“No.” She tried to jerk her arm out of his grasp. His fingers tightened around her. “Rob. I don’t want to go out with you anymore, okay? Let me go.”
In answer, he reached around and caught her other arm too, pulling her closer. His breath reeked of alcohol, but he looked straight into her eyes and sounded startlingly sober as he said, “Try it. You might like it.” He slipped one hand inside her top.
She had to get out the half-open door of this car and away from him. But intending to run didn’t count for anything. Though her muscles stretched taut, ready to bolt, Rob held her as firmly as before. His thumb rubbed her nipple.
“Rob!” she gasped. “Okay. Enough. I’ll call a taxi to take you home.” She moved her hand toward her pocket to take out her phone.
She managed to move only a millimeter before Rob’s grip stiffened further. “You’d love that,” he growled. “Go home with me. Do it in the same house with Elijah.”
The alarm Holly had felt the day she came down with MAD was nothing compared with her terror at this bizarre conversation. “Rob!” she shouted. “That’s crazy. I am not doing it with you at all. Let me call you a—”
“When you meet my brothers, you’ll find out what crazy means.” He laid her flat on the seat and pinned her wrists above her head with one big hand. His other hand worked on the buttons of her jeans. “And when you feel powerful in a few days, remember how powerless you felt right now. Remember how much you enjoyed this, because that’s how my brothers will make you feel.”
“Rob!” Holly squealed. She took a breath to scream, doubting anyone inside the club would hear her.
Abruptly he slid off her and sat back on the driver’s side of the car, against the door, still watching her with his hard brown eyes.
Holly didn’t waste time puzzling out his terrifying behavior or his equally terrifying one-eighty. She scooted away from him across the seat and hit the passenger door. Tumbling out onto the asphalt, she came face-to-face with wicked high-heeled sandals and a killer pedicure.
“Did he hurt you?” Kaylee cried, hauling Holly up by her sore arm. Her eyes stopped on Holly’s open fly. “That f**k!”
Holly stood, resting against Kaylee for a moment. Then she slammed the passenger door shut and pulled Kaylee a pace farther away from the car to put more distance between them and Rob. She took a deep breath to relax her nerves and clear her head after every horrible thing that had happened in the last five minutes. She buttoned her fly and gathered her very small sweater closer around her to ward off the chill that had come over her. It was no use. She assured Kaylee, “He hurt me, but not like you mean.”
Without a word, Kaylee reared back and kicked the bottom panel of the car with the heel of her sandal, leaving a small round dent.
Holly watched silently, unsure she was seeing what she thought she was seeing. Despite the fact that Kaylee was head of security at an institution rumored to be full of Mafia, Holly had never seen her do anything remotely violent before, and she had just dented a cop car with her shoe.
“You would have loved it, Holly,” Rob shouted through the back window with surprising clarity for a mostly passed-out drunk. “That bitch Kaylee wants to keep you a virgin until you’re thirty. You don’t know what you’re missing.”
Kaylee snapped open her purse, moved her handgun aside, and pulled out her phone.
“Who are you calling?” Holly asked worriedly.
“The cops,” Kaylee said without looking up from the keypad.
“They’ll want me to make a statement,” Holly protested. “I don’t want to make a statement.”
Kaylee looked up at Holly and cocked her head to one side. “Noooo, we don’t want you to make a statement.” The timbre of her voice changed from that of Holly’s angry friend to the calculating security officer at the casino, concerned about publicity if one of the scantily clad assistants for the casino’s popular magician were attacked.
“But we can’t just walk away from this,” Kaylee said. “He needs to be punished and then taken home and put to bed where he can’t hurt anybody else. Besides, if you don’t do something, he’ll just come after you again. Remember this morning at the apartment? He’s got stalker written all over him.” She moved her thumbs on her keypad.
“Now who are you calling?” Holly asked.
“My goons.”
Those Mafia rumors resurfaced in Holly’s brain. “Wait, no. Can you ask them not to beat him up?”
Kaylee shrugged. “It’s what they do. One or the other. Cops or thugs. Make a decision.”
No decision to make. “Beat him up. He deserves it.” Holly put her hand over her mouth, shocked at herself.
“Excellent choice.” Kaylee put the phone to her ear. Waiting for the call to go through, she said, “Holly, I’m really sorry. I told you I wouldn’t let you get in any trouble, but I lost sight of you for a minute. Even goddesses have to pee. I’m dropping the ball lately.”
“How can you say that?” Holly asked in astonishment. She was grateful for Kaylee’s protection, but she understood the limits of that protection. Kaylee couldn’t be everywhere. “You had no idea what he was going to do. You can’t read minds.”
“No,” Kaylee whispered, glowing like an angel in the night as the hot breeze rippled her gold lamé top and fingered her white-blond hair. “I can’t do that.”
A quarter hour later, safe in her apartment, Holly was surprised by the finger-shaped bruises on her hips. She stared into the bathroom mirror at the dark stains on her white skin. They didn’t jive with what she’d been through with Rob. He’d ripped open her fly against her will, yes, but when she thought back on what had happened, she framed it as sexual politics gone wrong, rather than a—
Rape.
Not a rape, she corrected herself, pressing her clammy fingertips to her temples, willing away the nausea. It looked so bad only because of the bruises. He’d read her wrong because he’d been drunk. She’d read him wrong because she was inexperienced with men.
Undoubtedly she was the only twenty-one-year-old virgin in Las Vegas. Surely to God she could have found a way to hook up with somebody by now. Of course, all the girls she’d known who’d had one-night stands had been aided by alcohol. On Mentafixol, Holly would have fallen asleep after half a beer, just like Elijah. She could have done it, but the escapade would have had a roofie-like flavor.