Passion

by Marilyn Pappano

  That left only the bathroom. She made a hasty retreat, closing the door behind her. She knew from her earlier visit that there was no lock on the door, but he had been decent enough so far. Surely he wouldn’t begrudge her a little time alone. It wasn’t as if she could go anywhere or could do anything.

  Lowering the toilet lid, she sat down and rested her elbows on her knees. The bathroom was no cheerier, no cleaner or nicer than the rest of the place. A bare light bulb, maybe forty watts, sixty at most, burned overhead, its fixture dangling by a wire from an irregular hole in the ceiling. The walls were ugly powder blue tile, with an alternating border at eye level of pale pink. The tub was old, small, and set against the back wall. A peek behind the shower curtain revealed bits of plaster fallen from the ceiling overhead, a yellow-red stain extending from the faucet down to the drain and two cockroaches, one dead, the other very much alive.

  And lo and behold, there was a God up in heaven… and a window above the tub. It was set into crumbling tile, square, awfully small, but she could wiggle through it. She knew she could.

  With a new sense of purpose—with new hope—she returned to the bedroom and lifted her suitcase onto the bed. “I’m going to take a shower,” she announced, opening the bag and rummaging through it until she located the zippered vinyl bag that held her toiletries.

  John made no response. He just lay there, his head tilted back at an awkward angle to rest against the door, his eyes closed, his breathing shallow but steady.

  Back in the bathroom, she closed the door once more, wishing she had thought to grab a shoe from her suitcase to slide underneath it and act as a wedge. But it was too late now, and the shoes she was wearing, chosen for their thick soles so she could do a lot of walking, were too big to be of any use.

  Setting the bag on the floor, she chased away the live cockroach, turned the water on full force, then climbed onto the narrow side of the tub. There was scum—mildew, dirt, slime she didn’t care to identify—on the lock and around the edges of the window. Grabbing a threadbare washcloth, she covered the lock and began pushing.

  After a moment of fruitless work, she sighed. The window obviously hadn’t been opened in ages; the scum grew in a continuous spread all along the frame and seemed to cement the lock in place. Changing positions, one foot on each side of the tub, she braced herself against the wall for better leverage and gave the small, slippery lock her best effort.

  The metal had just started to budge when an arm closed around her waist, startling her, pulling her off-balance. She struggled instinctively, shrieking as her feet slipped from the tub rim, one landing in the water that had pooled in the bottom of the tub, the other on John’s foot. Muttering a curse in her ear, he lifted her with his arm around her waist, then settled her against his hip like a sack of grain, carried her around the corner, and, with more force than necessary, dumped her right in the middle of the bed.

  Scowling, she scrambled into a sitting position. “You bastard.”

  He ignored her and picked up the phone from the night table. As she warily watched, he disconnected the cord from the back, then laid the phone aside on the other bed. So much for the possibility of calling for help, she thought darkly, not that she’d given it much thought. Whom could she call and what could she say? That she was being held prisoner in a motel without a name in a town whose name she didn’t know by a man whose name was commonplace enough to be a joke? And did she know this man? No, not at all… well, except for getting pretty damned indecent with him on a French Quarter sidewalk. Oh, and behaving shamelessly with him in a taxicab. And, oh, yes, having sex with him three times only hours after meeting him.

  Any rational person would think she was crazy and hang up on her. Even D.J.—if she could get hold of her again—wouldn’t buy this tale.

  When he bent down, searching between the beds, then straightened a moment later with the phone cord in hand, hostility quickly gave way to fear. She watched as he formed a loop with the thin wire, then bent again to fasten it around the metal foot of the bed. Dread coursing through her, she began scooting away, scrambling across the bed, trying desperately to avoid him but simply managing to back herself into the corner.

  She was trapped.

  And he was reaching for her.

  “P-please,” she whispered, her voice trembling. “Please don’t tie me up.”

  Looking grim and relentless, he grasped her right wrist and began drawing her across the bed. She pulled against him, but the sheet was old and worn thin; her feet couldn’t find traction, and the slick, synthetic blend of her shorts and vest slid right across the bed.

  The cord wasn’t very long, so he pulled her to the edge of the mattress, then forced her wrists together and began wrapping the length around them. When she struggled, he didn’t say a word but merely moved so that he was lying heavily against her, his weight forcing her to subside.

  She couldn’t bear this, Teryl thought. Her heart was thudding, and she felt an all-too-violent churning in her stomach. If he didn’t change his mind, if he didn’t loosen the cord and free her, she was going to go into a full-fledged panic attack. She was going to start screaming, and she wouldn’t stop until everyone in this entire little town had heard her.

  Then she felt his erection.

  His gaze met hers, and she saw his startled look. His desire had come swiftly. In no more than the space of a moment, he’d gone from sex-was-the-last-thing-on-his-mind to hard enough to hurt where his penis pressed against her hip. Twenty-four hours ago she had been flattered by his desire, but right now she felt only fear—fear and, in some shameful place deep inside, a tiny little rush of heat.

  Oh, God, she was as sick as he was. How could she care at a time like this that the sex between them had been good? He had kidnapped her, for God’s sake! He had taken her prisoner and was planning to tie her to the bed and was getting turned on by it! How could she feel anything less than total revulsion? How could her body betray her this way?

  He shifted positions slightly, rubbing against her, and then, holding both of her hands in one of his, he raised the other to lightly touch her face. “Teryl…” His voice was hoarse, soft, a needy plea.

  Humiliation given life by her own need made her turn her head away, and her response made him stiffen. He slid off of her, sat on the edge of the bed, and began rewrapping the cord around her wrists, working quickly, mechanically. She lay still until he began to tie the ends together; then she twisted her fingers, managing to wrap them tightly around his. “Please, John…”

  He brushed her away and fastened the ends into a knot, checking to make sure it wasn’t too tight—or too loose.

  “John, please don’t do this.” Panic made her voice thin, insubstantial. “I can’t… Oh, God, I can’t stand this. Please, I’ll be good. I won’t try to escape. I won’t cause any trouble.”

  He ignored her pleading, stood up, and walked away, crossing the room to the television, turning it on, turning the volume as loud as it would go. If she screamed, some rational part of her knew in spite of her fear, it wasn’t likely anyone would hear, and if anyone did hear, it wasn’t likely they would care. They would probably assume it was just part of the cop movie on TV. Still, that didn’t stop her from making one last, whispered, tearful plea. “I’ll be good, John. I swear I will.”

  John went into the bathroom, closed the door, rested his arms against it, and buried his head in his arms. She was crying; in spite of the television, he could hear it through the thin wall. The soft little sobs pricked at his already raw nerves until he wanted to cry.

  Christ, what was he doing here in a shabby motel in Podunk, Mississippi, with a crying hostage tied to a bed? What in hell could possibly be so important that it could bring him to this?

  Simon Tremont. That smug, condescending bastard claiming to be Tremont.

  His books. Resurrection.

  His life.

  Without Simon Tremont and the books, he had no life. He might as well be dead. And although he
had lived half his life thinking dead was the best way to be, he’d be damned if he would die a total failure. He didn’t have friends or family to miss him, didn’t have a woman who loved him or kids who would mourn him, but he had twelve much-loved books, and he would reclaim them before he died. He would prove to Teryl that he was Tremont. He would prove to her that he wasn’t crazy.

  He would prove it to himself.

  The sound of water still running in the tub penetrated his thoughts, reminding him that he hadn’t had time for a shower this morning. He’d had too many plans to make—to obsess over. He had gotten to bed late and had been up early to watch for the impostor in the hotel lobby, and now he felt dirty.

  Of course, the dirtiness he felt wasn’t the sort a person could wash away with soap and water. It came from the inside out, and there was nothing in the world with enough power to make him completely clean again. Still, a shower might help relax some of his tense muscles. It might help alleviate some of his unwanted desire. It would certainly help block out the sounds from the next room.

  Closing the vinyl curtain, he switched the shower on, then stripped out of his clothing and stepped under the water’s spray. Although the handle was turned to hot, the water was only lukewarm and quickly edging toward cool. Teryl had used all the hot water in the cover-up of her failed escape. He didn’t mind the cool temperature, though. It washed away the outer layers of his exhaustion, made him feel not quite so weary, not quite so ragged.

  Besides, cold showers were supposed to be good for over-active libidos, and after years of lying more or less dormant, his was certainly making up for lost time. Practically every time he looked at Teryl, he got aroused. Every time he thought about last night, every time he closed his eyes and remembered…

  That was exactly what he’d been doing earlier when she was in the bathroom. He had been more than half-asleep when she had informed him that she was going to take a shower. He had heard and understood her words, though; the images his brain had immediately conjured up were proof of that—images of her naked, her sleek brown hair wet against her head, her hands stroking her soap-slick breasts, his hands buried in a lather of brown curls between her thighs. They were images guaranteed to lead to the vaguely unsatisfying climax of a wet dream, but before he reached that point, something had jerked him wide-awake. Maybe it had been a sound. Maybe it had been a subconscious unwillingness to come while thinking about her when he would much prefer to do it while making love to her. Maybe it had just been instinct.

  Whatever the cause, he had awakened hard and horny and suspicious, and she had given him reason to be. If she had escaped, he would have wound up in jail—or, worse, the nearest psychiatric facility.

  He smiled bleakly. Maybe they would have kept him too sedated to know who he or anyone else was. Maybe they would have kept him too medicated to remember. Maybe, for the first time in his adult life, he would have found peace.

  He finished his shower quickly, not because the temperature of the water now was sending chills through him but because Teryl deserved that much consideration. Because the sooner he was done, the sooner he could untie her and the sooner she could calm down. They could both calm down and get some badly needed sleep.

  After drying off with a paper-thin towel, he pulled his jeans on and wadded the rest of his clothing into a ball. As soon as he opened the door, the soft, teary sounds coming from around the corner stopped. He tossed his dirty clothes toward his suitcase, shut off the television, then went to kneel beside the bed. There he freed the telephone cord, loosening it from her wrists and from the foot of the bedframe, winding it in neat loops around the fingers of his right hand. When that was done, he finally found the courage to look at her.

  She was lying on her side, her knees drawn to her chest, her arms tucked so that her hands were clasped beneath her chin. There was a red streak around each wrist where she had tried to free herself from the cord, along with the nasty bruises he’d left this morning around her left wrist. Her nose was red, and her eyes were puffy, their expression bleak and hopeless. She looked like a woman facing death, dishonor, or worse.

  Remembering the revulsion that had colored her expression earlier, when he had been lying against her and she had first become aware of his arousal, he knew she considered him much, much worse.

  He reached out, intending only to dry the dampness from her cheeks. She didn’t move away—she was all out of fight for the night—but her eyes widened slightly and her breath caught in her chest. He withdrew his hand without touching her and got to his feet, retreating to the mattress blocking the door. “Get ready for bed, Teryl,” he said grimly. “We’ve got another long day ahead of us.”

  He shut off the lights on his way, sliding down onto the mattress in complete darkness. For a time, the only sound in the room was his own settling in; then the other bed creaked. Her suitcase opened.

  He discovered that he could follow her movements by the sounds, that—to his supreme discomfort—his writer’s imagination readily supplied pictures to match. That little whoosh was her vest coming off, those soft little thuds her shoes hitting the floor. The metallic rasp of the zipper of her shorts. The delicate rap of the buttons on her blouse coming in contact with the wood of the night table as she draped it over it. The rubbing of something—a T-shirt, maybe—tugged on, the glide of skin against cotton sheet, the rustle of covers being pulled up and tucked, a pillow being plumped.

  Then silence.

  Not complete silence, of course. The air conditioner was running. Water was dripping in the sink. She was breathing, and so was he… barely. He counted her breaths, measuring them as they deepened and slowed, guessing when she finally went to sleep. Then he turned onto his side, facing her in the darkness, and spoke in little more than a whisper.

  “I’m sorry, Teryl.”

  Chapter Five

  Thursday had started out to be a very good day for Rebecca Robertson. The weather was unusually mild for a Virginia summer day. Her ex-husband Paul was in town on business and had taken her out last night for a dinner date that hadn’t ended until morning. Simon’s interview on “New Orleans Afternoon” had earned the best ratings in the show’s history and was being seen all around the country. The fans’ response had been overwhelming, and the media… They were getting a national—hell, an international—promotional blitz of the sort money couldn’t buy. Simon was going to pick up thousands, tens of thousands, of new readers. Resurrection would be the biggest selling release in publishing history.

  And Rebecca Robertson would be the agent of choice for every soul in the country who thought he had a story to tell. She would be the agent to the stars. She would have the power. The clout. The glory. As if she didn’t already have enough.

  Yes, this morning had started off just fine.

  And then Teryl hadn’t shown up for work and hadn’t answered the phone at her house.

  And Lena had just buzzed and told her that Debra Jane Howell was here to see her.

  Drumming her nails on the desktop, she waited for the woman to make the long walk from the front desk through to the big office at the back. She had known when she hired Teryl five years ago that she was getting a good worker. She hadn’t known she would also be getting regular exposure to a pain in the ass like D.J. Howell. She knew D.J. and Teryl were close—best friends, sisters, stepsisters; she’d never been completely sure of the nature of the relationship and she didn’t care. She just didn’t understand how someone as sweet, as hardworking, loyal, and just plain nice as Teryl could stand to be around a man-hungry bitch like D.J. It was an odd friendship, one Rebecca wouldn’t mind seeing bite the dust. Teryl deserved better.

  But Teryl’s personal life was none of her business. As long as Rebecca didn’t have to see D.J. on a regular basis, other than for her weekly lunches with Teryl, she would deal with business and leave her employees’ personal lives to them.

  The click of heels in the hallway signaled the woman’s approach—very high heels. Other than
her nickname, D.J. did everything in her power to play up her femininity. She was flamboyant in her dress, outrageous in her behavior. She somehow managed, even when doing absolutely nothing, to exude pure sex appeal. Paul, who had no particular interest in petite women, in aggressive women, in extremely sexually aware women—even Paul, who had always preferred women so totally the opposite of D.J., who had always found her kind of blatant sexuality unappealing, had been attracted to her.

  Even Paul had had a brief fling with her.

  The footsteps quieted as D.J. strolled through the door, stepping from hardwood floors to plush cream-colored carpet. She paid no attention to her surroundings. To her, furnishings, lush carpets, and rich wall coverings were merely backdrops to showcase her own assets. She ignored the two chairs in front of Rebecca’s desk and went to the sofa against the far wall instead, forcing Rebecca to leave her desk and take a seat in one of the wing chairs that flanked the sofa.

  “Good morning, Rebecca.” Everything about her was business as usual. Her smile was catty, her hair unrestrained. Her makeup was artfully applied, her dress outrageously revealing, her manner so perfectly unconsciously seductive that it couldn’t be anything but conscious.

  Most men didn’t see that. Even the few who did recognize it—like Paul—fell under her spell anyway, for a time at least.

  She pushed thoughts of Paul with Debra Jane to the back of her mind and coolly, politely asked, “What can I do for you, D.J.?”

  “Teryl asked me to come by. She wanted me to let you know that she’s taking a few vacation days and staying over a bit in New Orleans.”

  “That doesn’t sound like Teryl.”

  The younger woman smiled a curious smile, part amusement, part pleasure, and part pure malice. “No, it doesn’t, does it? But I’ll let you in on a secret: Teryl’s found herself a man. She went off on a simple little trip and turned wicked on us. It’s funny, you know. It’s always the innocent and predictable ones who surprise us the most.” The smile took a chilling turn. “Isn’t it?”