" No, I'm fine,... really. I guess I'm still not over the shock of the news yet," she responded as the older woman left the room.Thea stood up and str...tched her legs as the door closed behind her. Smiling a little, she moved to one of the tall narrow windows that framed the background behind Miss Hendricks' desk. At thirty-nine, Thea Carter was still a beautiful woman, as she had been a lovely girl. One large flaw, however, was the hard determined line of her mouth, unfeminine and bold. But. Clegg walked behind her, picked up the cigarette case and thumbed it open. Inside the two halves of a false cigarette, identical to the one in Tereza's case, betrayed Ilsa's intentions. "I don't imagine that the poison was in your drink, was it?" Clegg asked rhetorically. "Let's go through to the lounge," Clegg suggested with a wave of the pistol. "Somehow I'm not thinking of going to bed just now."Ilsa walked ahead of him across the room. Clegg watched the perfect smoothness of her back and. .."Tenchi?" her mind suddenly did a flip-flop as recent events began to unpleasantly reassert themselves. Remembering her last few brutal moments of consciousness with sudden acidic clarity."Why am I still breathing?" She mused, suddenly having an intimate understanding how a hockey puck must feel. Having lost count of how many battle-staves had impacted her skull. And that was just the ones she had seen."Gutless sons-a-bitches!" Her thoughts coalesced angrily."Couldn't take me in the open? Had. When they had initially arrived in her bedroom, Dee had simply let go of the handle of her rolling case, and attacked Kyle. She had unhesitatingly wrapped her arms around his neck and begun to probe for his tonsils with her tongue while she had pressed her body firmly against his.Kyle had been surprised only briefly. He had begun to return her kiss with equal fervor while running his hands down her back and cupping the firm cheeks of her ass, pulling her to him so that his very prominent.