Page 19 of Icebound

Luc surged to his feet. “I’ll show you the shower. Where do you want her to sleep, Jean-Marc?”

“The small blue room.”

Luc raised an eyebrow. “Really? But that’s...”

“I know perfectly well where it is—this isn’t my first time here. Put her in there.”

“But of course. Come with me, Madame Chloe. You’ll feel better after a shower and a good night’s sleep,” he said solicitously.

Chloe doubted it, but she followed Luc through the house, too weary to argue. She couldn’t even find any amusement in the fact that Luc carried the suitcase they’d taken from her hotel room. She was no guest, and Luc knew it. At least he made an attempt to be kind to her.

He led her into a large bedroom with two doors leading off it. “You’re through there,” he said, nodding toward a door. “The bathroom’s behind you.”

She said nothing. If they wanted her to walk through an empty bedroom to the small alcove with the cot-like bed, she would do it. As long as she was clean.

The bathroom was small but serviceable, and the shower generous. There were towels on a shelf, but no door on the shower room, though thank God there was a door on the small toilet cubicle. Anyone could come in and watch her shower, and she could only hope that Bastien could stop Flambeau. Who was she kidding? Bastien would terrify the Terminator.

Her suitcase was a jumble. Her hidden stash of money was gone, her second, false passport. Hardly the stuff of an American tourist looking for her lost husband. She wondered what Bastien had thought of them.

But then, he might be playing a deep game, knowing perfectly well that he was the one who’d gotten that fake identity for her. She still had so many questions. Did he know who she was? Did he know who he was?

She grabbed some fresh clothes—there was no way she would risk going through the empty bedroom in a towel—and retired to the bathroom. Once in the shower, she let out a moan of pure pleasure. The water was hot and plentiful, and there was shampoo and body wash. The water pounded down on her, and suddenly she began to cry.

The storm of tears was hard and fast, and she put a fist in her mouth to silence any sound she might make. She’d been calm and stoic so far, but in the isolation of the shower, her hard-won calm deserted her, and she released the hold on the emotions whirling inside her. She was going to die. Flambeau would rape her, Bastien was going to kill her, and she would never see her children again.

Eventually, the tears slowed into shuddery hiccups. The hot water was still plentiful, but it couldn’t be endless, and she didn’t want to think about the others’ reactions if there was only cold water left.

She turned it off, her body still shuddering in the aftermath of her weeping and looked at her face in the mirror. The tears hadn’t made much improvement. One side of her face was swollen, the other bruised from Flambeau’s fists, and now her eyes were red and puffy. She looked entirely pitiful, when she’d worked so hard at being calm and impervious.

She splashed cold water on her face, then patted it dry. It was a small improvement, and no one was around to witness her meltdown. She pulled on the loose dress she’d taken from her suitcase—there was no way she was going to wander around or even sleep in a nightgown. She needed to be alert, vigilant, ready to run at a moment’s notice.

But these men wouldn’t give her any notice. As long as she was calm and relatively docile, she might have a chance.

The room beyond the bathroom was in shadows, but she could see the door to the tiny alcove allotted to her, and she started through the darkness on silent feet, holding her breath until she reached her bedroom, when a voice speared through the darkness.

“Have you finished crying, madame?”

She jumped, letting out a little squeak of dismay. Her eyes had grown accustomed to the shadows, and she could see him now, stretched across the big bed. In the darkness, she couldn’t see him as clearly, and his French accent was unfamiliar, and she could almost think he wasn’t her husband.

In which case she’d be in even worse trouble. “I wasn’t crying,” she said defiantly, her rusty voice refuting it.

“You were sobbing your heart out—there are no doors to the bathroom, remember. You don’t need to worry. All you have to do is behave yourself and do what I tell you.”

She wanted to call him by his name, but she wisely decided not to. “Are you going to kill me?”

He didn’t answer right away, and fear spiked through her. “I don’t know,” he said finally, and she recognized the truth in his foreign voice.

She should say something sassy, to defuse the tension, like “please, don’t” or “I’d rather you didn’t.” Instead, she was silent.

“Go to bed, madame,” he said wearily. “Things won’t seem as bad in the daylight.”

She looked at his figure in the dark and knew the most powerful need to climb on that big bed with him and feel his arms around her. But he wasn’t Bastien, at least, not now, and the sooner she accepted that, the better.

“But I…” she began but he ruthlessly interrupted her.

“Go to bed. If you’re looking for sex, I’ll oblige you, but it won’t make you any safer. I’ve killed people I’ve fucked, and I’m likely to do so again. So, either strip off that ridiculous dress or go to your room.”

Without another word, she went to the small, adjoining room.