Prologue:
Do you know what it is to be alone? Alex Burrow's eyes opened to perfect darkness. Perfect silence. Perfectly alone. The world began to penetrate her senses slowly, as she lay half dead in the Tropicana Resort 12th floor suite. Slumped like a junkie half across the chaise lounge, clothes crusted in dried blood.
Her memories were distorted, disjointed, vivid flashes of his fingers sliding up her thigh. "This belongs to me." He growled in her ear.
She gurgled incomprehensibly.
His mouth at her throat, teeth slicing through her skin, hot, stolen blood swelling on his tongue. "It's all mine."
Immense Power and age coursing through every cell, oppressing, suffocating her. What he said was true. She was his as and she was him in many ways and that's why she lay there like a neglected rag doll.
He was gone now. Long gone. She would have to leave too. People were coming. She could smell the metallic clink of keys, taste the static of polyester suits and plastic of name tags.
Each attempt to move was a slow ache and burn in her joints and organs. She moved sluggishly, rising to her feet feeling her ankles quiver with the weight of her body. She was weak from lack of reality, her psyche knotted and gnarled, half stuck in another world.
The polite knock at the door was like thunder to her ears. Knock. Knock. Knock. "Excuse me, sir?" Knock. Knock. Knock. "Sir, can you open the door, please."
Alex dragged her feet to the balcony, the burst of hot, oppressive desert air greeted her, grated against her sensitive skin. Even as the hotel manager and maintenance men burst into the room she threw herself off the edge.
Falling.