Free Faces of Fear by Graham Masterton Page A

Moulin’s reception desk, and out into the brilliant sunlight. He crossed the gravel and went down the steps into the orchard.
    He found the girl leaning against a tree, chewing a long stem of grass. He tried to approach her as if he had simply decided to go for a stroll, and found her here by accident. Small bees bobbed and droned around the ripening apples, and the sunlight made dancing patterns on the girl’s face. For some reason, that reminded Gerry of something, but he couldn’t think what.
    He stood a little way away from her, looking at the river.
    â€œAre you American?” she asked him, after a while.
    â€œHow did you know?”
    â€œI heard you talking to your friend. Besides, you look American.”
    â€œI thought I was beginning to look quite French.”
    â€œNo, no. A Frenchman would never wear a suit like that. And you never use your hands when you talk.”
    â€œMaybe I should take some gesticulation lessons.”
    She smiled. “You shouldn’t. I like men who are very restrained.”
    He came closer. He guessed from the smoothness of her skin and the firmness of her breasts that she wasn’t much older than nineteen or twenty. The vulnerability of her slightly-parted lips was contradicted by thelook in her eyes. It was challenging, watchful, provocative.
    Her eyes were really the most remarkable colour. They were steely grey, almost silver, like the surface of a lake just before a heavy storm. Close up, Gerry could smell a light floral perfume, and an underlying biscuity fragrance. It was a combination that he hadn’t smelled for years: the smell of warm young girl.
    â€œIt’s very peaceful here, isn’t it?” he remarked.
    â€œIt’s too peaceful for me,” she replied. “I hate the countryside. I always dream of living in a big city in America.”
    â€œYou’d hate it. All that noise, all that pollution. All that crime.”
    â€œDo you hate it?”
    â€œWhy do you think I wanted to work in France?”
    She stood against the tree watching him and watching him, and flicking the stem of grass across her lips. “Would you hate it if I was with you?”
    This could have been the simplest of questions. Yet the way she put it, it was like a clock mechanism, full of complicated levers and springs and secret movements.
    â€œI guess that could make a difference,” Gerry replied. “I never liked Paris too much; but then I’ve never been there with anybody I loved.”
    â€œThere you are, then,” she said.
    She started to walk through the orchard and he followed her. Beneath her blouse she wore a pale yellow linen skirt, through which the sunlight cast tantalizing shadows of her legs. She wore sandals made of twisted leather thongs, which laced around her ankles.
    â€œMy name is Marianne,” she said, without turning around. “I’ve lived in the country all my life. My father wants me to be a famous cellist.”
    â€œBut what do
you
want to be?”
    She caught hold of the branch of one of the apple trees, and swung around, laughing. “I want to be the greatest prostitute that ever lived.”
    He laughed, too. “That’s some ambition.”
    â€œYou think I’m joking?”
    â€œI think you’re teasing me.”
    She reached up and plucked one of the apples from the tree. She held it up in her hand. “You see this apple? We use them for making calvados.” She bit into it, so that its juice smothered her lips. She chewed and swallowed the fragment of apple, and then she reached out and took hold of his hand, and drew him toward her.
    At first he couldn’t think what she was doing, but then she lifted her face to him, and kissed him. He tasted sharp, sticky apple and saliva. He felt her tongue-tip, probing between his lips. He felt her full breasts pressing against his shirt.
    He kissed her more urgently. They smothered each other’s faces in