The Complete Dumarest by E. C. Tubb

Author:E. C. Tubb
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pirata Press
Published: 2017-07-20T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Three

She was soft and warm and moistly engulfing. A creature of passion and demanding heat with skin like silk and curves which united into a symphony of delight. Her odor was enticing; that of rain-drenched loam, of sun-kissed grain, of an opening bud, the scent rising from the milk-dappled lips of a child. And, even when sprawled in satiated abandon, she held a lithe and lovely grace.

A dancer and now a dealer she had told him—but what else?

Lifting himself on one elbow Dumarest looked down at the woman in the pale light of a breaking dawn. Asleep she was more beautiful than awake, small tensions eased, muscles relaxed, the hand of time lifted from brow and cheek and the corners of the eyes. The mane of her loosened hair lay like a serpent over the pillow, the naked roundness of a shoulder, the proud mound of a breast. In her throat, beneath the rich olive of her skin, a small pulse beat like a tiny drum. Below it lay the carotid artery—a pressure and she would fall from sleep into unconsciousness and if the pressure were maintained, into soft and easy death.

"Earl!" Turning she muttered his name, head moving to present her lips, her eyes, the lashes which lay like nighted moths on her cheeks. "Earl!"

A dream in which, perhaps, she was again lost in passionate abandon.

Gently he rose and moved into the kitchen, heating coffee and taking it into the living room where, again, he searched the furnishings with his eyes. The apartment was what she had claimed it to be, a place rented for a limited stay, the appointments a standard necessity. Only the music cube was hers. That and a delicate vase of striated crystal, a framed portrait of an elderly man—her father perhaps—a scrap of embroidered silk, her clothes, her cosmetics, the painting of a crying child.

The painting which depicted a moon bearing the semblance of a skull.

Again Dumarest studied it, holding it to the window, using a glass to magnify detail. Was it what he hoped or had memory played tricks? A combination of light and shadow, a silver hue, a desperate yearning—a combination loaded with potential danger. As was the woman herself.

Logic told him that she had to be what she claimed but the instinct which had saved him so often before refused to permit him to lower his guard. The attack could, despite his previous conviction, have been the prelude to a trap. One baited with warm and yielding flesh. With the painting of the child. A snare which could snap shut at any moment.

"Earl?" Sardia was awake, calling sleepily from the bed. "Earl, where are you?"

"Here."

"Why are you up?" Her voice grew sharper. "Is anything wrong?"

"No. I wanted some coffee. A moment and I'll bring you some."

"I felt you missing," she said, her voice regaining its first softness. "Even though asleep I sensed you had left me."

Like an animal sensing danger. As if he had woken during the night to lie

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