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[This is the final part of the 4 part story Scorching. If you’re interested in that kind of thing then you may want to check out parts one, two and three before you read this.]

Steven put down his beer and turned himself over onto his back. He knew that he was supposed to towel off the sweat when you turn over. But he couldn’t be bothered today. Apparently it meant you got an uneven tan. But he couldn’t be bothered today. Today he didn’t have time for it, he was playing catch-up.

He’d had to spend all morning with the police telling them what had happened. He’d told them the truth. All of the truth. And they’d believed him. They had even understood why he hadn’t come straight to them. They too were men. They too had often thought, when they saw x x x that they would do anything to know her. He had had to spend the day, and the night with her. He made promise after promise to her while they ate, drank and made love. And yet there was no way he was not going to tell the police about the dead body in the master bedroom.

Steven turned slightly onto his side so that he could drink some more of his beer. The slightest breeze caught his chest and made a shiver run down his back. He was transported in his mind back to England. Cold rainy England. He didn’t want to go back there.

He wasn’t sure what to tell people. The real reason sounded like a laddish lie and so he thought about telling people that the reason he turned Gloria in was because he feared having to go back to England. That he feared being deported.

He thought it sounded better than the truth. That it sounded more reasonable than the reality. The real reason he had turned her in is that despite many attempts to improve things, almost all of the previous day and night had been spent trying. Gloria was singularly crap in bed.

Steven lay back down on the sun lounger and used the chair in exactly the way that the name suggested, he lounged in the sun.

He couldn’t shake one thought from his mind, “and people thought I was going to grow up”.

[This is part 3 of the 4 part story Scorching. If you’re interested in that kind of thing then you may want to check out parts one and two before you read this. Or of course you may not.]

Steven didn’t know what to do. He turned around a few times hoping that by the time he turned back the guy would suddenly be alive. He decided to stop being silly and besides he was getting dizzy. So he stopped and looked properly. There didn’t seem to be anything obviously wrong with him other than the obviously uncomfortable angle in which he was lying and the fact that his eyes had rolled back in his head. It looked to Steven’s untrained eye like he’d had a heart attack. Well the sex had sounded pretty amazing. Just as he was trying to decide if that would be the way that he wanted to go he heard a noise on the stairs.

“Gloria, don’t come in here a second.”

The steps stopped coming for a second and then they started again. “Steven?”
She walked round the corner, saw what had happened and then fell on the floor. She looked back up at Steven from all fours. Steven suddenly realised she’d gone into a kind of attack style crouch.

“What,” she snarled, “did you do to him”?

“Nothing. I was going to ask you the same question. He must have died just after you left the room.”

“Oh,” she said looking instantly more relaxed, “really”?

“Of course. Why would I want to kill him anyway? I don’t even know who he is.”

“Yes but maybe you thought you would have to kill him to sleep with me?”

“I don’t think so. I’m sorry, you’re lovely and everything but to kill for? Well possibly, but I’m not sure this guy was ever going to find out about us. That certainly wasn’t my plan.”

“What shall we do? Hide the body?”

“Why? We didn’t do anything. We should just phone the police, explain what happened and everything will be fine. I promise.”

“No we can’t phone the police. We can’t.”

“But,” said Steven, “if we just tell them the truth then nothing will go wrong, nobody did anything.”

“No,” she said, “I think I might have killed him.”

“You can’t have.”

“No, I think I did.”

“But you’ll go to prison.”

“I can’t I can’t.”

“But I can’t lie to the police.”

“You have to, you must. I… I… I’ll sleep with you if you will.”

That was Steven’s dilemma. He knew that she was the woman, out of all of the women that he’d ever met in his life that he most wanted to sleep with. She was the one. She was so beautiful. So young, fresh and pure – or at least she seemed that way. He thought to himself, I don’t care if she she’s killed somebody. Why should I care – he thought. And then he thought about himself, he thought about himself, and decided that this was certainly a risky situation.

[Will Steven sleep with her, or will he report her to the police? Let me know and I’ll write it! Or at the very least tune in next Friday for the hopefully dramatic conclusion.]

[This is part 2 of the 4 part story Scorching. If you haven't you may want to read part one first. I would usually include a link at this point but I'm sending this from a train somewhere in Sussex. Part 1 was published last Friday, you should be able to find it somewhere.]

Steven blinked his eyes open and closed, and open and then closed again. He couldn't tell the difference. It was really dark. Dark and quiet. It was so quiet that Steven could hear his eyelids opening and closing. Forget pins dropping it had to be really quiet before you could hear stuff like that.

Steven had been lying on his left arm for quite a while. First it had fallen asleep, then it had done that gentle tickleish pins and needles thing. About half an hour ago there had been massive amounts of shooting pain up and down it. And eventually that had stopped too. Now it just felt dead.

But through all of that time he hadn't dared move because, well Steven had not been alone in the room. Steven had been lying under the bed in which the woman he desired and the guy who currently seemed to be ringing her bell had been hard at it. He'd felt safe to move while they had been distracted but he had been right in the middle of rearranging himself when they had finished. After that they had just lain there cuddling quietly. But eventually they had got up and gone. Or rather that was the thing. Steven could have sworn that only she had left but he couldn't hear any breathing but his own. He decided to risk it. He moved his arm. Or rather he tried to but it wouldn't move. Steven rolled over, which isn't easy under a bed and then used his other arm to shake the dead one. Warm blood rushed back into his arm and the pain returned. It felt like there were little pieces of glass in his veins. As the pain rushed through him he asked himself the fundamental question, "was she worth it"? To which the answer was still yes. In fact she was more intriguing now than before.

From the moment that he'd woken that morning he had known today was the day. He'd risen, dressed and walked straight over to her villa. He'd knocked on the door and they'd started talking. She seemed interesting and interested. And so Steven had invited her out for breakfast. But she had given the perfect response. She'd invited him in for breakfast.

It was while they were toasting the bagels that this other guy had arrived. She had told him to hide which seemed promising to Steven. He had thought to himself as he was legging it up the stairs that she was only getting him to hide because she wanted to have sex with him.

So Steven had gone and hidden under the bed of what had seemed like the spare room. But of course that was the room they had decided to use.

His arm felt just about useable. He listened again. Still silence. He decided to risk it. He slid himself out from under the bed and stood up. He have a quick glance back to the bed just to be sure. And that's when he realised that there had been something else dead. The guy in the bed.

[Check back next Friday for part 3]

Steven lay on a slab of boiling hot concrete. He was wearing only his shorts and a damp towel on his forehead. He had never thought that he would have picked the concrete to lay on but the deck chair was made of plastic and it had started to feel like it was melting. He didn’t mind sun burn but he didn’t want plastic burn.

He moved his hand to the side and found without looking his beer. It was floating in a bucket of ice. He pulled the stopper out and then took a pull of the beer. It felt cold along the length of his body for a few glorious seconds. And then he put the stopper back and gently dropped the bottle back into the bucket.

They’d all taken the piss out of him when he’d first suggested the stopper. But now they were all doing it. It was the only way to keep the beer afloat in the bucket of ice. They’d all been coming here for years. In fact they’d never even been able to use a bucket of ice because the bottles would so easily turn over once open. But Steven had changed all of that.

Life had changed for them all since Steven had blown in. For Steven it was a change from life back in dreary old England. For everyone else it was a reminder that they had all come out to Spain to finally enjoy their lives and not just to die. Steven drank more than everyone else, had more sex than everyone else and caught more sun than everyone else. But more than anything else he thought more than anyone else and that was what had made him a sudden celebrity. And truth be told what had got him the sex.

But despite outward appearance the contrary Steven was not satisfied. Steven was hungry for more. Steven had a single secret in his life. A secret that he never told anyone. Steven had never, in his whole life, ever been satisfied. And that was the thing that made him want more than everyone else. And when he saw something, like he had seen her across the bar the night before nothing would stand in his way. Nothing.

He would have to have her.

[This is part one of a 4 part series, part 2 will be next Friday.]