Still the Texas accent, but it was exactly the way W would say it. And he wouldn’t invite me into the room if it wasn’t him. A complete stranger wouldn’t invite some random woman into his hotel room.
I decided it had to be him, and that he was just fucking with me. I believed it was him, up until the point the door shut, and he clapped a broad hand over my mouth and nose. He spun me around and thunked my head against the wall at the same time the lock clicked into place. This man, this polite Texas cowboy, stared at me with murder in his eyes.
“Didn’t anyone ever teach you not to talk to strangers?” he said.
I stared back at him, disordered thoughts tumbling through my head as he worked to suffocate the life out of me. His accent made me sick, because it wasn’t W’s accent and I should have known it wasn’t him, and W was in this hotel somewhere right now thinking what an idiot I was. And I was an idiot. An idiot who was about to get murdered. Blood rushed in my ears as I clawed at him, struggling to break away.
“You don’t want to leave yet, do you?” he drawled. “We’re just gettin’ started.”
The edges of my world started to go black. I didn’t think about W, or Simon, or anyone as darkness overtook me. I just thought, really? This is how my life is going to end?
When I woke again, I was lying face down on the floor. My skirt was pulled up around my waist and my panties were gone. I tried to swallow and choked on a mouthful of fabric, and realized my panties were in my mouth. I scrabbled at my lips but he was tightening a rope around my head so I couldn’t spit them out. I pulled at the makeshift gag, screaming, but all that came out was a hacking, muffled sound.
I turned onto my side and then flopped onto my back, gasping for air. He stood over me with a bright, maniacal smile. Oh shit, oh shit, he’s going to fucking kill me. His tie was off, his shirt undone. Had I ripped open all the buttons when I fought him? I kicked at him, losing my stilettos, but he just laughed and hauled me off the floor, and threw me on the bed.
Shit, shit, shit. Now that I was this close to him, I realized he didn’t smell right. I couldn’t smell W’s cologne. It wasn’t him, and I was locked in a hotel room with a sociopathic stranger. I shoved at him as I sent a frantic look around the room, seeking some weapon, any weapon, within reach. Nothing. There was nothing.
I tried to scurry off the bed, only to be dragged back where he’d originally thrown me. As he held me down by the neck, I noticed the ends of his red tie fall on the covers beside me, and realized that was what he’d used to gag me. Red for emergency. Red for blood. Red, red, red. It’s not him. It’s not fucking him.
“Let me go. Let me go!” I flailed at him, to no avail. My words were garbled nonsense behind the gag he’d improvised. I wanted to fight, but I was helpless and held down, with my own panties impeding my breath. My lips hurt, and my throat hurt from useless, muffled screaming. My whole body was one big, terrified heartbeat, throbbing help me, help me, help me, help me. But no one was going to help me.
“Listen, sweetheart,” he growled in his country twang. He knelt over me, pressing me into the bed while I tossed beneath his body weight. “Listen to me.” When I didn’t listen, he pinched my nose shut so I couldn’t breathe. I whipped my head from side to side, punching, whacking at him. He grabbed my wrists and yanked them over my head.
“Fight all you want,” he said. “This only ends one way.”
One way? What way? Rape? Dismemberment? Death?
Maybe he’d be satisfied with rape. Maybe I’d get lucky, but probably not. I’d seen too much of him by this point. I’d stared into his cold smiling face long enough now to work up a pretty accurate description for the police. He’d never let me go.
When I left stripping to start escorting, one of the other girls had told me I’d get myself killed, that half the johns in New York were murderers. I could still remember her shrill voice, and the way I’d laughed at her warnings. Now I wish I’d listened.
I screwed my eyes shut, unable to look at him anymore. I didn’t want to see the man who was going to snuff out my life. I tried to keep fighting him, but I was running out of energy. He was so much bigger and so much stronger, and when he covered my nose, I felt so close to death. If I was some superhero woman I might have come up with a brilliant plan to save myself, but I wasn’t a superhero, so I just lay there choking and shaking in terror, trying to block out what was happening to me.