Hostage of Passion

by Diana Hamilton

  At least she wasn’t alone here with the dauntingly unpredictable, fiery-tempered Spaniard, she thought as she added oils generously to the water. There would be someone around she could appeal to if he ever allowed his violent antipathy towards her father to spill over on to her. And she might be able to persuade one of them to help her get out of this place and back to civilisation and sanity. It wasn’t totally beyond the bounds of possibility, she comforted herself.

  The oils she had lavishly added filled the room with the sweet perfume of lavender, jasmine, rose too, she decided as she slid blissfully into the warm depths, and some other essence she couldn’t quite put a name to. Whatever, they had obviously been blended with complete relaxation in mind because the stresses and worries of the long, troubled day seemed to melt away and, in the perfumed mists of the seductive fragrances, the hedonistic surroundings of the luxurious bathroom, the soft, silky warm water, even Francisco Casals became a force that could be reasoned with.

  Sarah might have stayed exactly where she was all night, adding extra hot water and oils when she felt the impulse, but for the thought that she’d end up looking like a pale pink prune. So she eventually pulled herself languorously out, her toes curling into the thick-pile bath-mat as she released her hair from the heavy plait she’d secured on the top of her head with her one remaining hairpin and let it cascade down over her shoulders.

  When she’d dressed she would sit down quietly— perhaps in the graceful sitting-room she’d poked her head into—and sensibly work out how best to reason with her unreasonable captor. Common sense and logic would be the best, the only way to get through to him, she decided, wrapping herself in one of the luxurious dark green towels before padding through to retrieve her overnight bag from the bedroom, relaxed enough now to mourn vaguely the fact that apart form a change of underwear and a nightie she had brought nothing with her.

  It was dim in here now with velvety twilight but she would look for the light switches later because she could still see her way around and this soft bluey light was soothing. Reluctant to get into her travelcreased trousers and blouse when her skin felt so deliciously soft and fresh after her unaccustomedly long wallow, she hung her jacket in one of the capacious hanging cupboards she discovered behind a set of sliding doors. Reaching up, she lost her precarious grip on the towel, and she stepped over it where it pooled to the floor, enjoying the subtle caress of the cooler evening air on her body—then went into shock as the door opened and her dark captor walked in.

  He must have depressed a light switch because every lamp in the room and the two delicate crystal chandeliers overheard glittered into immediate light. Shamefully revealing light, she realised as her insides twisted and tightened in panicky knots when she saw his black eyes slowly rake over her nakedness.

  Ineffectively trying to cover herself with her hands, she made a raw sound in her throat as she stepped slowly backwards, trying to locate the fallen bath-towel with her feet. She didn’t dare take her eyes off him.

  He was holding her hostage, she had known that even before he had bundled her into this suite of rooms and locked her in, but this was the first time she’d felt afraid. Really, gut-wrenchingly afraid.

  There was something elemental in those sensually raking black Spanish eyes, something that threw her body and mind into terrified confusion. Every minute hair on her body seemed to be standing on end, her skin burning, and to her horrified shame she felt her breasts harden, engorged with something new and nameless beneath the open caress of his eyes. Her body couldn’t have responded more if he’d been physically touching her.

  The tiny rattle of china and glass as he put the tray she’d scarcely registered he’d been holding down on a heavily carved table at the side of the door gave her the break she’d been looking for, and she twisted round, scooped up the towel and wrapped it around her trembling body, only to have the breath knocked out of her lungs, as if she’d been punched, at the mortifying sound of his slow, insolent hand-clap.

  ‘Bravo!’ One dark brow drifted slowly upwards and his sexy mouth curled sideways. ‘I congratulate you on your act of startled modesty, but there is no need to stage it for my benefit. How long have you been wandering around naked, wondering when I’d return, as I said I would?’

  He rocked back on his heels, his hands pushed negligently into the pockets of his beautifully tailored trousers, and the expression in the midnight eyes between the thick tangle of black lashes was derisive as he told her, his husky voice mocking, ‘I would never have guessed it, but you have obviously inherited your father’s over-active libido. But let me make it perfectly plain—you won’t buy your freedom or my forgiveness for what he has done that easily, Miss Bouverie-Scott. However, you are welcome to continue to try.’ He smiled wickedly. ‘It wouldn’t work, but it could amuse me, help to break the tedium of waiting.’

  He turned then, opening the door. ‘I will leave you to grapple with your frustration alone. And eat your supper; we don’t want you losing weight, do we?’

  And his insolently amused parting shot echoed in her head long after he’d locked the door behind him, boiling her brain with impotent fury, with the gross unfairness of his calculated insults.

  ‘Who could have guessed that under the prim, unfeminine clothes you choose to wear an exquisite body exists, aching to be touched? Please feel free to display it for my enjoyment whenever you feel the urge.’

  CHAPTER FIVE

  SOMETHING dragged her up from the blissful oblivion of sleep. Sarah slowly opened her heavy eyes to the thick soft darkness and listened.

  Still and utter silence.

  She had probably been dreaming; that was why she had wakened, she rationalised drowsily.

  She didn’t want to be awake; she didn’t want to find herself going over and over her unenviable situation again, her mind whirling round in circles. Neither did she want to remember her embarrassment, or the disgusting insults he’d thrown at her in that silky soft voice of his. No, she most definitely did not want to dredge all that up again. Not now, not until the morning, when, after a restful sleep, she would be able to think more clearly.

  The fight for sleep had been a desperate one, her mind trawling through the facts as she knew them until she’d felt as if the inside of her head would burst into flames. That he’d made a complete fool of her had been hard enough to swallow, but his keeping her hostage was much, much worse, and as for the embarrassment, the insults, the way he believed she was trying to buy her freedom with her body… Words failed her…

  And the new edginess, the fear, had kept slicing right through every other troubled thought, making her go cold with dread.

  Even though she was as sure as she could be that she had no reason to be afraid, that he meant her no personal harm because she was merely the bait to pull Piers into this magnificent stone web, the irrational, unnameable fear kept coming, stalking her. It was as if Francisco Casals had pressed an invisible button and made it happen.

  With an effort, she calmed her breathing right down and closed her eyes. She couldn’t endure another battle for sleep and if she didn’t rest both her body and mind she would be in no fit state to reason with the dreadful man in the morning.

  The mattress dipped. The light bedcovers tweaked.

  For an endless moment Sarah lay in icy shock. Something had woken her. Something had got into this bed with her! She could hear it breathing!

  With a choking gasp of terror, she clawed her way to the edge of the bed. Her heart was going to burst. The back of her practical cotton nightie was grabbed by a lazy fist and the high-pitched squeal that vented from her lungs was overlaid by a relaxed, ‘What do you think you’re doing? Go back to sleep.’

  It took her a few breathless seconds to banish all those nameless, night-time horrors and then she made another determined effort to leave the bed, hearing the rending of cotton as he refused to release her.

  With a huff of outrage she scrabbled for the heavily carved bedside table, found t
he lamp and switched it on. At least this horror had a name. That smoky, sexy voice was unmistakable. And she could deal with him, of course she could. She would never allow herself to doubt that, not for a single moment.

  As the soft light gilded the room, she twisted round, bouncing into a sitting position, giving him the benefit of her iciest stare. Then she looked away again. Quickly. All that smooth olive skin covering those hard, rangy shoulders, the power of that shatteringly masculine chest, the flat, lean stomach, the arrowing of crisp black body hair that disappeared beneath the fine white sheet… He appeared to be wearing nothing at all!

  Her mouth went dry.

  Had he no shame? No decency? Or was he confidently expecting her to try to buy her freedom? She remembered what he’d said about her inheriting her father’s over-active libido and felt herself blush, right down to the soles of her feet. But although her voice was unsteady she managed to demand, ‘Get out of this bed. Now!’

  From the corner of her eye she saw him hoist himself up on one elbow but kept her gaze unwaveringly on the far side of the room, ready to leap to the floor if he so much as moved a single inch towards her.

  But he didn’t. He merely remarked with derisory patience, ‘This is my suite of rooms, my bed. Why should I vacate it?’

  ‘Because you put me here,’ she answered thinly. She would have thought that was perfectly obvious.

  ‘Naturally.’ He twisted on to his back, his arms crossed behind his head, perfectly, obnoxiously at ease. ‘You could be here for quite some time—it all depends on how quickly your father responds to my demands, how much he cares for you. So in order to explain your presence to Rosalia and Marcos I let them believe you were my woman. Where else would I put my woman but in my bed?’

  And that would make sense in the twisted, devious, wicked labyrinth that passed for his mind, she decided furiously. She spat out, ‘Then go and sleep in the other room! There are some perfectly comfortable-looking chairs and sofas, as I recall.’

  ‘I do not sleep on chairs,’ he said with the lofty arrogance that made her want to slap him.

  The need to give vent to her boiling emotions by resorting to crude physical violence appalled her. Sensible Sarah Scott brawling and sounding off was not a picture that pleased her. This impossible man had an unnerving habit of making her act out of character, showing her a side of herself she hadn’t known existed and was certainly most unhappy with.

  Hastily gathering her split and ruined nightdress around her rigidly outraged body, she slid smartly off the bed, telling him tartly, ‘Well, if you won’t I will.’ She would have chosen to sleep on a clothesline rather than a bed that had him in it! And the back of her neck prickled as she marched firmly into the adjoining sitting-room, but he didn’t say a word, much less pounce on her and haul her back to lie beside him as she had initially feared he would.

  Closing the sitting-room door behind her, she leaned wearily back against it for a second or two before pushing herself into locating a light switch, opening a couple of windows, selecting a sofa and perching uneasily on the edge of it.

  Her situation was impossible, and getting worse by the second, she fretted, and she vehemently wished she’d never set out to warn her father, advise him to send Encarnación back to her doting family or suffer the consequences of his own irresponsible, reprehensible behaviour.

  She had always refused to believe in the old adage that whatever couldn’t be cured must be endured. As her father had refused to be cured of his behavioural follies—and goodness only knew she had tried—she had, long ago, decided to endure it no longer and had gone her own way, leaving him to go to the devil in his.

  So why had she decided to stick her oar into these muddled, troubled waters at this particular moment in time? she asked herself. A surfacing of filial affection which was stronger than she’d consciously known? An acknowledgement, at last, of her pride in his genius—a pride she had always tried to smother beneath clouds of disapproval of his wild lifestyle?

  Whatever, soul-searching wasn’t going to get her out of her present predicament, was it?

  She arranged a cushion at one end of the sofa and curled up, trying to get comfortable. What she should have been concentrating on was the best approach to take when trying to reason her way out of the mess Piers had landed her in with that utterly impossible Spaniard.

  Or not. She scowled into the cushion. What she really should be doing was emptying her mind of all contentious matter and getting some rest!

  But it was easier said than done, and two hours later she was further from sleep than she’d ever been, fidgeting and wriggling and, worse, needing to visit the bathroom.

  Which meant going through the bedroom, from which her black-hearted captor had effectively banished her, disrupting her sleep, taking over the big, blissfully comfortable bed, forcing her to find what rest she could on one of the sofas. Because surely he hadn’t actually expected her to lie with him, their bodies barely inches apart—his naked as the day he was born and probably wallowing around during the night, tangling with hers?

  The mind pictures that popped up into her head were alarming, adding another, deeper layer to her heated discomfort. She thrust them decisively away. She had quite enough to contend with without that!

  Squirming to her feet, she assured herself that the oaf was certainly sound asleep by now. His conscience wouldn’t keep him awake because he almost surely didn’t have such a thing.

  Tiptoeing to the door, she opened it a fraction and listened intently. No sound but his soft, regular breathing. Holding her breath, she padded silently through, moving slowly, making sure she didn’t bump into furniture as she wended her way to the bathroom. And she stayed there as long as she dared, aware of the fact that he too might need to make a nocturnal visit.

  That possibility was more than enough to have her creeping back out, reluctance to face another few hours of tossing and turning on the sofa making her pout. She hated the self-centred, arrogant brute for putting her through all this, she really did, and she racked her tired brain for a way to pay him back. She couldn’t come up with a single thing. Except the resolve not to spend another minute stewing on that sofa.

  Which didn’t mean creeping back into that bed with him, of course. There had to be something else. And there was. Of course there was!

  The third door!

  It opened silently, like a dream, and the stair beyond was faintly illuminated by light-sensor bulbs set into the stone. Closing the door behind her, she padded on up, pulling open the stout door at the top and walking out on to the great rooftop, surrounded by the battlements.

  The air up there was much fresher and cooler than it had been in the sitting-room, despite the windows she’d opened, and the pale fingers of dawn in the sky added to her unexpected sense of exhilaration.

  Up here, at least, there was a sensation of freedom. Spurious maybe, but something she intended to hang on to for as long as she could because suddenly she felt much more alive than she could ever remember feeling before, could hardly wait for a new day to start, when she could begin again to pit her wits against the black-hearted Spaniard who, in her opinion, needed to be taken down a peg or two after the way he’d treated her.

  Her eyes glinting with new-found energy, she fled over the huge stone roofing-slabs and leaned against the battlements, the stone rough beneath her hands, still holding a residue of the past day’s warmth. She stretched over as far as she dared, squinting, eagerly trying to pierce the dark, velvety night for landmarks, and registered a sudden rush of bare feet a fraction of a second before she felt strong arms encircle her body, whirling her round to be crushed against a heaving, naked torso.

  ‘Idiota!’ His strong arms tightened convulsively as he dragged her away from the parapet and she could hear the rapid thundering of his heartbeats, feel the pulsating heat of his tall, sinewy body as her lightly clad flesh was crushed against him. ‘Launching yourself down into a rocky chasm isn’t the answer! I mean you no har
m, you must understand that,’ he assured her thickly, one hand sliding up to cradle her head, pulling it against the proud angle of his shoulder, his long fingers tangling in her hair. ‘My quarrel isn’t with you—you know that.’

  The warmth of that smooth olive skin stretched tautly over hard muscle and bone was distinctly distracting, tugging her mind away from the obvious advantage he was unknowingly offering her. The intimacy of being held by him like this was clouding her senses, and when she felt the tremors of his inner tension shake his impressive male frame she had to fight hard to resist the impulse to cuddle in closer and surrender to the rapidly gathering sensations that were as strangely exciting as they were hitherto unknown.

  Sarah shook her head desperately and fought instead to catch hold of the ideas that were poking at the edges of her fuddled brain, and he mistook the gesture, telling her rawly, ‘If I frightened you, I’m truly sorry. And I promise you I will never lay a finger on you in anger. You will not be harmed in any way while you are a guest beneath my roof— consider your time here as a holiday. Will you do that, Salome?’

  She could almost have capitulated to the urgency of his pleas, the very real—though utterly misguided—anxiety he had felt on her behalf. She had been on the point of coming clean, responding honestly to his deep concern, reassuring him that she simply wasn’t the type to fling herself from a great height on to rocks, or whatever, no matter what dire circumstances she found herself in, because she had a whole heap more character than that, but his use of that ridiculously flamboyant name, the name she had firmly discarded years ago and which he had, in his meddling, prying, sneaky manner, somehow dug out, put her firmly on her feet again, back in control and knowing exactly how she would play this scene, get every last ounce of advantage out of the situation he had so conveniently misread.