An erotic novel by bestselling erotic novelist Chloe Thurlow
Emily feels wicked, liberated, daring. And bored. But her adventure begins on holiday in La Gomera, when a rugged beachcomber removes the leather thong from his neck and binds her hands behind her. Crossing oceans and continents in a nether world of smugglers, arms dealers, and pirates, she becomes the adored but captive jewel of the tough inflexible men who make a living in inhospitable landscapes. On hot afternoons on long days without number, she dedicates herself to the pleasures of sex in all its shapes and forms. She learns subservience. She becomes the perfect concubine. The perfect lover. She becomes Chengi – Girl.
Chloë Thurlow lives in a Chelsea attic and writes her stories from two to six in the dead hours of night. At twenty-seven, Chloë is the author of three erotic novels praised for their lyrical writing style and unblushing sensuality.
"Never in all the hundreds and thousands of romance tales and stories that I have read over the decades has a novel left me so speechless." - Simply Erotic Reviews
What made me be so thoughtless that day, so reckless, so irresponsible? Many times I would ask myself this question on those dark nights that lay in the future. Was it a sense of boldness, a touch of madness, of promiscuity? A lone girl, shamelessly naked in the great expanse of the sea. I had finished with university, finished with my boyfriend. I was free. Totally free. I was at the beginning of my life and, like Columbus, I wanted to enter the unknown.
There is a Greek island that is said to move about the Aegean and I was beginning to wonder if the island before me was that very place, that the shaving of rock had cast off its ties and drifted across the Mediterranean, slid by the Rock of Gibraltar and was heading west for America. After leaving the midway point, that point where I should have turned back, I had swum on for a long time, yet the island seemed no closer, that rather than taking me towards the line of palm trees, each stroke was pushing it like a ball further away.
I rested, treading water, and glanced back. Before, I had been able to pick out the red and yellow stripes of the Spanish flag above some building on La Gomera. Now, it was a blur like a far away bird flapping on the horizon. There was no question of trying to swim back now. My fate was sealed and I swam on, paddling on my back, conscious suddenly that I would be arriving in a strange place without money or papers, as naked as the first creatures that crawled from the sea.
As that thought permeated my mind, I was suddenly afraid of the deep water, the silence, the isolation. I turned on to my front and swam faster, like an athlete at the end of a race. The moment of panic passed and I was relieved as the shapes and forms of the island grew firm, the trees, a pale beach, the ruins of a tower on the low peak. The next time I rested, my feet touched the sand of the sea bed and I waded slowly ashore.
I was on an empty beach dotted with shells and carapaces of every size and shape, shells in a kaleidoscope of colours like a flower garden. There were brick-coloured starfish, razor shells I stepped around so that I didn’t cut my feet, open shells with the dried skeletons of minute life forms and shells being carried methodically by hermit crabs. I saw bigger crabs with their swift sideways motion, running one way then the other, their eyes protruding like cartoon figures showing shock and surprise. I shivered with cold but the sun was heavy with the midday heat and I quickly warmed up as I picked my way through the shells to the dunes rising up at the edge of the beach.
The island had seemed small when I set out from La Gomera, but it was bigger than I had expected, the coastline stretching perhaps a mile in each direction before curving away from view. I climbed the dunes and lay down. I was exhausted. I may even have slept, for it was the sound of footsteps on the shingle that brought me back to my senses.
I was aware of two things simultaneously: the fact that help was on its way and, more worrying, that I was naked, no clothes, no phone, no watch. Nothing.
The approaching figure was a man in a turban and a loose blue tunic that billowed about him. He didn’t hurry and approached as you might a nervous animal, a unicorn perhaps. It occurred to me that the island might be private property, that I was trespassing. Not that it would matter. I obviously hadn’t stolen anything. In a way, I felt safe. I would be able to explain that I had swum too far and couldn’t endure the long swim back. I was certain there must be a boat and hoped the man in the blue tunic was a fisherman. I had left my money in a purse under my towel on the beach. I could pay him.
I stood, unsure what to do with my hands, whether it was best to hide my breasts, my pubic hair, those bronze curls shiny and a shade darker than my hair falling wet and sandy about my shoulders. I tried to picture myself as the stranger must have pictured me, and decided it was best to be cool, act as if being naked was the most natural thing in the world. I remained motionless, spine straight, breasts thrust forward. I felt embarrassed, of course, but also mischievous, proud, vaguely superior, a mass of swirling, changing emotions that swept through me under the gaze of the stranger.
As he drew nearer, his expression didn’t change. His face was as dark as mahogany, burnt by the sun, his features below the folds of his turban sharp and angular, a strong nose and piercing eyes shiny as chips of coal. He was carrying a large sack and, as he transferred it from one shoulder to the other, he made no pretence that he was studying my prominent nipples, my nervous smile, my green eyes trying to maintain the façade of self-confidence.
