Free Shocking Pink by Erica Spindler Page B

danced crazily on her pale skin.
    The man stood and left the room, walking past her without even a glance. Andie held her breath. Run, she silently urged. Grab your clothes and go.
    But the woman didn’t move. Not a muscle, it seemed to Andie.
    What was wrong with her? Why didn’t she—
    She wasn’t a prisoner. She wanted to be there.
    Andie brought a hand to her mouth and dared a glance at Raven and Julie. Their faces reflected each of her own emotions—shock, disbelief, a kind of fascination mixed with revulsion. She gazed at them, afraid to speak, willing them to look at her. Hoping if their eyes met, they would all come to their senses and leave this place.
    But they didn’t look her way, and Andie turned back to the window and the nearly naked woman, standing like a mannequin before it.
    Moments passed, though it could have been minutes—even hours—for all Andie knew. She had lost all sense of time and reality. It seemed like aeons that the woman stood unmoving, half-naked and alone.
    The man returned. Again, he strolled past the woman without looking at or touching her. As if she weren’t there, Andie thought. As if she didn’t matter enough even to glance at.
    Andie struggled to see his face before he turned his back to them and sat down, but came up with only impressions: of dark hair and features, of strength and beauty. And of evil.
    Rampant and blackhearted. Like the devil Julie’s dad was always warning about.
    Andie decided she hated him. Fiercely. The emotion reached up and grabbed her by the throat until she felt both choked and exhilarated by it.
    He lit a cigarette. The sudden, tiny flame illuminated his profile for a fraction of a second, then left it more inscrutable than before. Smoke curled, snakelike, through the light of the candle at his feet.
    The woman moved. She eased the slip over her hips and down. It puddled on the floor at her feet, and she stepped out of it. Next, she brought her hands to the back-clasp of her bra; she struggled with it a moment, then with almost agonizing slowness, she took the garment off.
    The panties, small and plain white, came next. She eased them off, then dropped her hands to her sides and stood completely still before the man, as if awaiting his instruction.
    Heat washed over Andie; she began to sweat. She had never seen a naked woman before. Not like this, not just…there. She and her friends had changed clothes in the same fitting room, she had seen her mother when she had burst into the bathroom without knocking, but that had been…natural, kind of innocent.
    But this was different. Unnatural. Anything but innocent. All of it. The man and the woman. The music. Her and her friends spying on them this way.
    Still, Andie didn’t look away. The woman was beautiful, pale and slim but with the kind of curves Andie dreamed of someday having. Cheeks burning, she moved her gaze over the woman, stopping with a sense of shock on the dark triangle of hair at the top of her thighs.
    Suddenly, Andie became aware of the labored sound of her friend’s breathing, the pounding of her own heart, of Julie’s fingers wrapped around her forearm in a death grip.
    The woman took a halting step toward the man, then another, seeming to feel her way in her darkness. When she reached him, she stopped, paused for a moment, then knelt at his feet.
    She lowered her head to his lap.
    For one dazed moment, Andie wondered what the woman was doing.
    Then she knew.
    This wasn’t happening, she told herself, sucking in a strangled breath. Not in Thistledown. Not in her own neighborhood.
    But it was.
    With a squeak of fear, she ducked down, grabbing her friends’ hands and dragging them with her. They stared at each other in shocked silence, then looked away, embarrassed and uncomfortable. Andie opened her mouth to whisper something to break the silence, but nothing came. It wasn’t so much that she couldn’t speak as that suddenly she didn’t want to.
    The three ran. Away from the