She jumped to her feet.
He aimed the gun at her. “You lied to me.”
She looked away, her insides tweaking her even though there was nothing left to come up but her boots.
The sound of an incoming text chimed. He glanced at her phone again. This time he smiled. “Boyfriend says he’s on his way. Twenty minutes.”
He put the phone in his pocket. “You all excited about that? It’s got me excited.” He grabbed his crotch with his free hand. “I won’t need twenty minutes to get you all juicy for him. Move over here and take off all your shit.”
But as he waved her toward him, Shay found her legs wouldn’t work anymore. “I—I can’t.”
He pointed at her left knee with the barrel of his gun. “You can strip or I’ll shoot you and strip you. Nicer if you do it.”
She nodded and reached for the edge of her sweatshirt. If she got a chance to run she wouldn’t care if she was cold. Cold was better than … so many things.
It was no striptease. Between numbing fear and weakness from nausea, she moved in slow jerky movements. It took her forever to wrestle out of her sweatshirt. Her Henley shirt clung to her arms damp from flop sweat as she peeled it off.
She didn’t look at him. She would have lost the last of her nerve. What next? Not her bra. Her jeans? Keep the boots on! If she got the chance to run she would need her boots.
He is going to kill me. Now. Or later.
The thought struck through her brain like the brilliance of a spotlight. He was on the clock. James was coming. She would be able to identify him. He would not allow that.
Now or later.
She had a choice.
“Fuck this! You’re taking too long!”
He grabbed her by the arm and shoved the small coffee table aside with one foot. It struck the tequila bottle and knocked it over, spilling it on the floor. He jerked her to the center of the rug.
He let her go and then, using the same hand that had dragged her along, he backhanded her across the face.
She wasn’t prepared for the violence. It caught her full force, snapping her chin toward her shoulder as pain ignited from her eye to her jawline. Too shocked to cry out, she reeled backward.
He caught her by her ponytail and jerked her head back against his cinder-block chest. He bent his head toward her. She smelled tequila on his rancid breath.
He tried to kiss her but she opened her mouth and breathed hard into his face.
He recoiled from her vomit breath. “Disgusting!”
She might have smiled if she hadn’t been so scared.
He jerked her hair again, this time pulling some of it out by the roots. She cried out in pain, which seemed to satisfy him.
“Get down!”
She went down on her knees to escape the possibility of another blow that might make her too weak to think. Her thoughts scurried in a frantic circle. Oh please, oh please! Think of something. Anything.
As she slid past his hips she saw the log lighter. It lay on the hearthstone a few feet away.
He grabbed her by the back of her head and jerked her toward the crotch of his jeans. He jammed her face against his groin. She felt his hard-on and the scrape of his zipper as he ground his hips against her cheek. “Show me how the cop likes it.”
Shay stiffened. She felt her gut cramp as it all went watery. “I—I can’t.”
“Useless cunt.” He shrugged and lifted the barrel to her forehead.
She gritted her teeth and shut her eyes. Now. Not later. Her choice.
The pain blinded her but the blow from the barrel sent her sprawling on her back. She let herself fall in the direction of the hearth. Her choice.
He was on her so quickly the force of his body knocked the breath out of her. Gasping for air she knew a panicky moment when her grasping hand met only hard slate. She had lost. She couldn’t fight him and win. If he hit her again she would pass out and all the choices after that, even to the end of her life, would be his.
She went limp beneath him.
Chuckling with satisfaction that he had bested her resistance, he grabbed the front of her bra and yanked it up over her breasts. With a grunt of animal lust he grabbed one breast and squeezed it so hard she moaned in pain.
This seemed to excite him even more. He reared back to reach for her jeans zipper.
Shay turned her face away, as if she could not bear to look at the foul man straddling her, and opened her eyes. She saw it. The log lighter. Too far away.
He was pulling at her jeans but he couldn’t get them down. “Raise up!”
“I can’t. You’re too heavy. Get off.”
He pointed his gun at her. “Nothing funny.”
She nodded and, coming up on her elbows, scooted backward out from under him when he rose up on his knees.
He watched with greedy eyes as she slipped her jeans down to the top of her hips. But then she couldn’t do it. Couldn’t let him think she’d wanted this, no matter if he killed her. She had been a victim too often in her life, at the whim of circumstances beyond her control. Not this time.