Prince Of Lies
Robyn Donald
I'm going to stick close to you… closer than a lover, but I'm not going to touch you… He called himself Duke and, like a prince on a charger, he'd rescued Stephanie from a nightmare kidnap situation. Stephanie felt it would be foolish to trust him when, it seemed, his tender passion could change without warning to uncompromising ruthlessness.In effect, she was still a hostage… to Duke's smoldering sexuality - to her own desire. And she couldn't help wondering what the price of her freedom would be!
Prince Of Lies
Robyn Donald
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE (#u73c4d344-2b11-5040-a71c-26661bda253a)
CHAPTER TWO (#u1f0ca6f9-b9d7-54ef-bfaa-f4468a0b50b4)
CHAPTER THREE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE
SOMBRE fir trees crowded against the small stone crypt constructed in the living rock of the mountain, concealing it from all but the keenest eyes.
The man who threaded his way so quietly that even the deer didn’t sense his presence had such eyes, strange, colourless eyes that refracted light like shattered glass. At a muffled sound in the still silence he froze, his big body somehow blending into the gloom, that fierce gaze searching through the trees and up the mountainside.
A hundred years ago an eccentric English gentleman had built a little castle high in the Swiss Alps, but it was his wife who decided that the estate needed something extra, a romantically outrageous touch to set it off properly. A couple of ruined follies sufficed for dramatic impact in the woods, but the pièce de résistance was the crypt, never intended to be used, constructed solely to induce the right mood.
During the past century the carefully laid path had become overgrown, scarcely noticeable, but the crypt had been built by good Victorian tradesmen, and it still stood in all its Gothic gloom, the rigid spikes of an elaborately detailed iron grille barring steps that led down to a solid wooden door.
Frozen in a purposeful, waiting immobility, ears and eyes attuned to the slightest disturbance, the man decided that as an example of the medieval sensibility admired by many Victorians the hidden crypt was perfect. Not his style, but then, his self-contained pragmatism was utterly at variance with the romantic attitudes of a century before.
In spite of the fugitive noise that had whispered across his ears, no birds shouted alarm, no animals fled between the trees. His penetrating gaze lingered a moment on stray beams of the hot Swiss sun fighting their way through the dense foliage.
He hadn’t seen anyone since entering the wood and his senses were so finely honed that he’d have known if he’d been followed, or if the crypt was being watched. The waiting was a mere formality. However, when a man lived on his wits it paid to have sharp ones, and the first thing he’d learned was to trust nothing, not even his own reactions.
A small, bronze butterfly settled on one broad shoulder. Not until the fragile thing had danced off up the nearest sunbeam did he move, and then it was soundlessly, with a smooth flowing grace very much at variance with his size. Within moments he was standing at the dark opening in the shoulder of the mountain.
The iron door looked suitably forbidding, but the old-fashioned lock that would have been, for all its ornate promise, ridiculously easy to pick, had been superseded by a modern one, sleek, workmanlike, somehow threatening. After a cursory glance he fished in his pocket and pulled out a ring of keys. No clink of metal pierced the silence. Selecting one, he inserted it, and as the key twisted and the lock snickered back a look of savage satisfaction passed over his hard, intimidating face.
He didn’t immediately accept the mute invitation. Instead, his eyes searched the stone steps that led down to another door, this one made of sturdy wood. For several seconds the cold, remote gaze lingered on what could have been scuff marks.
Eventually, with the measured, deliberate calculation of a predator, he turned his head. Again his eyes scanned the fir trees and the barely visible path through them, then flicked up the side of the mountain. Only then did he push the iron door open.
Although he knew it had been oiled, he half expected a dramatic shriek of rusty hinges. One corner of his straight mouth tilted in mordant appreciation of the horror films he and his friends used to watch years ago, when he was as innocent as he’d ever been.
Moving without noise or haste, he slipped through the narrow opening between the iron door and the stone wall, relocked the door, and turned, his back pressed against the damp, rough-hewn stone. Now, caught between the grille and the wooden door, he was most vulnerable to ambush.
Still no prickle of danger, no obscure warning conveyed by the primitive awareness that had saved his life a couple of times. Keeping well to the side where the shadows lay deepest, he walked noiselessly down the steps. Some part of his brain noted the chill that struck through his clothes and boots.
A different key freed the wooden door; slowly, he pushed it open, his black head turning as a slight scrabble sounded shockingly in the dank, opaque darkness within.
‘It’s all right, Stephanie,’ he said in a voice pitched to reach whoever was in the crypt. Grimly, he locked the door behind him. A hitherto concealed torch sent a thin beam of light slicing through the blackness to settle on a long box, eerily like a coffin, that rested on the flagstones. The man played the light on to the box until the keyhole glittered. For the space of three heartbeats he stood motionless, before, keys in hand, he approached the box.
* * *
Inside her prison she was blind, and earplugs made sure she could hear little. However, another sense had taken over, an ability to feel pressure, to respond somehow to the presence of another living being. For the last few minutes she had known he was near.
Almost certainly he was one of the two men who had abducted her on the road back to the chalet. The memory of those terrifying moments kept her still and quiet, her shackled limbs tense against the narrow sides of the box.
After the initial horrified incredulity she had fought viciously, desperation clearing her brain with amazing speed so that she was able to use every move Saul had taught her. She’d managed to get in some telling blows, scratching one’s face badly as she’d torn off his Balaclava. She had been trying for his eyes, but a blow to her head had jolted her enough to put off her aim.
Not badly enough, however, to stop her from crooking her fingers again and gouging at his face, so clearly seen in the moonlight.
Then the second man had punched her on the jaw.
Two days later the man whose face she’d seen had hit her again in exactly the same place when she’d refused to read the newspaper.
Half-mad with terror, convinced that she was going to die in the makeshift coffin, she had managed to shake her head when he’d forced her upright and thrust the newspaper in her hand, demanding that she say the headlines.
She’d known what he was doing. Saul must want some reassurance that she was alive before he paid any ransom. The torches that had blazed into her eyes had made it very clear that her assailant intended to video her.
Her refusal had made her gaoler angry, and he’d threatened to withhold the food and water he’d brought. Still she’d balked, folding her mouth tightly over the cowardly words fighting to escape, words that were pleas for freedom, craven offers to pay him anything he wanted if only he would let her go.
So he’d hit her, carefully choosing the site of the bruise he’d already made when he’d knocked her out in the street. Pain had cascaded through her but she’d only given in when he’d told her viciously that he was prepared to send a video of him beating her up to her brother if that was what it took.
It had been the only thing he could have said to persuade her. Saul must never know what had happened to her in that crypt.
And now, after an unknown number of days, someone else had returned to the crypt. Her jaw still ached, but that was the least of her worries.
Shuddering, she bent her attention to the person in her dungeon. It was a man; was he the man who had forced her to dramatise her own misery so that her brother Saul would know she was alive?
She lay still, trying to pick up with subliminal receptors some indication of his identity. Strangely, she felt, with a hidden, atavistic shrinking, a strong impression of power and intensity, and beneath that a controlled menace that made her shiver with terror.
The muffled sound of his voice again, low, oddly compelling even through the planks of her prison and the earplugs, sent quick panic flooding through her, humiliating, loathsome, unmanageable. She tried to breathe carefully, counting the seconds, but it didn’t help.
He spoke once more; although the words were somewhat louder they were still distorted by the physical response of her body. Her first reaction had been to will him to go away, but she suddenly wondered whether he was a passer-by who had merely stumbled on her prison. If that was so, he wouldn’t know she was in the box on the floor. He might be her only chance to get out of here.
Nevertheless, it took a real effort of will to move, and when she did she moaned soundlessly at the pain in her cramped muscles. Clenching her teeth, she lifted her hands and hit the manacles sharply against the top of the box, hoping that the noise would be enough to attract his attention.
Strung taut by fear and foreboding, she screamed into the gag as the lid came up silently, yet with a rush of air that hurt her skin and proclaimed a violent energy in the man who stood above her. Ever since she had been locked in this coffin she had been desperately trying to get free, rubbing her wrists raw against the unyielding metal of the handcuffs, yet now she shrank back because the impact of the stranger’s personality—intense, lethal, forceful—hit her like a blow.
Danger, her instincts drummed; this man is dangerous! Some primal, buried intuition warned her that he was infinitely more of a threat to her than either of the men who had kidnapped her. She sensed an icy, implacable authority, a concentrated will that beat harshly down on her.
But when he spoke his voice was level, almost impersonal. ‘Just lie still for a few seconds, Stephanie,’ he said, his voice pitched to pierce the earplugs.
So he was no casual passer-by.
Stephanie made herself stay quiescent as the gag was removed. This man knew exactly what he was doing, and did it as though he’d been wrenching off gags all his life. Life pulsed through him, an intensity of vigour, of purpose, a sheer, consuming energy that bathed her in white-hot fire.
Get a grip on yourself, she commanded. He still might come from the kidnappers. She said rustily, ‘Who are you?’ and strained to hear his answer.
‘I’ve come to take you out of this. How do you feel?’
Relief was a slow, reluctant warming. ‘I’m all right. Just numb all over.’
‘You’ll hurt like hell when the feeling starts to come back,’ he said.
Her kidnappers had left nothing to chance; they hadn’t intended her to escape. When he felt the steel manacles on her wrists and ankles the unknown man cursed roughly, but his hands on her body were warm and deft and gentle, and after a bit of manipulation the steel fell loose.
Nevertheless, it seemed an aeon before she was out of her coffin. Her legs wouldn’t support her, so her rescuer held her with an arm around her waist and then all she could think of was that she was filthy and naked and that she must smell and look disgusting. She put up a fleshless, quivering hand to remove the plugs from her ears.
‘I’ll do that,’ he said. In a moment the echo of her pulses that had been her sole companion for so many anguished hours was replaced by a rush of silence.
She didn’t have time to appreciate it, for the numbness that held her body in thrall was overwhelmed by an agony so intense, she thought she might faint from it. Biting her lips to hold back mortifying whimpers, she clung convulsively to his broad shoulders as returning sensation surged through her with accelerating agony.
‘How long have I been here?’ she mumbled, trying to keep her mind off the torment.
‘Three days.’
Free from distortion, his voice was deep and infinitely disturbing, detached, yet threaded by an equivocal undertone. English, she noted automatically, although there was something else, some hint of another country’s speech; not an accent, more an intonation, a slight inflexion...
He sounded as though he could have spent enough time in New Zealand or Australia to be affected by their special and particular way of speaking.
Giving it up as too hard, she set her jaw and forced her shaking legs to straighten, her knees to lock so that she could stand upright. Sweat stood out along her brow, settled with clammy persistence into her palms. When the torture receded a little she managed to mutter, ‘I tried to get free, but I couldn’t.’
‘It’s almost over, princess.’ His arm around her shoulders tightened. For several minutes he continued to support her trembling body, until at last he asked brusquely, ‘Can you walk? Here, you’d better get rid of this—’ Hands touched the blindfold.
Jerking her head away, she said, ‘No,’ because it gave her some sort of protection from his gaze. Not even when she had been stripped naked to the lewd sound of one of the kidnapper’s comments had she felt so exposed, so helpless.
‘Yes,’ he said relentlessly. ‘We’re not out of the woods yet—literally. I don’t think the men who snatched you will come back today, but if they do while we’re still here you need to be able to see, and this half-darkness will give your eyes time to get accustomed to the light.’
Ignoring her panted objections, he stripped the blindfold from her shaggy head. Obstinately, Stephanie kept her eyes closed. ‘Have you got any water?’ she asked, running her dry tongue around an even drier mouth. ‘I’m so thirsty.’
‘Don’t drink too much. It will make you sick.’
A metal flask pressed against her lips, and the blessed cool thinness of water seeped across her tongue. She gulped greedily, making a quick, involuntary protest when he took it away.
‘No,’ he said laconically, ‘you can have some more later.’ At her small sound of displeasure he went on, ‘If you have any more now you’ll be retching before you’ve gone fifty yards. Trust me, I know.’
An odd note in his voice coaxed her eyes slightly open. The torchlight barely reached the dank stone walls of her prison, but in its golden glow she saw a big man, tall and well-built, with a dark, angular, forceful face.
Shock hit her like a blow, followed by a strange, compelling recognition, as though she had always known he was out there, waiting. She would never forget him, she thought dazedly. He had rescued her from hell, and until the day she died she’d remember his warrior’s countenance, stark in the earthy dampness of her prison, as well as his curt, understated consideration.
‘That’s better,’ he said bluntly. ‘Put these on.’
He had brought clothes—jeans and a shirt in muted camouflage colours. Gratefully, she struggled a few moments with limp hands and weak wrists, before saying on a half-choked note of despair, ‘I can’t.’
Without impatience, he said, ‘All right, stand still.’
Competent hands pulled the clothes on to her thin body; he even managed to fit a pair of black trainers on her feet. Although the garments felt amazingly good after the soaked blanket she’d been lying on, she knew that she wouldn’t feel clean until she had washed herself free of this place.
In a hidden recess of her mind she wondered whether she would ever feel really clean again.
‘Let’s get out of here,’ he said.
Nothing in his tone indicated a need for hurry, but Stephanie suddenly realised that the longer they stayed in the crypt, the more dangerous it was.
Compliantly she tried to follow him across to the door, but her feet refused to obey her will. She began to shake.
‘I can’t walk,’ she said angrily.
‘You’ll have to.’
Although the words were completely unsympathetic, he grasped her hand in his lean, strong one, and somehow she could move once more. Each step felt like knives in her flesh. Abruptly the story of the little mermaid and the sacrifice she had made to gain a human soul flashed into Stephanie’s mind. When her mother had read it to her she hadn’t liked the tale, finding it too sad, but until that moment she hadn’t understood what a truly awful torture Hans Christian Andersen had devised for his heroine.
Tightening her lips, she held back any expression of pain. But when her rescuer switched off the torch and the blackness pressed in again, she couldn’t prevent a choked cry.
‘If you can’t keep quiet I’ll have to gag you again,’ he said, each word stark with the promise of retribution. ‘Walk softly, and don’t talk. If anything happens to me, climb a tree and stay there. Most people don’t think to look upwards.’
The next second she was stumbling behind a man who moved without sound. The door swung open silently, letting in a flood of dim light. At first it hurt her eyes, but as she squinted tearfully she saw stone steps leading up to bars, and beyond them a forest of firs, their trunks and thick foliage blocking out the sun.
Closing the door behind them, her rescuer locked it before leading her carefully up the steps, his back to the wall, his head turned towards the entrance so that all she could see of his face was the stern line of jaw above a hint of square chin, the sweeping angle of cheek, the dark, conventionally cut hair. His hand still engulfed hers; although it was warm and insistent, she understood with a purely female recognition that it could be cruel.
At the top of the steps he waited so long that she began to drift into a kind of trance. Then, apparently satisfied that the woods held no lurking enemies, he unlocked the bars and slipped through, shielding her with the graceful bulk of his body.
It was like all the thrillers she had ever read—the gallant, aloof hero, the abused heroine, the dangerous trek to safety. Perhaps if she could have viewed the situation as popular fiction she’d have been able to cope with the sick dismay that washed through her when he turned up the mountain and began to climb, half pulling her along behind him.
Gasping within seconds, exhausted in minutes, she knew she had to keep going, so she gritted her teeth and ignored the pain. He helped, hauling her over rocks, stopping occasionally to let her regain her breath. Her heart was thumping too heavily in her chest for anything but its erratic beating to be heard, and in a very short time she was engulfed by a headache and a spreading nausea that almost subdued her.
But anything was better than being locked in a box, unable to free herself. With the characteristic doggedness that came as a surprise to most people, Stephanie scrambled behind her unknown rescuer, grateful for the trees that sheltered them.
At last the steep slope levelled out. ‘Stay here,’ he said in a quiet, almost soundless voice, pushing her unceremoniously into a crevice beneath a rock.
Stephanie collapsed, peering through the bushes that concealed the narrow cleft, but he disappeared before she had time to query him, so she put her head on her knees, stiffened her jaw to stop the shameful whimpering she could barely control, and let her body do whatever it needed to recover. She was still panting when he slid back through the whippy, leafy branches with as little fuss as an animal.
Still in the same low voice he asked, ‘How are you feeling?’
‘I’ve felt better,’ she said quietly, avoiding the cold clarity of his gaze. ‘On the other hand, just recently I’ve felt worse. I’ll be all right. How much further?’
‘About a mile.’
As she struggled out he said, ‘I think it should be safe enough to carry you,’ and in spite of her automatic recoil he picked her up and set off.
Keeping her face rigidly turned away, she wondered why liberty didn’t taste as good as she’d imagined it would in those nightmare days of imprisonment. She should have been ecstatic, because she’d expected death, and now there was a future waiting for her. At the very least she should have been relieved. Instead, an icy chill eddied through her, robbing her of everything but a detached recognition that she had been imprisoned and was now free.
Freedom was easy to say, she thought with a scepticism that hurt. Common sense told her that her body would mend quickly enough, yet as she lay there in the powerful arms of the man who had released her she wondered whether some part of her mind would be incarcerated in that box for the rest of her life.
‘My car’s not too far away. When we get there I’m going to have to put you in the boot,’ her rescuer told her, his voice reassuring but firm enough to forestall any protest. He still spoke as though they could be overheard. ‘It will be bloody uncomfortable, but it’s necessary, and I’ve put a mattress in there to make it a bit easier. I’m almost certain no one’s been watching me, but we’ll be going through several villages and the last thing we want is someone remembering that I had a passenger. So you’ll have to stay hidden.’
Although her skin crawled at the thought of further confinement, Stephanie understood the need for caution. Mastering the flash of panic, she said, ‘Yes, all right.’ She thought his words over before asking slowly, ‘Will S—will my brother be there?’
‘No.’ He paused before explaining, ‘He’s busy dealing with the men who did this to you. You and I will have to lie low for a while until it’s over. I can’t even get a doctor for you in case they have a local contact, but I have some experience in this sort of thing.’
‘I’ll be fine,’ she said automatically, wondering where he’d gained this experience. First-aid training? A book on how to look after kidnappees?
Being rescued, she decided, closing her eyes, must have addled her brain.
He climbed for what seemed ages. Mostly Stephanie lay in a kind of stupor, accepting without thought the novelty of being carried, the controlled, purposeful toughness of the man. It did occur to her that he must be immensely strong, for he moved without any visible signs of exhaustion. And although he might not think there was anyone watching she could feel his alertness, a fierce concentration on every signal sent by the world around them. Several times he stopped and listened.
Whenever that happened she made herself still and quiet, trying to slow her heartbeat, calm her racing pulses and the rattle of air in her lungs, the interminable thud and throb of her headache. Although she too listened hard she could hear nothing but the sounds of the forest—an occasional bird, the soft rustling of a breeze in the trees.
Once she roused herself to whisper, ‘Are we there?’
‘Not quite.’ When he went to put her down she surprised herself by clinging. ‘It’s all right,’ he said gently. ‘I’m just going to scout around and make sure no one is about.’
‘Don’t leave me.’ Although she despised the note of panic in her voice, she couldn’t control it.
‘I’ll be keeping a good eye on you.’
A small, childish noise escaped her lips.
‘That’s enough,’ he said sternly, bending to thrust her into a cleft beneath a rock that broke through the bushes. ‘I haven’t gone to all this trouble to lose you now. Just sit there, princess, and I’ll be here again before you’ve had time to get lonely.’ He stepped behind a tree and disappeared, far too silently for a man of his size.
Disgusted by her feebleness, Stephanie waited, wishing she could point her ears like an animal to get a better fix on his whereabouts. A tangle of summer-green leaves hid her from any stray passer-by, but not, she knew, from a determined searcher. Her rescuer’s familiarity with this mountain slope surely meant that he had spent some time reconnoitring.
Fighting exhaustion, she peered past the leaves, trying to identify a glimmering patch of white that danced in the sun beyond a belt of trees. At first she thought it was a waterfall, but by narrowing her eyes she could see that it was too regular for that. Slowly, it coalesced into stone, a waterfall of stone—no, columns of stone.
There, some hundreds of yards away through the trees, was what looked to be a temple, chastely, classically Greek. Her eyes blurred; she blinked to clear them, but a cloud had passed over the sun, and the tantalising streak of white was gone.
Perhaps it had been a hallucination.
His return startled her. It was uncanny; he seemed to rise out of the ground like a primeval huntsman, so at one with his surroundings that the trees sheltered him in their embrace.
‘Not a soul in sight,’ he said. ‘Let’s go.’
His arms around her were intensely comforting, like coming home. Sighing, Stephanie leaned her head against his shoulder. He smelt slightly sweaty, so it wasn’t as easy carrying her as he made it seem. Another scent teased her nostrils, faint but ever present, evocative, with a hint of salt and musk. Masculinity, she decided dreamily.
She knew that she must smell hideous, reek with the stale odour of confinement. A pursuer, she thought with a wry twist of her lips, wouldn’t need to search for her; all he’d have to do was follow his nose to find her.
She was still wondering why this seemed so especially unbearable when he said, ‘Right, here we are.’
However, he didn’t go immediately to the car that waited in the heavy shade of a conifer. It wasn’t hidden, but few people would notice it, for it was painted a green that blended with the long needles of the trees.
Just inside the confines of the wood he put her against the trunk of a tree, and stood blocking her from anyone who might be watching, his whole being concentrated on a hawk-eyed, icily patient scrutiny of every tree, every blade of grass, and the big, dark car.
When at last he did move it was with a speed that shocked her. Within seconds she was deposited on the mattress in the boot, choking back a moan as he firmly closed the lid.
The engine sprang into life; with no delay the car drew away from the picnic spot and turned down the road.
Even on the mattress Stephanie was soon profoundly uncomfortable. Her bones seemed to have no fleshy covering to protect them; she ached all over, and she was shivering. She was also worrying. So great had her initial relief been that suspicion hadn’t had room to take hold. Now, cramped like a parcel, trying to ignore the thumping of her head and the tremors that racked her, she began to recall things she had noticed but not questioned. Whoever her rescuer was, he had keys not only to the crypt and the coffin, but also to the handcuffs that had manacled her in the coffin.
Saul, her brother, had an excellent security department, but it was highly unlikely that even the most skilled operative would have been able to get those keys. So unlikely that she had better stop believing that the man driving the BMW had anything to do with Saul.
Her quick, instinctive stab of revulsion warned her that she was halfway into the Stockholm syndrome—falling in with the wishes of her captor.
Think, she adjured her pounding brain. Think, damn it!
There had been no indication that she was a target; if her intensely protective brother had heard the slightest hint that she was in danger, he wouldn’t have let her come to Switzerland without a bodyguard. Or with one, for that matter. The close relatives of billionaires were sometimes at risk; she had long ago accepted the constraints of her world, and co-operated, so Saul had no reason to keep her in ignorance.
If Saul didn’t know, if he hadn’t been warned, then none of his agents would have been alerted. According to her rescuer, she’d been imprisoned for three days. She had no way of checking the accuracy of this, but if it was true, was that time enough for one of Saul’s men to discover who the kidnappers were and get close enough to them to be able to copy the keys?
It didn’t seem likely, unless the kidnappers had left clues the size of houses. And somehow she doubted that; they had been frighteningly efficient.
It seemed important to know exactly how many keys there were. Even understanding that it was a mechanism to push the truth away didn’t stop her from counting them: the keys to the box, then to the handcuffs, keys to both doors. Four sets of keys. And he had them all.
She dragged a deep breath into her lungs. All right, don’t panic! What sort of person was he, this man who had walked into her life?
Although she hadn’t looked at him carefully, so she couldn’t recall the colour of his eyes or even his colouring beyond the fact that he was dark, that first swift glance had seared his features into her brain: a blade of a nose, high, arrogant cheekbones, eyes that had something strange about them. Did he look like a criminal?
Not, she thought bitterly, that looks were any indication. The man whose face she had seen under his torn Balaclava hadn’t looked like a criminal. If he’d been any type at all, it was a small-time shopkeeper.
Whatever, until she knew for certain, it would be much safer to work on the assumption that either her rescuer was one of the kidnappers who wanted all of the ransom, not merely a share of it, or an associate who knew what they had done, was trusted by them, and had decided to cut himself a piece of the pie. That would explain why he was being so careful not to be seen by the original kidnappers.
It sounds, she thought feverishly, like the instructions in an Elizabethan play: Enter first kidnapper with gag, blindfold and coffin, exit first kidnapper. Almost immediately enter second kidnapper, a large, athletic man with keys and strong arms.
If that was so, she was in just as much danger as before. He could quite easily plan to keep her safe as long as Saul demanded reassurance that she was alive, then kill her when the money had been paid over.
Her heart skittered into a rapid cacophony while her brain veered off towards the messy heights of hysteria.
Calm down. Panic isn’t going to get you anywhere.
With an effort of will that made her teeth chatter she began to breathe slowly, regularly, forcing herself to count the seconds. Eventually the churning flood of fear in her stomach subsided, and with it her inability to think.
Paradoxically, the only thing that comforted her was that he’d used the keys quite openly. If she’d been less of a cynic she might take that to mean he was legitimate.
Of course, he could well be devious enough to use them deliberately so that she’d be confused into accepting him as completely above-board. It wouldn’t be the first time someone had imagined that because her brother was one of the richest men in the world Stephanie Jerrard was incapable of logical thought, with nothing but clothes and jewellery and gossip in her mind.
He could have fallen into that trap. However, in the few moments she had spent talking to him she had gained the impression of a keen, razor-sharp intelligence, the sort of mind that didn’t make obvious mistakes. Apart from the keys, what else was there to base suspicion on?
The tension clamping her muscles began to ebb as she realised how little there was. He’d been evasive when she’d asked about Saul. Or had he?
Questions jostled around her aching head, forcing their way through to her conscious mind, battering her precarious self-control. How long was this journey going to take? She felt as though she’d been in the car for hours. Although they were now climbing quite steeply she couldn’t smell any exhaust fumes. Perhaps when you travelled in the boot of a car you left the fumes behind. No, she told herself, don’t get side-tracked. Think!
While the car twisted and turned smoothly around corners, she decided to do nothing. Her suspicions could be entirely wrong, and anyway, common sense told her she wasn’t going to be able to do any running or hiding until she’d regained some strength. The two men who had kidnapped her were around somewhere, and if she ran away and they caught up with her again, she thought with a shudder, they might kill her outright. After all, she could identify one of them.
So she’d eat and rest, and she’d probe as subtly as she could. If her rescuer was a villain she might be safe while she pretended to take him at face value.
Of course, there might be a perfectly logical explanation for those keys. All she had to do was ask. And if she didn’t like the answer, she could fake belief until she found an opportunity to get away from him.
As the car slid to halt, she froze. Striving to look weak and pathetic and entirely brainless, she coerced her muscles into looseness, wondering despairingly whether she should try to get away now, when he would be least likely to expect it.
Before she had time to make up her mind the lock on the boot clicked. ‘We’re here,’ he said, reaching in and gathering her up.
She said raggedly, ‘Where’s here? And what happens now?’
‘This is where we’re staying.’
‘It looks old,’ she said inanely.
‘Not very. It was built last century.’ He set off for a door across the garage.
Frowning, she looked around. ‘It doesn’t look like the stables.’
‘It’s not. This is the old laundry, which was converted into a garage some time in the thirties.’
Apparently he wasn’t given to fulsome explanations. She said stubbornly, ‘What’s going to happen now?’
‘I’m going to carry you upstairs, where you can shower and go to bed. Then you eat, and after that you sleep.’
It should have sounded wonderful but the greyness she had fought so long and vehemently had finally caught up with her. Blankly she said beneath her breath, ‘Thank you.’
Some emotion sawed through him, but his voice was steady and deliberate as he said, ‘It’s nothing. Think of me as your doctor.’
Her doctor was forty, a married woman wearing her sophistication with cheerful cynicism and an understanding heart. Stephanie smiled wearily.
‘Shower first,’ he said. ‘I’ll have to stay with you, I’m afraid, in case you fall.’
A week ago she would have refused point-blank, but it didn’t matter now. She didn’t think she would ever be modest again.
She forced herself to look around as he carried her across a high, mock-Gothic hall and up some narrow stairs.
‘This looks like a castle,’ she said.
‘Seen plenty of them, have you, princess?’ His voice was dry.
‘A few,’ she admitted. It couldn’t hurt. He knew who she was. What he might not know, she thought vengefully, was how formidable Saul was. On the first suitable occasion she’d make sure he learnt.
However, not even Saul was invincible, and she’d have to try to get herself out of this situation. So, she decided with an odd lurch in her heartbeat, she had better take a good look at the man who might well be her greatest obstacle. Fractionally turning her head, she sent a sideways glance through her lashes.
He wasn’t handsome, but strength and a compelling and concentrated authority marked the slashing lines of his face. Not a man you would forget, she thought, wishing her head didn’t ache so much that she couldn’t think clearly. Surely kidnappers didn’t look as though they strode through the world forcing it to accept them on their own terms? The two who had snatched her certainly hadn’t. The one she’d seen was short and thin, inconspicuous except for his flat, emotionless black eyes, and the other had behaved with all the flashy arrogance of a small-time criminal.
This man couldn’t have been taken for a small-time anything.
Stephanie felt physically ill; her whole body was screaming with pain, she was tired and hungry and frantic with thirst, and in spite of her efforts to keep a calm head she was terrified with the sort of fear that only needed a touch to spill into panic, yet her first reaction to eyes where the light splintered into scintillating energy was a sensation of something heated and unmanageable racing through her with the force of a stampede. Some hitherto inviolate part of her shattered in a subtle breaching of barricades that left her raw and undefended.
Eyes locked on to his face, she was thinking dazedly, What’s happening to me? when the corners of that ruthless, equivocal mouth tilted a fraction. ‘Do you think you’d recognise me again?’ he asked, his tone imbuing the words with a hidden meaning.
‘I’m sure of it.’ Self-protection impelled her to add, ‘I believe it’s a well-known syndrome; people do tend to remember those who rescue them from durance vile. Incidentally, how did you get into that cellar?’
He shouldered through a small door off a landing at the top of the stairs, walked across a room dimmed by heavy curtains, through another door, and stood her on her feet, turning her at the same time so that she had her back to him.
They were in a bathroom, neat, white, with a startlingly luxurious shower, all glass and modern fittings. As his hands supported her for the first agonising moments, he said calmly, ‘It’s not a cellar, it’s a fake crypt. The locks on the doors are not brand-new, and the men who put you there didn’t bother to change them. Your brother wields a lot of power, and it didn’t take long for me to get a complete set of skeleton keys.’
‘And the handcuffs?’
His mouth tightened, but his eyes held hers steadily as he said, ‘There are techniques for picking them.’
Stephanie almost sagged with relief, her reassured brain spinning into dizziness. Of course; she had read of skeleton keys often enough; she should have thought of them herself. And hadn’t Saul’s chief of security told her once that there was no lock invented that couldn’t be picked, given time, equipment and a deft hand?
Before she had time to say the incautious words that came tumbling to her lips, the man who had rescued her began to strip her as efficiently and swiftly as he had dressed her.
‘No,’ she muttered, trying to stop his hands.
‘You can’t do it yourself.’ He unzipped the jeans and pushed them down around her hips.
He was right, but in spite of her previous conviction about her lack of modesty she actually felt intense embarrassment. She had her back to him, but there was a mirror, and for a breathless second she saw their reflections, her pale, thin, hollow-eyed face beneath a wild tangle of rusty curls, the swift movements of his long-fingered hands unbuttoning her shirt.
Hastily she looked away, confusion and shame battling for supremacy. Although he was gentle, those tanned fingers branded her skin, leaving it hot and tender, connected by shimmering, glittering wires to her spine and the pit of her stomach. A lazy, coiled heat stirred there, as though his touch summoned something forbidden but irresistible.
Stephanie bit her lip, trying to use pain to drown out those other, treacherous sensations. It didn’t work, and in the end she gave in, her eyes caught and held by the strange power of his.
‘You have eyes like cornflowers,’ he astounded her by saying. ‘That brilliant, rare, clear sapphire. It must be a Jerrard trait.’
So he had met Saul. Stephanie’s suspicions fell from her like an ugly, discarded shroud. Bewitched by the new and unusual responses of her body, pulses jumping, she waited until he moved away to turn on the shower before shrugging off the shirt and stepping out of her jeans. A quick flick of her wrist hooked a towel from the rail to wrap around herself.
She stumbled, and he caught her, pulling her against the solid length of his body. Stephanie flinched, that insidious, unwanted awareness reinforced by his nearness. Although she was tall and not slightly built, against him she felt tiny, delicately fragile, an experience intensified by the unexpected burgeoning of a languorous femininity.
Her rescuer’s austere face was intent as he juggled with the shower controls, but that concentrated attention was not bent on her; he showed no signs of a reciprocal response.
You’re mad, she told herself as steam began to fill the shower stall. Look in the mirror—your bones stick out, you’re filthy, and you smell. The sort of first impression no one ever overcomes. Who in their right mind would be anything but casual and very, very detached?
‘There, that should be right,’ he said, urging her into the big, tiled, warm shower with its glass doors now tactfully obscured by steam. He didn’t move away from the door, but at least he couldn’t see much through the hazy mist.
A singing, surging relief persuaded her to release the bonds of the obstinacy that had held her together for so long. Only for a few hours, she thought as with eyes tightly shut she tried to wash herself. She could give up for a few hours and use some of this man’s strength until she regained her own.
The water was like nectar over her skin, but its heat drained her waning energy, and her hands shook so much that she couldn’t get soap on to the flannel. As tears squeezed their way beneath her lashes she continued grimly on, aware of the man who stood so close, a large, dim figure through the glass doors.
The cake of soap plummeted between her fingers and landed on her foot. Unable to prevent a soft cry of pain, she cut it short and crouched to pick up the wretched thing. It took a vast effort to push herself upright, and when she got there she could feel her legs trembling. Refusing to look at the man who watched, hating him for not leaving her alone, she gripped the flannel and passed it over the cake of soap.
He asked tonelessly, ‘Do you want me to wash you?’
Lethargy enmeshed her, but she said, ‘No, I can do it.’
Only she couldn’t. Her arms ached, and her fingers wouldn’t obey her, and her legs felt as though the bones had been replaced by sponge rubber.
He waited until she dropped the soap again, then said curtly, ‘Here, give me that flannel. When you’ve as much strength as a cooked noodle courage and determination will only get you so far.’
Stephanie turned her face away, saying stiffly, ‘I’m all right—’
‘Shut up,’ he said, interrupting her by taking the cloth from her lax fingers.
CHAPTER TWO
HOSTILITY flared brightly inside Stephanie, matched by a crackle of antagonism from him. A searing glance from those colourless eyes warned her that she wasn’t going to win this one. Squeezing her eyelids shut, she stood mutinously while the flannel slipped slowly, gently over skin that was stretched and too sensitive.
Her blood gathered thickly in her veins. No matter how much she tried to concentrate on relief at being safe, all she could feel was the elemental nearness of the man who had brought her out of hell. His presence was a sensuous abrasion on her skin, electric, tingling, charging the shower stall with a fierce, primal vitality, setting acutely responsive nerves alight. Dazed, she set herself to endure what she couldn’t change.
He didn’t hurry. The flannel laved her body in subtle, diligent torture. He even shampooed her hair, working suds through the rust-coloured strands, seeming to understand that she needed it rinsed over and over until it was glowing against her head. Luxuriating in the purifying spray of water, she thought that he was surprisingly patient. She suspected that it wasn’t an inherent part of his character, but had been hard-won by the exercise of will. Whatever, she was grateful for it.
Sudden exhaustion robbed her bones of strength, and she swayed, her hands whipping up to grab his forearm as she fell. Unwillingly her eyes popped open. A wide, bare chest filled her vision, fine wet hair slicked in a tree-of-life pattern over olive skin clearly in the best of health, a shocking contrast to her own sunless pallor.
Without her volition her gaze travelled down; she realised he still had his trousers on.
‘You’re getting wet,’ she said foolishly, trying to curb a harsh, unbidden response, elemental and unwanted.
‘I didn’t think you’d like it if I came in without any clothes on,’ he returned, a satirical note edging his tone.
Blood stung her cheeks and throat. Feeling much younger than her eighteen years, she stammered, ‘No—well, no, I wouldn’t.’
She had wanted to stay beneath the water until her skin was wrinkled and pale, washing off the results of being locked in a coffin for three days, scrubbing herself free from the taint and the terror and the evilness of it. But now she needed to get out of there.
Quickly, she said the first words that came into her head. ‘I’m cold.’
‘All right.’ He turned off the spray.
Swallowing a lump that obstructed her throat, and apparently her thought processes too, Stephanie watched through lashes beaded with drops of water as he pushed open the glass door and stepped out on to the mat. Muscles moved in his back—not the smooth, sculptured works of art nurtured in a gym, but tautly corded, with the flowing vigour and hard, tensile power of rigorous work.
‘Here,’ he said, handing her a large, warm white towel.
Battling the treacherous feelings that surged through her, she accepted it and began to dry herself. He pulled another towel from the holder and started to wipe the glistening water from his arms.
Her last vestiges of energy evaporated as fast as the water on his skin. Stumbling once more, Stephanie would have fallen if he hadn’t sensed her predicament and whirled around to catch her, moving with a speed and accuracy that obscurely frightened her. For the second time in as many minutes, she was supported against a taut male body.
‘My legs won’t hold me up,’ she muttered, unable now to hide her panic with anger. Sensation bludgeoned her; acutely aware of the heated, silky dampness of his skin, the potency barely leashed in the tall body that supported her, she swallowed.
‘Stand still,’ he said in a cool, crisp voice, and began to blot the water from her shoulders.
Beneath the white towel his hands were careful yet completely impersonal. By the time she was dry Stephanie was shivering, engulfed by a fatigue that was only partly caused by her ordeal. Dimly she realised that she was being put into a huge T-shirt, thick and soft and enveloping, before being lifted and carried and lowered into a bed, and then sheets were pulled over her and she sank gratefully into the sleep that claimed her...
Until the nightmares came like evil wraiths, tormenting with the terrors she hadn’t allowed herself to feel while imprisoned, slyly sneaking through the unguarded gates of her unconscious mind and into her brain, vivid, horrifying, so real that she could feel herself screaming.
‘Stop that right now,’ a masculine voice ordered, compounding her fear.
A reflex action filled her lungs with air. Opening her mouth to scream again, she flung herself on to the other side of the bed. The sound was cut off instantly by a hand clamping across her mouth. Bucking with terror, she lashed her tired limbs to greater efforts, wrenching at iron fingers, trying to bite, to claw, to scratch.
‘Stop it, you little spitfire,’ he commanded.
It was the impact of his body rather than his voice, low and gritty and threatening, that restored her to her senses. Suddenly she realised where she was, and that this man had taken her from darkness and horror and cleaned her and soothed her, as well as giving her water several times already that night when she’d woken gasping for it.
A convulsive shudder shook her and she stopped fighting. Amid the fading panic and confusion she registered the change in his tone as he repeated, ‘Stop it, Stephanie. You’re safe, and no one is going to hurt you again.’
Silenced, the only sound the heavy pounding of her heart, she nodded feebly. The hand across her mouth gentled, relaxed, and slid down to the pulse that beat ferociously in her throat. ‘Poor little scrap,’ he said, his deep voice vibrating with a barely curbed anger.
Somehow the simple remark called her back from the frightening world of her memories. She didn’t want to be pitied, pity weakened her, yet for a moment she let her craving for security pacify her back into childishness.
‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered. ‘It was just a dream.’
Perhaps because that long walk in his arms had desensitised her, or perhaps because of his total lack of response to her nakedness in the shower, she forgot any reservations she had and followed her simple need for reassurance by burrowing into him. As his arms tightened her panic eased into a strange contentment. She pressed her cheek against a bare chest, the slight roughening of his hair on her skin a profoundly comforting sensation.
He moved, but only to switch on a small bedside lamp. The light and his heat and solidity eased the chattering of her teeth, reached through her defences in some subliminal way and soothed her, as did the quiet rumble of his voice reverberating from his chest to her ear.
‘You’re safe,’ he said again. ‘No one will hurt you here.’
She could remember her father holding her and saying the same words. He had been proved wrong, and she knew that the man who held her so sweetly couldn’t guarantee his words either, but for the moment she allowed herself to believe him. Tiredness and the heart-warming feeling of being sheltered and protected combined to make her yawn.
‘I’m sorry I’m such a wimp,’ she said in a slurred voice when she could speak again.
‘You’re allowed a couple of episodes. Go back to sleep,’ he said. ‘If the nightmare comes back, try telling it you won, you triumphed. But sometimes they’re actually good for you, even though they scare the hell out of you. It’s one way the brain can try to make sense of what happened.’
‘I know what happened,’ she said grimly, resisting the possibility of any more dreams.
‘Oh, intellectually, but I’m willing to bet that in your heart you’re wondering how anyone could be so cruel as to put you through the particular hell they organised for you.’
‘Money. That’s what it usually is. Some people will do anything for money.’
‘You’re very young to be a cynic.’
‘I’m eighteen,’ she said.
He gave a ghost of a laugh. ‘And I’m twenty-five. I’m still considered young, so where does that leave you?’
‘Childish,’ she retorted almost on a snap, pulling free. The quick spurt of defiance exhausted her and his comment forced her to realise that he wasn’t her father. He was a total stranger, and a rather frightening one, because beneath the feeling of safety engendered by those strong arms there were other emotions, deep and bewildering, that combined to produce the subtle, wild attraction calling to her with a honeyed, siren’s voice.
Trying to speak without any indication of her runaway reactions in her tone, she said, ‘I’m all right now, thank you. I’m sorry I woke you.’
‘Princess, you didn’t wake me.’
She huddled back under the warm duvet, averting her face so he couldn’t see it. ‘Why do you call me that?’
‘Princess? That’s what you are, isn’t it? A genuine eighteen-carat-gold princess, with everything but the title. And your brother could probably buy one of those for you if you weren’t too fussy about its origins.’
As she thought this over, wondering how an amused voice could be so detached, the mattress beside her sank, and to her appalled astonishment she felt the covers twitch. Sheer shock jackknifed her upright.
‘What the hell are you doing?’ she demanded in a high, shrill voice, staring with dilated eyes as he turned to look at her.
‘I’m making myself comfortable,’ he said mockingly, crystalline eyes gleaming. ‘You can’t expect to hog the covers, you know. It’s bad manners.’
‘You’re not—’
He interrupted with unexpected curtness, ‘Stephanie, you’re quite safe. I’m sleeping here, that’s all.’
‘But what—then why—?’
He said reasonably, ‘Although I’m almost certain no one is watching this place, I believe in caution, so I’m working on the assumption that we’re under surveillance. The last thing we need is for anyone to realise that there are two people living here now. So we act like one person. We sleep together, we move around the house together; when you’re in the bathroom, I’ll be next door with the light out. I’m going to stick as close to you as a shadow, princess, closer than a lover, but I’m not going to touch you.’
When Stephanie gathered her wits enough to object, he didn’t let her get more than a word out before finishing with a steely authority that silenced her, ‘Rules of the house, princess; don’t knock them—they might save your brother a lot of money and both of us quite a bit of trouble.’
The problem was that she understood. Having grown up in a small English village, she knew too well just what a hotbed of gossip such places were, and how by some osmosis everyone learned in an astonishingly short time all about everyone else.
But although his logic made sense, a wary feminine apprehension rejected it. The close, constant proximity he insisted on was going to be an enormous strain on her. She pulled the duvet around her body, trembling in spite of the mild temperature. ‘No! I’ll be very careful—’
‘I’m not suggesting this, or giving you power of veto. You have no choice, so you’ll avoid unnecessary stress if you just accept it.’
His voice remained cool, almost indifferent, but she heard the curbed irritation buried in the words as well as the implacable resolution. She gulped. ‘I don’t want to!’
‘Stephanie, if you’re afraid that I won’t be able to control my lust, rest assured that I am not attracted to thin, gangly schoolgirls, even when they have indecent amounts of money as well as big, innocent cornflower eyes and a mouth as soft as roses.’
No contempt coloured his voice, nothing but that steady detachment, yet each word was a tiny whip scoring her skin, her heart, as it was intended to be.
She retorted obstinately, ‘I’m not sleeping in this bed if you are.’
Unimpressed, he said, ‘Then sleep on the floor; I don’t give a damn. But just in case you’re stupid enough to run around the house putting lights on, I’ll tie you to the bed-leg first.’
Stephanie bit down on a gasp of outrage. Her gaze flew to his face; she read an implacable, unwavering purpose there. He meant every word. If she made up a bed for herself on the floor he would shackle her. At that moment, ensnared in the ice of his eyes, she hated him with every part of her soul.
However, two could play the game of threat and counterthreat. Her lips tightened. ‘Saul won’t like that.’
He directed a hard, level stare at her. ‘Your brother will have to accept that I know what I’m doing.’
Flinging caution to the wind, she said rashly, ‘He can ruin your career.’
As soon as she’d said the words she’d realised it wouldn’t work, but she hadn’t expected the deadly silence that followed. When he spoke his voice was slow and even and truly terrifying.
‘Perhaps we’d better get one thing straight,’ he said. ‘I am not afraid of or intimidated by your brother. I never have been, and I don’t plan to be in the future. In your world, princess, money might mean power. In mine it doesn’t. Now lie down and shut up before I say something I might regret.’
More than anything in the world she needed to make some gesture, prove that he couldn’t make her do what he wanted, but something in his stance, in the way his crystalline gaze met her rebellious eyes, something in the remote, chillingly indifferent face with its angular bone-structure and complete absence of softness or compassion, warned her not to try.
Defeated, she shuddered, almost swamped by the fear she had fought so valiantly. He was as callous as the kidnappers, finding the right buttons, pushing them relentlessly.
‘Very well,’ she said, striving for dignified self-possession, ‘but using physical strength is just as despicable as using money to force anyone to do what you want them to.’
‘I suppose it’s your privileged upbringing,’ he said conversationally, ‘that means you don’t know when to stop,’ and before she realised what he was doing he caught her wrist in a grip just short of painful and leaned over and kissed her with a merciless mouth, crushing her objections, her worry and fear to nothing.
It was over in a moment. As she dragged painful air into her lungs, he stared at her with eyes as cold as shards of diamonds and said beneath his breath, ‘God, what the hell are you doing to me?’
Stephanie’s world had turned upside-down, been wrenched from its foundations by a kiss, as it had not been by the preceding nightmarish days. For a lifetime, for an aeon encompassed by the space between two heartbeats, she was captured by those eyes, dragged into a world where winter reigned supreme. This man, whoever he was, moved and breathed like a human being, but, in spite of his gentleness and care for her, at his heart was a core of primeval ice.
The prince of ice, she thought, trying to be flippant, an effort spoiled by foreboding.
‘Turn over and get to sleep,’ he ordered in that quiet, lethal voice.
Silently she turned her back on him and crawled beneath the covers, enveloped by the instant warmth of down. Tense and resistant, she huddled on the edge of the bed. Heat prickled across her skin, suffused every cell in her body. For the first time in her life she felt a tug of desire in her loins, a strange sensation in her breasts as though they were expanding.
Stop it, she adjured her unruly mind fiercely; stop it this minute. But she couldn’t, until finally she fell back on a childhood remedy for unpleasant thoughts and strove to block out the images that danced behind her retinas with a concerted attack on the seven times table.
Out of the darkness he said, ‘I’m sorry, that shouldn’t have happened, and it won’t be repeated. You needn’t be afraid that I’ll jump you again.’
She couldn’t answer; touching her tongue to lips that were tender and dry, she wondered why his kiss should have had such an effect on her. Beyond the somewhat inexpert embraces of several boys not much older than she was, she had nothing to judge it by. Oh, she’d had crushes, but her brother’s overwhelming masculinity made other men seem pale and ineffectual, and it had been difficult to let down the barriers of her mind and heart to anyone less compelling than Saul.
Also, her very protective brother made sure that she was kept well away from anyone who might view his younger sister as a tempting morsel. Consequently, most of her friends at school were far more experienced than she was.
Although their family had always been rich, and grown even richer under Saul’s capable hands, he wasn’t a member of the jet set. He despised people who didn’t work, and because he was deeply in love with his wife he preferred to spend the time he had to spare with her and their children. Stephanie, too, loved being with the half-sister she had come to know so late in her childhood, and adored being a favourite aunt. Saul, she knew, kept a close eye on her friends, so although she had spent holidays with schoolfriends she had never gone anywhere except with people he had known and trusted.
Which meant, she thought, as she lay rigidly in the bed, that she was pretty naïve. If she’d been more sophisticated she wouldn’t now be so overwhelmed by the powerful charisma of the man who lay beside her in the huge bed.
And perhaps she had been conditioned to look for that concentrated authority in a man; growing up with Saul had persuaded her that there could be kindness and love in a man of imperious character.
Exhaustion gripped her in unrelenting claws, but she couldn’t sleep. Acutely aware of every tiny movement her rescuer made, of the length of his body next to hers, of the sound of his breathing, the tantalising, seductive heat of his body, her nerves sang like tightened bowstrings.
She didn’t even know his name, and here she was sharing a bed with him!
Resentment simmered, encouraged because it blocked out the strange equivocal warmth seeping through her body. She despised men who thought their superior strength gave them the right to dominate.
And she hated the fact that he was able to sleep when she couldn’t.
He’d probably shared a bed more times than she could count. Like Saul, who had been unmercifully pursued for as long as she could remember, the man who slept beside her possessed a smouldering sexuality that every woman would recognise. Squelching a mysterious pang, Stephanie lay longing for him to snore. It would demystify him, make him an ordinary man.
Of course he didn’t. Eventually her muscles protested vigorously at being locked in stasis; giving in to them, she turned over on to her back, moving inch by careful inch in case she woke him. He didn’t stir, but her change of position had brought her closer, and she scorched in the heat from his body. Surely all men weren’t as hot as that? He certainly didn’t have a fever, so perhaps he lived on a fiercer, more intense plane than other men.
Hastily, she turned back again.
‘Stop thrashing about,’ he commanded, his voice cool and slightly amused.
‘Goodnight,’ she muttered through clenched teeth.
Strangely enough, sleep reclaimed her then, but with it returned the dreams. Unable either to banish them or allow them to take her over completely, she fought back, and woke to find herself once more in his arms, that cruel hand clamped over her mouth again to cut off her screams.
At last, when it had happened three times, he said brusquely, ‘Right, that’s it. No, don’t scuttle back to your side of the bed.’ His arms tightened around her; one large hand pushed her head into the warm, hard muscles of his shoulder. ‘Stay there,’ he ordered.
‘All right,’ she said in the flat tone of exhaustion.
He pulled the duvet over them both. ‘Now,’ he said, his voice as level and unhurried as ever, ‘let’s see if we both can get some sleep.’
Her last thought was that he wasn’t naked; she could feel some fine material beneath her hand as she cuddled against him, her body and mind immediately responding to his steady heartbeat.
Towards morning she woke, still in his arms, his body heat encompassing her, his scent in her nostrils, a masculine hand lying laxly along her thigh. At some time during the night she had climbed over him, and was now lying half on top, her leg between his, her arm underneath his other shoulder, using him as a mattress.
Overwhelmed by a demand she didn’t fully recognise, a need she had never experienced, by the sheer, male power radiating from him even in sleep, she woke with her senses fully alert, her body in high gear. Unknown feelings tingled through her and before she realised where she was she felt his awakening, and the surge of awareness through his heated body, the swift compulsion of arousal that gripped him.
Stephanie might have been innocent but she wasn’t stupid; she had read magazines and books, listened to some of her more worldly friends, and she knew that a man could be instantly ready for making love to any woman if she turned him on. She understood what was happening.
What she didn’t understand and couldn’t fight was her own reaction, the heady, draining weakness that had invaded her while she slept, making it impossible for her to retreat as prudence commanded. Anticipation coiled through her in sweet, seductive promise, drowning out common sense, washing away morals and logic and caution.
She had to get out of this immediately, scramble free and get on to her own side of the bed. But her muscles refused to obey her brain. Something world-shaking was making her heart race, drying her mouth, dampening her skin with an unexpected sheen.
He said harshly, ‘Is this what you want?’ And the hand that had been across her back found the full curve of her breast, cupping it, measuring its soft weight in slow, sensual appreciation.
Fire invaded her, robbing her of strength. An incredible sensation shot down her spine and into her loins; in answer she gave a tormented twist of her hips, seeking some as yet unknown response.
‘How many men have you slept with?’ he asked, that raw note in his voice abrading her nerves as savagely as his expert caress. ‘You certainly know how to get what you want.’
She would have sobbed with desolation when his touch lifted if he hadn’t slid his fingers down her back, exploring with lingering thoroughness the sharp bones of her hip and the amazingly sensitive hollow beneath it. She held her breath, and suddenly, fiercely, he clamped her hips down, pushing the newly awakened, violently sensitive portion of her anatomy against his growing hardness. Stephanie gasped, biting back a moan, unable to control the shudder that ran through her at the wild pressure.
And then she was almost flung across the bed, and he said in a voice that left her with no doubt about his feelings, ‘Sorry, princess, I was paid to rescue you, not act as your gigolo.’
Humiliation burned deep into her soul; she had to swallow before she could retort thickly, ‘I didn’t—I woke up like that, damn you! And it was you who forced yourself into this bed.’
‘Clearly a mistake,’ he agreed contemptuously. ‘But then, I didn’t really know what I was dealing with. According to most reports, you’re a sweet, innocent little schoolgirl.’
Sunk in frustration and shame, she lay with her eyes clamped tightly shut while he got out of the bed. However, after a moment she asked miserably, ‘What are you doing?’
‘Making a bed,’ he said curtly.
Her lashes flew up. He hadn’t put the light on, but the wintry pallor of early dawn was seeping through the heavy curtains, and she could see his outline, and the pile of clothes on the floor.
‘No,’ she said involuntarily.
‘Yes,’ he said, lowering himself to it. ‘In another five years, perhaps, I might enjoy taking what you’ve got on offer. In the meantime, however, I’m going to have to say no, thanks. Nothing personal, princess—I’m a professional, and we like things to be nice and tidy.’
Which made her feel even worse.
* * *
When she woke it was morning, and the sun was shining in through the window with a hearty fervour that released something inside Stephanie. For the first time since she had been kidnapped she believed, not merely in her mind but in her heart, that there might be some future for her after all.
And then her eyes fell on the pillow beside her, and she stiffened, remembering. In one involuntary motion she sat up and looked at the floor where he had slept. The clothes were gone.
Heat flooded her skin; bitterly, angrily ashamed, she sank back against the pillow. How on earth had she let down her guard enough to climb all over him while she was asleep? And then, even when she was awake, to lie there and practically invite him to do whatever he wanted? No wonder he had been taken aback, although he needn’t have been quite so brutal.
A self-derisory little smile curled her wide mouth. Perhaps he was afraid she’d make a nuisance of herself. If so, he’d certainly made sure his rejection was cruel enough to convince her never to fall into that trap again. If he still insisted on them sharing a bed, from now on, nightmares or not, she’d keep to her own side.
Forcing her mortification beneath the surface of her thoughts, she gazed around a room in the shape of a half-circle, its walls made of wooden panelling, its ceiling plaster. Both walls and furniture had been carefully carved by superb craftsmen to look medieval. Even the armchair was decorated by over-exuberant fretted wooden carving.
Yet wherever she looked she saw the icy scorn in her rescuer’s expression as he rejected her.
She had to face it. And although shame still stained her cheeks she thought resentfully that he had had no right to be quite so—so scathing. There was some excuse for her behaviour. Surely after an experience like hers it was normal to crave the reassurance of human warmth, the comfort of arms around her, the momentary return to childhood when parents made everything better, even though from the age of four she had known that parents could die, that love was not enough to keep her safe, that the arms and soothing voice of a strong man were only temporary refuges.
Anyway, natural or not, a need for reassurance was a luxury she couldn’t afford, especially if it led to situations like that of a few hours ago. Her fingers crept up to touch her trembling lips. For a moment she fancied she could feel his kiss on them. Very firmly, she banished the memory.
She shouldn’t blame herself for what had happened in her sleep, but afterwards—well, that was a different story. If she had immediately climbed off him and made it obvious she wasn’t trying to seduce him she wouldn’t be feeling like this—embarrassed, ashamed, and with a forbidden fire in her blood that had to be outlawed. Instinct warned her that she was asking for heartbreak if she allowed herself to become even slightly dependent on the man who had rescued her.
Stephanie had learned the value of accepting her own emotions, and now she admitted that keeping her heart whole might be a little difficult. He had come to her like a prince on a charger, saving her from a hideous fate. She was entitled to spin a few fairy-stories about him; he was the stuff of fantasy, the dark hero, at once gentle and dangerous, kind and threatening, armoured in power and a fierce, unknowable authority.
But, tantalising though her fantasies might be, she couldn’t afford to fall in love with him, for as well as the heart-stopping attributes of his strength there was that cool, impregnable self-sufficiency and a callousness that hurt. He might be only seven years older than she was, but what had happened to him in those years set a barrier between them.
He was a loner, a man who walked by himself. Prince of ice, she thought again.
She gazed around once more, searching for clues to the personality of the man who had brought her here. She found nothing. There was a dressing-table made of sombre, highly polished wood, on which was a tumbler with a collection of wild flowers. Stephanie wondered if the brilliant blue one was a gentian, then dismissed the query. Candace, her sister-in-law, would know; she was the expert on gardens and flowers.
But the little posy made a pleasant spot of colour, and in some odd way reassured her. Turning her head, she surveyed the other side of the room. The bedhead was against the straight wall that divided the room from the bathroom and the landing. The other walls stretched around her, enclosing and comforting, as though they were holding her in a protective embrace.
‘It must be a tower room!’ she said out loud, delighted, and flung the covers back.
Still stiff and sore, she staggered as renewed pain throbbed through her, but even so she was halfway to the window when she was caught and pulled back, whirled abruptly and held by a cruel grip on her shoulders, to meet the impassive, glittering eyes of her rescuer. Yesterday she had been too dazed to realise just how unusual they were, although she had registered their concentrated compulsion. Now, imprisoned as unequivocally by them as by his hands, she almost gasped. Instead of the warm, brilliantly clear sapphire she was used to seeing in the mirror, this man’s eyes were so pale as to give an impression of translucence, with white flecks in the iris that made them look like splintered glass. Such was the intensity of those eyes that Stephanie’s struggles stopped immediately. Her own widened, darkness swallowing up the colour; she shivered with some strange inner confusion.
‘Don’t go near the windows,’ he said roughly.
The fragile moment of happiness shattering irrevocably, she nodded. Instantly, he let her go.
It was the most difficult thing she had ever done, but she managed to look fearlessly at him. He had freed her, slept with her, comforted her and finally held her, his strong arms and the solace of his presence banishing the nightmares. Then he had unfeelingly rejected what her innocent body had offered of its own volition.
Those powerful hands held her life and well-being. He could snuff both out as easily as he had pulled her away from the window.
He made her heart falter. Partly it was his amazing eyes, but they were merely the most arresting part of a truly formidable man. At five feet nine she was accustomed to looking many men in the eye, but he towered above her by at least six inches—possibly seven, she thought, gazing up into a face far more impressive than handsome. Slashing bone-structure formed the basis of features that reminded her of an eagle, the fiercely hooked nose and dominant, angular lines of jaw and cheekbones reinforcing an arrogant authority. His straight mouth warned of self-possession and fortitude, although she recognised something ambiguous about that mouth, a hint of sensuality in its sharply cut outline that set female nerves jangling at some hidden, primitive level.
From the top of his blue-black head to the soles of his feet he was all edged, confident masculinity, but it was a masculinity tight-leashed by an almost inhuman will.
‘Who are you?’ she blurted.
Apparently not in the least affected by her bold survey, he’d waited until she spoke. At her question his lashes drooped, and a smile, mockingly amused, curved his mouth.
‘Duke,’ he said laconically, and to her astonishment held out his hand.
Most men looked stupid with a hand held out, a hand that was ignored. This one didn’t; completely relaxed, he merely waited. Once more Stephanie glimpsed a monumental, hard-headed patience that sent a cold shiver flicking down her spine as she reluctantly accepted his invitation. She had long fingers and a strong grip, but in his clasp her hand seemed small and white and powerless.
‘You know who I am,’ she said uncertainly.
‘We haven’t been introduced.’
Later she would wonder whether he had enough intuition to realise that this introduction was a wiping clean of all that had happened previously, and even before entertaining the idea would dismiss it. In spite of his care of her the preceding night he’d been more forceful than sensitive, and his abrupt rejection in the morning hadn’t revealed any insight or empathy at all.
At that moment, however, saying her name, asserting an identity, was a reclaiming of something that the calculated inhumanity of her imprisonment had taken from her.
‘Stephanie Jerrard,’ she said, and her head came up. While they shook hands she asked, ‘Just Duke?’ and thought how strange it was that she had called him a prince, an ice-prince. He looked more like a prince than a duke, and yet the name suited his careless arrogance.
‘That’s all you need to know,’ he said, an indifferent note in his voice warning her off.
As their hands fell away he ordered curtly, ‘The windows look out over the valley, so the only people we have to worry about are ones with binoculars on the far side. Still, remember that if anyone does see you here word may reach the men who kidnapped you.’
At her involuntary shiver he nodded, pale eyes ranging her face. ‘And if that happens we could lose not only the small men but those who gave the orders. Then there are your brother’s negotiations; while you’re thought to be safely stashed he’s working from a position of power. If we can fool them into thinking that you’re still their pawn, we’re going to catch them all, including the ones who’ve kept their fingers clean.’
‘I only saw two men. What makes you think there might be others?’ she asked swiftly, striving to hide the sick panic that clutched her for an unnerving moment.
Broad shoulders lifted in a gesture oddly at variance with his poised, controlled persona. ‘Rumours,’ he said without expression, his eyes searching her face keenly. ‘I need to know everything you can remember about the kidnapping.’
‘Now?’ she asked, realising that she was still in the thick T-shirt she’d worn as a nightgown. From the way it slid down over her shoulders it was one of his.
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