When he was satisfied with her knowledge, he led her to a different room. This one had a large, flat screen against one wall. He put a disc in the player, turned out the lights, and joined her on the couch. It was a mockery of a date: a chick flick and his arm around her.

The movie was a typical romantic comedy with the typical formulaic plot line. If you’d seen one, you’d seen them all. It might be nice to get lost in it, but she couldn’t. She wondered if she might have watched this, or something similar if she’d stayed home with her cat that night instead of going out.

Midway through the film, Leo turned her face to him, and his lips met hers. She still froze when he did it, unable to bring herself to relax under his touch given the circumstances.

He pulled away. “Give in to me, Faith. All I’ll take from you are chaste kisses. You can give me that. You’ll be doing a lot of this when my family arrives. You’d better get used to it.”

He tried again, and this time she forced herself to relax and pretend it was a date with a guy she’d said yes to.

“Better. We’ll work on it.”

Leo pulled her into his arms to finish the movie. He held her as if he was her boyfriend, but even under cover of darkness, he never tried anything. When the credits rolled, he turned on the light. “We’ll try again tomorrow. Go to bed.”

He didn’t have to ask her twice. She couldn’t get back to her room fast enough, the one place where she was moderately safe.

That night, Leo starred in her dreams. Except instead of being a scary horror-movie monster, he was her boyfriend, and he was kind and funny. When he kissed her in the dream, she melted against him and moaned, opening her mouth to accept his probing tongue. Her arms gripped his shoulders, trying to pull him closer, wanting to be consumed by him. Between her legs, a throbbing ache started until his hand slid underneath her panties to soothe it away.

“See, Faith? This is nothing,” Dream-Leo said. “You can give me this.”

When she woke, her own hand was between her legs, and she was aroused. No! If some part of her actually fell for him, it would be more painful. She didn’t want to be like one of those kidnap victims who started sympathizing with her captor. She didn’t want to start believing his lies. And she definitely didn’t want to want him or like his hands or lips on her. She pressed her face against her pillow in an attempt to muffle her distress—though she knew Leo couldn’t hear her from the other end of the house. Then she pressed her face against the pillow to muffle the sound of her orgasm.

7

Leo paced the entry hall, the usually unobtrusive Christmas music beginning to set his teeth on edge. His family would start arriving in less than an hour. About half of them were coming in from Vegas, and they’d be trickling in until dinnertime. The other half would be equally laissez-faire about their arrival times, though they were all in or around Brooklyn.