In Too Deep (31 page)

 

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The leading imprint of women’s sexy fiction is back – and it’s better than ever!

Turn the page to read the first chapter of Portia da Costa’s classic erotic novel,
The Stranger
. . .

Chapter One
The Man in the River

There was a storm coming.

Claudia Marwood looked up at the sky, and seeing only its high, blue canopy pasted with a thin scattering of hazy gauze-like cloud, she wondered why she found the lovely sight portentous. It was a perfect summer’s day – a classic – yet something inside her sensed the distant threat of thunder. She couldn’t hear or see it, yet she knew it was on its way.

Idiot!

She paused in the scullery, eyeing her umbrella and the light cotton jacket she sometimes wore in the garden on cooler days. Don’t be a wimp! she told herself firmly, taking only a broad straw sun hat with a yellow ribbon before stepping out on to the terrazzo tiled patio at the back of her house. If it does rain, you’ll get wet. So what? It won’t kill you!

As she crossed the lawn, adjusting the angle of her hat as she went, she analysed her burst of small-scale bravado. She felt wild, sort of, and slightly daring. It suddenly dawned on her that she was actually very happy.

What a relief! At last! Striding out faster, almost skipping, she enjoyed the spring of the immaculately cut turf beneath her sandal-clad feet, then felt faintly dizzy for a second as she inhaled the rich odours from her abundantly stocked flowerbeds. The roses, the sweet peas, the scented shrubs.

Good God, it was summer, she was as fit as a fiddle, she had no commitments and there was nothing at all that she
had
to do! The wood pigeons were cooing while honey bees were hovering over the roses and the pelargoniums, and she too shared their unquestioning contentment.

At the bottom of the garden a little lychgate led through into the copse beyond, and the path beyond it led down towards the river. As Claudia passed through, she felt another rush of satisfaction. This was also her land and she could enjoy her stroll in perfect peace without meeting other walkers. This new feeling of hers had a delicate quality to it, and she wanted to examine and analyse it, not have it popped like a balloon before she could savour it. She would be wanting new people around her soon, she was sure of that, but for now she felt more comfortable alone or with just her closer friends.

The copse on a summer’s afternoon was a magical place to be alone. The dappled shade was green and fresh and cool; alive, yet tranquil, and dense with a brooding quality of expectancy. It was the sort of place one might imagine sprites and elves could be found, although it was only the pigeons, the rustling leaves and the nearby river that chattered to each other.

Not that it hadn’t been a nice place for company too, she thought, waiting for a pang of pain, then smiling when, thankfully, it didn’t come. Only happy memories surfaced. Herself and Gerald, on another post-prandial summer walk, both tipsy on good wine and feeling silly and rather randy. They had rolled in the undergrowth and actually fucked here, beneath an old tree that stood to her right. They had climaxed noisily among the ants and twigs and mud.

We were good together, she thought, taken all round. Her smile turned wistful. Of course, there had been rough patches – the difference in their ages and Gerald’s devotion to business matters had meant that frantic fucks in the bushes were quite infrequent – but it was only the cheerful times that were printed in her memory. She imagined she could see where the grass and the ferns had been squashed down and feel the good earth beneath her back as she celebrated life with her lover, her husband.

But it wouldn’t be with Gerald the next time, would it? Her dear old husband was dead, and had been for eight months. She would have a new lover in the copse one of these days, though, when the time was right. And her husband’s smiling shade would cheer them on.

Don’t be weird, Claudia, she instructed herself, treading boldly onward, and stepping over the occasional root or straggling creeper that had strayed across the path. In the relative quiet of the woodland bower, she gradually became aware that the water sounds ahead were changing. The leisurely flow of the river was still a reassuring susurration in the background, but there was a louder, more arrhythmic splashing too – the sound made by a human occupation of the water. Where the river bellied out, diverted by an island of rocks, there was a wide, inviting pond, and from the sound of things, someone was bathing there.

Claudia frowned. It wasn’t that she begrudged people access to the land – it wasn’t clearly marked as private property or fenced off in any way. It was just that she felt protective of her hard-won little store of equilibrium and her sudden and self-nurtured bud of happiness.

Despite her qualms, though, she moved on. You’re going to have to break out some time, Mrs Marwood, she told herself, and it might as well be now. She could almost feel Gerald behind her, pushing her forward.

But just as she was about to burst into the clearing and reveal herself, a dose of sixth sense told her to hold back. Slipping her hat off, she held herself quite still, her breathing shallow, then risked putting out a hand to draw aside the greenery and take a peek into the open area beyond.

Sitting on a rock where she often sat herself to dangle her feet in the pool, was a naked man, dangling his feet in the pool. Tall and young looking, he had a longish mop of curly mid-brown hair, and he was gazing down intently into the stiller area of water around his ankles. Whatever he saw there had produced a frown on his face.

Once she had got over the initial shock of the young man’s nudity, Claudia allowed herself to breathe properly again and study his appearance more closely. He was very handsome, she quickly realised. Quite beautiful, in an eccentric sort of way. But there was something wrong, something disturbing or distressing him. He had obviously been responsible for the splashing she had heard, because his pale skin was gleaming with water, but now he was staring, in a fugue, at his own reflection. His angular but boyish face was certainly one Claudia would have happily stared at for as long as he would allow, yet the manner in which he was contemplating himself was in no way narcissistic. More than anything, he looked worried to death – almost afraid of his own attractive features.

And you’ve taken a beating too, haven’t you, stranger? thought Claudia, noting that the young man’s smooth, lightly muscled body sported several spectacular bruises in the area of his ribs and thighs. As he put up a hand and brushed his soft, wild hair back off his brow, she saw that there was also a nasty red graze on his temple. When he touched this gingerly and winced, she winced with him, but when, after a pause, he rose slowly and gracefully to his feet, what she saw made her forget all thoughts of pain.