by Penny Jordan
'The sooner it's over the better,' Guido opined. 'I'm sick of this place. Give me Rome any day!'
It had gone dark outside while they were eating and in the velvet softness of the night the crickets chirruped ceaselessly, tiny moths hurling themselves at the windows as they sought the light.
'Come,' Nico instructed Saffron when they had finished eating. 'Tonight I will walk with you.'
She wanted to refuse; she could feel Olivia's eyes boring into her back like twin knives and had seen the flash of resentment in the glance Guido gave him, but Olivia had developed a habit of slipping silently away when she was supposed to be walking with her, leaving her alone with Guido, whose eyes roamed too hotly over her body.
There was a heavy stillness in the air which brought a fine film of perspiration to her skin the minute they stepped outside. She would give anything for a shower, Saffron thought longingly, quelling a sudden stupid urge to laugh as she recalled macabre jokes she had often been amused by, concerning a prisoner's last wishes. It seemed a lifetime ago since she had laughed naturally; she was beginning to understand how religious cults worked on their converts; shut away from the rest of the world, at the complete mercy of strangers, it was dangerously easy to feel one's judgment slipping away and one's willpower disintegrating.
Nico steered her in the direction of the river, almost as though he had read her mind and wanted to deliberately add to her torture. The warm male scent of his body reached her through the scents of the countryside around them, her senses so attuned to him that it frightened her.
Nico's offer that she could bathe in the river had never been repeated, and pride had prevented Saffron from asking, just as she refused to ask Nico for anything, no matter how acute her physical discomfort.
'You know, you're different from what I expected.'
The quiet comment caught her off guard, and she almost missed her footing as she stopped in the darkness to look up at him, searching his face for signs of mockery, but there were none.
'In what way?'
Somehow the cloak of darkness made it easier to talk, to put her hatred away from her, how ever temporarily.
She felt him shrug beside her.
'In every way—more vulnerable, and yet tougher, more resilient.'
Saffron tensed, suspecting a trap, her voice faintly brittle as she said bitterly, 'Not quite the rich bitch you expected? Not just a spoiled Daddy's girl who thinks she can buy her way out of anything? I'm not stupid. I know the statistics; I know why I'm here, and if you expect me to get down on my knees and beg for my life when I know that you're going to kill me.'
'And if you didn't know?'
'Is that what you want? For me to crawl and cry? Why? does it turn you on? Make a change from Olivia's masculinity?' she asked cuttingly. 'I've never begged any man for anything and I'm not going to start now!'
'No?'
Nico turned towards her and in the moonlight Saffron saw the cynicism ingrained into the hard planes of his face. 'That isn't how I heard it,' he said softly. 'Word is that that you're one of the easiest lays around—and the best. A real tough little lady who knows how to get her man when she wants him.'
'But I don't want you!' The husky denial was raw with an emotion Saffron wasn't going to try to name. Just listening to Nico speak had left her as bruised and aching as though she had been beaten. She knew about her reputation, of course; and sickness swept over her as she remembered her initial 'foolish belief that something special existed between them. Her fingers curled into her palms, her nails now devoid of varnish, and broken from the work she had been forced to endure.
'Even raving nymphomanics don't necessarily want every man they set eyes on,' she threw at him bitterly. 'What do you do when you aren't doing this for a living? Hire yourself out to middle-aged millionairesses?'
She gasped when his hands grasped her body beneath her armpits, threshing wildly as she tried to kick his shins. One brief glance at the icy fury of his expression told her that she had gone too far. Far enough for him to kill her now? she wondered. All at once she wanted to beg him not to torture her any more, to make her death swift and painless. Her eyes darkened with the burden of her emotions, the ragged urchin cut Olivia had given her unintentionally emphasising the delicacy of her bone structure and the fragility of her body, almost too thin after the weight loss of the last few days.
'Saffron ...'
She veiled her eyes immediately, hating the tinge of compassion in his voice, rejecting the pity she could sense in him.
'What's the matter?' she jeered. 'Having second thoughts? Why don't you mention them to Olivia? I'm sure she'll have no problem in disposing of me when the time comes. She'll enjoy it.'
Only bitter anger had prompted the words, but Saffron sensed by the tenseness of his body that Nico was reacting to them.
'Perhaps she will,' he agreed smoothly. 'And if you're trying to goad me into losing my self-control ...' He muttered something under his breath as the moonlight revealed the contempt in her eyes and then she was in his arms, feeling the heat coming off his body in the subtropical evening, his lips tracing the exposed line of her throat, his hands moulding her body against him.
Saffron tried to fight him, but his strength was too great. Fear leapt inside her when she felt Nico's hands on the bare skin of her back, stroking the supple contours of her spine, but it was a fear that soon gave way to spiralling tremors of pleasure.
Her lips parted in mute invitation without her being aware of it, her gasp of shock when Nico's hands moved round to cup her breasts lost in the warmth of his mouth on hers.
She forgot what had led up to this encounter; what had happened between them already and the reason she was here with him at all, as some deep primaeval instinct rose up to subdue everything but the need he was skilfully arousing within her. She had expected violence, but this was something else, and she had no power to withstand his subtle arousal of her untutored body.
When her bra was pushed aside to allow his seeking fingers access to the rounded warmth of her breasts, she was beyond caring that he was taking without permission the intimacy she had never allowed anyone else. When her breasts swelled and hardened to his touch she trembled with shock.
She shivered when one hand left her skin to slide possessively down to her hip, holding her so intimately against his own body that she was immediately aware of his arousal. Her flesh seemed to burn from the contact. She wanted to push him away, but instead her body seemed to cling erotically to his her arms lifting to encircle his shoulders, her breasts pressed against the hard warmth of his chest. She felt him tugging at her blouse, but didn't realise what he was doing until she felt the rough scrape of his body hair against the softness of her flesh, the contact instantly arousing. A strange sensation curled through the pit of her stomach, a husky moan torn from her throat as Nico's thumb stroked sensuously over the throbbing tip of her breast.
The male lips which had been exploring the soft vulnerability of her throat ceased their slow torment and the dark head bent. Tense excitement churned through her, desire flaring moltenly inside her as her fingers curled feverishly into his thick dark hair.
'Nico!'
His reactions were swifter than hers, and he had released her and stepped away before Olivia reached them, but Saffron didn't think for one moment that the Italian girl was deceived.
'We were concerned about you,' Olivia told him, 'you have been gone for so long.'
'Concerned?' Nico drawled coolly, 'or curious?'
'You have been making love to her!' Olivia blazed furiously, suddenly abandoning restraint. 'You have been making love to the little whore!'
'It is not a crime. Indeed one might almost call it one of the perks of the job. Surely you are not jealous, cara?'
He was deliberately baiting the other girl, Saffron realised, although she could not understand why, any more than she could understand what had driven him to touch her in the way that he had.
Her flesh still burn
ed in memory of that touch, and no matter how much she berated herself now, she could not deny that she had responded to him. Her response had been purely physical, she assured herself; in her situation who would not act in a way that was out of character? But why had she experienced desire for Nico when all the other men she knew left her cold? It was just that she was in a highly charged emotional state, and those emotions had betrayed her.
Engrossed in her thoughts, she hadn't been aware of the fury in Olivia's eyes, but she was made abruptly conscious of the other girl's feelings on the way back to the farmhouse, when Olivia pushed her deliberately out of the way, almost causing her to stumble in the darkness. She had made a dangerous enemy in Olivia, Saffron acknowledged later when she had been locked in her room for the night, and the look she had given Saffron as they entered the farmhouse earlier had promised punishment for daring to usurp her own position with Nico.
Olivia was welcome to him, Saffron decided wearily. Oh, she herself had been attracted to him initially, but that attraction hadn't lasted once she realised what he was. Once again the desire for revenge burned bitterly inside her, but it was a revenge she wasn't likely to get, she acknowledged unhappily, unless she planned to return from the dead to haunt him.
So slowly that she hadn't realised it was happening until it was too late, she had come to accept the fact of her own death. Occasionally in a downhearted frame of mind she had contemplated the thoughts that must run through a person's mind when death was imminent, wondering what hers would be, but somehow, even knowing what was going to happen to her it was difficult to focus her thoughts on the actuality of it. Catholics approaching death were bidden to prepare themselves for it, but how did one prepare? Saffron wondered. With prayers? With forgiveness of one's enemies? She wasn't capable of either.
It was almost dawn before she drifted off to sleep, lulling herself into a false sense of security by pretending that she was a small child again held safe in her father's arms.
CHAPTER FIVE
'Not quite what we're used to, is it?'
Saffron closed her ears to Olivia's insults, recoiling automatically as she always did from the indignity of being watched while she stripped and washed as best she could in the small bowl of water that was supplied. However, this morning there was even more resentment than usual in the Italian girl's voice, and Saffron knew why.
Almost from the moment of her kidnap Olivia had been at pains to imply to Saffron that she and Nico were lovers, but Saffron had sensed early on that the Italian girl was not as sure of Nico as she like to pretend.
'Quite a change for you!' Olivia sneered when Saffron refused to retaliate—she had learned early that to do so merely provoked a blow of some kind from her tormentor and now avoided encouraging her whenever she could. 'Not quite the society lady now, are we? Not many of your fancy men would want you if they could see you now, if it ever was you they wanted and not simply Daddy's money.'
Her last words caught Saffron on a raw spot that had never quite healed. Always at the back of her mind had been the suspicion that some of her acquaintances cultivated her because of who she was rather than any feelings of genuine friendship and she retaliated without thinking, laughing mockingly at Olivia as she asked softly.
'What's the matter? Are you frightened that Nico might want it too and double-cross you?'
She knew the claim was an outrageous one, but it was worth making it to see the fury in Olivia's eyes just before she launched herself on to Saffron, nails raking her soft skin.
'He wouldn't dare,' she told Saffron. 'The organisation would kill him. He wouldn't want you anyway,' she added scornfully, giving Saffron's hair a vicious tug before thrusting her away so heavily that she half fell to the floor. 'He is just amusing himself with you. He told me about it. 'Just seeing if you are as good in bed as you're supposed to be.'
'And you don't mind? Or is it that you daren't mind?' Saffron suggested shrewdly as she got to her feet. She knew her arrow had found its mark when she saw Olivia's eyes darken, but before she could speak they heard Guido calling from downstairs.
'Be careful!' Olivia muttered as she pushed Saffron out of the room. 'And remember, Nico' is mine!'
And she was welcome to him, Saffron told herself fiercely as she walked between the dusty vines, always conscious of Guido behind her, watching her. His unrelenting scrutiny was beginning to unnerve her; he had never made any move to touch her, but she knew that he wanted her; knew and was frightened by the knowledge, sensing something dangerous in him; a similar danger to that of a rabid dog, and her skin crawled every time she felt his eyes on .her body, while he boasted of the power of their organisation.
At lunch time she was so hot and tired from bending over the vines that it was a relief when Guido told her to stop work. They were real professionals, she thought tiredly as they headed back to the house, even to the extent of actually working the vines and fields, even though they knew there would not be anyone there to harvest the crop they were raising.
'Perhaps when your papa pays us the money I will buy myself a farm like this,' Guido told her as they headed for the farmhouse, 'get myself some land and a plump wife.'
Saffron knew he was baiting her, bat still couldn't resist muttering cynically, 'I thought the money was for the cause, whatever that might be.'
She hadn't realised Olivia had caught up with them, her dark eyes flashing ominously as she interrupted furiously, 'Our cause is to cleanse the world of parasites like you; to share out equally its wealth and do away with the corruption of privilege!'
In the valley by the river a sudden movement caught Saffron's eye. She stopped listening to Olivia as she watched Nico emerging from the water, unashamedly naked, his skin gleaming; rivulets of moisture running off the smooth copper shoulders. He had his back to them and Saffron felt her breath catch in her throat as she watched him walk to where he had left his clothes, his body as sleek and fluid as a jungle cat's, oiled skin like satin over hard bones and sinewy muscle.
She must have made some tiny betraying sound, because suddenly Olivia stepped in front of her, raw hatred glittering in her eyes.
'You want him,' she breathed, 'I see it in your eyes, but Nico is mine! See,' she told Guido, 'she lusts after him like a bitch in heat!' Her sneering words were more than Saffron could bear, her emotional reaction to the site of Nico's naked body, something so far outside her normal experience, and so completely devastating that she reacted abnormally, stepping forward, her hand raised ...
Guido caught it, pulling her arm painfully behind her back, grinning the inane, lustful grin that always brought the tiny hairs on the back of her neck upright in atavistic fear.
'Let me go!' Somehow she managed to twist free, fear lending her the agility to wrest herself from his grasp, something in the way they were both watching her fuelling her earlier dread.
All through lunch she expected to hear Olivia making some contemptuous remark about the brief scene, but to her surprise nothing was said. Olivia spoke more to Piero than Nico, and Saffron wondered if she was trying to make him jealous. There was nothing in his demeanour towards her to suggest that they were lovers, but Saffron suspected that if they weren't they probably had been at one time, and Olivia was desperately hoping for a renewal of their earlier intimacy.
Following the visit by the police Saffron had been allowed a little more freedom; the police were hardly likely to return Nico had said, and there was always at least one person on guard with a gun. Saffron had been told that if she tried to escape she would be shot down, and even though she knew that her death was likely to be the only outcome to her kidnapping, she still couldn't force herself to make the break for it which she knew would put an end to her life.
After lunch Nico announced that he had to go into town. Saffron had noticed that he was always the one who made contact with Rome and through them presumably her father, and although she sensed the others resented it, none of them questioned his right to do so. He ruled them with the th
reat of fear, a despicable weapon, she had always thought, but obviously a powerful one.
He had been gone about fifteen minutes, and Saffron had just finished cleaning up after the meal when Olivia announced that Nico had left instructions that she was to guard Saffron while she bathed in the river.
'He said nothing to me,' was her initial reaction, but Olivia merely sneered, and told her, 'Why should he? It is not for you to question his orders, and besides, it will save Piero having to carry up extra water.'
Saffron admitted to herself that she would welcome the opportunity to immerse herself fully and wash away the grime from her skin. The sketchy washes she had managed with the small bowls of water she had been brought were better than nothing, but fell a long way short of bathing. A delicate flush coloured her skin as she remembered seeing Nico emerge from the river ... the tanned suppleness of his skin, the broad shoulders tapering to the narrow waist.
The water was every bit as refreshing as she had imagined. She had forgotten how delicious it felt to be really, really clean, she thought happily as she stood breast-high in the water. Olivia had supplied her with soap and even some shampoo so that she could wash her hair, still bedraggled from its enforced cut. Even the coldness of the water was an invigorating pleasure. A smile curved her mouth as she reflected how she would have scorned the very idea that she might find bathing in a country river a sybaritic luxury as little as a month ago.
When she stepped out on to the river bank Olivia was nowhere in sight. It was strange for the Italian girl to be less than excessively diligent in her guarding duties, but Saffron was too relieved to be free of her constricting presence to care very much.
She had just started to towel herself dry when a figure emerged from the shadows of the small olive grove. Clutching her towel protectively to her body, Saffron saw Guido moving slowly towards her.
Her first instinct was to run, but fear held her rooted to the spot as he smiled and reached out for her towel.