“That’s all I’ve got for you.” She brought her knee up, hard, fighting dirty, but he jerked out of the way in time. Leaving her room to run.
She took off across the wide, manicured lawn, running toward the house. She needed to grab her cell phone, call 9-1-1, and the hell with Reno and everyone else who was placed on this earth simply to make her completely insane.
He caught her by the swimming pool with a flying tackle that sent her sprawling on the grass, and a moment later he was on top of her, rolling her over beneath him so that she could look up at him in the smoke-filled dusk. He was staring down at her, and the expression on his face was unreadable. Was it anger? Disdain? Hatred? Or something else?
“You’re going to get up and do exactly what I tell you to do,” he said in a deceptively soft voice. “Or I s
wear to God, I’ll let them kill you.”
“I’m sure you’re tempted,” she shot back, squirming. “But then you’d have to come up with a good excuse for Taka, and I don’t think you have it in you. Get off me!”
He didn’t move, straddling her, ignoring her struggles. It only took her a moment to freeze. He was turned on.
“You sick bastard,” she said, fighting it. Not him. Fighting the heat that had pooled between her legs.
He climbed off of her, hauling her up beside him, his grip like iron. “Healthy,” he said. “Are you going to do what I tell you?”
“Fuck, no.”
Before she could stop him he picked her up, tossing her over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. She beat at his back, but he was impervious, skirting the pool, heading for the garage.
The moment they were in the shadows he veered to the right, to the pool house, kicking the door open and shutting it behind him. The pool house had been closed up for years—Lianne preferred to spend her time in the sun, and no one had ever really liked the place but Jilly. There was an old mattress on the floor, and she used to curl up there and read, safe and secure and hidden just on the rare chance that Lianne or Ralph would remember she existed and start to look for her.
It hadn’t changed—if anything it was dustier, but the mattress was still there, and he dropped her down on it, making no effort to cushion her fall.
“Goddamn it!” she said, furious. “I was just in a car accident. You might at least be a little gentle.”
“I’m not feeling gentle right now,” he growled. “If I stay around you a minute longer I’d probably strangle you. I’m going to check the house, see if your supposed yakuza is really dead. And then I’m going to have to find a way to get you out of here. You screwed up the front gate, big-time, and the service entrance has been locked from the house. We can’t get out that way, either, unless I disarm it.”
“I know how to turn it off,” she said, starting to get up, but he put his hands on her shoulders and shoved her back, hard.
“You’ll stay here or I’ll tie you up.”
“Promises, promises,” she muttered. “And you can just stop throwing me around and hurting me. I’m fragile.”
“Ha! You’re as fragile as a sumo wrestler. And trust me, I’m pulling my punches. I could hurt you a lot more.”
“If that’s what turns you on,” she snapped, grabbing at the loose jacket he was wearing.
He swore, foul and dirty, pulling out of the jacket and moving away. “Coward,” she said, mocking.
He froze. The dusty, deserted pool house was silent, the windows so dirty she could barely see the huge house beyond it. He turned to look back at her for a long, thoughtful moment, then headed for the door.
She was tempted to throw the jacket at his head, tempted to find something, anything, to hurl at him, but she simply sat there on the mattress, defeated.
He didn’t open the door. He locked it. And then he turned back to look at her in the dusty stillness.
“What do you want from me, Ji-chan?” He sounded older, tired, not the smart-ass, smirking punk she was used to. He sounded as wounded as she felt.
Your head on a platter? Never to see your face again? For you to be eaten by hungry tarantulas? Nothing was bad enough.
She looked up at him, opened her mouth to rip him a new one. But only one word came out. “You,” she said.
She wasn’t sure what she expected. Was he going to walk away from her? Bring the force he’d threatened? He moved across the deserted pool house to the mattress, squatting down beside it, close enough to touch her. “Someone is trying to kill you, Ji-chan,” he said softly. “I haven’t had sex in three weeks, not since you left, and I’m not the kind of man who goes without sex easily. You need to let me go and try to save your life, because otherwise I won’t be able to keep my hands off you.”
“Why haven’t you had sex in three weeks?”
“Because you weren’t there. And unfortunately I don’t want anyone but you. Now, let me go and find a way to keep you safe.”