Kiss the Girls

for now, anyway. Bear in mind, I can be romantic. I actually prefer it that way.”
    She wasn’t prepared for his sudden movement, his quickness. The stun gun appeared and hit her with a vicious jolt. She recognized the gun’s crackling sound, smelled the ozone. Kate fell back hard against the bedroom wall and cracked her head. The impact shook the whole house—
wherever
she was being kept.
    “Oh, Jee-sus no,” Kate moaned softly.
    He was all over her. Flailing arms and legs, all of his weight pressing down on her. He was going to kill her now. Oh God, she didn’t want to die like this, to have her life end in this way. It was so pointless, absurd, sad.
    She felt a fierce and explosive rage swelling up in her. With a desperate effort she managed to kick out one leg, but she couldn’t move her arms. Her chest was on fire. She could feel him ripping off her blouse, touching her all over. He was aroused. She could feel him rubbing against her.
    “No, please no,” she moaned. Her own voice sounded very far away.
    He was kneading her breasts with both hands. She could taste blood, and feel its warmth trickle from the corner of her mouth. Kate finally began to cry. She was choking, and she could hardly breathe.
    “I tried to be nice,” he said through tightly gritted teeth.
    He stopped suddenly. He got up and unzipped his blue jeans and yanked them down around his ankles. He didn’t bother to take them off.
    Kate stared up at him. His penis was large. Fully erect, and bright with pulsing blood and thick veins. He threw himself down on her and rubbed it against her body, moving it slowly against her breasts, her throat, and then her mouth and eyes.
    Kate began to drift in and out of consciousness, in and out of reality. She tried to hold on to each thought that came to her. She needed to feel some control, even if it was only over her thoughts.
    “Keep your eyes open,” he warned her in a deep growl. “Look at me, Kate. Your eyes are so beautiful. You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. Do you know that? Do you know how desirable you are?”
    He was in a trance now. It seemed like it to Kate. His powerful body danced, snaked, writhed, as he thrust himself in and out of her. He sat up and he played with her breasts again. He caressed her hair, different parts of her face. His touch became gentle after a while. That made it even worse for her. She felt such humiliation and horrible shame. She hated him.
    “I love you so much, Kate. I love you more than I’m capable of saying. I’ve never felt this way before. I promise you I haven’t. Never like this.”
    He wasn’t going to kill her, Kate realized. He was going to let her live. He was going to come back again and again, whenever he wanted her. The horror was overwhelming, and Kate finally passed out. She let her spirit fall far away.
    She didn’t feel it when he gave her the softest kiss good-bye. “I love you, sweet Kate. And I’m truly sorry about this. I do feel…
everything.
”

Chapter 29

    I RECEIVED an urgent phone call from a law student and classmate of Naomi’s. She said her name was Florence Campbell and that she had to talk to me as soon as possible.
“I really must talk with you, Dr. Cross. It’s imperative,”
she said.
    I met her on the Duke campus near the Bryan University Center. Florence turned out to be a black woman in her early twenties. We walked among the mangolias and well-kept Gothic-style school buildings. Neither of us looked as if we particularly belonged in the setting.
    Florence was tall and gawky and somewhat mystifying at first. She had a stiff, high hairstyle that made me think of Nefertiti. Her appearance was decidedly odd, or maybe old-fashioned, and it struck me that people like her might still exist in rural Mississippi or Alabama. Florence had done her undergraduate work at Mississippi State University, which was about as far away from Duke University as you could get.
    “I’m very, very sorry, Dr. Cross,” she said as we sat on a stone-and-wood bench with student memorabilia etched into its rails. “I apologize to you and your family.”
    “You apologize about what, Florence?” I asked her. I didn’t understand what she meant.
    “I didn’t make the effort to talk to you when you came to campus yesterday. No one had made it clear that Naomi might actually have been kidnapped. The Durham police certainly didn’t. They were just rude. They didn’t seem to think Naomi was in any real