Fatal Burn (West Coast 2)

Now, watching this whacko undress, Dani couldn’t agree more. Still she watched, fascinated, trying to figure this loser out.

First he unbuttoned his shirt, then, his gaze never leaving the mirror, he dropped the shirt onto the floor. She sucked in her breath and bit her tongue as she stared at his back. The sight of his shoulders made her cringe. Scars slashed across his muscles, burn marks covered his skin and made it look slick and stretched too tight, while the rest of his body was smoothed and toned. What had happened to him? And what was with this strange routine?

Not knowing she was watching, he kept at it. He unzipped his jeans and let them slide down his legs, then kicked the dirty Levi’s away. If he wore underwear, it came off in the same quick motion. She never actually caught a glimpse of jockeys or boxers or anything. Then he stood naked, facing the fire, away from her, his body tanned except for his scarred back and muscular butt.

He was in good shape, she could see that. His flesh was taut. Not an ounce of flab was visible, just a hard, honed body with that horrid, disfiguring burn across his shoulders and halfway down his back. She couldn’t see the front of him, other than his face, didn’t know if the scars went down the front. But his face was unscarred and handsome, in an evil way. Blue, blue eyes, thick black hai

r, defined jaw and thin, cruel mouth.

She finally understood what women meant when they called some guy a “handsome devil.” Dani could believe he truly was a devil.

He reached toward the mantel, grabbed his small bottle of oil and slowly started rubbing his body all over, along his neck, down his arms, over his torso, making his tanned skin glisten a shiny gold in the firelight.

It was like he was into himself to the point of being obsessed.

Now the fire was burning bright, eager flames dancing and snapping, red-hot coals winking from the black ash. He smiled at his reflection and touched himself…down there.

Sick, sick, sick!

She thought he might jerk off and decided she didn’t want to watch that!

But instead he peed, sending his stream into the fire, spraying urine on the flames as his eyes moved from his own reflection to watch the fire hissing and recoiling under the foul-smelling onslaught.

Dani almost heaved.

She clamped her teeth together, determined to watch all of it, hoping to somehow figure out what made him tick.

As soon as he was finished peeing, the rite was over.

Just like that.

As slowly as he’d stripped, he pulled on his clothes in a rush, almost as if to make up for lost time. The fire sputtered and died, red embers still winking in the ashes as he yanked the shirt over his head and pulled up his pants.

Dani shrank back and crept to her cot, crossed her fingers that he wouldn’t guess she was faking it and feigned sleep. As she did every night. She knew he was coming. He always checked on her, opening the door enough to allow light to spill on the cot and her face. Sometimes it seemed as if he stared at her forever.

She always pretended that she wasn’t awake, her eyes were closed, but not squeezed shut, her mouth was slightly open and she tried to breathe evenly. Sometimes she even rolled over while he was staring, then sighed. All the while she was trembling inside, afraid that he could see through her ruse, and that he might change his routine and step into the room, move across the short distance to the cot, lean down and touch her…

She felt nauseated at the thought but forced herself to appear relaxed. Whatever happened she had to go with it, to the point that she knew she could wound him, debilitate him or outrun him.

So far he hadn’t stepped a foot into her private cell.

In fact it was almost as if he could barely tolerate her.

She still had no idea who he was and any attempts to draw him into conversation were met with steely-eyed resistance and tight lips.

During this whole time, he’d barely strung two words together when talking with her and then it was always just to bark an order.

“Get into your room.”

“What’re you lookin’ at?”

“Eat and shut the fuck up.”

During mealtimes he allowed her to sit at a table and choke down the stuff he had—canned beans, canned spaghetti, canned stew—all of which he cooked over the fire that he pissed on each night. It turned her stomach, but she forced the food down, determined to keep up her strength, determined to escape from this boring, hot, hell of a prison. He gave her bottled water and sometimes a Coke.

In the brief periods of time he’d allowed her out of the room she’d checked out as much of this cabin as possible, each avenue of escape, the few windows and two doors. There was no television. No phone. No electricity. The shack was primitive and decaying, the door on her room latched with an old-fashioned hook-and-eye lock that looked as if it had been there for half a century.

Her forays out of the cell were short, only long enough to eat or stretch her legs, but he was beside her constantly, his eyes trained on her, his muscles tense as if he was ready to pounce on her if she made one misstep. That thought, of his hands on her again, of the smell of him close, kept her in line.