The Hostage Bride (4 page)

And slowly, cautiously, she let herself be drawn with him, sliding over the soft leather of the seat. She was almost out of the car when a new idea came to her, flashing into her mind with a force like lightning so that for a second she paused, one foot just reaching out to the ground, wondering if she could possibly risk it.

She had no idea at all where she was. The car was parked at the top of some wide, winding drive, thickly lined with trees. Just a few yards away stood a large, elegant house, the heavy wooden door already open onto a wide, spacious hall. Clearly, Rico had unlocked the door before he had come back to the car to waken her.

The house or the drive? Felicity asked herself, mentally veering backwards and forwards between the two options.

The drive must lead to a road—but how far away—and what was beyond that? And if she ran for the drive, then Rico could simply get into the car and come after her. Hampered as she was by the long skirts of her dress, the delicate satin shoes with their fine, high heels, she doubted if she could manage to run very far or very fast for very long.

But if she could make it to the house then she could slam the door to and hopefully bolt it against him. He had already said that there was a phone in the hall. Even if she only managed to win herself a few free seconds, then surely it would be long enough to ring the police and scream for help? The house was her best bet.

But first she had to disable Rico, at least for a moment or two.

‘Felicity?'

Her hesitation had caught his attention, which gave her the cue she wanted.

‘I—I'm sorry…' she managed to sound convincingly hesitant. ‘I don't feel…'

The pretence of faintness, of still feeling the after-effects of the sedative, gave her an excuse to free her hands from his, pressing them to her forehead, hiding her eyes.

‘Are you not well?'

He actually sounded concerned so that she allowed herself a small, secret grin of triumph behind her concealing fingers.

‘Just a little unsteady. If I could just…'

She needed to keep her hands free so, instead of taking his again, she let them rest lightly on his arm, using his strength to support her as she got to her feet.

It was a mistake that almost distracted her from her purpose. In the moment that her fingers closed over the taut, powerful muscle, the hard bone underneath the fine material of his jacket she felt her heart jolt, her breath catching sharply in her throat. An electrical sense of awareness sizzled along every nerve, making her head spin, but this time for real. Rico was so close that the unique scent of him filled her nostrils, warm, potent, musky, totally alien and yet strangely, disturbingly familiar in a way that set her pulse racing hotly.

This time her unsteadiness wasn't totally feigned as she slid out of the car and slowly stood upright, using his strength as her support. She didn't dare to look up at him, fearful that those dark, probing eyes might be able to read her feelings in her face and recognise her response for the lightning bolt of white-hot sexual awareness that it was.

‘Lean on me, if you like.'

Lean on him? Felicity thought on a wave of near hysteria. If only he knew just how she longed to do just that! How her hot, throbbing, dangerously aroused body yearned to throw itself towards him, to rest against the hard wall of his chest, feel those powerful arms come round her.

No!
She couldn't afford even to let herself
think
of such things or she would waver in her purpose, forget what she had planned. She had to act
now
or it would be too late.

‘I…' she began, her voice convincingly low and weak.

‘Si?'

As she had hoped, he bent his dark head towards her, in order to hear better. It was now or never.

White teeth digging into her lower lip in concentrated determination, she brought her right arm up and out, elbow bent sharply, aimed straight at that square, determined jaw. In the same moment that it connected with the hard strength of bone, jerking his head back, she launched a wild kick at his nearest ankle, allowing herself a faint smile of pleasure as she heard his muffled grunt of pain. For just a split second she was free and she took full advantage of the moment, hitching up her white silk skirts and sprinting for the door.

She only managed to get a few feet before a hard hand closed over her shoulder, pulling her back. An arm snaked round her waist, clamping tight around her slender frame, and, kicking and struggling, she was lifted bodily from the ground.

‘Oh, no you don't,
señorita
!'

Rico had been anticipating the escape attempt. It was quite shocking to realise just how well he had come to know her, even on such a short acquaintance. But just the brief exchanges—he could hardly call them conversations—as they had had on the journey here, had taught him so much about the way her mind worked. He hadn't expected that she would have so much spirit. That she would be prepared to take him on quite as openly as she had. But he'd observed and learned and as a result he had had a good idea of what was coming.

It was that tiny grin that had given her away. A smile that she had thought he couldn't see but which had put a light into her eyes that warned him she was up to something. So he had been ready for the moment she attacked, anticipating the movement of her arm, ready to dodge the full force of it. The vicious little kick to his ankle was more of a surprise, but he soon recovered from that.

‘You don't get away from me that easily!'

‘Let me go!'

She tried to fight; tried to kick out at him again but the long skirts of her dress hampered her and the whirling veil covered her face, half-blinding her.

‘Careful,
belleza
…' It came out unevenly as he fought to adjust his grip on her, trying to hold her more securely. ‘You'll have us both on the ground.'

‘Do you think I care?'

Furiously she writhed against his restraining hands until the only thing he could do was lift her higher, his arm going round her waist, the other supporting her legs, her head against his shoulder.

‘Now perhaps you'll do as you're told!' he flung at her, clamping down hard on the sudden blaze of anger that had flared inside him, making him want to shake her roughly, drive some sense into her.

But even as he spoke Felicity moved, her arms coming out in an automatic, instinctive movement to close around his neck in order to make herself more secure. Her action brought a faint rush of perfume to tantalise his senses.

The fragrance of rose and lily was fresh and sweet, but it was what came with it that delivered the real kick, awakening everything that was truly male and sexual within him. The clean, delicate, and yet potently erotic scent of this woman's skin and hair, the feel of her warm, soft curves in his arms made his body tighten in hunger and respond with fierce arousal all between one blink and another.

And as Felicity's head went back against his shoulder and eyes the colour of an autumn mist met his own sensually darkened gaze, Rico knew that he had just made one of the worst mistakes of his life.

I
T HAD
been bad enough when he had managed the change of cars a couple of hours earlier.

Then at least she had been deeply asleep, totally oblivious to what was going on. Her body had been limp and unresponsive, those soft grey eyes closed and hidden from him.

Now they were staring straight into his, the sparks of fury and rebellion still burning deep in them, making them shimmer in angry defiance. Her skin was flushed with the after-effects of their undignified tussle, her mouth slightly open as she tried to control her uneven breathing.

He didn't want to think that it might not just be the physical exertion that had set her pulse racing. Didn't even want to consider the possibility that she too might feel the sudden singing tension that had gripped him. Could she sense the abrupt, dangerous change in the mood of the moment, the shift in the sensual temperature that had turned it from winter chill to midsummer heatwave in the space of a heartbeat?

‘I'm going to take you inside,' he growled, shocking himself with the way that his voice didn't sound like his own but had suddenly become rough around the edges, thickening revealingly. ‘And if you're wise you'll not try any more crazy stunts.'

‘What did you think? That I was just going to sit there and let you do what you wanted with me?'

‘I'd given you my word.'

‘Oh, yes, and I know just how much that word is worth.
You gave me
your word
that you wouldn't harm me even while you were feeding me drugs to knock me out.'

‘I've already told you, I never planned for quite that effect.'

He was striding towards the door as he spoke; the ease with which he carried her weight a testimony to the true strength of the muscles beneath that superbly tailored jacket. And the terrible thing was that she had suddenly lost all the will to fight.

It was as if in that frantic dash towards the house she had drained what little strength she possessed, leaving herself limp and incapable of movement.

Oh, who was she trying to kid? Felicity reproached herself inwardly. Her sudden mental paralysis had nothing at all to do with her mind and everything to do with an injection of white-hot physical excitement that had set her body throbbing in urgent response. The sensations searing through her in reaction to the forceful, warm strength of Rico's taut male body so close to hers, the scent of his skin in her nostrils, the iron-hard support of the arms that held her made her skin burn until she felt she was in the grip of some delirious fever…

‘And did you not think that maybe a mild sedative was perhaps a kinder way out than others I might have taken?'

‘So what do you expect from me? Thanks? Gratitude for the fact that you didn't treat me any worse than you already have?'

‘Oh, no,' Rico tossed back, caught on the raw by the sudden switch back to cold contempt.

For a second there she had seemed almost to treat him as a human being. But now the lady of the manor act was right back in place, those soft smoky eyes hardening to the grey of the sea on a winter's day. Immediately he felt his own feelings change in response as anger put a sharper
edge on the volatile cocktail of responses he was already prey to.

‘Gratitude would be the last thing I'd expect from you. After all, the woman who was going to marry Edward Venables…'

Something about her sudden stillness, the shocked, blank look in those misty eyes, brought him up short.

‘Oh, come now,
querida
,' he derided sardonically. ‘Don't tell me that you had actually forgotten. That it had somehow slipped your mind that today was to have been the happiest day of your life.'

She
had
forgotten, Felicity realised, her mind hazing over in shock. She could excuse herself by saying that the way Rico had exploded into her life with all the force of a whirling tornado had numbed her thoughts, making it impossible to think. But the truth was both deeper and less complicated than that.

Since the moment that she had first set eyes on this darkly devastating man, her mind hadn't been her own. It was as if he had taken possession of it, filled her every thought with the stunning force of his presence, wiping away any memories of who she had been, how her life had been.

‘You didn't remember.' Rico's voice was thick with contempt. ‘You…'

‘Put me down!' Felicity inserted sharply, hating the scorn in his voice, hating the way he looked at her, dark eyes bleak and cold. ‘Put me down at once! I can walk—'

‘Oh, no,
querida
.' The hateful mockery grew sharper, lacing his tongue with cynical acid. ‘How could I deny you the moment that every woman dreams of? The moment when all the fantasies of her childhood, the hopes of her adolescence come to fruition.'

The beautiful mouth had curled into a brutal sneer, the sexy accent heightening on each word. But the sound of
his voice no longer made her toes curl, her skin tingle in delight. Instead it was like the lash of a cruel whip, flaying away a protective layer of skin so that she shivered at the feel of even the air against her flesh.

‘Don't be cruel!' It was a cry of protest.

‘Cruel,
gatita
? Cruel?' he taunted. ‘I am not being cruel. I am simply ensuring that your day ends as you had hoped it would—with you in the arms of a very rich man indeed, being carried over the threshold of his house…'

As he spoke, he suited action to the words, mounting the steps to the front door, shouldering it open, carrying her over the threshold into the cool shadows of the hall.

After the light of the sun, Felicity fond that she was temporarily blinded, unable to see anything clearly. And what made matters worse were the weak tears that filmed her eyes; tears she was determined not to let fall. Rico's words had stabbed straight to her heart and twisted in it, but the truth was that they had hurt so much because they were so very far from reality.

She doubted that Edward would ever have thought to follow any of the traditions of a real wedding, at least as far as she was concerned. Once the formal, public ceremony and the lavish reception was over, he would probably have dropped all pretence at being the loving bridegroom, the part he had acted so unexpectedly well over the past month or so. Instead he would have reverted to the role of cold, calculating schemer, the man who had manipulated both her life and that of her father in order to get just what he wanted.

Right now she didn't know who was worse—Edward or Rico.

‘For such a beautiful bride as you are, it is the least I can do.'

Once inside, with the door kicked closed behind them,
he paused, ebony eyes going towards a room on his left and just once, very briefly, glancing towards the stairs.

‘So now that I have carried you over the threshold,
mi ángel
, what next, I wonder?'

Rico had bent his arrogant dark head down to murmur in her ear, the warmth of his breath stirring the tendrils of her hair, brushing softly against her cheek.

‘If you were truly my bride—
mi esposa
—I know exactly what I would do…'

And his body knew it too. He knew he should set her down, put her on her feet and move well away. That was the sane, the only safe approach. But with her in his arms, with the scent of her skin all around him, the last thing on God's earth he felt like was playing it safe. And he certainly didn't feel
sane
. Instead he knew he was totally out of control—completely crazy and dangerously off balance.

His heart was pounding, his blood flowing hot in his veins. Every sense he possessed clamoured in hunger, insistently demanding appeasement, making him ache with need. And the feel of those soft arms around his neck, the yielding pressure of her feminine body against his chest and the brush of her hair against his neck were almost more than he could bear. He wanted to drop her straight to the floor in order to end the sweet torment and yet at the same time he wanted to hold on to her so as to prolong it for ever.

‘But I'm not your bride!'

Felicity knew she had to break the spell that that low, husky voice had been weaving around her weakened senses. Listening to it had been like sliding slowly but irresistibly into a bath filled with warm, golden honey. She could feel it flowing around her, enfolding her, threatening to close over her head at any moment.

‘I'm not your wife and I never will be! I'm just your prisoner, your captive—here under duress because you
forced me into this! And whatever fantasies you might be harbouring, you can forget them right now! You lay one finger on me and I'll—I'll…'

‘You'll do what,
belleza
?' Rico enquired with silky menace when, suddenly realising just how hollow her threat was when he already had more than a hand on her, when she was held securely in his arms, her voice died away rapidly. ‘What was it you promised earlier? That you would kill me?'

The sound of his laughter was shocking. It was all the more terrifying because there was no trace of any real humour in it, only the sardonic dismissal of her impotently angry words.

‘Do you know,
gatita
, it might just be worth it.'

‘You don't mean that! You can't…'

‘Can't I?'

Rico's smile turned her blood to ice. Now that she could see more clearly, she couldn't be unaware of the way that his pupils had darkened, enlarged, until his eyes were almost all black, only the tiniest line of the deep brown at the very edge of the iris as he looked down into her still, white face.

‘The way I feel right now, I think I could die happy if I only had you in my bed for one night.'

‘One night…'

She could barely get the words from her constricted throat, her voice just a raw, broken croak of disbelief.

‘You're crazy!'

To her horror he nodded agreement.

‘One night—but what a night, Felicity. A night that neither of us could ever forget, that we could only ever dream of in our wildest fantasies. A night when—'

‘No!'

Summoning up all her strength to snap free of the hypnotic trance in which he had imprisoned her, Felicity
twisted in his arms, struggling against the power of his hold. Clenching her hands into fists, she pummelled them against the powerful wall of his chest, aiming wildly at his shoulders, his arms, would have hit his face if he hadn't seen it coming and instinctively flung his head back defensively.

‘Let me go! Put me down! Put me
down
!'

‘Your wish is my command,' he returned, dark eyes burning into hers insolently.

Adjusting her position very slightly, he lowered her slowly to the ground in such a way that she slid all the way down the length of his body, hips, breasts and legs held so tight against the muscular strength of him that she couldn't be unaware of the blatant physical sign of his intense response to her. The swollen evidence of his passionate arousal burned against her even through the fine white silk of her skirts.

And when her feet were on the floor he still held her against him, one hard hand clamped in the small of her back, the other fastening over the fine bones of her chin, lifting her face towards his.

‘I want to kiss you,
mi belleza
,' he told her in a voice that was harsh with barely controlled hunger. ‘If the truth is known, I have wanted to kiss you from the first second I saw you; from the moment you came out of that house and walked towards my car. I wanted to hold you then, to take you in my arms like this, to touch your skin, inhale the scent of your hair…'

He suited action to the words, dropping his proud head so that his cheek rested against her hair, the pad of his thumb tracing the full softness of her mouth.

So he had felt it too. That immediate, lightning strike of response, that inexplicable yearning, the male to female reaction at its most primitive, most basic level. He had sensed
it, as she had, on the air that they breathed, in the look from one set of dark eyes to a much lighter pair.

‘And you want it too.'

‘Oh, yes…'

Somehow it escaped her without a moment's thought. Thought would have told her that what she was doing wasn't at all wise. That it was beyond stupidity—it was foolish, crazy—
dangerous
. But thought didn't enter into what she was feeling in any way. She was incapable of thought. She was nothing but feeling, total emotion, pure sensation.

And she wanted the kiss she knew was coming. Wanted the feel of that beautiful mouth on her own. She hungered for the warm touch of skin on skin, the caress of his strong hands, the sensation of the silken strands of his hair under her fingertips.

And so she swayed towards him, her wild hands slowing, stilling for a moment then closing over the broad square shoulders and clinging tightly as his mouth came down on hers.

It was harder than she had imagined. Harder and more cruel so that for a second her mind seemed to split in two, hunger warring with panic as she struggled against the wild passion that threatened to burn her up alive.

Passion and hunger won. She was incapable of holding out against them, incapable of denying herself even more than she was incapable of denying him. His mouth took hers by storm, crushing and near brutal one moment then gentling to a stunning tenderness the next. The tantalising slide of his tongue was a delight and a torment combined, wakening all the most sensitive pleasure spots of her lips and mouth, making her open to him, surrendering herself completely.

‘Belleza…belleza…'
Rico crooned softly against her skin, his mouth trailing a path of fire over her face and
down the fine lines of her throat to fasten fiercely on the creamy slope of one exposed shoulder. ‘You are so lovely…so perfect.'

She
felt
perfect, Felicity thought shakily. She felt just right for this man, her body fitting exactly against his, her hips cradled against the strong bones of his pelvis, her legs coming between his as he shifted slightly to accommodate her. Her breasts seemed perfectly formed for the touch of his hands, a sigh of delight escaping her as his hard fingers cupped their soft weight, the heat of his palms burning through her dress to her skin.