“Well, of course it does, silly,” she said, dispatching what was left of her clothing. “Trust me. He won’t mind.”
“But I’ve never —”
Brandy pressed her finger to his lips. Her touch was soft and her skin smelled sweet and wonderful. The intoxicating cocktail of perfume, cocaine, adrenaline, and hormones heated him to his core, burning away any fragments of resistance he once had, leaving him weak.
Brandy knew she had him. She reached in and pulled his T-shirt off over his head and shoved him back onto his pillow.
She unbuttoned his jeans and as Aaron started to close his eyes, something outside caught his attention and his heart leaped. He sat up and checked the window. They were clear of the locks!
“Get dressed,” he said, sitting up. “We’re through the first locks. We’re on Lake Gatun.”
Brandy sat up with her hands covering her breasts. “What? Already? But we were just getting started.”
“There’s no time,” Aaron said. He crawled off the bed and buttoned his pants and pulled on his shirt.
“Please don’t do this,” Brandy said innocently. “I can be quick.”
“I’m really sorry, Brandy,” Aaron said. “But Jason will be looking for you.” He handed Brandy her sandals.
Dazed and embarrassed, Brandy dressed and then checked herself in the mirror. She had never been snubbed by a man before, and she didn’t like the way it felt. Not one bit. Was she losing her sexuality? Did she cross some kind of line at twenty-seven? Had Aaron really wanted her? Or did she just imagine it all?
She made a few quick adjustments to her makeup, then gave herself a kiss in the mirror and told herself, I’m smart enough to know when I’ve been insulted… but I’m sexy enough not to care!
As she stepped out of Aaron’s cabin, she gave him a look that said, You missed your chance, Mister. You were about to go where most men only dream of going!
Chapter 30
Aaron watched Brandy leave, his crotch aching from the thought of what they had almost done. I guess that mystery’s going to remain a mystery, he thought sadly. Exhausted, yet still buzzing from the cocaine, he threw back a couple of shots of Jack Daniels and lay down on his bed, and it wasn’t long before he fell asleep again.
“Wake up you useless sod!” a man’s voice boomed.
Aaron started and opened his eyes, frightened and confused. Where the hell am I? he thought, glancing around in wide-eyed panic. In the dim light he could make out what looked like the corroded bars of a cell door in a medieval dungeon.
The man hammered hard on the bars with what sounded like a wooden club, shattering Aaron’s eardrums. “You walk at noon!” the man bellowed with the power of five men combined. Then, without another word, the man’s heavy footsteps receded into the distance.
Perspiration stood in hot beads upon Aaron’s forehead as ice water surged through his veins. He looked down at himself and found that he was dressed in some sort of tattered robe, woven from a coarse serge. His feet were bare and crusted with filth.
The smell of human waste hung heavily in the air, and he could see that he was indeed in some sort of dungeon. The walls were of heavy, stacked stone, glistening with moisture, and polished from centuries of human agony. Bolted to one of them was the bunk on which he sat, a wrought-iron platform supported by two heavy chains. A woven-straw mat served as his only bedding.
Above the bunk a small window was cut high into the wall. Aaron quickly determined that even if he could reach it, which he could not, it would be too narrow for him to pass through.
A thin shaft of sunlight angled down across the dank space, illuminating a small patch on the floor, revealing a swarm of roaches feeding on a scrap of something disgusting.
Aaron stood up from his bunk, but the pavers underfoot were treacherous with slime, and in the gloom he tripped on the torn hem of his robe and fell hard to the stone floor.
From his prone position, he noticed something startling: although his chest and hands were in contact with the stone, his chin and face appeared to be suspended in cold, thin air. He reached out in front of him and shuddered at finding nothing but empty space. His nostrils drew in the damp, disgusting smell of mold and decaying flesh, nearly gagging him. He spat into the darkness, waiting several seconds before hearing the faint sound of spittle hitting water. A cold thrill of terror arced up his spine. Through a stroke of pure dumb luck, he had escaped the horror of falling headlong into some sort of deep well, or pit. His malevolent captors had thoughtfully provided him more than just a bellowing thug with a club with which to facilitate his untimely doom, and he considered himself exceedingly fortunate to have avoided what he hoped was the more terrifying of the two options.
He edged back from the well, finding it difficult to maintain enough grip with his hands to regain his feet. He groped backward and grasped the chain suspending the low bunk from the wall, managing to pull himself up.
He lay back down on the mat and shut his eyes tightly, hoping to shut out the ghastly nightmare. This can’t be happening, he cried to himself. This can’t possibly be happening!
But every time he dared open his eyes, he was greeted by the same forbidding surroundings.
After tossing blindly on the iron bunk for what felt like hours, Aaron heard the dismal echo of heavy footsteps in the corridor.
He froze, tucking his legs up under his arms, straining to see through the bars into the corridor beyond.
KaClank!
The turnkey had unlocked the heavy lock on the cell door. He swung the iron gate wide and stepped into the narrow shaft of light. A giant of a man, the jailer stood seven feet at the shoulders, with the girth of an ox. He wore a leather vest with no shirt, revealing a massive chest soaked with sweat and crisscrossed with jagged scars. In lieu of pants he wore a rough leather kilt, held in place by a wide belt from which hung a long, straight sword and a coiled, leather whip. Legs like pier pilings ended in huge troll feet wrapped in leather.
“The sun is high,” he boomed. “Come with me.” He stepped into the hall and waited.
Aaron hesitated, frightfully perplexed. None of this made any sense, but strain as he may, he couldn’t wake himself. Knowing of no other option but to go with the man, he stood up from the bunk, pulled up the hem of his robe, and shuffled cautiously past the pit toward the door.
Aaron followed the towering goon down a dark, narrow, stone corridor, hewn from and polished to the same smooth finish as the stone in his cell. Wrought-iron torches mounted at intervals along the way providing what little light there was.
They passed other cells, and once again the sour stench of decay filled Aaron’s nostrils. Most of the cells appeared to be empty, but the ones that were occupied held sights that would chill a coroner’s blood — sights that Aaron would be long to forget.
In one cell Aaron saw a nude woman with long, red hair, lying on her back strapped to an evil looking instrument of torture. As he passed, she turned her head and stared at him through blood-red eyes. Then she hissed at him, causing the hair on his neck to stand. He couldn’t help but imagine what the machine was designed to do to her, but he quickly pushed the horrid image out of his mind.
In another cell Aaron saw a man sitting on the stone floor dressed in rags. He held a large knife in one hand, and it looked like he was attempting to chew his own arm off — and it appeared that he was succeeding. He looked up, and Aaron saw that his face was tattooed with a flower, but where his eyes should have been, there were only dark holes through which Aaron could see the very depths of hell.