Black Ice - Anne Stuart [56]
She wrapped herself in a towel. Her wet hair was a disaster and wouldn’t wait for Sylvia’s leisurely return. She had no choice but to attack it herself. She found some scissors and started hacking away at it, letting the various lengths fall into the sink.
She’d been hoping for one of those movie makeover—the dull, bespectacled secretary takes nail scissors to her mop and becomes a gamine worthy of Audrey Hepburn. Not quite. She put the scissors down before she went too far—maybe it would look better once it dried. Her mother’s hairdresser would cluck in horror and then dive in, and in a few days she’d be chic and adorable. Right now she felt like a drowned cat.
The heat had managed to fill the main room, but the air was still stuffy, so she opened one of the windows a crack, searching through her clothes for her warmest nightgown, a flannel granny gown that always had Sylvia in stitches. There’d be no one around to laugh at her tonight, and she needed the warmth and comfort of the soft, enveloping fabric.
There was nothing to eat but cereal and cheese. She ate two bowls of Weetabix in the darkness, washed it down with a glass of wine and crawled beneath the duvet on her thin mattress. Tonight she could be overrun with rats and she wouldn’t move. All she wanted to do was sleep.
She did, dreaming terrible dreams. The nightmares should have been the worst—Hakim’s face looming over her, his soft, insinuating voice more horrifying than anger, as he lovingly drew the knife over her flesh and dared her not to cry out.
In her dreams he didn’t stop. In her dreams she bled to death, with Hakim smiling down at her with gentle approval, and Bastien sitting in a thronelike chair, women draped around him as he sipped a glass of whiskey and watched.
And yet that was bearable. She knew she dreamed, and no matter how real it felt, a tiny part of her brain was aware enough to convince her it wasn’t real.
But her dreams didn’t give up easily. She was no longer dying, bleeding. She was lying in a white bed, covered in lace, and Bastien was on top of her, inside her, making love to her with slow, wicked intensity, and the pleasure was so exquisite she felt her body spasm in her sleep.
She was cold, she was hot, the covers were too light, then too heavy, and she could feel Bastien around her, like an embrace, his scent teasing her as she fought her way deeper into sleep. She didn’t want to dream, she didn’t want to remember, all she wanted was warmth and darkness.
Somewhere in the distance a church bell tolled four. She should get up and close the window, but she was finally warm, and surely she could manage to fall asleep again. In the morning, in the daylight, she could face things again. In the darkness all she could do was hide.
Something didn’t feel right. Small wonder—there was very little that was right in her life, and thinking about it wouldn’t help. Only time and daylight would make things better.
She shifted on the thin mattress, tugging the duvet up around her chin, reaching for Bastien’s stolen coat to wrap around her as well, one more layer against the cold.
But the coat wasn’t there—she’d left it lying across a chair. She opened her eyes in the darkness, only to see Bastien himself sitting on the floor beside her, leaning against the wall, watching her in utter stillness.
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For a moment she thought she was still asleep, her nightmare come to life, and she told herself it was just a dream. When he spoke, his voice was low and calm in the darkness.
“You’re lucky you’re still alive,” he said softly.
She wasn’t going to argue with him about that, though she was tempted. She lay very still, not moving, hoping he’d just fade away. But he was distressingly real and solid, far too close to her. “How did you find me?” she finally asked. “And how did you get in?”
He didn’t move from his spot against the wall. His long legs stretched out in front of him, crossed,