Uncut Bundle

by Susan Stephens

  “They’re slavers,” she’d whispered in horror. “They’re going to sell us.”

  Slave traders? In this century? Leanna would have laughed, but the girl added that she’d seen a news report on the white slave trade on television.

  “But who would they sell us to?” the first girl said.

  “To any son of a bitch who can afford to buy us,” the third girl had answered, her voice trembling. Then she’d added details, enough so the first girl had tossed her cookies.

  Leanna had never been the type to throw up or swoon. Ballerinas looked like fairy-tale princesses on stage but the truth was, dancing was a tough life, especially if you came to it via a publicly funded dance program instead of some expensive Manhattan studio.

  While one girl vomited and the other shivered, she’d fought the ropes that bound her. But their captors burst in, held them down and injected something into their arms. She’d come to in this horrid cell, alone, knowing she’d been sold…

  Knowing it was only a matter of time before her owner claimed her.

  Now, that time had come.

  The giants dragged her down a long corridor that stank of sweat and human misery. They shoved her into a small room with stained concrete walls and a drain in the middle of the floor, and slammed the door behind her. She heard the sound of a bolt sliding into place but she threw herself at the door anyway, pounding it with her fists until her knuckles hurt.

  Then she slumped to the cold floor, looked at the stained walls, at the drain. At the dark, wet stain around it.

  She buried her face in her hands.

  A long time later, she heard the bolt sliding open. Leanna began to tremble.

  “No,” she whispered to herself, “don’t let them see how scared you are.” Somehow, she knew that would only make things worse. Slowly she dragged herself to her feet and lifted her chin.

  A woman entered the room. Leanna sagged with relief. Two men with cold, dead eyes stood behind her but the woman’s bearing made it clear she was in charge.

  “Do you speak English?” Leanna asked. No reply, but that didn’t prove anything. “I hope you do,” she said, trying to sound reasonable instead of terrified, “because there’s been an awful mis—”

  “You will disrobe.”

  “You do speak English! Oh, I’m so—”

  “Leave your clothing on the floor.”

  “Listen, please! I’m a dancer. I don’t know what you think I—”

  “Do it quickly, or these men will do it for you.”

  “Do you hear me? I’m a dancer! And I’m an American citizen. My embassy—”

  “There is no embassy in Baslaam. My lord does not recognize your country.”

  “Well, he’d better. Otherwise—otherwise—” The woman jerked her head toward the men behind her. Leanna shrieked as one of them moved faster than she’d have thought he could and grabbed the neck of her T-shirt. “Stop it! Take your hands off—”

  The shirt tore to the hem. Leanna lashed out but he laughed and caught her wrists in one hand, lifting her off her feet so the other man could yank off her sneakers and her cotton trousers.

  When she was stripped to her bra and panties, they flung her to the floor. Leanna scrambled toward the wall and screwed her eyes shut. Maybe she was dreaming. She had to be dreaming.

  This couldn’t be real, couldn’t be real, couldn’t be—

  She shrieked as a gusher of warm water hit her in the face. Her eyes flew open. A scraggly line of serving-women surrounded her. Some held steaming pitchers, some held soap and towels. The men had dragged in an enormous wooden vessel…

  A tub?

  “Take off your undergarments,” the woman in charge snapped. “Bathe yourself well. If you are not clean enough, you will be punished. My lord, the sultan Asaad, will not tolerate filth.”

  Leanna blinked. She was in an improvised bathroom. That was the reason for the drain in the floor.

  A bubble of hysterical laughter rose in her throat.

  The ruler of this godforsaken place had bought her, had her thrown into a vermin-infested hole in the ground. He was going to make her into his newest sex toy.

  But first, she had to scrub behind her ears.

  Suddenly everything that had happened, that was happening, seemed unbelievable. Leanna let the laughter out. Peals of it. The servant women stared at her in disbelief. One giggled and slapped her hand over her mouth, but not quickly enough. The woman in charge slapped the one who’d dared laugh, barked an order, then rounded on Leanna in rage.

  “Perhaps you would like to appear before my lord beaten black and blue!”

  Leanna looked her tormentor in the eye. She was tired of being afraid, tired of behaving like a whipped dog. Besides, all things considered, what could she possibly lose?

  “Perhaps you’d like to appear before him and explain how you managed to damage the merchandise.”

  The woman blanched. Leanna’s heart was racing but she smiled coolly.

  “Tell your goons to get lost and I’ll get into that tub.”

  Stalemate, but only for a few seconds. Then the woman snarled a command and the men marched out of the room.

  Leanna took off her bra and panties, stepped into the tub, eased down in the hot water and let it soothe her body while her brain worked feverishly to come up with an escape plan.

  Unfortunately, by the time she was pronounced clean enough for the sultan of Baslaam, she still hadn’t thought of anything. Improvisation was for actors, not for classically-trained dancers.

  But she’d never been a coward.

  If she had to, she’d die proving it.

  CHAPTER TWO

  CAM had seen a lot of places in upheaval.

  Baslaam wasn’t in upheaval. It was in collapse. It didn’t take training as a spy to see that.

  No people. No vehicles. A gray sky, filled with plumes of smoke. And the vultures, scores of them, circling overhead.

  Things were not going well in the sultanate, he thought grimly.

  Adair offered no explanations. Cam, nobody’s fool, didn’t request any. All he kept thinking was that the pistol he’d secreted in his briefcase might end up being useful.

  The sultan was waiting for him in a marble hall with ceilings easily twenty feet high. He sat on a gold throne elevated on a silver platform, and he sure as hell wasn’t the man Avery had described.

  The sultan, his father had told him, was in his eighties. Small. Wiry. Hard-eyed and determined.

  The man on the throne was in his forties. He was big. Huge, really, a mass of muscle just starting to turn to fat. The only resemblance between the picture Avery had painted and this behemoth were the eyes, but the hardness in them spoke more of cruelty than determination.

  Had there been a coup? That would explain a lot of things, including the disappearance of his father’s representative. It was a good guess the poor bastard was one of the unlucky souls attracting the attention of the vultures.

  Cam had only one real question. Why hadn’t he been disposed of, too? The man on the throne must want something of him. What? He had to find out, and do it without giving away the game.

  Adair made the introductions. “Excellency, this is Mr. Cameron Knight. Mr. Knight, this is our beloved sultan, Abdul Asaad.”

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Knight.”

  “Excellency.” Cam smiled politely. “I expected you to be older.”

  “Ah, yes. You thought you would meet my uncle. Unfortunately, Uncle passed away most unexpectedly a week ago.”

  “You have my sympathy.”

  “Thank you. We all miss him. I had similar expectations about you, Mr. Knight. I thought the man who owns Knight Oil would be much older.”

  “My father owns the company. I’m his emissary.”

  “Indeed.And what brings you to our humble nation?”

  “My father thought the sultan—I should say he thought that you,” Cam said, with a polite smile, “might prefer to discuss the final details of the contra
ct with me instead of his usual negotiator.”

  “And why would I wish that?”

  Why, indeed? “Because I have his full authority. I can come to agreement on his behalf.” Cam offered a just-between-us smile. “No middleman, as it were, to slow the process.”

  The sultan nodded. “An excellent suggestion. As it is, your predecessor and I have had some areas of disagreement. He wanted to make changes in the wording your father and I had already agreed upon.”

  Bull, Cam thought coldly, but he smiled again. “In that case, it’s a good thing I’ve come, Excellency.”

  “I am sure Adair explained that the gentleman in question has gone to visit the plains beyond the Blue Mountains.”

  “He mentioned it.”

  “It was my suggestion. I thought it might do him good to get away from the city for a while. Take a break, I think you would call it. The plains are very beautiful, this time of year.”

  The lie bore no resemblance to what Adair had said, and ended any last hope that his father’s representative might still be alive. The desire to leap onto the platform and grab the sultan by the throat was fierce.

  Cam forced a polite smile. “A fine idea. I’m sure he’s enjoying himself.”

  “Oh, I can promise that he’s getting a good rest.”

  The son of a bitch grinned from ear to ear at the double entendre. Once more, Cam fought back the desire to go for him. Outnumbered, he’d be dead before he got within ten feet.

  “While he rests,” Asaad said, “you and I can finalize things.” The sultan clapped his hands. Adair hurried forward with a pen and a sheaf of papers that Cam instantly recognized. “All it takes is your signature, Mr. Knight. So, if you would be so kind…?”

  Bingo. This was why the negotiator was dead—and why Cam was still alive. Asaad needed a signature on the dotted line to move forward with the deal.

  “Of course,” Cam said smoothly. “First, though, I’d like to get some rest. It was a long journey.”

  “Signing a document is not difficult.”

  “You’re right, it isn’t—which is why, surely, it can wait until tomorrow.”

  Asaad’s eyes narrowed but his tone remained smooth. “In that case, permit me to ease the stress of your journey. I have arranged a small celebration of welcome.”

  “I appreciate the gesture, sir, but really—”

  “Surely you will not disappoint me by turning down my hospitality.”

  The sultan’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. Was the so-called celebration part of a plan to lure Cam into compliance, or was it for more sinister reasons? Either way, Cam was trapped. The sultan had planned a party. There was no way out.

  “Mr. Knight? What do you say? Will you be my guest?”

  Cam inclined his head. “Thank you, Excellency. I would be delighted.”

  Three hours later, the festivities were finally drawing to a close.

  The evening had started with a feast. Platters of grilled meats, sweets, pastries…and bowls of other things, easily identified and grotesque, eaten by custom in decades long past.

  The first time such a course appeared, Cam felt his stomach roll. He managed a polite smile, began to shake his head—and realized that a hush had fallen over the several dozen armed men seated at the long table.

  Every eye was on him.

  The sultan raised his eyebrows.

  “This is a great delicacy, Mr. Knight—but we will understand if you are not prepared to partake of it. Not all men can be like the men of Baslaam.”

  Hell. Was this going to be a pissing contest? A Baslaamic version of “I’m tougher than you are”? If so, Cam couldn’t afford to lose. He smiled, leaned forward and scooped a ladleful of the quivering mess on his plate.

  “A delicacy, Excellency? In that case, I can’t pass it up.”

  He ate quickly, tasting slime and something even worse on his tongue, keeping his gut from rebelling by reminding himself that he’d eaten things as bad in other places. A soldier in the field couldn’t be choosy. Bugs, lizards, snakes… Protein, he told himself, that’s all this was.

  There was a perceptible murmur when he swallowed the last of the stuff. Cam smiled. Asaad didn’t smile back. His expression was ugly. The bastard had lost the first round and he didn’t like it.

  “Delicious,” Cam said politely.

  Asaad clapped his hands. A servant scurried in, carrying an oversize urn. “Since you enjoyed that so much, perhaps you would like to sample another of our delicacies. A drink, made from… Well, I won’t tell you the ingredients but I assure you, it is more potent than anything you’ve had before.” At his nod, the servant filled two cups with a brown liquid. Asaad took one, handed Cam the other. “Unless, of course, you’d rather not?”

  It was a pissing contest. Juvenile, even pathetic, but what choice did he have except to accept the challenge? Any show of weakness and he could end up keeping his father’s rep company. Asaad needed his signature but there were ways to get it that didn’t involve pretending they were all one big, happy family.

  “Mr. Knight?”

  “Excellency,” Cam said, lifting the cup to his lips. The liquid smelled like rotting fish but he’d survived worse one long night in Belarus, when he’d downed endless shots of homemade vodka in a face-off with a thickheaded guerilla leader. He held his breath, tossed his head back and drank the swill in one gulp.

  “Great stuff,” he said calmly, and held out his empty cup. Another murmur of approval filled the great hall. Asaad’s face grew dark as a thundercloud.

  “Do you ride horses, Mr. Knight?”

  Maybe the sultan was thickheaded, too. Asking a born-and-bred Texan if he rode horses was like asking a pigeon if it could fly.

  “Some,” Cam said politely.

  Moments later they were outside in a vast courtyard lit by torches, racing over the hardpacked sand on the backs of half-wild ponies in a game that involved sticks as thick as baseball bats, a leather ball and a looped rope hanging from a tree. Cam had no idea what the rules were but he stayed on his snorting mount, managed not to get clobbered by men wielding their bats with abandon, and whacked the ball straight through the loop.

  The sultan’s men cheered. Asaad’s face turned purple. He shouted for silence.

  “You are a worthy opponent,” he said in a voice that made clear the statement was a lie, “and I shall reward you.”

  With what? A knife across the throat? A bullet in the head? Lose the game and you were dead. Win, and you were dead, too. Asaad was a psychopath, and capable of anything.

  Cam’s muscles tensed and he fought to keep his tone calm.

  “Thank you, Excellency, but the only reward I want is—”

  The words caught in his throat. Two of the sultan’s men were coming toward them. They were big, bigger than the sultan…

  Twice as big as the woman they all but dragged between them.

  The first thing he noticed was that her hands were bound.

  The second was that she was naked. No. Not naked. It was just that her skin was the palest gold and what little she wore was only a shade darker.

  Gold cupped her full breasts; a gold thong rode low on her flat belly. A thin gold chain adorned her narrow waist; slender, twisted ribbons of gold hung from the chain and swayed sinuously with each thrust of her long legs.

  Her feet were encased in golden sandals, the heels so spiked they could have been declared lethal weapons. Tiny bells dangled from the straps of the sandals and tinkled softly at her every step. Her hair was gold, too, and tumbled forward in silken disarray around her downcast face.

  “Do you like your reward, Mr. Knight?”

  “She is…” Damn it! Cam cleared his throat. He hadn’t expected anything like this golden creature and it had thrown him. The sultan knew it; he could hear it in the bastard’s oily voice. “She is an amazing sight, Excellency.”

  “Indeed.” Asaad smiled. “I will have her brought closer, yes?”

  The obvious answer was n
o. This woman was a trap. It didn’t take a genius to know that. Cam had been wined and dined; he’d been entertained with a crazy game of desert polo. Asaad had softened him up and now he was moving in for the kill. An hour with this houri and he’d sign the contract, no questions asked. He’d be too sated to do anything else.