by Penny Jordan
'So, since I cannot trust you, I shall have to make sure the task is completed myself.'
She was inside the bathroom when he added softly, 'Wear the lavender skirt and blouse. I seem to remember you have particularly attractive legs, as well as other ... enticing attractions.'
Saffron fully intended to ignore him and dress in the clothes she had just discarded, but when she emerged from the luxury of a warm shower and picked up his shirt, as well as being stained with her blood, the disturbingly male scent of his body still impregnated the cloth, and she dropped the shirt as though it burned, turning instead to the lavender blouse. It was a wrap-round style with a plunging neckline and tight sleeves, complementing the flounced skirt. The wound showed rawly against her tanned skin, the damp fronds of her butchered hair clinging softly to her face, adding to her fragile appearance, her eyes huge in the delicate oval of her face.
When she stepped into the bedroom, she was trembling with the onset of an emotion she found it hard to decipher. Nico was lounging on one of the beds, reading the paper. He stood up when she walked in, his eyes scrutinising the soft femininity of her body in the lavender shirt and blouse.
'It suits you,' he said at last, 'but I think we can dispense with this if I am to attend to your cut.' He reached deftly for the ties of her blouse, releasing them before Saffron could stop him. Her face flamed and she moved backwards automatically.
Nico ignored the small movement, grasping her shoulder and holding her still while he spread the cream on the throbbing cut. The fingers which had so far merely punished were strangely comforting as they spread the soothing balm against her heated flesh. Strange sensations curled dangerously through her stomach, an odd lassitude enveloped her.
'Saffron?' She caught the hard edge underlining her name, but the room seemed to be tilting oddly, Nico's fingers against her skin the only reality, his eyes dark, and almost concerned as she looked up at him and tried to articulate her concern at the dizzying sickness enveloping her, then Nico and everything else was blotted out as a whirling pool of blackness opened in front of her and she tumbled helplessly into it, sinking drowning ... floating deliciously on something warm and safe.
The first thing Saffron was aware of when she opened her eyes was her unfamiliar surroundings. She blinked in the strong sunlight streaming in through the uncurtained windows, and glanced slowly round the room. That awful nightmare that she had been kidnapped must have been just that, and yet it had been so real. She frowned as she heard the sound of running water from the bathroom, then her glance fell on to the skirt and blouse she had worn the night before, now neatly folded on a chair, and realisation swept over her and her body tensed beneath the thin sheet.
Her eyes were drawn again to the chair. She couldn't remember undressing herself, which meant...
'Good, you're awake.'
She froze, acutely aware of her near-nude state beneath the thin sheet, and blurted out unthinkingly, 'Did you undress me?'
'You passed out, and it seemed a pity to get your finery creased ... It isn't the first time, and I doubt it will be the last,' he mocked her, 'although normally my women don't pass out on me.'
The laughter in his eyes, and the knowledge that she was his prisoner, combined to form a hard, tight anger.
'I'm not one of your women,' she pointed out freezingly, 'and I object to being classed as one.'
Nico's face hardened, his eyes narrowing as he prised his shoulders away from the door and walked slowly towards the bed, careless of the fact that his only covering was the towel he had knotted round his hips. Saffron tried to drag her eyes away from the raw masculinity of his body, as pagan and malely beautiful as a Greek statue, only unlike marble, his flesh would be warm and responsive to touch.
'So you object, do you?' He was standing beside the bed and Saffron flinched under the cold fury of his eyes. 'Why, I wonder? Because you can't dominate me the way you've dominated your other lovers? Or is it because I get a response from you that they can't?'
'You don't!' She flung the words at him in heated denial without thinking, gasping as the bed depressed under his weight and he pinned her to it, arms either side of her body while he studied her flushed face.
'No?'
There was a wealth of cynical disbelief in the softly spoken word, and Saffron flinched as he bent towards her, turning her head wildly from side to side to escape the punitive force of male lips intent on branding her a liar, as they touched mockingly along the sensitive column of her throat, teasing apart compressed lips and tasting the soft sweetness she had fought to withhold from him with a sensuality that half shocked her.
'Stop acting the virgin!'
The words were more mocking than angry, the hand that had slid beneath the sheet swiftly expert in removing the barrier of her bra. Saffron tried to protest when the sheet was pushed aside, modesty outraged by the lazy appreciation in his dark grey eyes as they made a thorough inspection of creamy white flesh which had never been touched by the sun and rosy pink nipples.
'Clever girl,' he admired. 'Total nudity lacks challenge, and you have obviously learned that a man wants most what he must fight to obtain. That pale band of flesh suggests a modesty we both know you don't possess, and yet even knowing I find it very erotic to think I am seeing something that has been hidden from others. Very erotic,' he reaffirmed huskily, his fingers stroking slowly over the curves of her breasts and causing tiny spirals of pleasure to curl insidiously through her body. Against her will she was responding to him, and there was nothing she could do about it, Saffron thought bitterly. This was the price she paid for being inexperienced; if she had had the many lovers he had suggested she might have some inkling of how to preserve a cool facade; indeed, she might not need to—surely a woman of experience could not be as vulnerable to a single caress as she was to Nico's?
'You're trembling.'
'Because I hate you so much,' she told him. 'Hate and loathe you.'
'You do?' Amusement masked the anger glowing darkly in his eyes, but Saffron only had a moment to wonder why he should be so angry before his mouth came down on hers, hard hands trapping her head so that she was powerless to move. She moaned protestingly deep in her throat, straining to push him away, but Nico was too strong for her. Her small fists were captured, the fingers spread and placed against his skin, the roughness of male body hair tingling against her soft palms. Against her will she felt a response stir deep inside her, and as though he sensed what she was feeling the bruising pressure of his mouth eased as Nico teased and stroked her lips into soft surrender, small moans of pleasure lost against his throat as his lips moved slowly over her skin, tracing her collarbone, and then moving downwards to where his fingers still caressed the hardening peaks of her breasts.
Molten fire erupted inside her, a feverish need clamouring through her body. Beneath her lips his skin tasted salt and male, and oddly vulnerable. She could see the darkened colour tinging his cheekbones, his eyes dark with sexual desire.
'Nico ...' His name shivered past her lips, a plea for mercy, and a cry for fulfilment, and a shockwave of rejection shuddered through her as she felt him stiffen and slowly release her.
'You'd better get dressed. We've got to get back.' The flatly spoken words and the coldly dismissive curve of his back as he turned away from her were like a physical blow. She wanted to rage and scream, to ... To what? she asked herself bleakly; demand that he gave her the fulfilment her body was now craving? Sickness clawed at her stomach. What sort of woman was she? Always she had prided herself on her fastidiousness, on her refusal to indulge in sex for sex's sake, for cheap thrills, and yet here she was suffering the most acute pangs of sexual frustration over a man she loathed and despised. What was happening to her? She had read stories of the bitterly intense relationships that developed between captor and kidnapped; perhaps now she was experiencing them at first hand. She stole a glance at Nico's impassive back through downcast lashes, shuddering with the realisation of how he had awakened he
r senses to sensuality. Before, the male body had held no attractions for her; now she longed to touch the smooth skin of his back and feel his muscles clench in a need as great as her own; and yet she hated him. She ought to despise herself, but somehow her overriding emotion was one of frustration that he had turned his back on her. He got up and picked up his shirt, pulling it on, his hands reaching for the towel wrapped round him. Saffron touched her tongue to hot, dry lips, her eyes mesmerised by the taut suppleness of his body.
'I'm not the sideshow!'
The terse words shocked her into awareness, and the air left her lungs on a painful hiss as she dragged her eyes away,
'Here, take these and get dressed.'
She turned just in time to catch the clothes Nico threw her, her face scarlet as she realised her sudden movement had exposed the top half of her body, but unlike her, he seemed to have no inclination to let his eyes linger and grabbing the skirt and blouse, Saffron hurried into the bathroom the moment he turned his back.
When she re-emerged she found that breakfast had been brought to the room. The coffee tasted delicious after the food they had been eating at the farmhouse, and she drank several cups, before she realised that Nico had finished his breakfast and was waiting for her. Absurdly she wanted to prolong her time with him but there was nothing absurd about her reluctance to return to the farmhouse. She shivered, remembering what waited for her there.
'Come on. You've got to see the doctor and I want to send this tape off to your father. So far he's done everything we've told him, for your sake I hope he continues to do so.'
The doctor gave her cut a cursory glance and told Nico that it was healing well. He had insisted on accompanying her into the doctor's surgery, telling Saffron blandly that the doctor would see nothing odd in his determination. 'Italian men are loath to leave their women alone with other males, the good doctor will quite understand why I don't want him to be alone with my beautiful wife.'
Strangely enough that taunt hurt more than anything else that had happened to her. She knew she looked far from beautiful with her cropped hair and make-upless face; there was no need for Nico to rub salt in the wound and mock her for her lack of femininity.
Once outside he directed her steps towards the piazza where he had bought her clothes, never releasing his firm grip of her arm. Under her lashes Saffron watched him, wondering about him; about the events that had brought him to his present situation. He was plainly well educated and intelligent; he spoke English fluently and was far less volatile than she would have expected for an Italian. That he could control the other members of the gang was self-evident, and that in itself was no easy task, so qualities of leadership and diplomacy must be added to undeniable charm and shrewdness. Surely such a man could have made his mark in any number of legitimate careers, so why had he chosen to live outside the law? Was it the challenge of living in such close contact with danger; or was it simply the money that appealed to him? The answer was something she was never likely to know, Saffron decided, as he drew her into a small building which she realised belatedly was the post office.
Watching him posit the tape to her father she was filled with an overwhelming sense of homesickness. Tears welled up in her eyes and refused to be blinked away, and to her intense chagrin several escaped to trickle bleakly down her face.
'Here.'
She took the handkerchief and dried her eyes, and as her vision cleared she saw that two police officers had entered the building. Nico had released her while she dried her eyes, and acting impulsively, she started to run forward, all her hopes and determination concentrated on reaching the policemen by the door.
She had a few seconds' start on Nico and for a moment she thought it was going to be enough. Being small she could dart among the other customers, which he could not, but just as she reached her goal she felt his hands closing on her body, jerking her backwards, his face a mask of cold fury as he swung .her round to face him, so hard that she almost lost her balance.
The policemen looked up; several other people were staring at them. Saffron opened her mouth to beg for help, and cried out with pain instead as Nico's hand left its impact on her face.
For the second time he physically chastised her, although this time somehow the pain wasn't as great, shock being her overriding reaction, for powerful though the blow had looked in reality it had done little more than stun her into silence.
'She has been seeing another man,' he explained for the benefit on the curious police. 'My cousin, no less, and when I tax her with it, she denies it, when all my village have seen them together!'
The police laughed and made a comment that brought fresh colour to Saffron's cheeks; their earthy humour not to her liking. Or course Italy was a male-dominated country, she remembered bitterly, where a man could openly chastise his wife without anyone thinking to interfere, and southern Italy, less sophisticated than the north, still looked upon a wife as her husband's chattel.
With a grip that bruised, Nico marched her back outside, not stopping until they had rounded the corner and were in sight of the Land Rover.
'Try anything like that again and it will be a bullet you'll feel, instead of the flat of my hand. God, but you try my patience, you really do! What did you hope to gain?'
'The most precious thing in the world,' Saffron told him tautly, 'my freedom.'
'Is that why you have never married?' he asked her, catching her off guard. 'Because your "freedom" means too much to you?'
Saffron shrugged. 'Aren't you being a little naive?' she taunted mockingly, salving her pride for the blow he had inflicted upon it. 'If one really wants to one can find all the freedom one desires within marriage these days ...'
'So ...' He shrugged, 'perhaps you couldn't find anyone willing to take you on, on those terms, shop-soiled as you are, so to speak ...'
'Shop-soiled! Haven't you ever heard of female equality?' she demanded. 'Not all men want timid little virgins in their beds.'
'Not in their beds,' Nico agreed suavely. 'But as their wives ... that's a different matter.'
His complacency infuriated her; she could have told him that she hadn't married because she cherished a ridiculous dream of finding a man she could respect and honour as well as love; a man who could be a man and encourage her to be a woman without dominating her or wanting to put her down. She had begun to think such men did not exist.
The drive back-to the farmhouse was uneventful, although with every mile that took her closer to her prison, Saffron's feeling of terror which had begun in Monteveno built up until by the time they actually reached their destination she could think of nothing but the proximity of her own death.
Her life span was only as long as her father's search for the ransom money, she was sure of that. Once they knew it was going to be paid over, she would be disposed of without mercy. Why else would they allow her to see and possibly later identify them? They must think she was a fool, she thought bitterly, especially Nico, who was amusing himself with her, playing with her emotions, knowing what her ultimate fate was to be.
Olivia greeted them with sullen silence. There was a livid bruise along Guido's jaw, and a savage anger in his eyes when he looked at them which intensified Saffron's fear. Only Piero seemed unchanged.
'Have you sent the tape?'
Olivia was openly truculent, her eyes constantly searching Saffron's face, although looking for what Saffron neither knew nor cared. She had already noticed the skirt and blouse Saffron was wearing, and when Nico had answered her she added aggressively, 'You let her go into a shop alone? Wasn't that taking a risk, or does she have some reason for staying with us that the rest of us know nothing about?'
Saffron's colour rose in spite of her determination not to react to the other girl's malice.
'Neither,' Nico drawled, without looking at Saffron. 'I bought them for her. The things she was wearing were practically in rags,' he added smoothly before Olivia could object. 'I decided to replace them in case they drew attentio
n to us. No one queries the presence of two foreigners obviously on holiday, but the sight of a man with a girl at his side, dressed in rags, is bound to be remembered by someone.'
It was obvious that Olivia wasn't happy with the situation and equally obvious that she could think of no further criticisms to overset the logic of Nico's argument. Saffron couldn't herself. Ever since she had woken up in the morning she had been beset by conflicting feelings over which she had no control. There had been a look in Nico's eyes this morning—anger mingled with something else; an almost unwilling admiration combined with self-contempt. If she hadn't known better she might almost have supposed that he was regretting his part in her kidnapping—and yet she couldn't be the first victim he had been involved with in this way; and she couldn't flatter herself that his feelings towards her were likely to be any different than to any of the others.
The evening meal was a silent affair, with Olivia constantly glancing from Nico to Saffron, her eyes watchful and angry. Nico must be aware of her feelings, Saffron knew, and yet he appeared not to notice the furious looks she was giving him, and she wondered at his attitude, especially when as leader he must be conscious of the need to preserve an amicable relationship between the other members of the gang and himself. After the meal was over Saffron noticed how Olivia went straight to Guido's side and how they both stood talking in low voices as Nico studied the paper he had bought in town, and Saffron herself cleared the table under Piero's watchful eyes.
'Leave that,' Nico told her when the things were washed and she started to dry them. 'Olivia and Guido can finish them.' The glance he threw the duo in the corner was cynically assessing. 'How's your cut?' he asked Saffron abruptly. 'Are you taking the prescription?'
She nodded in confirmation. The cut was healing quite well, but Nico's apparent concern unnerved her. Why was he showing such a belated interest in her welfare? Was he trying to lull her into a false sense of security for some Machiavellian purpose of his own? Did he get some sort of kick out of coaxing her to trust him and then destroying that trust? she wondered bitterly.