way he had touched her? Conjure images of the rape he had planned to carry out if she hadn’t managed to escape?
Fidgety and unable to relax, she headed for the pool, Bran reluctantly accompanying her. Exercising in the warm water was the perfect stress reliever. She glanced over to where he paced the deck at the opposite end of the pool, tall and lean-muscled, blue-eyed, and built. Nothing better than swimming—except for hours of erotic sex with the man of her fantasies.
It seemed so outrageous she found herself grinning as she stroked to the far end of the pool. She was still smiling when she came up out of the water, dripping and adjusting her swimsuit, just a few feet away from him.
“What’s so funny?” Bran asked, as grumpy tonight as he had been the night before.
She looked into his hard, handsome face and some little devil made her say it. “If you really want to know, I was thinking what it might be like to have wild, uninhibited sex with you.”
Hunger flashed in his eyes so quickly she took a step back. “Is that so,” he drawled, his gaze running over her, assessing every curve her orange-striped bikini displayed.
Her whole body flushed with heat as she realized she wasn’t the only one who’d been thinking about sex.
She swallowed. “I was imagining what it might be like, but I...I know if we tried, I’d screw it up. After Ray, I’ve got, you know, hang-ups.”
His gaze grew more intense. “What kind of hang-ups?”
She picked up her towel off the lounge chair and quickly dried off, then slipped on her white terry cloth robe. Fortunately, the overhead lights began to flash, signaling it was time for the pool to close.
“Time to leave.” She started walking back to the room, wishing she’d kept her mouth shut. By the time Bran opened the door and checked inside to be sure it was safe, she was starting to relax.
“What hang-ups?” Bran asked as he closed the door behind them.
Jessie’s stomach instantly knotted. What had possessed her to mention it? But Bran had opened up to her yesterday, which meant she owed him the same courtesy today.
Trying to appear nonchalant, she shrugged. “You know, kissing’s okay, but if a guy starts touching me, my mind flashes back to Ray Cummings and I, um, I start thinking about the way he touched me, where he touched me, and pretty soon sex is the last thing I want to happen.”
Bran’s jaw looked iron-hard. “Did he rape you?”
She swallowed and shook her head. “On the third day, just before he got home, I managed to get loose. I couldn’t get out of the basement, so I searched for a weapon.” Her lips trembled as the memory became all too clear. “I found a wooden crate and pried a board loose. The board had a nail in the end so I held it like a bat, and I waited till he came down the stairs.”
“Go on,” Bran said so softly she felt a chill.
“He always wore this black knit ski mask with a red ring around the mouth, which made him look even more terrifying. Knowing what he planned to do gave me courage. The minute he stepped off the bottom step, I swung the board as hard as I could and smashed him in the side of the head. As soon as he hit the floor, I starting hitting him over and over with the nail in the end of the board. He was unconscious and bleeding when I took off running.”
“Finish it,” Bran said when she paused, more a demand than a request.
Her voice trembled. “The woman in the house next door let me in and called the police. Ray was still unconscious when they got there. Turned out he was a serial rapist. He had abducted four other women and locked them up just like me. Eventually, he released them somewhere, but none of them could identify him or the place he had taken them. I was the only one who escaped.”
She was shaking. She didn’t realize she had tears in her eyes till Bran pulled her into his arms.
“Oh, baby,” he said. “I’m so sorry.”
Jessie clung to him. She never cried, but she couldn’t stop the tears from sliding down her cheeks. “I was so scared. I thought he was going to kill me.”
Bran’s hold subtly tightened. “He’s lucky he’s in prison.” There was such quiet venom in his words she knew that if Bran had