Nathan started to leave and turned back to say, “If you need help, if you need anything… I’m in A-3, it’s like a penthouse way out on the edge of the east wing. Third floor above the gym. You can call it too if…if you need anything.”
Alanna didn’t reply and Nathan sighed, turning to go.
Dorine swatted his shoulder as he passed her. “What did you do, Nate? You heartbreaker.”
Nathan only snorted at that and said, “I don’t think I’m the one breaking hearts here.”
6
Alanna
That kiss felt too good.
The kiss had felt like setting herself on fire and also like crawling under a warm blanket after being caught too long in the harsh cold. Nathan’s mouth was hot and it knew what it was doing, but his touch was gentle too. She’d wanted those strong arms to stay wrapped around her. She’d wanted to hide in them.
Then immediately, even as she’d been losing herself in his embrace, she’d thought: You’ll get him killed.
“Did you decide on a dress, dear?”
Alanna only shook her head. She’d changed back into her clothes (Rawley’s clothes, she thought) and left the dresses in the changing room. She’d slipped on her boots and she all but ran past Dorine.
She thought she’d done a pretty good job of not falling apart since her freakout in John’s trunk but now she wanted to pound the walls and scream. Instead, she only cried, which felt pretty good really. She cried all the way back to her room.
Once back inside room 27, Alanna shut the door behind her and slumped against it.
The problem with Nathan, the warm-hearted and sexy handyman, was that he was too good and too sexy at the same time. He made her want to run to him, but that wouldn’t be fair.
“Where’s your dress?” John snapped. He sat at a small dining table that looked out on the ski slopes behind with a tumbler full of vodka in front of him. Alanna tensed up at the sound of his voice, but she summoned her courage and went to the mini bar, taking out one of the airplane bottles of Grey Goose for herself. She didn’t bother with a glass, instead draining it in one shot. “Thought you went down there to get some dresses to wear for Mr. Rawley? Where are the dresses? Did you have them delivered or what?”
Alanna glared at him, her mouth a tight line. She had been so well-behaved so far. Much too well-behaved, in her opinion. It was a survival mechanism and then there was her brother’s safety which hovered in her thoughts constantly. But Nathan made her want to be a little less well-behaved. Nathan made her feel alive.
She bent down and grabbed another airplane bottle and drank it. “Hey!” John barked at her. “Go easy?”
“Why?” Alanna said. “Trust me. I’ll be way more pliant drunk. I’ll be a good little girl. That’s what you want, right?”
“Where are your dresses?” John snapped again. “Christ, I thought women loved shopping. They got a million stores down there. What were you doing if you weren’t shopping? Who were you talking to?”
“I wasn’t talking to anyone.” Alanna rubbed her eyes. She had been on high alert every second she spent in John’s presence. It was exhausting. “I found some dresses, okay? Just didn’t decide on them yet. I…I mean I can’t go spending all his money, right? I just want to make sure I, ya know, pick dresses he’d like.” She looked at him, feeling exhaustion creep up on her like an ache.
John got to his feet, glaring at her. “You’ve been crying.” He said it like it was some major accusation, as if there was any reason she shouldn’t be crying. “Why are you crying?”
Alanna just stared at him and John said again, “Why are you crying? What’s the matter with you?”
Alanna burst out laughing. She didn’t mean to. She’d felt it creeping up into her mouth from her throat and suddenly she stuttered a laugh that turned into a breathless, giddy hysterical shout. She dropped her second airplane bottle and bent over, grasping her knees, helpless with laughter. She sounded a little nuts, she thought. But the entire situation had suddenly struck her as just too funny.
“Why...why am I laughing?!” Alanna gasped, her eyes tearing up yet again. “Are you joking? Are you seriously that stupid? Oh my God, you are such a stupid asshole!”
I’m off my rocker, Alanna thought. Why can’t I shut up?
The blow was a backhanded slap that she’d fully expected yet which somehow came as a surprise. Alanna gasped and fell back a little but she held her ground, wincing as she absorbed the blow. She stood up straight and felt a little proud of herself. She’d have a bruise. But she was okay.
Then John shifted.
“Oh shit.”
A truly gigantic brown bear was coming at her, rearing up on his hind legs. Alanna was about to shift, but she didn’t have time before John tossed her aside like candy and she slammed into the dining table.
“Son of a…”
Her own bear was pissed. The corner of the table had hit her right in the gut and it hurt. He’d kill her if he wasn’t careful. She spun around and shifted herself, and the two of them went at each other, tumbling to the floor, wrestling and roaring and swiping at each other with massive claws.
It was over too quickly. John’s bear was just too big. All Alanna could do was put up a decent fight just to prove a point, but she knew she couldn’t win. In a couple of minutes, having wrestled their way into the living room of their suite, knocking into the coffee table and breaking a glass vase on top of it, John had her pinned. It wouldn’t have been so bad in her mind if he didn’t seem to be enjoying it so much. The way he pinned her was more like a person than a bear too, his massive paw clamping her head to the floor. He should’ve just taken her neck in his mouth. That was how you got a foe to submit. But it wasn’t just that. He wanted her to be humiliated.
Alanna went limp and felt even worse than she had minutes before, any spark of defiance now gone. He’d made her feel so small. But it was really all Rawley. It might as well have been Rawley’s bear and Rawley’s paw keeping her down on the floor, helpless to do anything but bend to his will.
John rolled off of her and the two of them shifted back. She was still on the floor, now in her human form, as John got to his feet. She didn’t want to move. She curled up into a ball and lay there as John dusted himself off and caught his breath.
I wonder if there are bear fights in these rooms a lot, Alanna thought dimly. It was a strange thought that came from nowhere. But it was better than thinking of anything else.
“Clean this up and go to your room,” John said. He went right back to his seat at the dining table and took a sip of his drink, like none of it had even happened.
Alanna did as she was told, once she’d picked herself up off the floor. They’d tossed some furniture aside, though the only thing they’d actually broken was the vase. Alanna knew the right thing to do was to call house-keeping and have them clean up the glass and put the cost of the vase on the bill. But she felt a sense of shame about it. She cleaned up the glass herself, cutting her fingers up a little as she picked up jagged bits of porcelain and threw them away. She found a small supply of bandages in the kitchen and took her time in the bathroom, still sniffling and crying a little as she rinsed the blood from her hands and bandaged herself up.