She stood in front of the apartment
building, weighing up whether to use the key. The bright sunlight
bouncing off the clinical white walls and reflecting back in the
glare of the Mediterranean sea was giving her a headache, despite
her oversized sunglasses.
It had been a long flight from Chicago to
the South of France, and she still did not know what she was doing
here. But it was too late for her to walk away now.
She clutched her cellphone in one hand,
ready to speed-dial her friend Amy in case there was a problem.
She had told no one other than Amy exactly
why she was here: she figured they would have talked her out of it
long before she accepted the airline ticket and the directions to
the apartment. She would have done the same if one of them had come
to her with some crazy story about a free holiday offered by
someone she had never met.
Or maybe she wasn't crazy. The warm breeze
fluttered her sheer chiffon skirt against her bare brown legs and
blew teasingly down the back of her neck, where she had tied her
long, tawny mane back for the long trip. Chicago had been suffering
from an unseasonable cold snap, but here in France, the weather was
perfect.
She took a deep breath and punched in the
entry code for the apartment's main door.
Once inside, the air conditioning and the
marble floor cast a slight chill which caused her arms to come up
in goosebumps. She shivered, despite the sunshine outside.
The atrium was luxurious, with wooden
panelling and Persian carpets. The elevator doors slid open
noiselessly and Megan stepped inside.
The apartment was on the third floor, and
her footsteps were noiseless in the thick carpet of the
corridor.
Her heart pounding, she turned the key in
the lock, her thumb still firmly on speed-dial.
She opened the door and stepped inside. The
key worked: that was a good start. It had crossed her mind that the
whole thing might be an elaborate hoax and she would turn up in
France without knowing a soul and a word of French, with nowhere to
stay and a maxed-out credit card. She had no Plan B: other girls
might have Googled the location of the nearest Youth Hostel, but
Megan did not do plans and she definitely did not do Youth
Hostels.
The door opened directly into the living
room. The apartment was compact, but luxurious, and she could see
from where she stood that she was alone - unless the mysterious
Marc was hiding in a closet, of course.
She let out a sigh of relief and kicked off
her sandals, her feet enjoying the cool of the tiled floor. The
window was open and the sea breeze whispered against her skin.
As promised in the photographs she had been
sent, the bathroom and bedroom matched the discreet opulence of all
she had seen so far. A huge tub and a pile of fluffy white towels
reminded her of what she needed after the long flight and she
stepped towards the bathroom, shedding her skirt and T-shirt as she
went.
She checked herself out in the full-length
mirror as she turned on the hot water, cupping her full breasts in
her hands and shaking her loose curls free over her shoulders. She
had the taut, tanned curves and narrow hips of a teenager, yet now,
at twenty-two, there was something knowing in her hazel eyes that
offset the girlish sprinkling of freckles over her cute nose and
advertised that she was very definitely a woman.
While the tub was filling, she wandered over
to the window and looked out at the beach. It looked pretty much
like any other golden sand beach she had ever seen, except for one
thing: everyone was naked.
Ignoring the older men and women with their
wrinkled skin and decidedly unsexy paunches, she fixed her gaze on
a couple of young guys playing beach volleyball. Northern
Europeans, she decided, probably Swedes. Their tanned six-foot
frames were slick with sweat, and their cocks were massive, even in
their unexcited state.
Unconsciously, her hand slid down and she
began to finger
Craig Buckhout, Abbagail Shaw, Patrick Gantt