He hoped to hell he wasn’t making a mistake leaving her alone. Short of locking her in, though, he didn’t see how he could confine her here against her will. Besides which, they needed to eat and Dog needed to go out. A point the hound drove home by retrieving his leash from its hook by the door and waiting with an expression of acute impatience.
* * *
Natalie. Natalie Elizabeth Clark.
Why didn’t it feel right? Sound right?
She wrapped her freshly shampooed hair in a towel and stared at the steamed-up bathroom mirror. The image it reflected was as foggy as her mind.
She’d stood under the shower’s hot, driving needles and tried to figure out what in the world she was doing in Budapest. It couldn’t be her home. She didn’t know a word of Hungarian. Correction. She knew two. Kutya and… What had he called her? Dragon or something.
Dominic. His name was Dominic. It fit him, she thought with a grimace, much better than Natalie did her. Those muscled shoulders, the strong arms, the chest she’d sobbed against, all hinted at power and virility and, yes, dominance.
Especially in bed. The thought slipped in, got caught in her mind. He’d said they weren’t lovers. Implied she’d slept alone. Yet heat danced in her belly at the thought of lying beneath him and feeling his hands on her breasts, his mouth on her…
Oh, God! The panic came screaming back. She breathed in. Out. In. Then set her jaw and glared at the face in the mirror.
“No more crying! It didn’t help before! It won’t help now.”
She snatched up a dry washcloth and had started to scrub the fogged glass when she caught the echo of her words. Her fist closed around the cloth, and her chest squeezed.
“Crying didn’t help before what?”
Like the steam still drifting from the shower stall, the mists in her mind seemed to curl. Shift. Become less opaque. Something was there, just behind the thin gray curtain. She could almost see it. Almost smell it. She spun around and hacked out a sound halfway between a sob and a laugh.
She could smell it, all right. The musty odor emanated from the wrinkled items hanging from hooks on the door. The steam from the hot shower must have released the river stink.
Her nose wrinkling, she fingered the shapeless jacket, the unadorned blouse, the mess that must once have been a skirt. Good grief! Were these really her clothes? They looked like they’d come from a Goodwill grab bag. The bra and panties she’d discarded before getting in the shower were even worse.
He—Dominic—said he’d rinsed her things out. He should have tossed them in a garbage sack and hauled them to a dumpster.
“Well,” she said with a shrug, “he told me to help myself.”
The helping included using his comb to work the tangles from her wet hair and squirting a length of his toothpaste onto her forefinger to scrub her teeth. It also included poking her head through the bathroom door to make sure he was still gone before she raided his closet.
It was a European-style wardrobe, with mirror double doors and beautiful carving. The modern evolution of the special room in a castle where nobles stored their robes in carved wooden chests. Called an armoire in French, a shrunk in German, this particular wardrobe wasn’t as elaborate as some she’d seen but…
Wait! How did she know about castles and nobles and shrunks? What other, more elaborate armoires had she seen? She stared at the hunting scene above the doors, feeling as though she was straining every brain cell she possessed through a sieve, and came up empty.
“Dammit!”
Angry and more than a little scared, she yanked open the left door. Suits and dress shirts hung haphazardly from the rod, while an assortment of jeans, T-shirts and sporting gear spilled from the shelves below. She plucked out a soccer shirt, this one with royal-blue and white stripes but with the same green-and-gold emblem on the right sleeve. The cool, slick material slithered over her hips. The hem hung almost to her knees.
Curiosity prompted her to open the right door. This side was all drawers. The top drawer contained unmatched socks, tangled belts, loose change and a flashlight.
The middle drawer was locked. Securely locked, with a gleaming steel mechanism that didn’t give a hair when she tested it.
She slid the third drawer out and eyed the jumble of jock straps, Speedos and boxers. She thought about appropriating a Speedo but couldn’t quite bring herself to climb into his underwear.
“Not the neatest guy in the world, are you?” she commented to the absent Dominic.
She started to close the drawer, intending to go back to the bathroom and give her panties a good scrubbing, when she caught a glimpse of delicate black lace amid boxers.
Oh, Lord! Was he into kink? Cross-dressing? Transgender sex play? Did that locked drawer contain whips and handcuffs and ball gags?