and released the sheet. Even when she felt his eyes and her body heat with shame, she did not scream or struggle.
He lowered his dark head to kiss her, his mouth coming so close to hers, she felt his hot, tobacco flavored breath fanning her lips.
She shut her eyes tightly like a child forced to take medicine she feared would taste worse than poison.
Seconds ticked by as she waited for him to kiss her.
Instead of doing so he pushed her roughly away.
“I am not a snake,” he yelled, with the pain of one mortally wounded. “Who do you think you are? Who are you, Angelita? This woman who control me? Me, Tavio Morales? A princess?”
“I am Angelita.”
“Who helped you today?”
The silence was so vast between them she could almost hear the desert wind through the walls again.
He circled her throat with his hands. His touch was gentle. Even so, she sensed his deadly strength.
“Nobody…nobody…. I swear it!”
His fingers tightened. “You lie. I will find out with or without your help. If you set up my brother, I will kill you myself.”
Letting her go, he picked up a chair and hurled it. Then he stomped across the broken bits of the chair and left her room.
When his door banged, she sank back onto her bed and lay under her sheets, feeling limp and helpless, and cold, so cold, even though it was a hot night.
Too wired up to even close her eyes, she lay there, staring at the ceiling for hours.
She had to get out of here.
Finally she slipped into a fretful sleep. At first she dreamed of a little girl with brilliant blue eyes and down-soft black hair. The child was holding a rusty spade and digging in the soft, tilled flower bed in the shade near the big house.
Mia tossed her head back and forth and cried out for Shanghai. Suddenly he lay beside her. They were in Vegas. She neither touched nor kissed him even though she ached because she was waiting to see if even once, he’d make the first move. Finally he bent his dark head, and his lips caught hers at just the right angle.
The heat of his mouth made her sigh in surrender and say his name aloud again.
“You shouldn’t have come here. We can’t be together—not ever,” he said. But he kissed her again, and that one kiss turned his words into lies and was everything she’d ever wanted from him and way more.
In her dream she relived how he’d made love to her all night, so tenderly, so sweetly, and so passionately. How he’d given her countless climaxes, and still she’d begged for more.
He’d been tough loving, tender—and sexy. Oh, so sexy.
But he’d rejected her the next morning as if their night together had been nothing.
Next she was on Tavio’s yacht shivering, and Tavio was wrapping her freezing body in blankets and telling her in Spanish that she would be all right.
Her dream changed. She was sleepwalking on Tavio’s yacht. Only was it Tavio’s? She’d found pictures of a blond family buried in a drawer in the stateroom Tavio had locked her in.
In her dream her stateroom door was unlocked, and she wandered out onto the deck and made her way shakily to the stern where she saw a thick chain attached to a huge cleat. An object bobbed that was being dragged in the white frothy wake behind the boat.
The moon was full and the transom light bright. As she leaned over the railing and stared at the thing dancing on the thick chain in the heavy seas behind the boat, trying to make sense of it, she suddenly realized it was the skeleton of a human being, and there was still some flesh on the torso.
Suddenly the skeleton turned into a giant rat and hopped onto the boat. She began to scream and scream for Shanghai to save her.
But Shanghai didn’t come. When she turned, the monster chased her straight into Octavio’s arms.
As always when she had this nightmare, she woke up screaming. And as too often was the case, Tavio was there, holding her.
“It’s all right. There’s nothing to be afraid of,” he said gently, pressing her against him as he sat beside her on her bed.
He was so hot, he felt like he had a fever. Even though she was still shaking, she quickly pushed away from him. Gathering the sheets to her neck, she shrank against the immense headboard.
“I’m all right. Please, just go.”
He hesitated longer than he usually did, and she knew he was remembering the lustful rage he’d been in earlier. “I still want you. No matter what you’ve done.”
“And all I want is for you to let me go.”
“Who is this Shanghai?” he growled. “Did he love you even half as much as I do?”
His question made her eyes burn.
His white smile flashed across the darkness. “No?”
Sensing she had to tell him something, she said, “He’s dead.”
“If you lie and I ever meet him, I kill him, Angelita. Maybe I kill you, too, if you don’t choose me.”
“Please, just let me go to my country. This isn’t going to work. I don’t understand your life. You could never understand mine, either. You can’t make people love you. Believe me, I know!”
“I throw my wife away for you. Already my men are laughing at me because of you. You try to run away. Some traitor help you. Maybe an informant. They say I am weak because of a woman. Me? Tavio! I have to be strong, or they will cut me to pieces and throw me to the dogs. Every day this Terence Collins, he write more bad things about me, and Federico, he publish these lies because he hate me. The DEA wants me. They put pressure on the authorities here. Do you understand? Intiende? They demand drug busts like tonight. I think Collins and Federico cause Marco to die. And maybe you know who tell them these things about me. Maybe they hate me so much they help you.”
“No. I…”
“In the desert, the weak die. I never, not in all my life, have feelings for anyone like I have for you. My wife, she do nice things for me. She nice woman. But I do not love her. Is different with you. Is fate. You are strong woman. I am strong man. I would make you my queen.”
“You’re a drug lord.”
“If I wasn’t, maybe then…you could like me a little?”
“But you are. You torture people.”
“So do the police.”
“Collins says you kill people. Many people.”
“Bad people. Children look up to me. I am a hero.”
“Maybe that’s what I hate
