This is a ten chapter romantic Crime thriller with consenting erotic and romantic sex, male on male violence and a lot of exciting cliff hangers at the endings of each chapter.
As is usual in my stories there are a large selection of colourful characters and not all of the people in my stories have happy endings.
You have been warned -- so if you like the kind of story that combines sex, violence, complicated and interweaving story lines, and that you can sit back each day and read a new chapter -- read on.
*
The day was baking hot, the air thick, the sun bright, bright enough to make the glare in your eyes burn, so that Hannah wore her big straw hat as she bent over in the field picking beans. Straightening up and stretching her aching back she glance over towards the house where Jake, against all arguments and advice this morning, was working and using the pump to fill up the old tin bucket for watering the pigs. She had told him he needed to rest and keep out of the sun, he told her he had never sat back and watched a woman work in his life, and besides he wanted to earn his keep.
Eventually a deal was set, he would do general work, including helping to tend to the animals, she and Frank the backbreaking work in the fields.
Last night they had slept in each others arms, and she flushed just thinking of the wonderful love making they had made yesterday, and the deep sleep they both had fallen into afterwards, then waking up together, smiling at each other across the pillows, feet finding feet to tangle intimately as they lay quietly listening to the birds outside give the dawn chorus.
She watched as he walked over to the pen, bucket in hand, a long legged, easy walk, the worn old jeans outlining his thighs and hips, making her smile as she thought about how he looked, naked, those long limbs and slim hips under her hands. Rubbing her hand in the small of her back to ease the small pull of muscles there, not necessarily from today's work, but also from the strenuous sexual workout she had yesterday, she followed him with her eyes as he opened the gate into the sty and heard the greedy noise that greeted him from the big mother sow and the growing piglets that she was going to sell. Bending down she continued to tend the beans, her head full of plans that had been placed there by Jake, ways in which she might be able to save most of the farm and sell up only a portion to the county.
*
Jake watched the fat round bodies of the pigs shuffle each other out of the way as they grunted and huffed around the water and food troughs. The old straw hat that Hannah had given him kept the sun off his face and out of his eyes, but not off his body where the heat was making him sweat, and the thin cotton of the shirt rub against the healing skin of his back. But he was damned if he would let Hannah work whilst he sat on his backside. He admired her so much, her spirit, her need to keep this run down old farm, where he had seen the empty fields in the distance where once they had been filled with rice and crops aplenty. But the country was in a depression, and farmers scrabbled around hardly able to survive all over the country, and the building of the levees in the two rivers had completed the wipe out of the farms that had once made a decent living in the area.
Wiping his arm across his forehead he looked out from the rickety old sty, out over the sagging fence towards where she worked bent over in the sun, big old floppy hat hiding her face, denim overalls covering her shape, sleeves of the old mans cotton shirt hiding her slim arms. He now knew that those baggy work clothes hid a sensuous woman with long willowy but incredibly strong limbs that had locked around his body as he made love to her. Skin covered with freckles, stretched across a body that bowed up and trembled in his arms as she came, a face that glowed, unadorned of makeup, it lit up with passion and had pulled him in.
A real woman.
Tough, kind, passionate, caring, hard working and sensuous.
And his heart grew as he watched her work. If only he had met her over two years ago, he though. Two fucking years, but now what could he offer her.
Nothing.
*
Rory sat in his office, the one he used to share with Jake, the pen in his hand turning over and over again as he played with it, unable to concentrate for the worry that was on his mind. He dreaded what he had to do tonight. Unsure he could really go through with it. But if he didn't, he and Abigail would be finished.
Or would he?
Throwing down the pen he sat up. What if he went to the Mayor, showed him some of the proof he had, threatened the man with total disclosure and ruin, just as he had originally kept the proof for, told him that he would expose him to the relevant agencies, bring him down if he didn't leave him and Abigail alone.
What if he really did try that and see if that worked first. He wouldn't have to kill.
But what if Claude killed them to protect himself?
Slumping back down he tried to think it through. Claude might bluff him out, threaten him, hold a gun to him and demand the proof? But what if he told him that the papers had been sent off to an Attorney of Law to be opened on Abigail's, or his own death!
That the papers were safely kept out of town with a third party, unknown to the Mayor.
It could work.
It had to work.
Getting up he rushed out to go back to his house. He needed to get the incriminating evidence posted over to the Attorney he knew over in a large town near Layfayette, and do it fast. Arriving at his home he didn't even notice that his wife and child were not even there, all he was focused on was the stuff he had hidden in the attic, and taking from the small pile of ledgers and papers and notes he pulled out one piece, folded it and put it in his pocket and rushed over to his office to write the accompanying letter to his friend explaining that these papers were to be kept safe, unless he had heard that something had happened to him and then they were to be handed over to the authorities.
*
The Sheriff had driven and walked around the area, checking out to see if there was any sign of the escaped Jake Bailey. He travelled around the Northern edge of the swamp, and up the small trickle of the bayou that meandered north of town, looking for signs that Bailey was hiding out, but all he found was the occasional camp of destitute men with hollow eyes and cheeks, an air of desperation around them.
Later he was going to go down to the south of town and over to Hannah's place, check out for any sign of the escaped man, as well as having another chat with Hannah to see if he could make her see sense and take up the Mayors offer.
Climbing into the hot confines of his car he sat for a while, trying to picture himself in Baileys position, and work out what he would most likely do. He came to the conclusion that his first thoughts were the most likely. If he was Bailey he would aim for Rory Kendal, his old partner and the one that had set him up, and try to get revenge. So starting up the car he swung the vehicle around in the dirt and drove back to town, and to the office that Bailey and Kendal had once shared.
*
Jake, Hannah and Frank loaded up the produce picked onto the truck and Frank climbed up behind the wheel and hanging out of the window waved as he drove off towards town. Jake and Hannah looked at each other and without words said between them, turned, and holding hands ran back towards the house and the bedroom,
There they stripped off each others clothes, kissing and laughing as they divested each other of the sweaty clothes, before falling in a tangle of arms and legs onto the big bed.
