by Sharon Kleve
Ps- that’s my secret *wink
His secret? I laugh to myself at his cryptic response, on how he knew where to find me that night we met at the club.
In the run up to our date night Richard and I exchanged e-mails, and spoke on Skype late into the evening or early hours of the morning. Once Richard booked his flight direct from JFK Airport, New York to London, Gatwick it became clear us that we have more than a physical attraction to each other.
As the date approaches for our second meeting, I’m dizzy with feelings of lust, intrigue, and anticipation over our next face to face meeting, he feels the same I can sense it. During our exchange of e-mails and banter on Skype Richard always tests the waters with me. He’s not after a relationship as such, more an “arrangement”. Which means whenever he is in London, we’d meet up. I’m not fazed or opposed to his proposal, I have my own barriers, and want to keep things simple with any potential guy in my life. I’m not stupid, I know how hard it would be for a man to accept my line of work as a girlfriend— especially one who is miles away, across the Atlantic. I can live with “an arrangement.”
With this mutual agreement in place, before our next meeting Richard and I are keen to meet up again as friends and lovers, after one steamy night of lust and passion in London.
ABOUT KIM KNIGHT
I’ve decided to support this cause as over here in the UK we campaign to raise money and awareness for breast cancer, members of the public sign up to wear something pink or buy a special ribbon to support the campaign. I take part as often as I can, to help support the cause in the UK. Growing up even though it was just my mum and I, my dad was diagnosed with cancer in his late fifties. It was quite hard to watch another person become so ill, so suddenly and just waste away to this terrible disease.
Kim is 34, from London in the UK. She’s a qualified teacher and mother to a beautiful toddler. As a reader she’s head over heels in love with romance, historical fiction, crime fiction, African-American, suspense and thriller genre books. After submitting three chapters of a romance /suspense novel she was writing to a USA based publisher in 2016, she scored her first publishing contact A Stranger in France is her first published novel. Her second romance novella will be released Christmas 2016. As a writer Kim enjoys creating stories within the romance, romantic suspense and thriller genres.
Kim also writes beauty and book related articles published in Love Life, Live Magazine. When she’s not reading or writing novels of her own, her other passions include practising her French, fashion and spending time at her sewing machine dress making, watching make –up and beauty tutorials on YouTube, letter writing and being a mum.
Social Media Links:
www.kimknightauthor.com – Author site
@kimknightauthor- Twitter
@kimknightauthoruk- Facebook
The Freedom Gene by Ella Medler
Dystopian
CHAPTER ONE
Arra tripped and landed face down in the thick layer of brittle gorse bushes. Burk groped in the dark until his hand found her arm, then he got a good hold on her shoulder and tugged. She came up for air gasping in shallow breaths, her limbs snagging on thorns, but quiet. Too exhausted to even register pain. He didn’t give her the chance to recover; they didn’t have that luxury.
With a glance at the machines hovering overhead, he set Arra on her feet and gave her a gentle push forward. She complied, wavering slightly, but at least they were moving again. The scientist was already two hundred yards ahead, scaling the rock face like a pro.
Burk lifted the girl to the first low ledge and placed one of her hands into the crevice that would help raise her higher. Her arms were shaking, her whole body tense enough to explode into splinters like a windshield hitting a concrete wall. Still, she kept fighting, kept pushing on. Burk admired her for that even as he kept close enough to help her should she need it.
The forest was thinner here, at this higher elevation, but the disarray of boulders made up for the lack of trees. Rocks were safer than wood anyway, when it came to protection. It was why Dash Camp had been set up in such an inhospitable spot. Only one more day and they’d get there. Arra would be safe.
Humming thrummed closer, approaching from the right. Damn. If only he could get them all to the other side of the ridge top, they could hide in the disused quarry. Burk touched his clip as he kicked a hole into the shingle for better balance. The girl was falling behind. He reckoned she’d be spent in two minutes flat.
The official channel was silent in his ear, so they’d disengaged his connection. Probably for the best.
Lightning-fast, he lunged left and snatched Arra’s wrist out of the air just as her back arched out of balance and she lost her foothold. He tugged her up and over his shoulder, and wrapped both her arms around his neck. She double-gripped her wrists when she realized what he was trying to do, and he dug in his chin and bent farther forward to keep them from tumbling down the near-vertical slope.
Overhead, thin beams of light split the darkness mere feet away. Burk grunted and pushed on, legs pumping, muscles straining to burst with the renewed effort. He crested the ridge and tilted to the right, allowing the girl to find her feet.
“Run!”
She nodded and took off with more speed than he’d anticipated in the direction he’d pointed her, straight at the next cliff face. Burk pounded along right behind her.
The beams multiplied. They crisscrossed over the cliff in inescapable abstract patterns. He had no doubt they’d be spotted before they found cover. He ran and ran, and Arra ran beside him, her long red hair whipping behind her and catching him on the cheek or the chin or the shoulder with a gentle touch he relished despite the hopelessness of their situation.
He watched her as they ran. Her head whipped side to side as she put all her strength into this last act of endurance, and she vaulted over an obstacle right in front of them.
Burk didn’t.
His foot found something soft and yielding, and he sunk heavily on one knee, cracking it on the rock below as he tried to avoid injuring the body he’d tripped over. As he rolled away and righted himself once again, he shouted, “Get up, Doc. Run! Run or you’re dead.”
He didn’t wait to see if the guy rose to his feet or continued lying in the dirt, and he didn’t have time to check on him. Ignoring the pain shards playing havoc with his knee, Burk ran to catch up with the girl. She was slowing now; he could almost see the energy seeping out of her worn-out body, and yet she was fighting the inevitable with every wheezy breath.
One hundred yards. Eighty.
The cliff face loomed closer and closer, but so did the light beams, and suddenly he knew they stood no chance of survival. Not unless a miracle happened or they got really lucky.
Hovercraft noise amplified to the side, and a beam swept right alongside his boot.
Burk bolted to the left, snagging Arra’s elbow as he rolled. She was too tired to resist. He wrapped his arms around her as they flew through the air, and took the impact on his shoulders when they landed. It must have hurt her too, because a half-whimper squeezed through her lips as he pulled her up and tugged her around the nearest spike of granite.
He watched her grimace as her back hit sheet rock, and in the next moment dropped to his knees as a light beam swept over their heads. They had to keep moving, had to keep going. The doc was probably dead by now, but he had to save the girl. Arra was too valuable to him, to the survivors, to the whole humanity.
Burk glanced left and his heart stopped. Arra was no longer there.
In one step, he crouched on the ground where she’d stood only seconds earlier. A hand wrapped around his ankle with an iron grip, and then he saw it—the opening. Their salvation.
The cave Arra had tugged him into was craggy and cramped, though it did seem to open up a little toward the back. Shingle gave way to smooth rock underfoot. Burk straightened up and instantly hit his head on the low ceiling. He brushed off the top of his head as he did every time he
’d knocked it on something; inevitable with his 6’10’’ frame. Arra was standing straight and tall in front of him, and he could feel her gaze on his face even through the pitch darkness.
Her eyes sparkled just as his gaze alighted on the clip in her right earlobe. The clip that was emitting pinprick strobes of bright blue light.
As if in a trance, he touched his own ear. His clip felt cool to the touch. He knew it would be dark and silent; it hadn’t so much as twitched once since he’d broken them out of the lab. Eyes riveted on the flashing clip, he wasted precious moments, valuable time that could have been better used finding ways to save Arra.
Behind them, a grinding noise disrupted the relative silence. The scientist skidded in, doubled over, in a flood of light. Burk threw his body over Arra’s, pushing her to the back of the cave in one motion. She sunk to the floor, and at first he couldn’t work out why. The light reached far enough to illuminate the narrow gap in the rock, the gap Arra half-filled with her slender body. Could she slip right down through it?
“You idiot!” Burk snapped at the scientist. “You gave away her position.”
The man laughed and pointed at the girl, working to catch his breath. “They know. They’ve been tracking her all along.”
Burk turned to look at Arra, and this time there was no hiding the fear in her expression. She cupped her hand over her ear as if that would stop the transmitter from giving her away.
Eyes locked on the clip, Burk launched himself at her. “Forgive me,” he thundered just before closing his mouth over her earlobe. His hand covered her mouth to muffle her scream, and then he bit down hard.
Arra’s sobs faded behind them as he hurtled out of the cave dragging the scientist behind him. Overhead, beams of light chased them as they fled. Through the forest, over the clump of fallen trees at the edge of the quarry, then down the slope and into the icy water. He shoved the doc in first, then dived and pulled himself across the silty bottom over to the clump of rock that formed an air pocket.
Carefully, tenderly almost, he spat out the piece of flesh with the still-strobing clip. His fingers searched through the silt and wrapped around a rock. Praying for the first and likely last time in his life, Burk wedged his back against unmovable stone and crushed Arra’s clip, pushing with all his strength until the casing gave way and the light on the devil device went out.
Arra was safe.
CHAPTER TWO
Burk’s muscles had seized and turned into solid knots by the time the last of the hovercraft disappeared over the rocky ridge. Shivering, he groped his way along the bottom of the lake and out into the shallows. He didn’t bother to keep the mud from sticking to his clothes. Mud was good. It would aid with camouflage and provide an additional layer of insulation when it dried. If he made it until then.
What was he thinking? Of course he would. He had to. The girl had to make it to safety for so many reasons.
Arra. He smiled as he tried out a few different ways of saying her name out loud. Softer, whispered, almost cooed like a lover’s caress. Stronger and firmer, gritty-like.
To his left, a lump of mud shifted and turned a tired face toward him. The infuriating scientist, that vile excuse for a human being actually had the audacity to grin a condescending smirk his way. Burk never would have thought the guy would have the bottle. Back at the lab, the wretch had done exactly what he’d been told to do—dissect and study, record and analyze, and generally torture his subjects to within an inch of their cursed lives. Sometimes the inch fell the other way.
It was still a mystery to him—the reason why the scientist had helped him get Arra out of there. In Burk’s eyes, the doc had always been a spineless coward, only along for the ride and to protect his own skin. Most people of this generation had turned out to be that way. Ever since the broad-spectrum conditioning of the masses had become more noticeable, Burk could see how the sad, spiritless crowds had begun leaning on the infrastructure the local cantonment governments had put in place.
First came the naturalization of any and all, and the squashing of any individual streak in a person’s lineage by enforcing the use of the twelve allowable surnames. He’d been a Ward anyway, lucky that he could continue using the name he’d grown up with. Lucky because, once everyone had received their new government-approved surnames, they had also been allocated the corresponding, specific profession. Tailors, Bakers, Carpenters and Clarks were soon laboring over cloth, bread, wood or administrative duties. His family had worked as guards for generations, so his job was assured. No further training required. But that hadn’t been the case with many.
It really hadn’t taken long. In a matter of about two generations, the complete separation of class had taken place, silent and swift and without so much as a ripple of consciousness. Burk had often looked around himself in astonishment at the lack of response in the all-accepting, all-conforming masses.
The slogans on the airwaves changed every now and then, suggesting the best alternatives to a certain product that had recently been discovered to be harmful to human health, and bang! Suddenly everyone bought oranges. A new type of fiber that allowed for better, more fashionable, wrinkle-free clothing—done. New spectral clip, blue light better than amber—that change had taken less than a week to full switch. New home décor, multi-function food prep area, most expedient transportation pod—fixed faster than a blink. Best shoes, best sunscreen, best scent, best eyebrow shape. Best haircut and hair color.
It had been chestnut in his youth. He remembered his mother dying his hair brown once a week, regularly like clockwork. How he’d hated that ritual. Funny how he’d never really kicked up a fuss at the time; must have been a kid thing.
Red was the latest color of choice. Red clothes, red pods, red furnishings, red drinks, red everything. Red hair.
Burk ran his hand over his smooth scalp, thanking his lucky stars for his deficient genes that had made him go completely bald in his late thirties. One less thing to worry about.
He shook his head at the craziness of it all and pulled the lump of mud and scientist upright.
“Didn’t know you were sweet on her,” the lump said.
Burk gave him a look that would have frozen the tongues of many. The doc laughed.
“Get moving,” Burk ground out at him and gave him a knuckle-stab to the ribs, propelling him forward.
“Ahhh, that hurt, you clumsy boor.”
Burk shrugged behind the doc’s back, not bothering to correct his assumption on clumsiness. As long as his feet were moving in the right direction, he saw no reason to make conversation, too. Silently, he directed their steps up the hill and into the forest. The doc kept his distance, a wise move considering his mouth had a habit of running faster than his brain.
Grateful for the temporary silence, Burk let his thoughts drift back to their current predicament. He had three people to take to cover. Two if he “lost” the doc. He sighed, already knowing he wouldn’t do that. The doc held answers to questions those in Dash Camp would consider life-saving, even if he didn’t understand them himself.
Arra was injured and exhausted—the only female he’d found remarkable enough to risk his livelihood over. It was surprising, the ease with which he’d made the decision to spring her out of the lab. Before the doc killed her.
Doc Clarke was muddy and wobbly on his feet, but was making progress under his own steam. Burk grunted his approval without making eye contact and kept pushing his own legs to move at a steady pace toward the ridge and the cave where he’d left Arra.
The doc had been close to giving his intentions away, back at the lab, but at the last minute he’d allowed Burk to get Arra off the gurney and into the old-fashioned, unregistered transport pod that was to be their getaway vehicle. No, more than that. He’d not only allowed it, he’d aided their escape. That thing he’d injected Arra with—while sporting a manic glint in his eye—had revived her almost instantly, and Burk was certain it was that chemical concoction that had allowed the tiny wom
an to push her body to such extremes in the last few hours.
Finally breaking through the last of the brush, Burk listened intently, then headed straight for the cave.
One cursory look inside confirmed what he’d feared all along.
The girl was gone.
CHAPTER THREE
“You lost her!”
Burk threw an irritated glance at the doc and briefly considered wringing his neck. Or at least compressing his windpipe long enough to hear a crack.
“Be very careful what you say next,” he warned as he dropped to his knees near the spot where he’d left Arra not so long ago. He ran his hands along the edges of the hole in the cave’s floor. It looked entirely too small for a person to simply slip through.
“Reckon they got her?” Clarke asked.
A growl rolled out of Burke’s throat before he could bite it back. Arra had to be safe. Losing her back to the parasites who were intent on slicing her to pieces was not an option he wanted to consider. Maybe she really could have slipped right through the tiny space. He shifted his position and ran his hands over the edges again. Could he detect a rougher patch? He leaned in, willing his eyes to see through the darkness. He sniffed. “Arra?” he called into the gap. No answer; just the echo of his voice.
“Come over here, Doc.” A small shuffle. “C’mon. I won’t hurt you, I promise.”
The scientist approached looking exhausted and defeated, and smelling like the bottom of the swamp he’d laid in.
“What is it?”
“I think there’s a cavity right below,” Burk said, pointing at the hollow.
The doc scrutinized the opening from his full height, then dropped to his knees by the edge and stuck his head in it. Ten seconds later, he surfaced.
“Can’t see anything.”