Page 224 of Deep Cover

We moved out of the spring day I could have stayed in and into a lobby wildly over-decorated with plants and art and helpful people. I wanted to fade away, hide my face in Cole's neck, but of course that was absurd. Nobody could tell just by looking at me what had happened to me.

Up in the glass elevator with the bellhop still by our side, which really made no difference unless he was going to pick me up and carry me across the threshold and put me on the weird bench thing fancy hotels have at the end of the bed, where you're supposed to lay the extra covers or put your luggage if you have it.

Or turn an unwilling slave across it with her arms on the bed and her head down, her ass up and waiting for what she deserves after allowing herself to be taken like that.

But none of that happened. The hotel was luxurious to a fault. Thick white towels and shining clean bathtubs, beautiful showers and sparkling everything in the bathroom. I looked at it all with longing. I wanted nothing more than to scrub off the previous weeks' worth of ugly.

Cole tipped the bellhop what looked like a couple hundred dollars, then turned to me. I was wearing the jog bra and a pair of sweats, the clothes I'd been training in. The only thing added was the running shoes that mostly fit. All I had here was what I'd had at Vincent's. I didn't want any of it.

Dragging my gaze away from the bathtub, I cast my eyes down and prepared to sink to my knees. There was no way I could endure another beating.

Cole caught me as I started to drop, his hands under my elbows. When I was on my feet again, he used one knuckle to tilt my head up so my eyes met his. "Would you like to go take a shower or bath?" His voice was his usual voice of command. I got the idea if I didn't choose one would be chosen for me.

"Bath, sir?" Somehow I made it sound like I was asking permission and not that I'd lost my mind and was asking what a bath was.

"Absolutely. Don't spare the bubbles." And he went back to some phone call or other that made me feel very not there.

The bath made me feel there. It made me feel almost clean. Another thirty years of very hot showers and I might "get over it."

I could hear Cole on the phone as the tub finished filling with me already in it, trying to convince myself to close my eyes.

My eyes never closed, but I enjoyed the luxury of the bath. Only once did I start violently, as a shadow crossed the wall and that was just Cole, coming into the bathroom.

"Making sure you didn't drown." He gave me that mischievous grin, though it looked a little strained.

"I suppose that would mean you'd wasted a lot of resources getting to me, sir." I waited.

"No," he said, admonishing. Cole did not like being led. "It would mean I should have kept a better eye on you."

That left me feeling bitter. Until he said, "That would mean I had failed you."

That left me feeling guilty.

But better.

When I got out of my bath, fingers and toes pruned from immersion, I had nothing but what I'd been wearing and a determination never to wear it again. I wrapped the huge, soft, fluffy white robe around me, wishing I could buy it and the hotel, keep them as a safe place, and went out into the bedroom, uncertain what I would find.

I might find a Cole who felt he'd failed me.

Or one who felt his failing me meant I had failed him by some kind of twisted logic and who then decided to punish me for it.

What I found was a man who had ordered me jeans and t-shirts, cardigans of the softest angora, bras and panties, a long white skirt that would pair beautifully with the pale pink sweater even if I wasn't a skirt kind of girl. He'd purchased toiletries and makeup, getting most of what I used right. He'd ordered toothbrush and paste and mouthwash and when I started to argue about everything, he just glared me into a different sort of submission and asked which of those things I could pay for and how.

"I have no money, sir." How could I? In Nevada I was in rehab, so to speak, and in France, I was a prisoner.

"So you were going to spend the rest of your life in a hotel robe?" He was smiling, a little, and without it having an evil glint to it.

That was disconcerting.

"There are worse things I could find myself wearing," I said lightly and it stayed light.

Cole smiled. "Or you could wear nothing at all." He tugged at the big white robe and I let it unwind and unwrap and drop, gently, to the floor.

Unpredictable as ever. Cole St. Martin took me in his arms again. He held me to him more sweetly than he had the morning I was taken. His kiss was anything but tentative. He pressed his lips to mine and his tongue found its way into my mouth right away, mine answering and touching his.

Both hands ran upward into my hair, fingers touching my scalp that still hurt from all the times Vincent had snarled a fist and pulled. So Cole's touch both felt good and ached, a sharp but very bearable pain. It felt good to have him touching me there.

Then his mouth was on my neck, his tongue darting out between his lips for little tastes of me as he kissed from jawbone to collarbone, from mouth to earlobe, from nose to solar plexus.

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