Those in Peril (Unlocked) by Wilbur Smith Read Free Book Online

inside. Now she abandoned any show of reluctance and her head nodded in rhythm to his thrusts. Suddenly she froze with horror, and then jerked her head back coughing and spitting.
    ‘You bastard!’ she sobbed with disgust. ‘You pissed in my mouth. Vous êtes un cochon dégoûtant!’ He let go of her wrist, but immediately grabbed a handful of her blonde hair and twisted her face up towards his.
    ‘Never, never call me a pig again,’ he said with deadly calm. ‘And this is just to remind you.’ Open-handed he struck her across the face, knocking her head to one side. She looked up at him with astonishment and awe, tears of pain from her stinging cheek flooding her eyes, but she could not speak from the shock rather than the pain.
    ‘Now, open your mouth again,’ he ordered, but she mumbled an incoherent refusal, and tried to turn her head away. He tightened his grip on the handful of her hair, until it felt to her as if he was going to rip it off her scalp. She lifted her face towards him, her cheek glowing pinkly where the blow had landed.
    ‘Please, Rogier, don’t hurt me again. I did not mean what I said. I love you so much. You will never know how much. Forgive me, please.’
    ‘Prove it to me,’ he said. ‘Open your mouth again.’ She had never felt so overpowered and helpless. It was as though she knelt not at the feet of a human being, but of a god. She longed for him to possess her completely, to subjugate her, to violate and demean her. Slowly she opened her mouth as he had ordered her and he thrust so hard into her that the hinges of her jaws ached. As the pungent warm flood spurted into her mouth again it swamped her senses. She knew then that she belonged to him, to him alone and to no other, not even to herself.
    Two hours later he left her lying exhausted on the rumpled sheets. Her lips were swollen and inflamed with his rough kisses and the stubble of his new beard, her mascara had run leaving her eyes like those of a tragic clown, her alabaster skin was deathly pale except for the one vivid pink cheek where he had slapped her. Her hair was tousled and darkened with her sweat. She struggled up on one elbow as she heard him at the door. But she could not find the words to plead with him to stay with her. Then it was too late and he had gone. Broken and ravaged, she was too tired to weep. She lowered her head to the pillow and within minutes she was asleep.

    R ogier went up on deck after evening prayers and leaned on the rail as was his established habit. Once he was sure that he was unobserved he slipped into the locker and one glance at the transponder in its hiding place assured him that it had been interrogated by another station. A second bulb had lit up above the first. He typed in the squawk code and the tiny screen came alive. It gave him the date and time of the last contact. This had taken place only a few hours previously. He felt a lift of excitement. Everything was going exactly as it had been planned many months before. There had been so much that could have gone wrong, and had almost done so.
    Originally his grandfather’s plan had been to make the Bannock woman herself the target. But it soon became apparent that this was not feasible. Even the most elementary research had made it clear that the woman was much too worldly-wise and canny to be lured into such an obvious honey trap. Although it seemed she had dallied once or twice since her husband’s death, it had always been on her own terms with mature and powerful men of similar status to her own. She would certainly be proof against Rogier’s more obvious and boyish charms and wiles. However, her daughter was an innocent lamb; alone in Paris and eager to experience life and all its excitements. Rogier’s grandfather had sent him to Paris, and the meeting with and ensnarement of the girl had been pathetically simple.
    All that was required now was for the mother to make her annual Christmas visit to the Seychelles on board