Ravenous, he began to kiss her. “You are beautiful,” he breathed, his lips moving from her mouth, to her cheek, to her throat. Suddenly, he could contain himself no longer. Peeling her panties lower, he pushed her down into the mattress and straddled her. He tore at his jeans, unzipped his fly and shoved his jeans down. Somehow he had the presence of mind to fumble in his wallet for a condom. He tore it out of its package, put it on.
“How many others…besides me? How many, damn you? Brand Baines? Those jerks with Baines, too? What games did you play with them?”
“Only you, Brand…” She raised soulful eyes to him.
She didn’t even know who he was, didn’t care.
Then she saw him. Really saw him.
“You’re not—Brand!”
“How many—”
“Where am…” She moaned, shut her eyes, thrashed her golden head back and forth. “Oh, dear!”
“You’re in a shack. You were playing bondage games with three men.”
Another voice, bright and sassy, not Marcie’s. “Don’t you dare say things like that to me, mister.” But she was very pale. “Why, who are you anyway?”
In the next breath she saw the nylon around her wrist and moaned. “Bondage? You—you monster!”
“Me? This little game was all your idea!”
Panicking, wild to escape him now, she pounded on his chest, kicked at his legs. “No…No…No…”
He hated teases. “Whores don’t say no.”
“Don’t you dare tell me what I can or cannot do. I can too say no if I want to. No…No…”
“No?” He laughed harshly, covering her sputtering lips with his hand. “I can have you. Anybody can. You can’t say no. Not now.”
“No,” she mumbled and most defiantly against his thick fingers. Then she bit him, rather ferociously.
“Ouch!” His hat fell off.
Furious, he jammed a knee between the girl’s legs, positioned himself to lunge. She was too slim, too small to stop him.
“You want me to tie you up again. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
She countered with a piteous, mewing sound. Terrified eyes locked on his for a long, shocked moment. Then she slumped lifelessly.
Blood pumped. Take the sexy, sassy witch.
Rigid, she lay beneath him, blue eyes wide-open.
They were isolated. She was helpless. He could do whatever the hell he wanted.
So, do it. Nobody would know. Not even her.
He was swollen, on fire. The room was an oven. His black hair dripped perspiration onto the bed, onto her pale skin that gleamed with sweat, too. The need to take and ravage was so powerful, it almost robbed him of his humanity.
I can say no if I want to. No…No…
Sassy. Even when her face had been bloodless and she’d been so scared.
“Oh, God…” Had it come to this?
Panting hard, he drew back and moved a hand in front of her face. She didn’t blink, didn’t even see the five splayed fingers. He ran his hands through his soaking hair, smoothed it back, inhaled a ragged breath.
Something really was wrong with her. He fingered her wrist, found a pulse.
Wild with relief that at least she was alive, he pushed himself off her. He sat in the hot, stifling dark, cursing himself and her blasphemously. Through gritted teeth, he sucked in more deep breaths as he fought to regain normalcy…sanity…decency.
When she just lay there, her glassy eyes fixed on the ceiling, he got scared, too. Lifting her, he began to shake her.
“Wake up.”
She frowned, struggling to focus on his scowling face. “Sleepy…You are being most unpleasant.…”
Near panic, he dressed quickly, pulled her panties up those incredibly long legs, smoothed her dress. Touching, redressing her stirred him almost more than he could bear.
“Stand up.”
“Can’t…Dizzy…”
“Keep talking.” He slapped her. Not hard. But hard enough to leave a red mark on her pale cheek. He instantly regretted having done so.
“You’re mean.”
He grabbed her shoe and his Stetson. When he jammed her bare foot into the high-heeled red pump, she couldn’t balance and swayed into him.
“Oops.”
He grabbed her. “What kind of pills are you on?”
“You really are most disagreeable.…I’m a good girl. I don’t do drugs.”
“Liquor then? How much?”
“Brand…Drink…Not liquor, though.”
Luke didn’t know much about drugs.
“Whatever it was, you’re higher than a kite.”
Bottom line. He had to get her out of here. “Put your arms around my neck.”
“Are we going on our honeymoon?” Then she realized who she was really with. “I think you’d make the most dreadful bridegroom.”
Jostling her into his arms seemed to waken her. She was lighter than he expected. Effortlessly, he carried her outside into the close, hot, humid dark, which reeked of diesel fumes, charcoal smoke and other fouler pollutants.
“Are we in Maui yet?” she asked, a tinge of desperation in her dazed, curious voice.
They were standing on a crumbling sidewalk in front of a shack smeared with graffiti. He’d nearly raped her. She’d called him a monster.
She thought they were on their honeymoon.
He played along. “Can’t you hear the surf and see the hula dancers?”
“Maui. Darling. Just like you promised.”
Her wistful eyes and impish smile of sheer joy both dazzled him and terrified him.
Darling. The word, the way she said it wrapped itself around her soul. And his.
And her smile. That incandescent smile.
He wanted that irresistible smile to be for him. For him alone.
She took off his hat, turned it over and then plopped it on her own golden head. It swallowed her. She looked like a little girl playing cowgirl.
His gut clenched. So did his heart.
He could feel nothing for her. Nothing.
4
“Oops.” The yellow-haired whore shot him an irreverent grin.
His heart paused for a beat or two.
Cute. Childlike. Sassy.
All woman.
Those were Luke’s first thoughts when she tiptoed out of the hotel bathroom in a blue terry cloth robe, nearly tripping on the hem of the voluminous thick folds that swallowed her.
“I’m sorry. Do you need to go—” She blushed slyly at this mention of bathroom activities, and scooted against the wall. She ran her fingers through golden, damp curls. “How long was I?”
Not that she looked like she cared in the least.
“An