Free Stories for When the Sun Goes Down (Sexy Anthology) by Lily Harlem Page B

joins souls
together for all of time.
    After scanning a few more pages, I dropped
open the album again. This time it offered a newspaper cutting, full page in
black and white. The headline read: HOLLYWOOD'S FAVOURITE STAR MISSING IN
HIMALAYAS — WORST FEARED — TRIBUTES POURING IN. Beneath the
jarring black words was a faded, grainy picture of me setting off on a climb in
aid of global poverty charity, One. I looked confident, determined, and happy.
The climbing gear suited me, it was tight enough to be sexy, expensive enough
to be couture. I'd also thrown a rope over my shoulder for effect and held a
pickaxe in the manicured hand I'd clutched the Oscar in six months previously.
    However, my eyes didn't linger on my own
young self. Instead, I looked at the two climbing experts flanking me. Their
names still rolled around my mouth a hundred times a day. I couldn't have
forgotten them if I'd tried.
    Andy and Lee Driver.
    Brothers.
    English.
    They'd summated Everest on two previous
occasions. They'd also been given the unenviable task, or perhaps some would
have said enviable task, of getting me at least up to camp VI safely. That was
all I needed to do to complete my sponsorship duties. It was all the insurance
company would allow because my next three movie deals were big budget. A dead
leading lady would be an inconvenient expense.
    I studied their faces. Lee had a sharp,
angular jaw line, supporting a devil-may-care expression and long hair which
curled out of his striped beanie like gripping fingers. Andy's broad grin
stretched the small, spiked tuft of hair beneath his bottom lip and creased his
young but weathered cheeks into balls. He wore his hair shorter than Lee's, and
although I knew it to be the same sun-kissed gold as his brother's, it couldn't
be seen on this photo because of his peaked Manchester United cap.
    Their eyes were an identical stunning ice
blue, so beautifully clear and pale they could have been chipped straight off
an ancient glacier. I leaned in for a closer look. I'd always liked their eyes
the best. It was the adrenaline junkie sparkle that did it for me every time.
They just couldn't get enough. Life on the edge was their drug. It buzzed them
to a high few people on the planet were ever lucky enough to experience.
    Of course, a black and white newspaper clipping
didn't do their eyes or their sense of presence justice. So with a sigh of part
frustration, part melancholy, I rested back on the pillow and let a wave of
drowsiness wash over me.
    Suddenly, I was there again.
     
    * * * *
     
    Surrounded by snow-dusted peaks, I glanced
up. Sharp rocky points licked an azure sky. There was an acute sense that the
deep blackness of space was only a whisker away. My cool limbs felt free and
agile, my body light and lithe, and my thoughts sharp and fresh.
    I pulled up several feet and noticed a
chill wind had picked up from the East. It was clipping around a vertical face
and catching us side-on like a barrage of icy bullets. But it was okay. Andy
had me tightly secured to his waist up front, and Lee was close behind me. The reassuring
jangle of hooks and clips filtered to my ears whenever the wind rested, and I
felt safe and protected between my two professional climbers. My two personal
mountain bodyguards.
    "How you doin'?" Lee called, his
English accent familiar on my ears after a week in his company.
    "Fine," I shouted over my
shoulder, even though my hands were beginning to numb with the chill.
"Let's keep going."
    "Watch this hand hole,
Sapphire," Andy warned from above, his big orange goggles flashing in the
brilliant sunlight. "It's a little awkward and quite a stretch for
you."
    I looked to where he was indicating my
next grip, flexed and un-flexed my fingers to encourage the flow of blood and
took a deep breath. I could do it. I knew I could. I stretched out my cold
spine, elongated the joints in my shoulder and elbow, and managed to fix my
fingers around the pin. But the metal had been put in at