AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Boy, please, everyone is not going to fall for that smile of yours.”
He winked and strode away. The next thing she knew he returned, and she smirked at him. “No go?”
“She’s not in her room at the moment but at the spa. This way.” He gestured, and Sakura resisted popping him in the back of the head for the self-satisfied air he wore. They headed down a corridor and made a few turns until they reached a small room decorated in rich hazel and cream. Soft leather couches and white candles burned on the tables giving the atmosphere a relaxing feel, and the attendant behind the counter spoke in soothing tones. This time, while Roger engaged her in conversation, Sakura pretended to examine the bath oils on sale. When the woman turned her head, Sakura slipped beyond the counter toward the back. She was met with a row of closed doors and frowned. Short of opening each door to check out who lurked beyond, she considered her next move. Voices around the corner reached her, coming closer, so she pressed her ear to one of the doors, and hearing nothing, ducked inside. The room lay empty except for a bed, a counter with various bottles lining it, and stacks of towels on a shelf. A set of buttons on the wall controlled lighting and music, she deduced by the labeling. Another door at the opposite end of the room caught her attention, and she went to investigate. So far, the decision to come wasn’t working out. Her mind wasn’t in the game. Under normal circumstances, all arrangements would have been made. She would have only to arrive as a guest and soon hobnob with her prey, no need to sneak around at all.
The door turned out to be locked, so she returned to the one she used to come in. A listen at the panels produced no sounds in the hall, so she took a chance and opened the door. One after the other, she listened to each door, not knowing what to expect or what she would hear. When she neared the end of the hall, she started coming to the conclusion that she’d just tell her dad about this woman and go back to her own investigation. Then the deep timbre of a familiar voice stopped her dead in her tracks.
“Aw, don’t be that way, suga’. I know you were with her last night,” said a woman with a saccharin-y sweet voice and a strong Southern drawl. “It’s my turn now.”
“Maldita sea, Laila! We’re not having sex here,” Adam said.
Chapter Six
Sakura froze. She stared at the door as if she could see through it and then backed away. All the while, she felt her mouth hanging open, but she was at a loss to how to close it or get a grip on herself. Pain tightened the muscles in her chest, and betrayal echoed across her skull. Stupid, stupid, stupid, she chided herself in silence. She had no right whatsoever to feel the way she did, and yet tears flooded her eyes and fell down her cheeks. She was blind to where she walked, but she spun around and charged forward anyway. She had told Adam in the beginning they would never be exclusive. He accepted that, but the moment she fell for him—and damn everything she had fallen for him, hard—she dumped all other men. Sure, she kept up the pretense that any day she might pick up a new man, but the truth was, she couldn’t. Her heart no longer belonged to her. Accepting the fact had been near impossible, so she had turned down his proposals one after another. He had every right to be with whomever he chose. The problem was, up until today, Adam had chosen only to be with her.
She scrubbed her face just before entering the spa’s lobby area.
“Ma’am, you’re not supposed to be back there,” the attendant scolded. Sakura ignored her.
“Sakura, what’s wrong?” Roger asked. She ignored him, too.
She kept walking, past the two people staring at her, out into the hall, to the hotel’s lobby, and out the front door. Roger caught up with her and grabbed her arm. He turned her to face him, and as many times as she blinked, she couldn’t bring his visage into focus.
?
?What happened back there?” he asked.
“Nothing,” she muttered and pulled from his grasp. “I’m… I need some alone time. I’ll get back to my hotel by myself. Talk to you later.”
“I don’t feel comfortable letting you go off like this.”
“That’s not your choice, is it?”
He flinched at the vehemence in her tone, but she didn’t have the ability to be nice. If she stood there with him much longer, she’d either attack him or throw up on him. Neither appealed, so she ran away. Never in her thirty-three years that she could remember had Sakura Keith ever run away from anything or anyone.
She kept moving, until she left the driveway and reached Collins Avenue, then turned left. Leaving the luxury hotel, Adam, and Roger behind her, she half walked, half jogged. After a while, her throat burned, a stitch lit up her side, and her feet hurt. She slowed her pace but didn’t stop. After a stop at Walgreen’s on Collins and One Seventy Fourth Street for a bottle of water, she set out again. The busy traffic started to get to her, so she cut through a path alongside some condominiums to the beach. There she slipped out of her shoes and squished her toes into the sand. Near the water’s edge, the sand was cool, and she shut her eyes.
“Hey, beautiful, want some company?”
Sakura opened her eyes to meet the hungry gaze of an over-tanned man in swimming trunks and nothing else. The way he stood made it obvious he sucked in a slight paunch. She gave him a pointed glare. A slow blush crept up from his chest to his face, and he turned away. She thought she heard him let go of his breath. She found an available umbrella with a lounge chair beneath it and curled up on it. Eventually, the sun slid below the horizon.
Sakura leaned back in the chair and tucked an arm behind her head. A shadow moved in her peripheral vision, but she paid it no mind. Not far away, parties swung into high gear as if people used the night as an excuse to act like they had no sense. Music echoed across the water, along with shouts of laughter and cheers. Soon the shadows lengthened, and she let the swish of the waves coupled with the merrymakers soothe the raw pain.
“Found you,” someone whispered out of the gathering darkness.
She leaned up and scanned left and right. No one lurked nearby, but then something zipped from behind, and a hand covered her mouth. She tried biting down, but the man knotted his hand in her hair and jerked her head back. She rammed an elbow backward but impacted with air. Using her weight against him by rolling to the side didn’t produce the results she had expected. He stayed with her. When she hit the sand on hands and knees, he flipped around to lie atop her, crushing her into the soft earth. Bad move, Sakura. You’re in real trouble.
“Do you know what I’m going to do?” he asked, his tone too low to recognize. A tongue along the side of her throat followed the words, and she gagged. He chuckled at her response. “Not that. You have a dirty mind.”
She mumbled “fuck you” against his palm but doubted he understood it. Scouring her mind for some way of getting free or at least calling someone’s attention to her plight, she waited for his next move. What he did next took away her ability to think let alone fight. His teeth sank into her skin, deep, sharp, and very painfully. A cry wrenched from her throat. Although she and her family had speculated, none of them could have imagined what it felt like be changed and to endure the pain spreading fast throughout her body, and ensuring she would never be the same again.
* * * *
Sakura woke on the beach with the sun shining down on her. She lay beside the lounge chair, now turned on its side. A woman stumbled along, holding shoes in her hand, makeup smeared, hair a mess. She met Sakura’s confused gaze and offered a small smile.
“Better get moving before they catch you,” the woman slurred.
Sakura tensed, and fear made her heart pound, but then she realized the woman probably referred to the authorities. She guessed everyone assumed she slept off a strong hangover rather than being the victim of an attack. Remembering her ordeal, she reached a hand to her neck and found—nothing. On her top, the only evidence of the night’s events was a small stain of red. Her skin remained unbroken. Could she have imagined it? Maybe being upset with Adam had thrown her so much she started hallucinating.
