When his door banged, she sank back onto her bed and lay under her sheets, feeling limp and helpless, and cold, so cold, even though it was a hot night.
Too wired up to even close her eyes, she lay there, staring at the ceiling for hours.
She had to get out of here.
Finally she slipped into a fretful sleep. At first she dreamed of a little girl with brilliant blue eyes and down-soft black hair. The child was holding a rusty spade and digging in the soft, tilled flower bed in the shade near the big house.
Mia tossed her head back and forth and cried out for Shanghai. Suddenly he lay beside her. They were in Vegas. She neither touched nor kissed him even though she ached because she was waiting to see if even once, he’d make the first move. Finally he bent his dark head, and his lips caught hers at just the right angle.
The heat of his mouth made her sigh in surrender and say his name aloud again.
“You shouldn’t have come here. We can’t be together—not ever,” he said. But he kissed her again, and that one kiss turned his words into lies and was everything she’d ever wanted from him and way more.
In her dream she relived how he’d made love to her all night, so tenderly, so sweetly, and so passionately. How he’d given her countless climaxes, and still she’d begged for more.
He’d been tough loving, tender—and sexy. Oh, so sexy.
But he’d rejected her the next morning as if their night together had been nothing.
Next she was on Tavio’s yacht shivering, and Tavio was wrapping her freezing body in blankets and telling her in Spanish that she would be all right.
Her dream changed. She was sleepwalking on Tavio’s yacht. Only was it Tavio’s? She’d found pictures of a blond family buried in a drawer in the stateroom Tavio had locked her in.
In her dream her stateroom door was unlocked, and she wandered out onto the deck and made her way shakily to the stern where she saw a thick chain attached to a huge cleat. An object bobbed that was being dragged in the white frothy wake behind the boat.
The moon was full and the transom light bright. As she leaned over the railing and stared at the thing dancing on the thick chain in the heavy seas behind the boat, trying to make sense of it, she suddenly realized it was the skeleton of a human being, and there was still some flesh on the torso.
Suddenly the skeleton turned into a giant rat and hopped onto the boat. She began to scream and scream for Shanghai to save her.
But Shanghai didn’t come. When she turned, the monster chased her straight into Octavio’s arms.
As always when she had this nightmare, she woke up screaming. And as too often was the case, Tavio was there, holding her.
“It’s all right. There’s nothing to be afraid of,” he said gently, pressing her against him as he sat beside her on her bed.
He was so hot, he felt like he had a fever. Even though she was still shaking, she quickly pushed away from him. Gathering the sheets to her neck, she shrank against the immense headboard.
“I’m all right. Please, just go.”
He hesitated longer than he usually did, and she knew he was remembering the lustful rage he’d been in earlier. “I still want you. No matter what you’ve done.”
“And all I want is for you to let me go.”
“Who is this Shanghai?” he growled. “Did he love you even half as much as I do?”
His question made her eyes burn.
His white smile flashed across the darkness. “No?”
Sensing she had to tell him something, she said, “He’s dead.”
“If you lie and I ever meet him, I kill him, Angelita. Maybe I kill you, too, if you don’t choose me.”
“Please, just let me go to my country. This isn’t going to work. I don’t understand your life. You could never understand mine, either. You can’t make people love you. Believe me, I know!”
“I throw my wife away for you. Already my men are laughing at me because of you. You try to run away. Some traitor help you. Maybe an informant. They say I am weak because of a woman. Me? Tavio! I have to be strong, or they will cut me to pieces and throw me to the dogs. Every day this Terence Collins, he write more bad things about me, and Federico, he publish these lies because he hate me. The DEA wants me. They put pressure on the authorities here. Do you understand? Intiende? They demand drug busts like tonight. I think Collins and Federico cause Marco to die. And maybe you know who tell them these things about me. Maybe they hate me so much they help you.”
“No. I…”
“In the desert, the weak die. I never, not in all my life, have feelings for anyone like I have for you. My wife, she do nice things for me. She nice woman. But I do not love her. Is different with you. Is fate. You are strong woman. I am strong man. I would make you my queen.”
“You’re a drug lord.”
“If I wasn’t, maybe then…you could like me a little?”
“But you are. You torture people.”
“So do the police.”
“Collins says you kill people. Many people.”
“Bad people. Children look up to me. I am a hero.”
“Maybe that’s what I hate the most.” She stared at the shadowy walls. “I hate this life and everything it means. Poor people are forced into this business.” She was thinking of Julio. “I hate the power you have over me…to keep me here. Of course, I try to run away.”
“I do not rape you.”
“Yet.”
He laughed.
“When you do, you will kill the thing inside me you like.”
“Maybe that would be for the best,” he lashed violently. “Maybe then I kill this thing inside me and I will be free.”
Feeling weary and hopeless, she shut her eyes and willed him to go. Finally she prayed, and after a while, a sense of peace washed her even in this awful place where she felt so lost and weak and helpless.
For a long time, Tavio stayed beside her. She could feel his predatory eyes on her face and body and smell the tobacco on his breath as she prayed for help, for strength, for a miracle. She didn’t dare get up and run because she feared any movement might entice him, that he was that close to the edge.
Seconds passed.
Finally the bed groaned. When she opened her eyes again, he was gone, and she was alone and shivering in the darkness.
Then Shanghai’s deep voice said, “You are not alone.”
She felt his strength envelop her. For several seconds it was almost as if he held her in his arms. Her body grew warm.
Knowing he couldn’t be here even though she felt his presence so keenly, she jumped out of bed, her eyes searching the darkness.
“Shanghai?”
The only sound was Negra purring from her carpet under the chair.
Mia sank wearily back onto the bed alone and felt more crushed by her loneliness than ever.
Shanghai wasn’t here. He’d never been there for her.
The night when she’d pledged her heart and soul and body to him forever had been nothing more than a one-night stand to him. He’d left her for another rodeo the next day.
As always, she had only imagined that Shanghai cared.
She gripped the sheets. She was all by herself in this awful place, and if she didn’t find a way to make something