, the fat man had conceded.

And as for the Long-haired one.  The way he'd left the house - stomping across the verandah and down the stairs in a fury - Pital felt sure he must be a cuckolded husband. 

Was this attractive woman leaving a handsome and virile husband to bed with such a fat old man?  It defied understanding.  Until Pital remembered that the older man had many attendants.  And he travelled in a helicopter.  He obviously had much money.

Pital knew what people would do for money.  Only the year before - his eighteenth year - he had sold himself to an Australian woman for money.  It had happened in Port Moresby, where he'd gone to buy a gift for his girl-friend, only to discover his humble savings weren't enough for the American jeans she'd wanted - the jeans he'd imagined himself peeling off her to get at the pulsing love-fruit she was coyly denying him.