Raintree: Inferno (Raintree 1)

He was herding her, she realized, as if she were a sheep, and she had no choice, but to do anything other than be herded. His bloodshot green eyes glittered in his grimy face, making him look completely uncivilized. Her heartbeat skittered wildly. Was he some sort of mad serial killer who left pieces of dismembered bodies scattered all over Nevada? A modern-day Rasputin? An escapee from some mental institution? He certainly didn’t look or act like the millionaire owner of a topnotch casino/hotel. He acted like some sort of—of warlord, master of all he surveyed.

She backed into a door frame, briefly staggered off balance, then brought herself up short as she realized he’d maneuvered her into another bathroom, this one a full bath, and far more opulent than the half bath off the kitchen. No lights were on, but the illumination coming in the open door revealed their reflections in the gleaming mirror on her left.

He reached in and flipped on the lights, so bright and white that she lifted a hand to shield her eyes. “Now,” he said, “no more stalling. Take off your clothes yourself, or we’ll do this the hard way.”

Lorna looked around. She was cornered. “Go to hell,” she said, and did what cornered animals always do: she attacked.

For a short while he merely blocked her punches, deflected her kicks, avoided her bites, and the ease with which he did so made her that much angrier. She lost one shoe in the battle, the cheap sandal sailing across the room to clatter into the huge sunken tub. Then she felt a sudden wave of impatience emanating from him, and in three seconds flat he had her bent over the vanity with her hands pinned behind her.

He crowded in close, using his powerful legs to control her kicks, and gripped the neckline of her top. Three hard yanks brought the sound of several threads giving way, but the seams held. He cursed and yanked harder, and the left-side seam surrendered. Ruthlessly he tore at the garment until it was in rags, hanging from her right wrist. Her bra fastened in back, easy prey to the quick pinch of his fingers that released the hooks.

She squirmed like an eel, screaming until she was hoarse. He completely ignored everything she said, every insult and plea she hurled at him, silently and grimly concentrating on stripping her. She alternated between fury and sobs of panic as he opened the fastening of her pants, lowered the zipper, but stopped before pushing her pants and underwear down over her hips.

She went limp, sobbing, her face pressed against the cold stone of the vanity. He stopped pulling at her clothes, and instead the heat of his hand moved over her neck, lifting her matted hair aside for a moment, then tracing over her shoulders. He shifted his grip on her hands, instead pulling them up and over her head before resuming what felt like an inch-by-inch search of her skin. The sides of her breasts, her ribs, the indentation of her waist, the flare of her hips—he examined all of that, even pushing her pants lower to scrutinize the bottom curves of her buttocks. Mortified, she squirmed and sobbed, but he was inexorable.

Then he sighed and said, “I owe you another apology.”

He released his grip on her hands and stepped back, freeing her from the pressure of his body. On his way out he said, “I’ll bring you some clothes. Think about taking a shower, get your breath back and we’ll talk afterward.” He paused, added, “Don’t leave this room,” then quietly closed the door.

Sobbing, she slid from the vanity to the floor and curled in a vanquished heap. At first all she could do was cry and shake. After a while her temper resurrected itself and flashed over in a wordless shriek. She wept some more. Finally she sat up, wiped her face with the shreds of her blouse, yelled, “You bastard!” at the door, and felt marginally better for the invective.

Her eyes were swollen and her nose was clogged, but she felt calm enough to stand, though that wasn’t easy with her pants around her knees. The indignity made her flush with humiliation, but there was no point in pulling them up. Instead she stripped completely naked and stood there in rare indecision.

The suggestion to take a shower, she discovered, had been just that: a suggestion. If she didn’t want to, she didn’t have to. She could take a long soak in the sunken tub, if she wished. She didn’t have to bathe at all, though that was an option she immediately discarded.

Getting in the tub wouldn’t be practical, because she would end up sitting in dirty water. A long—very long—hot shower was the only way to get clean.

The shower didn’t have a door. The entrance was a curved wall of stone that led past a built-in shelf, stacked with thick, copper-colored towels, to three steps down into a five-foot-square stall with multiple showerheads. The controls were within easy reach, and when she turned the handle, water spurted out of three walls and from overhead. She waited until she felt the heat of the steam rising to her face, then stepped into the deluge.

Concentrating on getting clean, and nothing else, gave her nerves a much-needed respite. The hot water streaming over her body was a soothing, pulsating massage. She shampooed and rinsed, then did it again, and yet again, before her hair felt clean and untangled. She lathered and scrubbed with the fragrant bath gel, and found it didn’t remove even half the soot and grime. A second scrubbing produced results that weren’t much better, so she switched back to the shampoo; it had worked on her hair, so it should work on her skin.

Finally she realized that she’d been in the shower so long that her fingertips had wrinkled and the hot water should have long since been used up, though it wasn’t—but enough was enough. She was waterlogged. Regretfully, she turned off the water, and the pulsating streams disappeared so suddenly that it was as if they’d been sucked back into the showerheads. Only the sounds of the vent fan overhead and the draining water came to her ears.

She hadn’t turned on the vent fan. Unless it came on automatically when the humidity level reached a certain point, he’d come back into the bathroom.

Hurriedly, she went up t

he three steps, grabbed one of the fluffy towels and wrapped it around herself, then got another one and twisted it into a turban over her dripping hair. Following the curving wall, she moved until she could see into the main part of the bathroom. The mirrored wall behind the double sinks threw her reflection back at her, but hers was the only reflection. She was alone—now. The thick terry-cloth robe folded over the vanity stool told her that he had been there.

Lorna stared at the mirror. She looked pale, even to herself. The skin across her cheekbones was drawn tight, giving her a stark, shocked expression.

That was okay. She felt stark and shocked.

He’d said not to leave the bathroom. She was so soul-weary that she didn’t even try, so she didn’t know if that had been another suggestion or one of his weird mental orders that she couldn’t disobey. At this point it didn’t matter whether it was a suggestion or command. She was content to simply stay there, where there was nothing more complicated to do than dry her hair.

Rummaging in the drawers of the vanity, she found scented lotion, as well as a hair dryer and brush, which was all she needed right now. The shampoo had made her skin feel tight, so she rubbed in the lotion everywhere she could reach, then began the task of drying her hair.

Her motions with the brush became slower, then slower still. Exhaustion made her arms tremble. She was lucky that her hair was mostly straight, and had good body, because any attempt at styling it was beyond her. She just wanted her hair to be dry before she collapsed, that was all.

With that chore accomplished, she put on the robe, which was evidently his; the sleeves fell several inches past the tips of her fingers and the hem almost reached the floor. Funny, she thought fuzzily, he didn’t seem like the robe-wearing type.

Then she waited, swaying on her feet, her bare toes clenching on the plush rug. She could have at least opened the door, but she wasn’t in any rush to face him, or to find out that even with the door open, she was imprisoned in this room. Time enough for that. Time enough to engage the enemy again.

They would talk, he’d said. She didn’t want to talk to him. She had nothing to say to him that didn’t involve a lot of four-letter words. All she wanted was to go…well, not home, exactly, because she didn’t have a home in that sense. She wanted to go back to where she was staying, to where her clothes were. That was close enough to home for her. For now, she just wanted to sleep in the bed she was accustomed to.

Without warning, the door opened and he stood there, tall and broad-shouldered, as vital as if the night hadn’t been long and traumatic. He’d showered, too; his longish black hair, still damp, was brushed straight back to reveal every strong, faintly exotic line of his face. He’d shaved, too; his face had that freshly scraped look.

He was wearing a pair of very soft-looking pajama pants…and nothing else. Not even a smile.