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The floor is so slippery, and I can’t get up. I can’t stop what’s about to happen. No matter how I stretch and strain to reach the gun, it keeps sliding farther away. There’s nowhere to hide from the giant in the doorway, so tall, broad, and looming over me.
His thin lips stretch in a sick smile.
And he pulls the trigger.
“No! Stop!”
My eyes snap open in a strange room where I’m wrapped in inky darkness. My muscles are frozen. I can’t move. I can hardly breathe. There isn’t a sound except for the fading echo of the scream that woke me—my scream—and the heavy pounding of my heart.
“Emilia?” Luca runs into the room, breathless, before almost draping himself over me. It all comes rushing back in a sickening wave. I’m in the cabin. I was only dreaming about the events of this afternoon going much differently than they did.
He reaches over and turns on a small lamp to cast a warm glow over the room. Being able to see goes a long way toward breaking me out of the paralysis that gripped me after I woke up. Now that I can see his face, the concern etched across his features is evident when he leans over me again. “You screamed,” he whispers, his dark eyes wide and searching.
“I was having a nightmare.” Now, I feel the wetness on my cheeks and the pillow. I was crying. Luca Santoro has discovered me crying in bed like a baby. My humiliation knows no bounds. I run a hand over my cheeks, resenting the tears that make me look weak.
I can’t afford that.
I can’t look at him.
The thought of looking at my reflection the next time I go to the bathroom is something I can barely stomach. How can I look myself in the eyes after what I allowed to happen hours ago? I let him humiliate me. Hell, I practically begged him to do it and gave him the keys to my body. He knows how much I want him. There’s no use pretending otherwise now. I have completely lost what little leverage I had. I’m weak, he knows it, and I don’t have the first clue what happens next.
My only hope—small, like a tiny flame in the darkness—lies in whatever he feels for me. He talks like he wants to hurt me, but he hasn’t yet. Not really. Aside from a little rough groping, he’s left me unharmed. Physically, anyway. Emotionally? That’s another story for when I have the time to get into it.
I’m so weary. My limbs feel heavy when I shift my weight on the mattress. The only sleep I managed to get came in short, light bursts, and the few dreams I managed were gory, bloody, a little too close to reality, like my most recent nightmare.
He sits back, giving me space but stopping short of leaving me alone. “You scared the shit out of me.” He releases a dry, shaky laugh. “Fuck. The last thing you want to hear when you’re in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night is a scream like that.”
It must be the fact that he’s looking a little disheveled and vulnerable that gives me the balls to say it. “Like that’s the first scream you’ve ever heard.”
At first, his brows draw together in a stern expression. It soon fades before a faint smile passes over his lips. “I make women scream, but not that way,” he assures me in a voice dripping with innuendo.
He would turn it into something sexual, wouldn’t he? “That’s not what I meant,” I mutter, rolling my eyes.
“No shit,” he deadpans. “You think I’m the guy who got off on torturing bugs and small animals when I was a kid? I’ll have you know I didn’t torture my first animal until I was sixteen.”
“What?” I whisper, horror-struck.
“Jesus, you’re gullible.” He laughs, and it’s a nice sound. It reminds me of the man I met at the club that first night—charming and warm enough to make me laugh softly along with him. Once he’s gone quiet, he pins me in place with a penetrative stare. “What were you dreaming about?”
I roll onto my back and blow out a sigh. Luca might not be into torturing animals, but he’s not above torturing me with questions I’d rather not answer. It’ll only get worse if I shut down. “Today. Or yesterday, I guess. In my bathroom.”
“You’re a big, bad detective, right?” he asks with a snort. “You shouldn’t get so shaken up by something like that.”
All his smartass comment earns him is a withering look from me. “There’s a difference between being on the job and falling out of the tub, completely naked and unarmed and already wounded,” I snap.
“Watch it.” Darkness creeps back into his voice, and it brings ice along with it. “I’m sitting here, trying to take your mind off your nightmare, and you get a shitty attitude with me?”
With my kidnapper.
My kidnapper, who saved my life.
I’ll never unravel this entire fucked-up situation, not if I had a hundred years to try. “It’s been a difficult twenty-four hours.” Including the fact that he basically assaulted me in the bathroom earlier, no matter how much I liked it.
“For both of us,” he reminds me before standing, and I wish my heart wouldn’t sink like it does. I shouldn’t want him to stay with me.
I can’t trust him not to use my body for his amusement the way he did earlier.
I can’t trust myself not to want him to, either.
