Chapter 1

The smell of newly turned earth, and the hazy buzz of insects, was making me drowsy. I’d been living in Chateauneuf with John, and every golden day was as delightful as the next. He and I worked the vines like field hands. Then, in the evening; we ate gourmet food, drank premium wine, and watched the sun set over the hills of Provence.

John is every woman’s dream, an incredibly handsome, intelligent and cultured man. He has the body of an elite soldier. He is even better to talk to, and he is an enigma wrapped in a mystery. He’s a Provencal wine maker with a nine-figure bank account. His accent is English academic while his entire background is Russian Special Forces. He spent the last part of the Cold War playing the Great Game against his father figure, Sir Alexander Haig. Most importantly he is my lover and no doubt “the one.”

I have been blessed with more intelligence, alleged beauty and physical gifts than any girl could expect. Hence, my destiny doesn’t involve grapes, wine, or devoting myself to that life. I was born to serve, and I knew the call would eventually come. That call would rip me away from my dream lover and return me to the life I had chosen.

We were sitting drowsily under John’s giant pergola, shaded from the hot Provencal sun by two-hundred-year-old grapevines. It was cool inside and growing dusk. I was holding his hand and looking deeply into his bottomless, almost cat-like, eyes. He was gently stroking my face with his other hand. At six foot three and 220 pounds of rock-hard muscle he should be bluff and hearty. But he has the soul of a poet and his touch is the sweetest gentlest thing I have ever felt. Needless to say, I was conflicted.

I said, “Sir Alex called, and I have to go back.”

He said, “I know, he called me too. Sir Alex felt like he had to make excuses for you. He didn’t need to. I understand how important this is.”

I said sincerely, “I meant it when I told you I was yours. Do you believe me?”

He said, “I do, but I also understand that I share you with the life you’ve chosen. We have been very lucky so far, and I don’t want to tempt fate by changing any part of what we have. I might be a Provencal grape farmer now. But I used to be a Russian and you know how superstitious we Russians are.” The last part of that sentence was in a heavy Russian accent.

We both chuckled and I said, “I am leaving early in the morning, I have a NetJets rental out of Avignon to London and I am meeting Sir Alex for lunch at the Oxford-Cambridge Club.”

John looked at me with those uncanny cat eyes and said, “But we still have this evening.”

I nodded and stood, still holding his hand. I gently led him into our master bedroom, which is just off the huge stone terrace of his ancient chateau. It was light enough that I could see his face and he looked sad. I felt the same way. It was going to be difficult to part from him. He completed me in every way.

John can only be described as exotic. Russia has undergone millennia of invasions from the east and many of its citizens have an oriental cast to their eyes. John’s eyes are emerald green, but their shape hearkens to Attila, or Tamerlane. The rest of John’s face is devilishly handsome, with short black hair that forms a perfect widow’s peak and a mouth that I love to kiss.

And then there is THAT body. John spent his formative years in the Russian Special Forces. He survived some of the most intense situations imaginable in Afghanistan. And when I tell you that his body reflects that harsh life, what I mean is that John is a man amongst men.

In my selective sexual experience, I had not met a man who I could fully express myself with, until I met him. I don’t have to hold myself back. He can possess me in a way that I have never experienced. I am freakishly strong and a little taller than average. When I make love, I want to be able to abandon myself completely. And frankly there has never been anybody who could satisfy me like he can.

I needed to experience that one last time. So, I walked over to the big bed. I very slowly and lovingly shed my simple blouse and shorts outfit, unsnapped and dropped my bra, stepped out of my thong and lay down with challenge in my eyes. We have made love in every conceivable position in every place around the chateau. But tonight, I wanted to see if we could express our love in the simplest and most direct way possible, like a man and his wife.

He stood there looking at me as if he was taking a snapshot of the entire scene, not just my body. Then he walked unhurriedly toward the bed, never taking his eyes off mine. I could see a million emotions roiling in his. John is English in every way, polite, controlled, logical and civilized. It is only at times like this that the Russian emerges.

I know that my new assignment had upset him. Hell, it upset me. But until I saw that look, I didn’t know how MUCH it upset him. The knowledge of what he wanted from me; and what he knew I needed to do with my life, were at war inside him. He sat on the side of the bed almost sadly, still clothed. Then he touched my cheek and ran a simple finger down it to my mouth. The only word I can use to describe the feeling is “electric.”

I was already a little over aroused by the thought that this might be my last opportunity to make love to him. But that simple touch, with its infinite gentleness and caring, caused me to shout out loud and I began sucking on his finger like it was an appendage located a little further down his body. I gazed at him feeling desperation. I had to have him or die. He pulled his finger, which I was still loudly sucking, out of my mouth, stood and slowly took off his clothes.

That hard, muscular body with its various scars and military tattoos would have lit a raging fire in me anyway. But the sight of the perfect instrument of my satisfaction, which sprang out of his underwear like a pouncing Bengal Tiger, made me moan in agony.

I immediately grabbed it and began to make suggestions about what he could do with the thing and how fast I needed him to do it. Those suggestions were expressed in highly colorful terms. That was because he had made me hugely impatient to have him in me.

Instead, he smiled and lay down on his side next to me. He turned me on my side facing him and said, “Do you remember the first time we made love?” How could I forget that? John had just walked for hours in the rain, over impassible mountains, to help me and my sidekick Mel, secure a priceless treasure. I had fallen asleep in our tent with him spooning me. And the effect of all of that masculinity had led to some of the wildest sex I have ever experienced.

I said, “I liked the second time better, when we fucked gazing into each other’s eyes, that is, until I couldn’t stand it any longer.” He smiled and moved over me. I spread and elevated my legs to accommodate him. We never broke the stare. I was feeling lost. The effect of looking into his intense eyes was arousing me more than normal foreplay. He supported himself on his arms, so that the only place we touched was at my entrance. I was mesmerized by his glance.

He very slowly slid into me never breaking our connection. Red hot poker analogies are just so clichéd. But that is exactly what it felt like. It was too much. I shrieked while never breaking eye-contact. We were now in bird-and-snake mode, I was hypnotized. He paused at the very top of my passage. We were merged at every level, body and spirit. And then he began to move.

I went from sublime goddess to total wild animal in about two seconds. I had never felt so much sheer lust. I humped back against him with my arms around his neck trying to pull his head off. He was still holding himself on his arms. But they were now behind my thighs and he had them spread to a point where they were actually close to touching both knees to the bed, even though I had drawn them up almost to my shoulders.

I was wailing and moaning and trying as hard as I could to bite a chunk out of him while he just pounded me in a way that totally dominated me. No more romantic soul searching. We were attempting to kill each other. I could see terrible things in his eyes at that moment, not gentle, tender love. Whatever I had set off in him, it came from his lizard brain.

We were both breathing like the next breath would be our last. I was vocalizing to a point where I hoped the staff was on the far side of the house. The loud suggestions about how hard he should fuck me, how deep I wanted him to go and how much I wanted him to fill me up, would no doubt convince everybody in the chateau that I was a total slut.

I didn’t care. The contractions were so powerful that I had the totally irrelevant thought, “So that’s what childbirth feels like.” Then my whole world imploded.

My feet began to drum on the bed like I was having an epileptic seizure. I fastened my fangs on his rock-hard deltoid muscle and bit down like a soldier on a bullet. At the same time, I raked his back with my claws, trying to process the feeling.

As the major convulsions began to subside, I grabbed the two massive boulders that masquerade as his butt and tried to jam him completely inside me. My contractions finally died down enough that I could breathe again. I must have been holding my breath while every autonomic function in my body went off-line.

I finally got enough rationality back that I could look him in the eyes again. He stared down at me with total disbelief on his face; like he had never seem a display like I had just put on. I was going to say something to commemorate what he had just done to me when he went back to MOVING INSIDE ME. Apparently, the guy hadn’t come yet. He was just waiting for me to get back from wherever he had blown me to.

On top of what had just happened, the sensation of him moving inside me robbed me of all rational thought. I know that I was semi-conscious through most of what happened next. But I was nowhere near sane.

I whimpered and shrieked. I writhed under him trying to just live through what was happening in my lady parts. I went back to scratching and biting and then after what seemed like an eternity of bucking and twisting, he came inside me in a way that set off the absolute mother of all orgasms.

I remember forming a perfect arch from my shoulders to my heels, with nothing else touching. And I appeared to have lifted him off the bed with me. That was the last I remembered until I came back to consciousness with him gently stroking my brow. I had passed out and I was mortified. I popped one eye open and said in my sternest voice, “Don’t do that to me again.”

He said with wonder, “I don’t know how I could?”

I said accusingly, “You actually nearly killed me.”

He looked down at his suddenly battle-scarred body with at least three distinctive teeth marks on it, two of them still bleeding and said, “You didn’t do so bad in that category yourself.”

I said with all sincerity, “There will never be another man like you John.”

He said, “And there will never be another woman but you Helen Larson. I will await your successful return.”

The Cessna Citation got me to London City airport at 10:30. John had driven me to the airport, and our parting involved a lot of kissing. But I was looking ahead not back. John is a confident man and he understands about service. So, there was none of the maudlin parting you might expect between two people who are so completely bonded to each other.

I should have been doing the weepy girl thing on the flight but instead I was energized. I called Mel the minute I got into the taxi at the airport. Besides being a world class sexual athlete, my little friend is also a closet stand-up comic, with a gift for mimicry that would make a macaw jealous. The voice that answered was slightly more Cockney than Liza Doolittle.

I said, “Mel, I am going to be meeting with Sir Alex at the Club at one o’clock. Do you want to join us?”

The voice said, “Cor! And hooo’re yoooo?”

I laughed and said, “It’s me Hilley, you little twit”

The voice said, “Annnnd owww do I know you ain’t givin’ me nooo pork pies?”

I said, “I’m not lying to you silly, it’s Hilly.” The Cockney rhyming thing was even getting to me

The voice said, “Hilley’s too hoity-toity to ‘ang aroun’ with the likes of li’l Mel”

I said, “Well Hilley’s back from her dalliance with the world’s greatest lover and she is ready to get back to work.”

Suddenly it was Mel’s voice, “Details! I want all of the DETAILS!!”

I was almost convulsed with laughter at that point so I said, “Can you meet me at my place, and I’ll fill you in. Then we can go meet Sir Alex. He has a job for us.”

Mel said, “I will be there in 15 minutes.”

I said, “Not that fast, I have to get through City traffic. I’ll see you at 11:30. We are meeting Sir Alex at 1:00”

The Cockney voice said, “Right then guv!” and hung up. I chuckled all the way across town to my place.

Mel is my exact opposite, which might be the reason why we are as so closely bonded to each other. Professionally, Mel is a licensed solicitor, where I am a barrister. Together we cover the legal spectrum in Great Britain. And her razor-sharp mind and command of the law and legal reasoning are second to none.

Where I am tall and athletic, she is short and spectacularly voluptuous. There isn’t an ounce of fat on that beautiful little body. But she is so stunningly round that she appears to be chunky. That impression is mainly fostered by her having two of the biggest, most remarkable breasts in womankind. Those things make her look almost top-heavy.

In public, I give off cool and aloof vibes. So, most people consider me stuck-up. I really just have my father’s lone-wolf personality. I am an intellectual and a scientist and I guess in actual truth, most people DO bore me.

On the other hand, Mel is the warmest, most caring and insightful person I know. And she absolutely ADORES everybody. She can walk into a room full of total strangers and in a half an hour have all of them just loving her. It is an instinctive gift which in many ways it is as rare and special as my genius IQ.

Underneath all that though, Mel is as clever as the Artful Dodger. So, I am aware that what we see is the Mel WANTS us to see. Still, she has braved things on my behalf that nobody, but a person of dauntless courage and absolute loyalty would ever do. And she has proven time-and-again that she is a devoted and stalwart friend. I also discovered on our last assignment that my little five-foot nothing friend can be as deadly as a king cobra.

Mel might also be the hottest woman on the planet. No man can say no to Mel if she decides to have him. She just radiates her extreme sensuality. Hence, her seductive talents have proven invaluable in our past missions.

I am capable of absolutely insane passion in the act of love. But there has to be a personal connection. For Mel, sex is just sex. And Mel is a woman who enjoys sex in the way that a gourmet loves food. She is not slutty in any way. In fact, she applies very strict personal rules to any man she’s with. And any male who violates her code of conduct gets slightly less forgiveness than the Inquisition gave heretics.

London traffic was the usual nightmare. So, Mel was standing outside my door when my taxi pulled up. She had driven over in her new John Cooper Works Mini Roadster which is an absolute perfect car for her.

Mel is a passionate soul in everything she does, including her driving. So, I have had more than a few of those “Holy SHIT!!” moments, as I grabbed for the panic straps. She drove a Moped until our exploits made her rich. And she just got her actual driving license. But that didn’t stop her from buying something that would be more at home on the road course at Brands Hatch, or Silverstone.

Her Mini is electric blue with a white racing strip over the bonnet and down the boot and it was currently parked in front of my garage, which holds my Range Rover and the shiny black Aston Martin Vanquish Volante, that I first drove down to visit John. I used to drive a vintage Lotus Super 7. But it really wasn’t practical for long trips, so it is parked up at my parent’s estate now.

I looked at my little friend, who was frolicking around on my front porch like an over-eager Jack Russell Terrier. Her love of life and people are her trademark personality traits. But she is nonetheless a remarkably beautiful woman with her perfect, smooth café au lait complexion and her almost oversized dark Indian Temple Goddess eyes.

Her faultless little muscular legs were presently dancing up and down on my front porch and even in an industrial strength bra it was impossible to keep those huge tits completely pacified. She has long thick glistening black hair that she wears down to the top of her round little butt and as she pranced in her happiness her hair was swaying in one direction while her boobs swayed in the other.

She had on a cream-colored pure silk blouse and a matching, slightly darker taupe skirt. The contrast with her amazing coloration was striking. And of course, being Mel, she had on her usual pair of “fuck me” pumps even though she was just going to do lunch at a hoary old “Gentleman’s” club.

Nevertheless, the taste and culture just radiated off of her. She has gotten rich in our two assignments with the Organization. I might add that all of it is well deserved. That has allowed her to indulge her natural ability to dress like the person of extreme intelligence and gentility that always underlay the Cockney fish and chips girl.

Just looking at her I was proud to say that she was my best and, in some respects, ONLY female friend. I actually have one other woman who I call a friend, but who I am nowhere as close to. In fact, I met Prudence THROUGH Mel.

Prudence, or Pru as we call her, completes the triangle of opposites. Where I am muscular and athletic, and Mel is voluptuous, Pru is slim and extremely nubile. She is perhaps three inches taller than me and most of that added height is in her waist and legs. Hence, she is gorgeous if you like women who could easily pass as a runway super-model.

She is also an archetypal English Rose. Her perfect classically round face with its porcelain complexion is like something out of a Gainsborough painting. She has very thick blond hair that she usually wears straight-down-to-the-middle of her slim little back. It makes her look like Alice in Wonderland. She has huge china blue eyes, which are separated by a perfect little patrician nose and a mouth as sensual as Mel’s.

I purposely did NOT put the usual adjective “innocent” in front of the description of her eyes because Pru is by far the least innocent of all of us. Where Mel likes sex, she has iron-clad rules. Pru would be considered slutty if she was not so strikingly beautiful and coolly aristocratic most of the time.

She is the daughter of an Earl whose lineage goes back to the Norman Conquest. So, she is a REAL blue-blood, not an American knock-off like me. Her parents own large tracts of land including Buckinghamshire, where our estate is located. Still, her parents are actually nowhere near as rich as mine.

Pru’s natural plummy accent and her upper-class-to-the bone bearing tell you all you need to know about her lineage. And if you saw her in public you would think that she was lofty and reserved unless you knew that her haughty appearance was at constant war with the wild child that lurks beneath.

When we are together, Pru tries to wash her upper-class veneer away with alcohol. So, I have to keep an eye on her, or she will do really harmful things to herself. But she DOES possess a jaded perspective that neither Mel nor I have. That viewpoint is both interesting and valuable.

In most settings I tend to be over-analytic and Mel is like an enthusiastic puppy. Pru has seen and done everything twice, and she instinctively understands the darker and more decadent motives and forces that surround us. Those special sensibilities are like a touchstone when it comes to situations that Mel and I simply have no point of reference for. And it is Pru’s insights into the machinations of people that help us steer around the rocks so-to-speak.

As a result, I considered Pru a peer, just not somebody I knew very well. But I was planning on changing that for my next assignment. I opened the door and gestured for my little pal to go through. She bounced into my flat with the enthusiasm of a well-mannered Yorkshire terrier.

In the beginning I had some problems with Mel adjusting to the opulence of the place. But she has her own house now, which she bought with the proceeds of our first mission. It is over in the Bohemian quarter of Chelsea and it originally looked like the place that Miss Haversham haunted in Great Expectations.

Still, Mel can make anything homey and in the succeeding year she has turned the place into a haven of luxury for her and her twenty-three-year-old sister Sarai. Needless to say, the parade of men is almost endless; with two of the hottest women in the West End living in one house

My Egyptian Mau Bastet was crouched on an end table regarding me with contempt. I was not concerned since Bastet regards everybody who is not a cat with contempt.

I said cheerily, “I’m home Bastet.”

Bastet has always talked to me, even though she hisses when she talks. She looked at me condescendingly and said, “That wasss a long hunt sssssister. How many did you kill?” Bastet is named after the Egyptian cat goddess of hunting and warfare and she sees the world in those terms. So, that was not as disturbing a question as you might think.

I said, “I was only stalking one prey this time dear. But it was a long satisfying hunt.” Bastet is neutered so she didn’t get the double meaning. She speared me with her claws just to express her contempt at my feeble efforts.

I dropped my travel things and Mel and I went back out to flag down a taxi. I had changed into what I planned to wear to meet with Sir Alex on the flight from Avignon. It was a classic flowered day dress that was cut to show off my legs. I know that my legs stop hearts and I was planning on bagging a few of the geezers at the Oxford-Cambridge Club this afternoon.

We arrived promptly at 1:00 and the guy at reception, who probably felt like he had seen too much of me, showed us through into the Coffee Room.

Mel has come a long way since we started our adventures together. So, she was stopped bumping into me like she used to do when she was gawking at her surroundings. She has also learned how to interact with Sir Alex, without behaving like she was meeting the Queen.

Sir Alex was sitting at his usual table. From a distance he looks like the prototype of the retired upper-class English bureaucrat. He is tall, slim, white-haired, ruddy-cheeked and always impeccably dressed. His accent and general attitude is pure “Whitehall”, which is appropriate given his years of service in the Blues and Royals. But he is much, much more than what he appears to be.

Sir Alexander Haig spent most of the latter years of the Cold War playing the Great Game with superb skill. He was a mainstay of MI-6’s Eastern European branch right up to the fall of Communism. And he was one of the chosen few who kept the English people safe from all enemies foreign and domestic throughout the 1980s. It was during that service that he met and eventually became the mentor of my John, and nobody would be fool enough to mistake the steel that undelay the affable old buffer who he loved to play.

Sir Alex was radiating knightly charm as we were seated. He beamed at Mel, took her hand and said, “Miss Brown, I am SO pleased to see you.” Mel gulped and blushed as she always does when Sir Alex pays any attention to her. I swear that if there wasn’t sixty years difference in their age there would be something going on between the two.

Then Sir Alex turned his attention to me. He said, “We have by far the most serious assignment that we have given you so far. How much do you know about the Cold War?”

I said, “I only know what I read in the history books. That Russia and the West danced around each other for over a decade jockeying to see which economic system, Capitalism or Communism would prevail.

There was always the threat of nuclear annihilation to back up those political machinations. That threat caused a lot of people in the 1950s to build bomb shelters in their back yard; convinced that the end of the world was near. If I recall correctly, that end very nearly occurred in 1962 over the Cuban Missile Crisis.”

Sir Alex considered me with his usual fond grandfatherly look and said, “You have the general picture my dear. But you don’t have the entire story.”

The Colonel was tired. He didn’t mind training flights. But this one was a simulated combat mission so there was special strain. He and his other two crewmates had flown their B-47 Stratojet the 600 miles from their base at Homestead Air Force Base on a course to imitate a high altitude run into the Soviet Union. And as it was approaching 02:00 the mission had been relatively successful.

By 1958 standards the Stratojet was an excellent aircraft to fly. The Colonel mused that it was amazing how far America had come in bomber technology, from the B-17s and B-24s that had fought World War II a mere 14 years earlier. At an almost Mach 1 top speed at high altitude the B-47 could quickly slip in over the Arctic Sea, drop its nuclear load and slip back out without ever alerting anybody who was on the ground that they had been there.

Of course, the Colonel recognized that if this had been a REAL combat mission the people on the ground would have been alerted to the bomber’s presence approximately a minute and 45 seconds after the drop; when their world ended in a bright purple, yellow and red fireball.

They called it a “Cold War” and the men of Curtiss Lemay’s Strategic Air Command intended to keep it cold, through deterrence. The vigilance was constant, and the training was rigorous. But the alternative was eradication and that unthinkable option was what motivated SAC’s air crews to even greater accomplishments of airmanship.

This night, the Colonel’s Stratojet was carrying a single transportation configured Mk15 Mod 0 hydrogen bomb capable of a 3.8 Megaton explosion. Although it was dangerous to fly an armed weapon over the continental United States the men of the Strategic Air Command had to train with transportation configured bombs in order to get the “feel” for the real doomsday situation should it occur.

The bomb that was resting in the B-47’s bomb bay was twelve feet long and weighed 7,600 pounds; which was close to the Stratojet’s maximum lift capacity of 10,000 pounds. The bomb itself contained 400 pounds of conventional high explosives and it had a highly enriched uranium core with a plutonium trigger.

The heat it would generate on detonation was capable of turning five square miles of the landscape below into spun glass and the shock wave would flatten anything within a fifteen-mile radius.

It was due to the power of their own nuclear weapons that America could assure the destruction of any foreign power that chose to employ such a device against them. The only Nation with similar capability was the Soviet Union and the fact of certain mutual annihilation seemed to be the only way to keep that closed and alien Country at bay.

The Colonel didn’t know what he actually thought about Communism. But he DID know that Stalin was a cruel and brutal man and he believed that the U.S.S.R. was hell bent on forcing their economic system off on the rest of the world.

So, like all of the other men of his time the horrors of nuclear war were first and foremost in his thoughts. And he feared and hated the Russians. So, he knew that if the time ever came over Moscow, he would be willing to do what he needed to do to the people below.

The balance of power lay in the simple fact that if the balloon went up between the U.S. and the Soviets, hordes of nuclear armed bombers would be let loose on each country’s cities. The DEW line would provide plenty of early warning and the U.S. had the fighters and missiles to shoot down most of the incoming Russian bombers.

Nevertheless, some would certainly get through. And when they did both Russian and American cities would see the destruction that the people in Hiroshima had understood less than 15 years earlier. It was the assurance of that destruction that prevented both powers from walking over the cliff.

The Colonel was one of the Air Force’s best, an Instructor Pilot. He had flown so many combat missions in A-26 Invaders over Korea that he couldn’t count them all. Still, the Stratojet was a totally different aircraft from the A-26. The twin double-wasps on the A-26 could push it along at conventional fighter speed, almost 400 miles per hour. But the B-47 was powered by six General Electric J-47 turbojets. That brought its top speed to almost supersonic, much faster than any fighter with a propeller on its front.

Nonetheless, with all of that exceptional performance the B-47 was a very easy aircraft to fly. It was so fast and responsive that it almost felt like he was flying a fighter. The only problem was that the thin wings, which gave the Stratojet all of its high-speed aerodynamic advantages, also made it a bitch to land.