Fire and Ice - Anne Stuart [59]
After that she couldn’t remember anything until she woke up in bed in the middle of the night and Reno came in….
The whimper came from her own throat as she sat up. There was no sign of him. Her clothes were scattered all over the bedroom, but there was no way in hell she was going to touch them. She dove for the yukata that lay in a pile in a corner, and she remembered what he’d been doing when he stripped it off her. Oh, God.
The bathroom door was open, but it was empty. She could smell shampoo and water—he must have just left. She rose on unsteady feet, moving toward the window to look at the view of Tokyo. There were snow flurries dancing around the window, and far below the thick pack of pedestrians were bundled against the cold. She leaned her forehead against the window and closed her eyes.
She was a heartless, shallow, miserable excuse for a human being. Not because she’d killed a man. But because right now she was much more horrified about what she’d done with Reno in that huge bed.
When she finally moved, the snow was coming down more heavily. There was a clock beside the bed—the tumbled, messed-up bed. It was early afternoon, and Reno had disappeared. Which at this point was a good thing.
There was a pile of clothes on the sofa. He’d clearly thought better of the Gothic-Lolita look, and he’d somehow managed to find loose silk pants and a silk shirt and camisole. And a goddamn thong. She moaned again at the memory.
No bra, but she’d have to make do—she’d left hers in Reno’s apartment, and either he hadn’t been able to find one in her size or he’d chosen not to. She opened the yukata to look at her breasts. There was a bite mark on one, and chafe marks from his skin. Against hers. In that bed.
She grabbed the clothes and practically ran for the bathroom, cursing herself up and down. Had she gone out of her mind? Why couldn’t she be like a normal female, with a reasonable amount of experience? She’d tried, with Duke, but she could see by the stain on the sheet that he hadn’t quite succeeded. Reno had.
She took as long in the shower as she could, scrubbing every inch of her body. Trying to ignore the fact that he’d used the soap on his body. On the parts of his body that had been inside her body. Again and again. And again.
She hurt. She didn’t remember making any protest, but a hot, soaking bath would have made her more comfortable. By the time she turned off the shower her skin was pink from scrubbing. At least the silk pants were loose-fitting—tight jeans would have been an agony she didn’t want to think about.
She was just getting ready to leave the bathroom when she smelled the coffee, and for the first time in her life the smell of coffee made her sick. In this hermetically sealed modern building the only way the smell of coffee would reach her would be if someone had brought it into the suite.
She had to face him sooner or later. She looked at her reflection in the mirror. Her short hair was damp and curling slightly around her face. She looked at her mouth, and an even more awful memory came back to her. With all the things he did to her, all the things she’d willingly participated in, he’d never kissed her. Not once.
It was enough of a shock to give her the courage to face him. She walked out of the bathroom, to see him lounging on the sofa, a paper cup of Star-bucks in his hand, a second one on the table.
He lifted his head, looking at her, and there was something about his cool, lazy expression that warned her things were about to get a lot worse.
He didn’t say a word when she came forward and picked up the coffee, and the silence was making her want to scream. “This is for me?”
“Yes.”
More silence. “I found the clothes you got me,” she said, then could have kicked herself for such an inane statement.
He tilted his head to one side. Mocking Reno was back, and he’d even found another pair of sunglasses that were now perched on top of his flaming hair. “Obviously,” he said. “I take it you’ve gotten over your traumatic experience.”
“Which one?” The words