Chapter 40

Sid Buchanan listened wearily to Reg Fields' screaming protests as he paced up and down in the study where they had taken turns with Desirée's body just days before. Fields was sweating freely, his pudgy hands trembling as he ran them over his dripping jowls. His wooly eyebrows worked up and down like the wings of an ostrich and his belly shook with each step he took, while above it his obese heart could be seen as it pounded, stirring the flab of his chest.

"I'm ruined, Sid," he whined. "Ruined. My clients will have me prosecuted. At best. Some of it was Mafia money. They don't forgive." He covered his face with his hands. "What about Khalid? Can't he cover our margins until we find a way out of this?"

Sid shook his head. PLO dissatisfaction with Khalid al-Mazkum had been quickly vented, and his body had been found in his own office this morning. "A few million we could sweep under the carpet. But not a few billion. Khalid won't be covering anything more than a three-by-six foot plot ever again."

Fields stopped, his puffy eyes wide. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, they took him out. The PLO. They don't forgive either."

Reg Fields' trembling increased. He was essentially bankrupt and he feared the retribution of the people who had trusted him. And his wife...

Buchanan wasn't feeling very well himself. He had been destroyed in a matter of twenty-four hours. The stock exchanges had executed on his assets, frozen his accounts, and he was expecting auditors and lawyers from the SEC. He was trapped no matter which way he turned. Harry Wickes had been trying to avert this when he called, but Sid had not listened, being too wrapped up in Desirée's sweet palace of pleasure. Now, as he stared at the computer screen at the email he had sent to the broker, he wondered how it could have gone so wrong. The volatility list had replaced his selected buy list somehow, and he wondered how it had happened. He could not have been so scatterbrained as to do that himself. So the only answer to the question of how was who. The computers were not networked and could not have been accessed from outside. The files would have had to have been altered from right here in the study, the night of the party, most probably, most certainly, after he had shown them to Khalid and Reg, after he had used his password to access the computer. Sometime between the time when they had left the room at eleven-twenty and when he had sent the email ten hours later.

That was a fairly big window, but who could have done it? Who could have even known, or want to alter the files? As far as he knew, of the people at the party, only the three men in the study, who had taken turns with Desirée's sweet body, had known of the plan. Of his jackals all over the world, none had known of the whole picture, only their separate functions.

But the email he had sent was exactly the opposite of what it should have been, numbers randomly altered in a way that didn't even add up, as Harry had said. Only the three of them present could have known enough of the project to sabotage the file. Buchanan knew that he hadn't done it, and Reg Fields would have done it only if he knew he would profit somehow. But here he was, sweating and greasy, and it was plainly no act. The fat man had taken a bath, that was plain to see, nor was there any way he could have profited by having Sid sink his money into volatilities.

If Khalid had come back later and done it, why was he dead? Or was he really dead? Had he somehow faked his death? But how could he have profited from buying huge amounts of stock in dying companies? No, Khalid had been paid off for his losses in a pound of lead this morning, as a lesson to the next guy entrusted with the terrorists' money. No, Khalid would never ride another camel, or another young Unbeliever again.

Unbeliever. Buchanan looked down at the couch, still stained with male ejaculations and female secretions. She had been here, asleep over there with her belly filled with the semen of three men, the same three men who were now destroyed by the events of the preceding day. Had she really been asleep? He wondered. He had not logged off after showing the computer file to his two associates. Could she have been listening? Did she really hate them enough to do this to them, after her countless orgasms and cries of joy? Of course, women said no, but they really meant yes, didn't they? She had loved it, hadn't she, all those big cocks sliding up into her tight pussy?

He looked again at the couch. She had hated it, and she had found a way to get even for the time before when he had seduced her in bed with her own husband and the time when he had shared her with the other two men. For fuck sakes! She had already set him up for a fall when he had brought her to his room on Friday morning! When Harry had called and she was sitting on his cock, she had known what Harry was talking about. Because she had done it. The bitch had done it! To him! If it weren't so horrible, so final, so devastating, it would have been funny. In one fell swoop she had avenged herself on the three of them.

Buchanan looked up at Fields. He was wiping his cheek with a handkerchief, trembling and breathing heavily, looking pitiful. To Buchanan, it was not the biggest surprise in the world when Fields grabbed his chest and fell over.

He was looking at the VDU, at the email that had been sent on Friday morning and being read by Harry Wickes just as he was easing his big cock into Desirée Denning's wet vagina. Besides the numbers that didn't add up, which the broker had had to reconcile, there was something else that didn't look quite right. There. There it was. She had corrected his spelling. The fastidious little bitch had corrected two misspelled words, words he had always spelled differently.

He looked up. The paramedics were wheeling Reg Fields out, performing CPR. Buchanan wasn't accompanying the fat man to the ambulance. He was already flat-lining and there was little hope. Let the hospital break the news to his wife. Whether they would let her keep the life insurance money, with all the huge liabilities the fat man now had, was another question.

Score two now for Desirée.

What was he going to do now? He couldn't let the little bitch get away with what she had done. First, he would have to see Mark Denning ruined, and there were a dozen ways to accomplish that, but she would have to pay with her life. But slowly. Maybe a few years in an African brothel would do. Sure, her father was rich and powerful, now much richer than Buchanan, but he would never know. Even poor men could get revenge. Desirée herself had done it for free.

As for Buchanan, he now had to figure out how to get himself out of this mess. The stock exchange would have this house before long. He wished he had more squirreled away in Bermuda. But he was smart, much smarter than either Khalid al-Mazkum or Reg Fields, and he would make a comeback. Then little Desirée, and her naïve husband, would be dog meat. All he needed to do was set up some shell corporations and get some people to front for him. Build up his strength and get straight with some of his investors. Most of the money he had lost had been his own. It had been a decision born out of greed on one hand--he had wanted all the profits for himself--and on the other the necessity to be discreet about his inside information.

He was making plans when the door to the study opened.

"Nigel, bring me a lobster sandwich," he said.

For a long moment there was no reply, so he finally looked up. It was not the butler, but a man he had never seen before, a swarthy man who looked very much like Khalid al-Mazkum.

"Mr. Buchanan."

"Yes?" Sid said, beginning to rise.

"A message from my brother Khalid," the man said, bringing an automatic pistol fitted with a silencer out of his jacket.

Buchanan was about to make a hasty plea for mercy when the gun popped and put a bullet through his throat. The next one hit him squarely in the solar plexus and slammed him back into his expensive, leather chair.

They had immobilized his upper body so as not to tear the newly stitched wound, and the back of his thigh was incredibly sore because of the flesh he had lost there. He would need physiotherapy and lots of exercise before he could get back on the trail of the two remaining dogs, but hunt them he would, for Devereaux had raised the bounty on Lobo and Bruno astronomically. Of course, with Priscilla gone he had little else to do with his considerable fortune and his revenge would one day be sweet.

Of course, there were Rodney's pictures that told a story Devereaux would not be pleased to learn, those showing Clete shooting the now-dead girl with his revolver. He had blamed her wounds on dead Billy Canning, and the rich ranch owner had given him a check for a hundred thousand dollars without much thinking about it. Accompanied by a weeping, distraught Robyn Young, he had paid his respects and thanked the sheriff, who felt himself nonetheless to have been within his duty to stop the crazed auburn-haired beauty from murdering Desirée and him. Besides, the money was for the dogs, and not for keeping Priscilla alive. She had essentially committed suicide by her evil acts.

Still, Clete had coerced Rodney into giving him the negatives of the two photos that showed him firing and hitting Priscilla.

Clete could still smile through his pain. Nancy had just spent a lot of time with him, and had told him she thought she was pregnant and was going to the pharmacy for a home test. The idea of fatherhood had raised his spirits and they had immediately begun making plans for a quick wedding, to be carried out before he left the hospital. A call to Nancy's uncle and some bold negotiating on his part had secured a deal with the family over the abandoned Pace mansion. If Clete put up the money from his bounty to either dig a new well or have water piped in, he would be allowed a long lease on the property, which he now thought would be a good place to raise the brood that they appeared to have already started with Nancy.

He knew now that his obsession with Desirée was insane, and he felt his love for Nancy renewed by thoughts of his hopes for the future. In spite of his race, he was a respectable citizen now, a local hero, and perhaps a national one. He had had calls today in conjunction with Rodney's syndicated accounts of the Pickford's Meadows saga. The graphic photographs of yesterday's massacre had had to be sanitized for public distribution, and Clete had laughed to see the faces of the naked women victims and their private parts covered with big black rectangles.

Amazingly, and laughably, Mark Denning had no knowledge of what had happened to his wife, nor of the brief, passionate affair she had had with Clete. Except for the unfortunate episode when Lobo had invaded their bedroom in the middle of their love-making and taken the bride for himself, Mark believed his Desirée to be completely faithful. Perhaps she was, for she had never actually sought sex with anyone outside of her marriage. And, she had told Clete, while holding him and waiting for the ambulance, that the time they had had sex at the Pace mansion had been because she had been abducted there by Sam and Billy. She had begged him not to tell Mark about any of it.

So, in spite of his pain, that kept him from moving any faster than a snail, Clete was reasonably content. He had a nest egg, a great home to move into, respect and a job in the community, a wife soon-to-be, and offspring on the way. There was no reason why he should allow his obsession with Desirée to upset that any longer. He would simply have to learn to live without her.

He hoped it was a son. It had to be a son! Sure, he would look a little pale, like his white mother, but he would mainly look like his father, Clete had decided. But it was something that would tie him to the respectability of the old Pace family, the longest-resident members of Pickford's Meadows, since that great mansion had been built in the heyday of the region.

Clete sighed, smiled, and relaxed. His struggle, it seemed, was over.

When the door slowly opened, he raised his head. Had Nancy forgotten something?

Remembering his resolution made just a few minutes before, Clete tried not to smile when he saw Desirée enter, wearing a light, powder blue summer dress. She was radiant, clean and scrubbed to a radiant glow, with no sign of the sperm-smeared and blood spattered girl he had last seen as they moved him into the ambulance. Her glowing blue eyes were sparkling and clear, though downcast shyly as she crossed from the door to the bed. He watched her attentively as she stopped there and laid a hand on the mattress beside his leg.

"I--" she started, then swallowed and started again, her eyes looking at that hand. "I had to see you, Sheriff Anderson. Clete. I had to come and thank you and see how you were doing."

He smiled. "Well, here I am." His uninjured free arm gestured downward. "All that's left."

He saw a tear streak her cheek. "You saved my life, Clete. If it hadn't been for you, I would never have come back from that forest. Those men--"

"You told me about them, remember?"

"Yes, I'm sorry."

"You did what you had to do. How's Mark?"

She smiled slowly. "Just fine. Sore feet, but just fine. We're going to get started on the family now soon. You know--"

"I know what you mean," he whispered conspiratorially. "Keep it under your hat, but I think Nancy's pregnant. She thinks she is."

"Congratulations," she said, inadvertently putting her hand on his leg. "I wish you all the best." Then she noticed her hand, and withdrew it. "Excuse me."

He caught her hand as she moved it. "No, it's okay." He felt the familiar, uncontrollable churning that Desirée always evoked in him, and his stirring cock made a tent at the junction of his legs. Desirée saw it, remembered what it had done to her, and couldn't tear her gaze away. Clete pulled her hand gently and placed it over his huge cock, and, wonder of wonders, her fingers closed around it, though unable to completely encircle it.

Her hand moved slowly, stroking it up and down while a wet spot began to form on the sheet where it peaked. Glancing up into his eyes, she moved her hand under the cover and grasped the great shaft, feeling the throbbing veins, the bristly hair on the scrotum holding the big, swollen balls. Her hands moved upward, felt the exposed, wide-flanged corona, slippery with his pre- seminal fluid, and she used her thumb to smear it over the tip, raising a groan from his open lips. His big, black hand reached out, running up inside her thighs to the soft, damp center strip of her silk panties, pressed the thin material into her vulval slit to find the nub of her clitoris.

"Oh," she whispered, almost inaudibly, pressing her other hand to her full, swelling breasts, feeling the heat rise to her loins and bosom. Her knees began to tremble, and she squatted slightly to open her thighs while his finger slipped inside to the dripping split of her vagina, slipped inside the honeyed hole of her sex.

Desirée, losing control in a way she had not expected she would, and taking initiative for the first time in her life, lifted the sheet, looking down at the frightening black length of his two-and-a-half-inch thick cock. Making low, purring sounds in her throat, she bent her head forward and, holding the huge shaft in both hands, opened her mouth and slid her shining wet, red lips over the head of his cock.

"Dez!" he groaned, feeling her suck the big bulge into her mouth to twirl her tongue all around the throbbing, helmet-shaped glans, trying to work the tip into the hole in the end. Clete arched his back, pushing two fingers into her juicy pussy, feeling her muscles tighten and suck the digits up into her.

What she was doing with her mouth turned out to be inadequate, for his cockhead was much too big for her mouth and the cock itself too thick to even begin to go into her throat, as she had read about in the sex manual. She tried to give him as much pleasure as she could, but she had to stop when her breath ran out. She straightened up, pushing her pussy against his working hand, her eyes glassy, and a shy smile on her face.

"I can never see you again," she said softly. "Not like this. I'm Mrs. Denning, and Mr. Denning has a political career. Mrs. Denning loves Mr. Denning and wants to be his wife forever." She looked at him directly with those wide, soft eyes, hope in them that he would understand. A tiny drop of his fluid glistened on her lower lip, and her tongue lapped it away. She smiled quietly, and waited.

Clete spoke in a near whisper. "Never again, Desirée."

She nodded and he felt her pussy suddenly grow wetter. Her shaking hands moved up under her dress and she slid her damp panties over the ripe hump of her buttocks and he drew them down her thighs. She stepped out of them and while his hand played in the crease of her vulva and stroked her burning clit, her hands moved to her neck and unbuttoned the front of her dress, down to her navel. The clasp of her bra was between the cups and they parted under her fingers, letting her sculpted breasts spring out, the wondrous, pink nipples bobbing with her breathing that was coming throaty and faster. Leaning over him, she let him mouth her tautly hanging tits, closing her eyes as the sensations shot through her while his fingers dipped into her sweet cunt. Her hand moved inexpertly up and down his penis, a trail of goo dripping onto her white hand.

"I can't move," he groaned, and she moved her face to his, pressing her mouth to his thick lips, and enjoying the way his tongue worked against her cheeks and halfway down her throat. She felt possessed by this powerful man, though on his back and unable to move, and felt the heat grow in her. She hoped that Mark would never find out, that if he did he would understand, but more than anything that, when he next held her in his arms, he would possess her totally and completely, the way she felt it happening now.

Clete had three fingers stretching her tight pussy, which would need a lot of work before it was wide enough for any large cock to enter comfortably, with the fourth finger deep in her asshole. She was flexing her thighs, rising up and down, frigging herself on his hand, his palm filling with her warm lubricant. But it was not enough.

Desirée drew back and very carefully put her left knee up on the bed, then lifted the right and swung it over him, straddling his hips and carefully placing it between his side and his immobile left hand.