wooden floor of the small hallway. He i stripped his own clothing as swiftly, facing her, and she stared hungrily as every exquisite detail of his body was revealed.
She had never dreamt that a man's body could be so beautiful. Where other men were gross and hairy, inflamed and knotted with veins, he. was smooth and perfect. She felt that she could stare at him forever, but at the same time she knew that if she did not instantly feel him against her she would scream aloud with frustration, and she flung herself naked against his naked chest.
She pressed hard to him, and his body was firm and sleek and hot. Yet the hair on his chest was unbearably harsh against the sensitive engorged tips of her breasts. She moaned and covered his lips with hers to prevent herself screaming out her desperate need.
He picked her up, and she felt herself weightless in his arms, and he carried her to the bed without breaking the clinging suction of their mouths, one upon the other.
As she came awake, Isabella was aware of an overwhelming sense of well-being. She felt as though she might burst with joy. Her body tingled as though every separate muscle and nerve had a life of its own.
For long moments, she could not understand what had happened to her. She lay with her eyes closed, clinging to the moment. She knew that such a magical sensation must be evanescent, but she did not want it ever to end.
Then slowly she was aware of the man musk in her nostrils and the taste of his mouth that still lingered on her tongue. She felt the ache where he had been deep in her body and the heat of the pink rash that his beard had raised on the sensitive skin around her lips. She savoured it all, small pain transmuted into deep and fulfilling pleasure.
Then, with a sense of fresh wonder, the thought imploded into her consciousness: I'm in love! And she came fully awake. Her joy was almost delirious.
She sat up quickly, and the sheet dropped to her waist. 'Ramsey,' she said, and the indentation of his head was impressed upon the pillow beside hers.
A single strand of dark body hair was coiled like a watch-spring on the white sheet. She reached for it and discovered that the sheet was cool, the heat of his body long since dissipated, and she felt her joy sink into despair.
'Ramsey.' She slipped from the bed and padded on bare feet to the bathroom.
he door was ajar, and the bathroom was empty. Once again he had gone, and she stood naked in the middle of the floor and looked around her with dismay.
He was like a cat. His stealth was eerie, and a rash of tiny goose-pimples arose around her nipples. She hugged herself and shivered.
Then she saw the note on the bedside table. It was a single sheet of expensive cream-coloured paper embossed with his family crest. He had weighted it down with her key-ring, the keys to her Mini. She snatched it up eagerly. There was no salutation.
You are an extraordinary woman, and yet when you sleep you look like a child, a beautiful innocent child. I could not bear to wake you. I could hardly bear to leave you, but I must.
If you can come to MAlaga with me for the weekend, meet me here at nine tomorrow morning. You will need your passport, but do not bother with pyjamas.
Ramsey She chuckled with delight and relief, all the lightness -of her waking mood recaptured. She reread the note; the paper was smooth and cool as marble and had a sensuous feel under her fingertips. His skin had been as smooth, and her eyes turned dreamy and reflective as tiny disjointed episodes from the night replayed in her mind.
He had been far beyond all her previous experience. With the others, even the most skilled and patient and perceptive of them, she had always been aware of their separate bodies, their divergent existences, of the deliberate attempts to please and to reciprocate. With Ramsey, there 48 had been no division. It was almost as though he had taken over her mind as well as her body. They had blended into each other in some semidivine osmotic process; their flesh and their minds had become one.
So many times during the night, she had believed that they had reached the pinnacle together, only to discover that they were still upon the foothills and before them towered an alp and then another and another. Each higher and more magnificent than the last. There had been no end to it, only at last the oblivion of sleep so deep that it had been like dying, and a resurrection into this new charmed and joyous existence.
'I'm in love,' she whispered in almost religious awe, and she looked down on her own body, amazed that such a frail vessel could contain so much happiness, such abundant emotion.
Then she noticed'her wristwatch lying beside her car keys on the bedside table.
'Oh my Godv she breathed. It was half-past ten. 'Daddy's lunch!' And she leapt to her feet and flew to the bathroom. On the washbasin, Ramsey had placed a brand-new toothbrush still in its sealed plastic container for her, and this small kindness touched her out of all proportion.
She hummed the lyric of 'Faraway Places' through a mouthful of foaming toothpaste.
She decided there was just time for a quick bath, and she lay in the hot water and thought about Ramsey and found there was a great void in her body aching for him to fill it.
'Enough of that, girl,' she laughed at herself. 'With a wave of his magic wand, he has transformed you into a shameless little raver.' She jumped out of the bath and reached for the towel. It was still damp from his body, and she pressed a fold of it over her mouth and nose, and inhaled the faint but distinctive aroma of his skin. It excited her all over again.
'Stop itv she commanded herself in the steamy mirror. 'You have to be at Trafalgar Square in an hour.'
She was just about to let herself out of the flat when she exclaimed again, and darted back into the bathroom. She rummaged in her sequinned handbag for the Ovanon pills in their calendar-marked pack and broke one out of its sealed compartment.
She placed the tiny white capsule on her tongue while she ran half a tooth-mug of water from the tap and then saluted her image in the mirror with the raised glass.
'To life, love and freedom,' she said, 'and to many happy returns.' And washed down the pill.
Blood sports did not revolt Isabella Courtney. Her father had always been a hunter, and the walls of Weltevreden, their home at the Cape of Good Hope, were decorated with trophies of the chase. Amongst the family assets was a safari company that owned a huge hunting concession in the Zambezi valley.
Only the previous year she had spent an idyllic fortnight in that enchanted wilderness with her elder brother, Sean Courtney, who was a licensed professional hunter and ran the outfit for Courtney Enterprises. On a number of occasions Isabella herself had ridden to hounds at Harriet Beauchamp's invitation. Isabella was a passable shot with the lovely little gold- engraved Holland & Holland 20-PUge shotgun that her father had givenher for her seventeenth birthday. With it she had shot snipe in the Okavango Delta, sand grouse in the Karoo, duck and geese on the great Zambezi, grouse on the highland moors, and pheasant, woodcock and partridge on some of the great English estates to which she and the ambassador had been invited.
She felt no offence at the sight of blood deliberately spilled, and in addition she had inherited her fair share of the family's gambling instinct, so the contest intrigued her.
This was the second day, and the original field of nearly three hundred contestants had been whittled down to two, for it was a 'one miss and out' and a 'winner take all' competition. The entrance fee was one thousand US dollars 5a head, so there was well over a quarter of a million in the pot, and the tension was as hot and thick as minestrone soup as the American went to the plate.
He and Ramsey Machado were the only two remaining contestants and they had shot level for the last twenty-three rounds. Finally, to break the deadlock and decide the winner, the Spanish judges had decreed that double birds must be taken from now on.
The American was a full-time professional. He followed the circuit in Spain and Portugal and Mexico and South America, and until last year in Monaco.
Now, however, the tournaments had been banned in that tiny principality, after a mortally wounded pigeon had escaped from the stadium and winged its way over the palace walls to crash at last on to Princess Grace's tea-table, spraying the lace table-cloth and the ladies'tea-gowns with its blood. Prince Rainier had heard the screams halfway across his tiny realm, and that was the end of live pigeon tournaments in Monaco.
The American was Isabella's age, not yet twenty-five years old, but his income was reputed to be well over a hundred thousand dollars a year. He was shooting a 12-gauge 'side by side' that had been made by that legendary gunsmith James Manton almost a century ago. Of course, the weapon had been rebarrelled and proofed to accommodate the longer modern cartridges and smokeless powders. However, the stock and action, complete with the engraved hammers, were original and retained the marvelous balance and pointability that old man James had built into it.
The young American took his stance on the plate, cocked the hammers, tucked the butt-stock under his right armpit, and pointed the double muzzles just over the centre of the semicircle of five woven wicker baskets that were placed thirty yards from where he stood.
Each basket contained a live pigeon. They were the feral birds of the type that live in flocks in the centre of
