Kiss the Girls Read Free Page A

shabby stretcher clattered loudly down the halls of medicine.
    I saw nurses I knew. Annie Bell Waters and Tanya Heywood, in particular.
    “Bring him right here.” Annie Waters quickly cleared a way once she sized up the situation. She didn’t ask me any questions as she pushed other hospital workers and the walking wounded out of our path.
    We sailed past the reception desk, with SIGN IN HERE in English, Spanish, and Korean. I smelled hospital antiseptic on everything.
    “Tried to cut his throat with a gravity knife. I think he nicked the carotid artery,” I said as we rushed down a crowded, puke-green corridor that was thick with faded signs: X-RAY, TRAUMA, CASHIER.
    We finally located a room about the size of a clothes closet. The young-looking doctor who rushed in told me to leave.
    “The boy’s eleven years old,” I said. “I’m staying right here. Both his wrists are cut. It’s a suicide attempt. Hold on, baby,” I whispered to Marcus. “Just hold on, baby.”

Chapter 3

    C LICK! CASANOVA popped the trunk latch of his car and peered into the wide, shiny-wet eyes staring out at him.
What a pity. What a waste,
he thought as he looked down at her.
    “Peekaboo,” he said. “I see you.” He had fallen out of love with the twenty-two-year-old college student tied up in the trunk. He was also angry at her. She had disobeyed the rules. She’d ruined the fantasy du jour.
    “You look like absolute hell,” he said. “Relatively speaking, of course.”
    The young woman was gagged with wet cloths and couldn’t answer back, but she glared at him. Her dark-brown eyes showed fear and pain, but he could still see the stubbornness and spunk there.
    He took out his black carrying bag first, then he roughly lifted her one hundred twelve pounds out of the car. He made no effort to be gentle at this point.
    “You’re welcome,” he said as he put her down. “Forgotten our manners, have we?” Her legs were shaky and she almost fell, but Casanova held her up easily with one hand.
    She had on dark green Wake Forest University running shorts, a white tank top, and brand-new Nike cross-training shoes. She was a typical spoiled college brat, he knew, but achingly beautiful. Her slender ankles were bound with a leather thong that stretched about two and a half feet. Her hands were tied behind her back, also with a leather thong.
    “You can just walk ahead of me. Go straight unless I tell you otherwise. Now
walk,
” he ordered. “Move those long, lovely gams. Hut, hut, hut.”
    They started through the dense woods that got even thicker as they moved slowly along. Thicker and darker. Creepier and creepier. He swung his black bag as if he were a child carrying a lunch box. He loved the dark woods. Always had.
    Casanova was tall and athletic, well built, and good-looking. He knew that he could have many women, but not the way he wanted them. Not like this.
    “I asked you to listen, didn’t I? You wouldn’t listen.” He spoke in a soft, detached voice. “I told you the house rules. But you wanted to be a wiseass. So be a wiseass. Reap the rewards.”
    As the young woman struggled ahead she became increasingly afraid, close to panic. The woods were even denser now, and the low-hanging branches clawed at her bare arms, leaving long scratches. She knew her captor’s name: Casanova. He fancied himself a great lover, and in fact he could maintain an erection longer than any man she had ever known. He had always seemed rational and in control of himself, but she knew he
had to be
crazy. He certainly could act sane on occasion, though. Once you accepted a single premise of his, something he had said to her several times:
“Man was born to hunt… women.”
    He had given her the rules of his house. He had clearly warned her to behave. She just hadn’t listened. She’d been willful and stupid and had made a huge, tactical mistake.
    She tried not to think of what he was going to do to her out here in these bewildering Twilight