Wanderlust (4 page)

"I'm sorry I didn't accept your
offer," I said, hating the note of pleading in my voice, the
tremble that betrayed me. "I should have. It was rude of
me."

"Very pretty," he said. "And you got
there so quickly. I'm impressed."

I tried to pretend that was promising.
"Please. I wouldn't... I won't do it again. Maybe tomorrow we could
try again. We could go on a date, you and I."

"Tomorrow you'll be gone from here and
so will I. But you can stop talking about the bill. I would be in
this room either way. I knew it as soon as I saw you
there."

Any hope of talking my way out of this
deflated. He was sitting between me and the door, but even if I got
past him, it would take several precious seconds to open the door.
Then outside, there was no one around. My room was in the back. All
the windows around me had been dark. My car sat alone in the
lot.

No one would see me run. No one would
hear me scream.

He waited with a smug patience, as if
he waited for me to catch up to the forgone conclusion.

"Are you ready to cooperate?" he
asked.

Hell no.
My lips firmed.

He smiled, white teeth glistening from
the shadows. He looked the Cheshire cat, that incorporeal grin, the
unapologetic wickedness.

Except he hadn't done anything to
me.

So far he'd just sat in my room.
Disturbing but not harmful. He’d done nothing illegal, if I didn’t
count trespassing. All I had to do was walk out the door and leave.
March straight to the office and demand a refund. A laugh wanted to
bubble out of me, but I forced it down, knowing it would border on
hysterical. This was only the rambling of a terrified mind trying
to make sense of things that didn't make sense, desperate to feel
safe while so obviously in abject danger.

He hadn't threatened me explicitly,
but it was there. In his presence, in his casually arrogant words.
If I tried to leave, he would restrain me. He would hurt me
tonight, violate me tonight, the only question left up to me was
how much. If I cooperated, would he be gentle with me? But it was
too soon. I couldn't bring myself to submit to this yet even if it
might make my life easier.

I edged toward the phone on the
nightstand.

He leaned forward. "What are you
doing?"

"Just...just calling the front desk."
I forced a challenge in my voice. "If he gave you the key, then it
shouldn't be a surprise to him."

It was a long shot, of course. If the
manager had given him the key, he was an accomplice to whatever
this was. But maybe if he heard my voice...if I seemed more human
reaching out over the phone line, more scared, he might do
something to help me.

I gingerly lifted the bulky plastic
receiver as if it might bite. As if he might spring into action,
finally revealing the violence that must be his intent. Instead he
watched, eyes glittering while I listened to dead air. The line had
been cut. Or maybe it had never worked. He seemed to expect
that.

My hand trembled so hard that the
phone clattered on the cradle before sliding to the side, useless,
broken.

My voice cracked. "Please. I don't
know what you want from me."

"Don't you?"

I drew myself up. "You need to leave.
I'm not going to...have sex with you."

My words hung in the air, somehow
worse now that I'd voiced them, as if I were the one suggesting it
instead of him. He was as still as a deep pool, a limitless source
of patience, allowing me to work myself up into panic while he
watched in amusement.

"Enough," I said, more firmly. "You
want to sit there? Fine. I'm leaving."

Clutching the towel to me, I strode to
the door. I flipped the lock but before I reached the latch, his
heavy palm came up against the door. He didn't block the latch or
the knob. He simply leaned his weight, his thickly muscled bulk
against the door and waited. This close, I could smell the faint
scent of aftershave, of musk at the end of the day. His heat seeped
into my back, electrifying and strangely comforting after the cold
chills of fear.

"Let me go." The command came out
soft, a plea.

"I'm not doing anything to you," he
said. "Yet."

I was confined by the unopenable door
to my front, penned in by his broad body from behind. Well and
truly trapped, and he hadn't even touched me yet. I wondered if
that was the game. Maybe he was waiting for me to push him, to
strike him. Then he could say his actions were self-defense, in
whatever twisted mental world he lived in.

My throat felt tight. "I don't want to
fight you."

"Then don't. I think you know what I
want. Do I need to spell it out for you? Ask me to."

I swallowed. "What do I have to do for
you to leave?"

"I'm going to spend the night here and
we're both going to have a good time. In the morning, I'm
leaving."

He spoke with authority, but there was
a question inherent. Only one unknown. This was happening, but
would I fight him?

God, I didn't know.

I didn't know if I could let this
happen without a fight. I didn't know if I could fight him, knowing
I would lose, that I would only end up hurt. I saw my mother's
face, drawn and worried and accusing. Had this been her choice to
make too?

Maybe he knew I was close because he
continued, the low timbre of his voice rough and thick.

"I don't get off on hurting women. Not
too bad anyway. If you have any bruises they'll be small and
covered up by your clothes. No one needs to know what happened
here. It's nobody's business but ours."

He made it sound consensual. But that
was what he was describing, wasn't it? That I go along with this,
that I would consent.

Or else.

And I was too scared to ask about what
"or else" would mean.

"Oh God," I sobbed against the peeling
paint of the door. “I didn't bother you. You're a good-looking guy.
You could get a regular date. Why are you doing this?"

"Thank you for the compliment. You're
a pretty girl too. We'll be good together. This is a date, you and
I. You wanted to skip the dinner part, and I allowed it. I'm not
going to miss dessert."

CHAPTER FOUR

The three waterfalls
combine to produce the highest flow rate of any waterfall on
earth.

A sick sense of inevitability slid
down my throat.

Maybe this was a regular date—what did
I really know of courtship? He seemed very certain. And maybe it
was a self-fulfilling prophecy. If I agreed to this crazy
proposition, if I didn't fight him, it would be just a man and a
woman having sex. Wouldn't that be better than the alternative?
Even without an explicit threat, plain old mildly-bruising sex had
to be better than what he might do in anger.

Unable to submit, I searched
desperately, trying to think of something that could help. But I
was in the far corner of a deserted motel in a truck stop well off
the highway. I had no practical experience to guide me, only empty
words on musty pages. Like Alice, I had stepped through the looking
glass into a whole new world, foreign and sinister.

The old rules didn't apply to this
musky hotel room. There was only this man, strong and confident.
There was only his mercy, to be gained through pleasing him, not
angering him.

"You're thinking too much," he said,
and I heard the first rise of frustration in his voice. His
patience had a limit after all, and it was approaching on the
horizon.

"Please, please," I whispered. "Is
there something else I could...anything else...?"

He scoffed. "What else could I want
from you?"

Nothing. There was nothing at all, no
pride, no hope.

"There now." His voice softened.
Something stirred my hair. His hand stroked down, then toyed with a
damp lock. "You're making this a bigger deal than it needs to be.
It doesn't mean anything, you and I. Just casual sex. Have you had
casual sex before?"

No, never.
I shook my head.

He seemed amused, a little pleased.
"So this will be your first time, in a way. I like that. It's a
turn-on."

His fingertips drifted over my bare
shoulders, leaving a trail of goose bumps in languid circles. I
hugged the door, suddenly wishing that I were the kind of woman who
had casual sex. That I could turn around and let the towel drop and
pretend I wanted this too. It would make this easier. Instead I
could only shiver against the door, shudder under his
touch.

"Lock the door," he murmured against
my ear. "I don't want to be interrupted."

I took a deep breath and tried to calm
myself.

There are some men you
just don’t say no to.
That was what the
waitress had said to me, and I understood it now. I wouldn’t say
no, and he wouldn’t force me. I would go along with it, and
everything would be consensual.

Just like a date. Casual
sex.

My hand shook violently as I reached
up and turned the lock sideways. It didn't change our situation at
all. I couldn’t leave before it was locked, and I still couldn't.
But it felt different, as if I had exercised my choice. As if I'd
consented, and I had. He had my permission, even though he’d proven
he didn’t need it.

He trailed his hand down my arm,
wrapping his fingers around my wrist. Even though he only touched
me in one place, it felt intimate. Though he didn't squeeze, I felt
fragile. Breakable.

Leading me to the bed, he pushed me
gently to sit. I tightened the towel around myself, and he let me.
I'd expected him to push me down, to tear the towel off and have
sex with me. But I always seemed to overestimate his penchant for
force. It was something about his presence, brute strength combined
with the cunning to use it well. He wasn't afraid of violence but
neither was he overly fond of it. Or maybe that was just wishful
thinking.

He sat down beside me, his light
caresses still restricted to my arms, my shoulders. Safe places, as
if we were still getting acquainted. As if my comfort mattered at
all.

"Tell me about your boyfriends," he
said.

"What d-d-do you want to
know?"

Oh no. I hadn’t stuttered since I was
a kid. My mother had tried to frighten it out of me, but that only
made it worse. Eventually I’d grown out of it…right around the time
I’d gotten my book on Niagara Falls. Now my dreams deserted me
along with my composure.

He raised his eyebrow, a sign he had
heard my stutter, but he made no comment on it. Instead he asked,
"How many have you had? How far did you let them go with
you?"

I thought the phrasing was odd, even
if it was technically accurate. How far I let them go, like he
recognized my dominion over my body. Maybe he considered this the
same thing; maybe it was. I was letting him do it to me. I was
letting this happen.

Swallowing, I said, "My first
boyfriend was in eighth grade. We only dated for a few months and
never really saw each other outside school."

"Did you fuck him?"

The question was blunt, and I
flinched. "No. We d-didn't do that. We would meet sometimes,
outside the school during gym class."

"You made out." He smirked.

The arrogant action didn't subtract
from his attractiveness; it enhanced it. Up close, I realized he
was one of the most handsome men I'd ever met. I never would have
looked at him twice, mostly because of his age. He looked about ten
years older than me. I never would have expected him to look twice
at me either, but then I had always worn baggy clothes and hung at
the edges of a crowd with my mother before we made a quick
exit.

"Did you let him touch your
tits?

"Yes."

"Under your shirt or just
over?"

"Over at f-first. And then he
started—" I broke off as he touched my breasts through the towel,
just two fingers on the top slope, then around the
underside.

"He started what?" he prompted, still
stroking, soft caresses on the rough fabric.

I swallowed, willing myself not to
tremble. "Then he started reaching under my clothes."

He tugged the towel down. I loosened
my hold, letting the cloth slide down my breasts. The hem of the
towel caught on my nipples, baring the slope of my breasts but no
more. It was almost more obscene this way than if I'd been naked,
but I couldn’t bring myself to pull the towel down.

Instead I stared into the darkness at
the shadowy curtains that I hadn't drawn closed while the weight of
the wet towel tugged at the tender skin of my nipples. He drew his
finger over the tops of my breasts.

I sucked in deep breaths, more
panicked now, everything more sensitive, so acute—like pain. He
touched me so lightly, and it hurt. How would it feel when he was
rough? Because surely he would be. There was only one reason I
could think of why a man who looked as good as he did would force a
woman—because he preferred it that way.