She shook her head. “I’m cold.”
“We’ll be there soon. Can you hang on a while longer?”
She nodded and slid her arms around his lean waist, pressing close to his body and welcome heat, not caring if he liked it or not. He sighed. Or was it a groan?
Moments that seemed like hours passed before he parked the ATV on the cliff side of the building next to a small stone wall that snaked along the edge of the slope. He vaulted off and helped her dismount, then wrapped an arm around her shoulders and guided her through the gate.
It swung open soundlessly and she preceded him through it onto a paved stone walkway that led to a large wooden deck. Only one door was visible on the side and she headed toward the heavy wooden panel, her wet shoes pounding a weary beat on the deck that wrapped around the front V of the rifugio.
He unlocked and opened the door for her, his palm to her back as they hurried inside. “I’ll start a fire.”
“Okay,” she said, hugging herself. “Is there a shower?”
“Si, in the bedroom down the hall. Can you manage?”
“I think so.” But once she was there, her numb fingers couldn’t twist the knob.
Without a word, he opened the door wide, then swept her into his arms, slamming the door behind him. “You are chilled to the bone.”
She heard a gruff curse in Italian and felt herself pulled into the corner of the wet room.
Blessed warm water pelted her through her clothes as he slammed his back against the wall, still holding her tight in his arms. She gasped a breath and flung her head back, her fingers clasped behind his neck, glorying in the hot water washing away the grime and cold and fear from her.
He shifted and the hot spray plastered her hair to her head. She turned her head from the force, watching the streaks of brown mire from them both rush across the white tile floor toward the drain.
If only bad memories could be erased that easily.
Her face lifted to the hot spray, the jets washing over her body just like they had done seven years ago as she’d tried to scrub the taint of her attacker’s seed and smell from her body. She hadn’t thought it important to wash that beast from her soul as well.
She and Luciano had just escaped death. He’d done it at least once before, but this was her first close call. In all the years she’d skied in competition and for fun, she’d never experienced anything that threatened physical devastation or worse. Yet for the past couple of years she’d treated those who had. Dealt with men and women who’d lost the most basic vital functions of mobility.
All of these years she’d thought she understood how her patients must feel because she’d experienced her own demoralizing fear. She’d lost something precious, something she would never have back again. This time, she could have lost more—her life or Luciano’s.
Yet she had buried a vital part of her seven years ago.
Rape was death, whether bodily or mentally. It was the last rites of one’s innocence. The total stripping of will, power and control. That violation victimized and punished, leaving scars that ran soul deep for years, that haunted the survivor long into the nights to come. It remained the stain that couldn’t be washed away, couldn’t be removed, couldn’t be forgotten.
It victimized, sentencing the wronged to a living hell. It was the prisoners’ brand only invisible to the eye, but still she’d hidden the truth from the world out of fear and shame. And just like a devastating accident that sentenced the victims to wheelchairs for life, her rape had left her scarred emotionally.