I tried to pretend that was promising. "Please. I wouldn't... I won't do it again. Maybe tomorrow we could try again. We could go on a date, you and I."

"Tomorrow you'll be gone from here and so will I. But you can stop talking about the bill. I would be in this room either way. I knew it as soon as I saw you there."

Any hope of talking my way out of this deflated. He was sitting between me and the door, but even if I got past him, it would take several precious seconds to open the door. Then outside, there was no one around. My room was in the back. All the windows around me had been dark. My car sat alone in the lot.

No one would see me run. No one would hear me scream.

He waited with a smug patience, as if he waited for me to catch up to the forgone conclusion.

"Are you ready to cooperate?" he asked.

Hell no. My lips firmed.

He smiled, white teeth glistening from the shadows. He looked the Cheshire cat, that incorporeal grin, the unapologetic wickedness.

Except he hadn't done anything to me.

So far he'd just sat in my room. Disturbing but not harmful. He'd done nothing illegal, if I didn't count trespassing. All I had to do was walk out the door and leave. March straight to the office and demand a refund. A laugh wanted to bubble out of me, but I forced it down, knowing it would border on hysterical. This was only the rambling of a terrified mind trying to make sense of things that didn't make sense, desperate to feel safe while so obviously in abject danger.

He hadn't threatened me explicitly, but it was there. In his presence, in his casually arrogant words. If I tried to leave, he would restrain me. He would hurt me tonight, violate me tonight, the only question left up to me was how much. If I cooperated, would he be gentle with me? But it was too soon. I couldn't bring myself to submit to this yet even if it might make my life easier.

I edged toward the phone on the nightstand.

He leaned forward. "What are you doing?"

"Just...just calling the front desk." I forced a challenge in my voice. "If he gave you the key, then it shouldn't be a surprise to him."

It was a long shot, of course. If the manager had given him the key, he was an accomplice to whatever this was. But maybe if he heard my voice...if I seemed more human reaching out over the phone line, more scared, he might do something to help me.

I gingerly lifted the bulky plastic receiver as if it might bite. As if he might spring into action, finally revealing the violence that must be his intent. Instead he watched, eyes glittering while I listened to dead air. The line had been cut. Or maybe it had never worked. He seemed to expect that.

My hand trembled so hard that the phone clattered on the cradle before sliding to the side, useless, broken.

My voice cracked. "Please. I don't know what you want from me."

"Don't you?"

I drew myself up. "You need to leave. I'm not going to...have sex with you."

My words hung in the air, somehow worse now that I'd voiced them, as if I were the one suggesting it instead of him. He was as still as a deep pool, a limitless source of patience, allowing me to work myself up into panic while he watched in amusement.

"Enough," I said, more firmly. "You want to sit there? Fine. I'm leaving."

Clutching the towel to me, I strode to the door. I flipped the lock but before I reached the latch, his heavy palm came up against the door. He didn't block the latch or the knob. He simply leaned his weight, his thickly muscled bulk against the door and waited. This close, I could smell the faint scent of aftershave, of musk at the end of the day. His heat seeped into my back, electrifying and strangely comforting after the cold chills of fear.

"Let me go." The command came out soft, a plea.

"I'm not doing anything to you," he said. "Yet."

I was confined by the unopenable door to my front, penned in by his broad body from behind. Well and truly trapped, and he hadn't even touched me yet. I wondered if that was the game. Maybe he was waiting for me to push him, to strike him. Then he could say his actions were self-defense, in whatever twisted mental world he lived in.

My throat felt tight. "I don't want to fight you."

"Then don't. I think you know what I want. Do I need to spell it out for you? Ask me to."

I swallowed. "What do I have to do for you to leave?"

"I'm going to spend the night here and we're both going to have a good time. In the morning, I'm leaving."

He spoke with authority, but there was a question inherent. Only one unknown. This was happening, but would I fight him?

God, I didn't know.

I didn't know if I could let this happen without a fight. I didn't know if I could fight him, knowing I would lose, that I would only end up hurt. I saw my mother's face, drawn and worried and accusing. Had this been her choice to make too?

Maybe he knew I was close because he continued, the low timbre of his voice rough and thick.

"I don't get off on hurting women. Not too bad anyway. If you have any bruises they'll be small and covered up by your clothes. No one needs to know what happened here. It's nobody's business but ours."

He made it sound consensual. But that was what he was describing, wasn't it? That I go along with this, that I would consent.

Or else.

And I was too scared to ask about what "or else" would mean.

"Oh God," I sobbed against the peeling paint of the door. "I didn't bother you. You're a good-looking guy. You could get a regular date. Why are you doing this?"

"Thank you for the compliment. You're a pretty girl too. We'll be good together. This is a date, you and I. You wanted to skip the dinner part, and I allowed it. I'm not going to miss dessert."

Chapter Four.

The three waterfalls combine to produce the highest flow rate of any waterfall on earth.

A sick sense of inevitability slid down my throat.

Maybe this was a regular date-what did I really know of courtship? He seemed very certain. And maybe it was a self-fulfilling prophecy. If I agreed to this crazy proposition, if I didn't fight him, it would be just a man and a woman having sex. Wouldn't that be better than the alternative? Even without an explicit threat, plain old mildly-bruising sex had to be better than what he might do in anger.

Unable to submit, I searched desperately, trying to think of something that could help. But I was in the far corner of a deserted motel in a truck stop well off the highway. I had no practical experience to guide me, only empty words on musty pages. Like Alice, I had stepped through the looking glass into a whole new world, foreign and sinister.

The old rules didn't apply to this musky hotel room. There was only this man, strong and confident. There was only his mercy, to be gained through pleasing him, not angering him.

"You're thinking too much," he said, and I heard the first rise of frustration in his voice. His patience had a limit after all, and it was approaching on the horizon.

"Please, please," I whispered. "Is there something else I could...anything else...?"

He scoffed. "What else could I want from you?"

Nothing. There was nothing at all, no pride, no hope.

"There now." His voice softened. Something stirred my hair. His hand stroked down, then toyed with a damp lock. "You're making this a bigger deal than it needs to be. It doesn't mean anything, you and I. Just casual sex. Have you had casual sex before?"

No, never. I shook my head.

He seemed amused, a little pleased. "So this will be your first time, in a way. I like that. It's a turn-on."

His fingertips drifted over my bare shoulders, leaving a trail of goose bumps in languid circles. I hugged the door, suddenly wishing that I were the kind of woman who had casual sex. That I could turn around and let the towel drop and pretend I wanted this too. It would make this easier. Instead I could only shiver against the door, shudder under his touch.

"Lock the door," he murmured against my ear. "I don't want to be interrupted."

I took a deep breath and tried to calm myself.

There are some men you just don't say no to. That was what the waitress had said to me, and I understood it now. I wouldn't say no, and he wouldn't force me. I would go along with it, and everything would be consensual.

Just like a date. Casual sex.

My hand shook violently as I reached up and turned the lock sideways. It didn't change our situation at all. I couldn't leave before it was locked, and I still couldn't. But it felt different, as if I had exercised my choice. As if I'd consented, and I had. He had my permission, even though he'd proven he didn't need it.

He trailed his hand down my arm, wrapping his fingers around my wrist. Even though he only touched me in one place, it felt intimate. Though he didn't squeeze, I felt fragile. Breakable.

Leading me to the bed, he pushed me gently to sit. I tightened the towel around myself, and he let me. I'd expected him to push me down, to tear the towel off and have sex with me. But I always seemed to overestimate his penchant for force. It was something about his presence, brute strength combined with the cunning to use it well. He wasn't afraid of violence but neither was he overly fond of it. Or maybe that was just wishful thinking.

He sat down beside me, his light caresses still restricted to my arms, my shoulders. Safe places, as if we were still getting acquainted. As if my comfort mattered at all.

"Tell me about your boyfriends," he said.

"What d-d-do you want to know?"

Oh no. I hadn't stuttered since I was a kid. My mother had tried to frighten it out of me, but that only made it worse. Eventually I'd grown out of it...right around the time I'd gotten my book on Niagara Falls. Now my dreams deserted me along with my composure.

He raised his eyebrow, a sign he had heard my stutter, but he made no comment on it. Instead he asked, "How many have you had? How far did you let them go with you?"

I thought the phrasing was odd, even if it was technically accurate. How far I let them go, like he recognized my dominion over my body. Maybe he considered this the same thing; maybe it was. I was letting him do it to me. I was letting this happen.

Swallowing, I said, "My first boyfriend was in eighth grade. We only dated for a few months and never really saw each other outside school."

"Did you fuck him?"

The question was blunt, and I flinched. "No. We d-didn't do that. We would meet sometimes, outside the school during gym class."

"You made out." He smirked.

The arrogant action didn't subtract from his attractiveness; it enhanced it. Up close, I realized he was one of the most handsome men I'd ever met. I never would have looked at him twice, mostly because of his age. He looked about ten years older than me. I never would have expected him to look twice at me either, but then I had always worn baggy clothes and hung at the edges of a crowd with my mother before we made a quick exit.

"Did you let him touch your tits?

"Yes."

"Under your shirt or just over?"

"Over at f-first. And then he started-" I broke off as he touched my breasts through the towel, just two fingers on the top slope, then around the underside.

"He started what?" he prompted, still stroking, soft caresses on the rough fabric.

I swallowed, willing myself not to tremble. "Then he started reaching under my clothes."

He tugged the towel down. I loosened my hold, letting the cloth slide down my breasts. The hem of the towel caught on my nipples, baring the slope of my breasts but no more. It was almost more obscene this way than if I'd been naked, but I couldn't bring myself to pull the towel down.

Instead I stared into the darkness at the shadowy curtains that I hadn't drawn closed while the weight of the wet towel tugged at the tender skin of my nipples. He drew his finger over the tops of my breasts.

I sucked in deep breaths, more panicked now, everything more sensitive, so acute-like pain. He touched me so lightly, and it hurt. How would it feel when he was rough? Because surely he would be. There was only one reason I could think of why a man who looked as good as he did would force a woman-because he preferred it that way.

"Why did you let him, your boyfriend? Surely you worried about being caught? I bet he didn't even give you an orgasm out back behind the school. Were you that desperate for a skinny eighth-grader?"

His words knocked the breath from me. "No, I just... He wanted to, that's all. I figured it didn't hurt anything just to let him."

"That's right," he said approvingly, soothingly. "It doesn't hurt anything to just let him."

With a flick of his fingers, the towel slipped off my nipples, gaping open around my waist. I sucked in a breath and shut my eyes.

"Just let it happen," he murmured. "I want to do this. You let that little kid paw at you, so why not me?"

His warm hand closed around one breast. It was lifted, hefted into his palm before he rolled the nipple between callused fingers. It didn't hurt anymore. He was right about that. It felt good, the slight abrasiveness, the pressure.

Sparks set off low in my belly. He played with my breasts with a proficiency that made my breath catch. Clearly he was experienced. He knew just where to touch me and how to do it. But he seemed to be learning me as well, exploring every dip, every milky expanse of skin and the pink tips that pebbled under his manipulation. My hands were tense by my sides, my eyes shut tightly until he pinched my nipple. I gasped.

"Did he do that?"

"No, I-"

"What else did you let him do? Where else did you let him put his skinny little fingers?"

He made it sound so dirty, when it had just been innocent exploration between two teenage kids, hadn't it? That was normal. This was the fucked-up thing.

He twisted my nipple when I didn't answer.

I sucked in a breath at the pain. "I don't know-oh God."

"Your cunt? Did he touch you there?"