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I walked to the bed and saw there was also a tight, profuse carnation bouquet laid on the fold of the covers. The blooms were a pink that was an exact match to the shade used in the room, it was surrounded by a delicate, creamy netting and tied with an eerily perfectly matching bow.
Portia had told me during cocktails my room was known as the Carnation Room, while Lou’s was known as the Floral Room.
And it looked like they took the room’s namesake seriously.
Chocolates or mints would have seemed too hotel hospitality, for certain, but as with the sheer perfection of everything about the house (aside from its family), this, too, was incredibly weird.
In all honesty, it looked like a bridal bouquet.
And straight up, it gave me the creeps.
I wanted to know if Lou got one too, but then I didn’t want to ask in case she didn’t, and it was another slight.
I grabbed the bouquet, gazed around the room, found a vase with nothing in it, and went about the business of rinsing it out and then putting the bouquet in some water. I left it in the bathroom, moved to the bench at the foot of the bed, and with deep gratitude, sank to it, bent and took off my sandals.
I tossed them on the floor in front of the wardrobe and wandered back to the bathroom to prepare for bed.
I was coming down the coiling stairs wearing a magnificent bridal gown and carrying a large bouquet of pink carnations ensconced in creamy netting and tied with a pink bow.
The statue on the newel post was bathed in an unearthly white light, so bright it blinded me, but my feet still descended the stairs, steady and true.
A man at the bottom waited for me, tall and besuited, but he was obscured by the bright rays beaming off the statue.
It was only when both my feet were on the marble floor did he come into focus.
Ian Alcott reached to me immediately, not my hand, but my face, cupping my jaw with great tenderness, his head descending.
I tipped mine back to receive his kiss.
And I was on my back in bed in the Carnation Room. There were frilly, pink petals covering the sheets and pillows.
Ian’s hand was still at my jaw, his body warm and weighty atop mine, his mouth plundering my own.
The kiss was a juxtaposition of tender and carnal. My legs moved, restless with desire, trying to generate friction at the zenith, which was suffused with wet.
But the kiss needed to end.
I couldn’t breathe.
Part of me wanted it never to end. It was beautiful. Exciting. Freeing.
But it was killing me.
I tried to turn my head, but I couldn’t.
The hand was no longer on my jaw. Ian’s weight was no longer on my body.
But my head had been immobilized. I couldn’t lift it. I couldn’t turn it.
There was a pillow pressed hard over my face, held down at the sides of my head.
I tried to struggle, but there was nothing to struggle against. No hands attached to wrists or arms I could push away, no body I could buck off.
I kicked. I writhed. I sucked in a desperate breath and pulled in nothing but soft, expensive cotton.
Frantic, terrified, I screamed.
The sound was blood curdling, but it wasn’t my scream.
