A mechanical groan sounded from behind the elevator doors, then a crash as the steel box settled on its ancient cables. Liam opened the gold crisscross gate and gestured me inside. When I stayed rooted to the spot, he said impatiently, “I’ve had the building inspected. It’s perfectly safe.”
As if that was why I’d hesitate to step inside.
But I had no other options. Even if he let me leave now, there was no way to get fifteen thousand dollars. And deep down, I didn’t want to leave the Magnolia Hotel, the place I’d made elaborate fantasies about all my life, and go back to my one-room apartment with the bass pounding through the walls. The hotel had seemed like a castle, a place both pretty and safe. And now inhabited by a dragon.
“Coming?” the dragon asked.
I stepped inside.
* * *
The elevators had never been working when I played here as a kid. And the stairwells chained shut. But now the rattling motor took us up. And up and up. To the penthouse, the very top. A mishmashed version of me looked back at me through the milky-white reflective mirrors. Then the elevator doors opened, and I was looking at a Magnolia Hotel room. An actual room, and it was so much better than I could have imagined.
The sofas had elaborate silhouettes carved into dark wood. The fabric upholstery was floral and damask and a strange satiny substance that reflected light from crystal-dripped lamps. Like the carpet downstairs, there were bright rectangles left in the wallpaper from where pictures would have hung.
Ruthlessly, I tamped down my pleasure. This wasn’t about sightseeing, even if I was finally seeing the sight of my dreams. This was about obligation and pain. It was about the man who stood watching me a few feet away with hooded eyes and a slightly resentful turn of his lips. For someone about to get his way, he didn’t seem very happy. Maybe he didn’t really want me. Maybe he was reconsidering.
“Will you change your mind?” I asked.
A flicker of surprise. “Never.”
That couldn’t be relief I felt.
“Would you like a drink?” A brass cart held an array of amber liquids and cut-glass decanters.
“Please. Yes.”
He poured me something that went down smooth as silk. I drank the whole glass and then felt slightly dizzy.
“Slow down,” he said.
Easy for him to say. He didn’t have to look forward to a whole night of…what, exactly? I didn’t know what would happen next, or how it would happen, or how many times it would happen. My nerves were jittery, nonstop and overbright, like a neon sign flickering in an old pawn shop. He was so solicitous now, so patient all of a sudden. Everything felt too slow, as if time itself had slammed on the breaks. I wanted this over and done with. I wanted to never do it at all.
“Are you going to be rough?” I whispered.
“Do you want me to?”
“Yes,” I said, because then I could really hate him. And I’d know for sure, for absolute sure, that we had never been meant to be. That wasn’t how I liked sex. This wasn’t how I liked sex, forced and dispassionate. I would never like sex with Liam.
Oh God, I couldn’t do this. I imagined him twisting my arm and pushing me into the ground. I imagined his face contorting in anger and disgust. I had buried the feelings for him long ago, but every unkind word or cold touch would dig them up. And then where would I be? Devastated, like I was when I heard what he’d become. He’d be using not only my body but
my childish love for him, my lingering hope. He’d use all of me for his own pleasure and then send me home, disheveled and hollow.
The empty glass rolled from my nerveless fingers, soundless on the carpet pile. I bolted for the door, also soundless. Also empty. It was a frantic flight, like a bird bursting from a bush, except I couldn’t actually fly. And I had already been locked inside a cage. I reached the elevator doors at the same second as he caught me from behind. He spun me around, and there was the anger I had dreaded to see. Anger and disgust.
“You’d break your promise? That’s not the Grace I knew.”
I laughed. “I guess people change when they get older.”
“Yeah,” he muttered. “They do.”
As if to prove his point, he turned me with my wrist, twisting my arm until I faced the wall. Faded wallpaper against my cheek. A hard body pinning me from behind. Trapped. Trapped in the prettiest cage. A tear slipped down my cheek.
He made a sound of annoyance. “Am I as horrible as that? To let me touch you? Are my hands that dirty?”
“You hit my brother!”
“You’re right, I did. He stole from me. And unlike you, I’m not going to be a martyr. I take what’s mine.”