Chapter Seven: Come Fly with Me
Before Clara would find out exactly what the details were to her job assignment under Talia, Bane, Barsad and a handful of other men took off on a supply run to a densely populated city in the heart of the country.
Bane had not wanted to accompany the small group of militants to fetch supplies even though he normally joined the group for the twice monthly trip.
On the long, winding drive through the lush jungle, flat waxy foliage clung to trees and covered the forest floor. Winged, legged, and spotted critters watched the convoy pass through their home, a road roughly carved into the jungle floor from the fat, no-flat tires of the flat-bed truck and slate grey SUV.
The interior of the SUV was deceiving from the outside, it had about as much room as a prototypical diving bell.
Bane stared out the front passenger window as the landscape passed, a banded stack of currency and list from Fabiana was tucked into his jacket's inner woolen pocket.
Talia had added to the list before Bane had departed the military grade installation wrapped in the façade of a lovely estate with meticulous landscaping.
The trip to the center of the country and back would be a little over a day in total with minimal rest stops.
As Bane, Barsad and a group of other heavily armed men were just beginning their journey, Talia crossed the estate grounds and back to where Clara was finishing a meal.
She found the political socialite wiping crumbs from her fingertips onto a linen napkin.
"Clara, how does the day find you?"
Clara smiled tightly, always polite and wearing a smile even amidst the fiercest fire and flames that licked at her toes.
Maya scuttled quietly into the room a drum beat after Talia, sharing a glance before giving Clara her full attention.
Clara had instantly taken to Maya; she'd foolishly accepted the poisoned glass of grape-flavored subterfuge that Maya offered.
Maya forced her shapely lips to pull into a demure smile while keeping her eyes downcast, the perfect picture of penitence, pulling off the charade of possessing a servant's bleeding heart.
She'd been instructed to devote her time and attention to Clara, to anticipate her words and actions, to bring her close.
"Thank you," Clara murmured as Maya collected her empty plate, used napkin and drinking glass.
Maya wordlessly nodded and hastily exited the room, feigning nervousness in Talia's presence as she quickly exited the room, gently pulling the door closed behind her.
Talia settled across the table from Clara, tapping a few buttons on a rose-gold tablet before passing the device across to Clara.
Clara felt her belly clench as she was soon looking at her own typed letters under the gothic font of her covertly run site nestled deep within the warm, roiling bowels of the dark web, hundreds of thousands of eyes feasted upon Clara's words, carrion for conspiracy theorists.
Clara looked down as she clasped her hands together and stared at her lap, interlocking her slim fingers with expertly applied manicure, each nail left with the dull gleam of a raw crystal.
"Come now Clara, don't be so modest on your work," Talia purred as she leaned forward and pointed at the screen, the pad of her index finger hovered over the face of the page's creator.
Clara had created and manipulated a series of images into that of a plague doctor, a crimson cape draped around the lithe shoulders and protective medallion hung between the tops of the doctor's exposed cleavage. The gratuitously phallic mask was highlighted with brilliant streaks of silver and grey, proudly elongated on the shapely female.
"Do you have posies in your pocket?" Talia asked with a wink as she poured herself a tumbler of sweetened alcohol and fruity concoction from a lead glass pitcher in the center of the table.
"I wear contacts to conceal the redness," Clara rebutted quickly with a chuckle and nodded at the offer of a glass of sugar-forward alcohol over ice.
"Read that aloud," Talia said after a sip of the cold drink.
"You know what it says," Clara said as she took a sip off her own glass.
"I'd like to hear you read your own words," Talia murmured, her tone's subtle change did not invite discussion or compromise.
Clara pressed her lips together and gave a curt nod before taking a few big gulps of the cocktail, the alcohol spread warmth throughout her chest and belly.
"Greeting fellow friends and patriots amongst the filth that is the leadership of this country. I'm back from an eye and earful at a benefit gala honoring the illustrious head of the snake for helping the children. I don't know what he helped the children do but while the award was being given, the leader's wife was off polishing the knob of an allied nation with barrels of oil aplenty."
Clara paused before continuing to recount a gala from the previous year where her father was in attendance, dragging Clara and the rest of the family for the photo opportunity. She'd caught her mom negotiating a deal with an opposition leader before she sucked off the ally, swallowing a mouthful of sticky diplomacy before returning to link arms with her husband and assure him that all the parties were sticking to the script.
"This little birdie overhead two heads of state talking about getting rid of a dead hooker while they'd been across the pond paying their respects. If you want to know more, it'll take more than a tweet, I nest in stocks, bonds, and unmarked currency. Tell me something to ruffle my feathers."
As Talia drained her glass, listening with rapt attention to the political socialite sing her stories of corruption at the highest levels and frame-by-frame images of redacted documents with blood-red official seals, across the vast property, a bright blue helicopter approached from the west.
Fabiana heard the sound from the powerful engine of the short haul, narrow-bodied helicopter her drug lord husband had recently acquired, the Soviet-era helicopter continued to stand the test of time for form and function.
Fabiana practically skipped to the helicopter landing pad, her long shapely legs carried her across the estate to meet the heavy helicopter as it landed.
"Darling," Fabiana squealed as her husband hopped out of the helicopter and hurried in a hunchback position until he could rise to his full height and sweep Fabiana up in his embrace.
His hands that squeezed her sides were now clean, hours earlier they'd been dripping blood and other thicker bits from where he'd beaten a man to death.
The man in life had been his first lieutenant and then he'd gotten greedy and tried to take more than his generous cut.
The man, now nameless in death, had been caught with his hands in the cocaine cookie jar.
His hands had been cut off first before Fabiana's husband had personally cut out his tongue, depressed his thumbs into the eye sockets until his brown eyes bled and ended his suffering with a single bullet wound to the forehead, the exit hole out the back of his skull was bigger than his screaming, wet, mouth hole.
"My love," Fabiana purred before she pressed her lips to her husband's, the love of her life and complete savior, but also a merciless, bloodthirsty man who would carve out his father's heart to keep Fabiana safe.
The drug lord smiled down at Fabiana, no matter how long he was away from her side, being reunited with her made his heart skip a beat every single time.
Each time his heart fluttered in his chest; he remembered seeing Fabiana Fyre for the first time all those years ago on the runway in Milan.
She'd been wearing not much more than wet vellum, her supple body made men of god drop to their hands and knees as they begged to be sodomized by a rigid, religious artifact.
In the time that it took for Fabiana and her murderous and loving drug lord husband to find some perceived privacy on the estate, eager for their bodies to be in unison before they could make it to their bedroom or any room with a door they could close, Talia had left Clara to give the young lady time to rest after reading so many of her entries aloud from her writings as The Raven.
Talia dealt with those who betrayed her in a similar manner to the drug lord.
But she wouldn't with Clara if the socialite decided to stop cooperating or balk in any way.
Talia wouldn't cut off Clara's hands or silence her tongue.
Nor would she blind her.
Talia was going to make Clara sing, chirp and do everything she asked for within the digital underworld.
She'd have Clara fashion pixels into life-ending weapons, wield them at the living and the powerful.
Talia was going to exploit, deplete and completely use up Clara as she brought Olympus tumbling into the sea.
Clara was reclining on the plush cushion of the wrought iron chaise lounge when Fabiana's giggling reached her almost sleeping ears.
She had just about drifted off to sleep when the girlish sound made her eyes fly open, forcing her to bolt upright.
Clara peeked around the balcony edge and caught a glimpse of two people under an ivy-covered pergola.
Clara realized that she was staring down at Fabiana and the man who must be her husband.
The man towered over Fabiana as their hands seemed to be everywhere at once on each other.
There was a table and chair set under the pergola that was convenient for when Fabiana's husband lifted her into his arms, her long legs wrapping around his waist as their mouths crashed together.
Clara felt her heart start to beat faster as the drug lord settled Fabiana on the table and never stopped kissing her as he spread her lean thighs apart, pushing her dress up and out of the way, patience in his movements despite the surging lust that filled his limbs.
Clara held her breath as Fabiana laid back on the table, allowing her thighs to fall further apart, exposing her naked intimacy.
The drug lord practically salivated as he dropped his face to the nude apex of Fabiana's thighs, his tongue quickly finding her wet center, flicking against her clit until she was twitching under his mouth.
Clara pressed her lips together as she looked around to make sure no one was around, watching her watch.
She felt her body temperature rise as the drug lord continued moving his mouth against Fabiana's wet center, her body undulating under his touch until she covered her mouth and arched her back, her thighs shaking as she reached for the drug lord's belt buckle and fumbled at his zipper until she could tug his hardening cock free.
Clara couldn't hear the words they were saying to each other and didn't need to in order to know they were exchanging words of lust-fueled love. Clara bit her lower lip as the drug lord teased the head of his thick cock against Fabiana's wet center, bobbing against her opening until he could slide his rigidity into her with infinite slowness, anxious to plunge himself fully into her body, possess her at once.
Clara could hear his measured breaths as he savored filling Fabiana, feeling her body stretch around his thickness, she ached for him to thrust deeper, to make her body quake.
Clara felt a foreign sensation fall around her as she found herself putting herself in that moment, what complete and total possession would feel like, to share breath and body.
From the top of the table, Fabiana whipped her head towards where Clara spied, catching the political socialite's wide, unblinking spying eyes.
Clara covered her mouth as her face flamed to an instant shade of fuchsia when she locked eyes with Fabiana as her body fell into orgasmic ecstasy.
Clara was frozen, unable to blink, breathe or move.
Her fugue was broken as Fabiana gave her the smallest of a smile before retuning her full attention to her drug lord husband and his increasing pace which began to grow erratic as his balls pulled up tight to the base of his body before he shuddered in time with his cock belching sticky cum to fill Fabiana's wetness.
Clara almost stumbled in her haste to retreat to the main room of her new living quarters.
She shouted when she found Maya standing in the center of the room, holding a tray with a silver cloche in the center.
"Oh, Maya, apologies," Clara stammered as she smoothed her dress free of imaginary wrinkles in order to collect her thoughts and gather her words.
"I'm so sorry to disturb you miss," Maya said, forcing herself to verbally grovel, hating herself for each syllable she uttered.
"Clara please, and no, I was distracted," she trailed off, bringing her eyes to the silver cloche dominating the tray. "What's under the dome?" Clara asked, struggling to bring herself to the present, even more difficult to ignore the tingling sensation between her thighs and wishing Maya wasn't in the room.
"Miss Talia thought you would take pleasure in this," Maya murmured before lifting the cloche.
Clara managed to keep her expression neutral, just pretending she was fielding questions about her sexual practices from a misogynist news station when her eyes landed on the Caviar of the East.
"You may set it there," Clara said after a long pause and watched Maya replace the silver dome over one of China's expensive delicacies which had been consumed for thousands of years, the beige-colored Bird's Nest.
Surprisingly nondescript for how much it cost.
Maya fussed about the room, following orders and encroaching Clara's breathing space, trying to ingratiate herself into the political socialite's life and breathing room. As Maya refolded the perfectly folded towels, hours, and hours away in the SUV, Bane stared down at the list that Talia had prepared for him.
He recognized most of the usual items and for the most part could compose a list from the sheer repetition if he didn't have her written words in hand.
This list was different.
Bane skimmed the expected items, his eyes stopped dead in their tracks as he began reading items that could only be for Clara Leroux.
He read and reread the intimate wear details and panties that were in a size Fabiana didn't have on hand from her plethora of couture wear amassed while living in the fashion world.
Fabiana had already provided a goldmine of clothes, accessories, and shoes.
Bane looked over at Barsad who was driving, and the handful of men crammed in the second and third-row seating.
He had to force himself to ignore the urge to order all the men into one vehicle and take the SUV back to the estate that hid the next revolution.
Bane and Barsad were each landlocked within their own thoughts.
Barsad had been formulating his own list since he'd first laid eyes on Clara Leroux who made his heart stop for a moment when he thought Rava had come back to life.
He'd been frozen to the spot when he first saw Clara, his subconscious mind had imagined for a moment that Rava's body had somehow knitted itself back together, the arterial blood flow had ceased, and her ravaged vascular system had repaired itself.
The gurgling of her death throes and steady loss of her lung's tidal breath would cease, her heart would pump strongly, and her hands would once more close around his.
Barsad's palms itched, making him grip the steering wheel tighter, the last time he'd held Rava's hands, it had been as she'd left this world, her grip had grown slack when she'd succumbed to compete cardiac and neurological death.