Fire and Ice

by Anne Stuart

  Jilly wasn’t sure what was more horrifying, the way he was driving, or what he was saying. The driving would kill her more quickly, probably in the next couple of minutes, so she decided not to argue with him while he was still on the phone. She waited until he’d snapped it closed and shoved it back into his pocket before speaking.

  “I’m dead?”

  He jerked, startled, and stared at her. “You speak Japanese?” He made it sound as if she were a child molester.

  “A little. You told whoever you were talking to that I was dead. That I’d died when my car went over the side of the mountain.”

  “Shit,” he said, clearly annoyed. “And that was my grandfather. He’s not happy that I failed to protect a member of the family. Which you are, by default, whether I like it or not. And you don’t want to mess with my grandfather when he’s not happy.”

  “You don’t trust your grandfather with the truth? Unless, of course, that was the truth, just a bit premature, and you’re planning to kill me.”

  “I’m tempted, just to shut you up, but Taka wouldn’t like it, and disposing of your body would be a pain,” he said.

  “Are you sure? I thought you said your grandfather’s men would wipe out all trace of your earlier bloodbath in Taka and Summer’s house. Disposing of one small American shouldn’t be that much of a challenge.”

  “Small?” he echoed derisively. “You’re as tall as I am. And yes, they could dump you. But I have absolutely no interest in killing you. That’s more Taka’s style. I just want to get rid of you. Unless of course, you’d rather I strangle you. You could probably talk me into it.”

  “You can strangle me if you want, as long as you feed me first. At this point food is more important than a long life.”

  “Hold on.” Those weren’t words to inspire her with confidence, and his previously dangerous speed suddenly became suicidal as he bobbed and darted between the heavy traffic, narrowly missing pedestrians and cyclists as he clipped a curb and ran right over another.

  “Where are we?” Jilly lifted her head to peer out into the neon-bright night.

  Reno didn’t answer, of course. Why should she have expected him to? She’d spent the past two days asking him questions that he’d ignored. Why should it be any different? “If you don’t answer me, I’ll stab you with a chopstick again,” she warned him.

  He glanced at her. “You don’t have any.”

  “Point taken. I’m starving. Find me chopsticks and food to go with them and tell me what the plan is.”

  “We’re going to a love hotel.”

  “Right,” she drawled. “Right after hell freezes over.”

  “Don’t jump to any conclusions. They’re anonymous—they have them all over Tokyo. You check in by machine—no witnesses. You’ll like it—there are theme rooms. Pirates and samurai and slave girls. Just the kind of fantasy young women like.”

  “I have no deep-seated fantasy to be a slave girl,” she snapped. “And I hate to tell you, but you’re no Johnny Depp.”

  “That leaves samurai,” he said. “You don’t get a choice.”

  “Do they have two beds?”

  “In a love hotel? Not likely. Don’t worry—they’re like a family theme park of sex. Everything clean and pretend.”

  “I’m not having sex with you, even pretend sex.”

  “I don’t remember that I asked you for sex. If I’d wanted it, we would have already done it.”

  At some point she really was going to hit him. She already knew perfectly well that he didn’t find her to be anything more than a pain in the butt. He didn’t need to embarrass her, as well.

  “No love hotel,” she said flatly, staying on point. “You’ll have to knock me out and…” She let the words trail off as she remembered he’d already done just that. “No love hotel,” she said.

  “It’s that or a capsule hotel.”

  She brightened. “Oh, cool! I’ve seen those on TV.”

  “You won’t like that much better.”

  “A capsule hotel sounds perfect.”

  “And you think I’m going to do what you want?”

  “I’m a lot less trouble if you do.”

  He smiled. Just when she was thinking he never smiled, he did, and she almost wished he hadn’t. It was a smirk, as if he’d gotten exactly what he’d wanted and knew she wasn’t about to back down.

  And she wasn’t. She might have to spend the night with him, as she’d had to spend every minute since he first walked into the back bedroom at Summer’s house, but she didn’t have to spend it in a place designed for illicit sex. She’d seen capsule hotels on TV—they were strictly utilitarian, for people who needed to sleep and nothing else before they went back to work the next day.

  “No more arguments?” Reno said, his voice silky.

  Why did she feel she’d walked into a trap? “No more arguments. As long as it’s not a love hotel I won’t put up a fuss.”

  “You Americans are so puritanical,” he said. “It’s much better to be practical about these things. Sex is recreational, marriage is a business matter.”

  “And what is love?”

  “Doesn’t exist.”

  She just looked at him. “What about Taka and Summer? Don’t you think they’re in love?”

  “Su-chan is American, Taka is half.”

  “Meaning only gaijin fall in love?”

  “Meaning only gaijin are fool enough to pay any attention. The best thing to do if you start thinking such things is to lie down and wait for it to pass. It always does.”

  She stared at him. “You speak from your great experience at falling in love?”

  “I’ve avoided it. It’s a weakness and a waste of time, if it even exists. I’m better off without it.” He pulled the car to a stop. The street was darker than most of Tokyo’s neon-lit brilliance, and he cut the engine, turning to look at her. “So you can stop looking at me like that when you think I don’t know. I’ll go to bed with you if that’s what you want, but that’s all you’re getting.”

  She’d never hit another human being in her entire life. She punched him, hard, so fast and instinctive that he didn’t have time to stop her, so fast that she didn’t realize what she’d done until it was too late. She’d hit him hard—her knuckles had slammed against bone and flesh and it hurt.

  He didn’t move. “I guess that’s a no,” he said.

  She’d been about to apologize, but the words died in her mouth. “Are you trying to make me hate you?” she said instead. She should apologize; she didn’t believe in hitting people. But he’d needed a whack upside his head, big-time.

  His answer surprised her. “Maybe.” He opened the car door. “Stay put. I’m going to find us a place to stay. Just lock the doors and keep down.”

  He closed the door quietly and started down the empty street, a lone, wiry figure in the deserted night. She opened her door, suddenly nervous. “Are you coming back for me?” she called out.

  He turned and grinned at her, a flash of white in the darkness. “Don’t worry, Ji-chan. I’ll let you know when I decide to feed you to the sharks. Lock the door.”

  She sank back in the seat, locking the door as ordered, pulling his jacket around her. He must be cold, he must be sick of her. She’d punched him. She still couldn’t believe she’d done such a thing. The last person she’d hit had been Tommy Hepburn when he’d taken her Tonka truck in first grade. She’d hit Reno, and while a part of her was horrified, part of her was glad she’d done it.

  Her hand hurt. She could still feel the bone and flesh in his cold, pretty face. There was no violence in her—she was a pacifist in every sense of the word. And she wanted to hit him again.

  She’d better think twice about doing it again. He wasn’t the kind of man to let someone get away with it twice.

  Maybe he knew he’d deserved it. Maybe he just didn’t care. Maybe he was lying and never coming back, leaving her on her own in a strange city. She could handle it. As long as he wasn’t dead, she
could just as easily abandon him as he abandon her.

  And she would. If he wasn’t back in half an hour. Not that she had any way of telling time; it was after midnight, but then, her sense of time was all screwed up. Days were blending together—had she first landed yesterday or the day before? She hadn’t the faintest idea of the date. She’d gone backward in time, and the snatched hours of sleep, the constant movement on top of normal jet lag, had put her in an altered state of consciousness.

  She should give him back his jacket. He must be cold. It wasn’t snowing in the city, but it was still midwinter and he was wearing nothing more than a skin-tight T-shirt.

  She stayed put. Either he’d come back or he wouldn’t. At that point she was too tired to worry about it. She slid down and closed her eyes, practicing her deep breathing. Good air in, bad air out, shut out all those scary thoughts….

  Someone loomed up outside her window, and she let out a small scream as he rapped at the window. He’d come back for her. Whoopee.

  “Come on,” he said when she opened the door. “We’re going the rest of the way on foot.”

  “What about the truck?”

  “Someone will find it and return it.”

  “Don’t you think you ought to wipe it?”

  “Wipe it?”

  “Make sure your fingerprints aren’t all over it,” she elaborated. “You don’t want the police matching you with car theft.”

  “They can’t. My fingerprints have never been taken.”

  “They don’t fingerprint you here when they arrest you?”

  “I’ve never been arrested.”

  She climbed down out of the truck, holding on in case her legs were still unsteady. She didn’t want him touching her if she could help it. Signs of weakness were disastrous. “I’m disappointed,” she said. “I thought you were the quintessential bad boy. You’re just a poseur.”

  She didn’t manage to rile him. “No, I’m good at not getting caught.” He pulled a cap from his back pocket. “Put this on and keep your head down. I don’t think anyone will see you, but I believe in being careful. I need to sleep, and I don’t want to have to find another place you’ll approve of.”

  She took the hat, a slightly grubby baseball-style hat with a Hello Kitty samurai in pink camo, and put it on her head. “Don’t you want your jacket? You must be cold.”

  He didn’t answer, reaching out and tucking her hair beneath the cap. The touch of his hand on her head was startling—he was surprisingly gentle as he pushed the hair up under the cap. “Follow me and don’t say anything. If anyone sees us, they’ll just assume we’re a couple of doseiaisha out for a good time.”

  “A couple of what?”

  “Gay men. Though they’d be more likely to go to a love hotel. And they’d be more comfortable.”

  “Why do they…?”

  “Capsule hotels are only for men.”

  “Great,” she said. “So not only do I have to stay with you, I have to become a cross-dresser, as well.”

  “It’s a good thing no one will look closely—you’d never pass. You’re going to have to keep from talking, which I know is almost impossible for you. No one was around when I checked in, but you never can tell who might be up and about. Most people who spend the night here are salarymen who are too drunk to make it home, and they sleep soundly, but I’ll need to guard the toilet if you need to use it.”

  “I need to use it,” she said, her voice grim.

  “Then do what I tell you.”

  She was having to spend far too much time doing what he told her to do, but now was no time for a mutiny. She wasn’t used to being ordered around—she’d been living on her own in an adult world for so many years because of her freakish mind, and she’d never liked being told what to do.

  The building was square and anonymous, and while she’d managed to become conversational in Japanese in record time, she’d barely attempted to learn kanji. That would take years of study, even for her usually lightning-fast brain. They were in luck—the only person they passed heading down the narrow hallway was someone so blind drunk she could have been wearing a prom dress and he wouldn’t have noticed.

  It looked like some science-fiction beehive. Reno stopped before one column of capsules and slid the door up, exposing a small, narrow bed. There was a light overhead, a small shelf and what looked like a TV screen set into the wall.

  “All the comforts of home,” she said.

  “Climb in.”

  Not that she had any choice. She could hear the faint snores from the capsules surrounding hers, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t wake up. She climbed up into the capsule, stretching out.

  A moment later he followed her.

  “What are you doing?” she shrieked. Or tried to. He slammed his hand over her mouth to silence her, and his face was next to hers, his body plastered full-length against hers in the tiny space.

  “You didn’t think I was going to let you go anywhere alone, did you? You would have had more room in a love hotel, but you were too squeamish, so this is what you get, with me included. At least it’s too small to do much more than sleep, even if you’re feeling kinky. And you don’t strike me as the kinky sort.”

  There was nothing she could say. For one thing, his hand still covered her mouth, silencing her. For another, she felt assaulted, overwhelmed by his presence in the tiny capsule, his long legs against hers, his chest too close, his mouth…his mouth…“Are you going to behave?” he asked, his voice silken.

  After a moment she nodded, glaring at him, and he moved his hand. “Smart girl,” he said.

  She wasn’t feeling particularly smart at that moment. She was feeling trapped, claustrophobic, hot and turned on, much as she hated to admit it. And there wasn’t a damned thing she could do about it.

  “You can take off my jacket now,” he said.

  “I’m not taking anything else off.”

  He ignored her. She tried to move far enough away from him to reach the zipper, but the plastic wall was right there, he was crammed in front of her, and in order to get her hand up she would have to jab him with her elbow.

  Which seemed like a good idea. He must have been expecting it, because he didn’t flinch, annoying her further. She unzipped the jacket, trying to wiggle out of it, but wiggling against Reno’s hard, hot body was a big mistake, and she froze, the jacket half on and half off.

  He put his hands on her. Or course he would, pushing the jacket down her arms and off her, tossing it toward their feet. Before she realized what he was doing he’d caught the hem of her sweatshirt and began pulling that off, too, and fighting it would only bring him closer. At this point he was going to do what he wanted—skinny though he was, he seemed huge in the narrow plastic coffin and far too strong. The space was made for an average-size Japanese man, not for two people almost six feet tall.

  She let the sweatshirt go the way of the jacket, waiting for him to just try touching the fly of her jeans, but he seemed to have stripped her enough. Another disheartening reminder of just how resistible she was.

  He managed to sit up in the cramped space, barely, and looked at her. “Do you need to use the toilet? I’ll stand guard for you.”

  It wasn’t as if she could tell him no. She nodded, and he slid out of the capsule with annoying grace, holding up a hand to stop her while he checked the corridor. Then he nodded, and she slid after him.

  The toilet room was neat and utilitarian, with dividers between each urinal. Japanese men must be more modest than Western men. And she was not going to think about that.

  She slipped into the stall and shut the door behind her, doing her business quickly. Listening with annoyance as Reno calmly did the same in the outer room.

  He was leaning in the open doorway, waiting for her when she finally emerged. He gave her enough time to wash her hands before he hustled her back to the capsule, and to her relief he didn’t immediately follow her into the cramped space.

  “I’ll be right back,”
he said, pulling the shade down after her.

  She let out her pent-up breath. Maybe he wasn’t really planning to sleep with her—it would be just like him to torment her like that when he’d already secured his own capsule. Asshole. She leaned back against the plastic wall, closing her eyes, trying to make the stress wash away from her. It encased her like a straightjacket.

  The door slid up again, and Reno tossed something toward her. A thin cotton outfit that looked like a cross between surgeon’s scrubs and baby doll pajamas. “Put it on.”

  He didn’t give her time to argue, sliding the door down again. She considered arguing, then began unbuttoning her shirt.

  By the time he came back she was dressed in the dark blue pajamas, her clothes neatly folded with her sneakers resting on top of them. She was half afraid he’d be wearing the same thing, as he had in the ryokan, but he was still in his T-shirt and jeans.

  He vaulted into the capsule, graceful and efficient, and slid the screen closed behind him. In the intervening minutes he hadn’t gotten any smaller—he filled the narrow space. He stretched out, taking up far too much room as she tried to make herself as small as possible in the far corner.

  “You may as well lie down, Jilly. You’re not getting out of here past me, and I intend to sleep until they turf us out in the morning. You’re just going to be uncomfortable sitting like that.”

  “I’m fine,” she said in a frosty voice.

  “I’m not.” With an economy of motion he pulled her down beside him, crammed next to him in the narrow space, and then reached up and turned off the overhead light, plunging the space into darkness.

  They were on their sides, face-to-face, and she realized belatedly that she should have left her bra on. Left all her clothes on, and borrowed a suit of armor, as well. She was lying plastered up against him, her legs almost as long as his, hip to hip, breast to chest, faces too damned close.

  “Go to sleep,” he said, his voice cool and bored. She tried to move back, but his arm snaked around her, holding her there.

  “You first,” she snapped.

  It was too dark to see him, but she had the uncanny feeling that he smiled. Not the unpleasant smirk, not the mockery. A genuine smile.