“What are you doing here?”
My eyes flew open.
I turned around and saw Emilio standing there, with just a towel around his waist. His arms were crossed.
“Did you follow me here?”
I stammered, “No…what are you doing here?”
I dropped my coffee cup. Both of us looked down at it as it spilled just a little bit of coffee on the ground.
“Sorry,” I said, grabbing a napkin and wiping up the spill.
“Why are you here?” he asked me.
“I just wanted to go up the TeleferiQo…I had no idea that you were here.”
“Were you hoping for a repeat?”
“No.” I shook my head. “I had no idea that you were here. I should…I should go.”
I tossed my coffee cup into the trashcan by the door and walked towards it. I should know better than to walk into a stranger’s house. I didn’t know what had possessed me.
But before I got there, Emilio put himself between the door and me.
“Excuse me,” I said, walking around him.
But he stepped to the side.
“Why did you follow me here? This cabin is the most private place that I have. Nobody knows that I even own this.”
“I didn’t know that you owned this cabin,” I protested. “And all I want to do is go home.”
But he had walked towards me. His hands were holding my upper arms. He wasn’t hurting me, but his grip was pretty firm.
“Let go,” I breathed.
I saw a look in his eyes that terrified me. The lover who had made me come over and over again was gone. The man in front of me, even though he was only wearing a towel, was looking at me with an intensity that went beyond the crazy passion that we had experienced.
“Who sent you?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I tried to step around him again, but his hands were still on my arms.
“Let go.”
“What’s your name?”
“You know my name. I’m Naelle.”
“Naelle who?”
“This is insane,” I told him. “Listen, I’m going to leave now, and both of us are going to forget that I ever met you.” What a psycho.
But his hands were closing on my arms with more force, and I was starting to get really scared.
I was trying to remember what I’d been taught in the self-defense class that my father insisted I take before starting college. I couldn’t really aim very well when he had a towel on, but a knee to the balls would be pretty effective, and he was within close range.