Captivated (Stranded)

by Mia West

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Description

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Epilogue

  Thank You!

  Hot For More?

  Preview of CONFINED

  Preview of THRUST

  Also by Mia

  About Mia

  Captivated

  Stranded #1

  an erotic novella

  by

  Mia West

  Copyright

  Captivated

  Copyright © 2014 Mia West

  Cover design © 2014 Mia West

  Cover photograph © Forewer | Shutterstock

  Digital Edition 1.1

  ISBN-13: 9780991376681

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Captivated (Stranded #1)

  Laine is spending a hard-won sabbatical researching erotic art in a renowned archive in Spain. Surrounded by the sensual work of centuries of artisans, Laine is most intrigued by a mysterious man who seems to work at the museum but whose face she’s never seen. When she gets trapped in the archive before a long holiday, Laine discovers her mystery man is the caretaker, one who chooses to be locked in every weekend.

  Discharged after a chemical combat injury, Evan put off going home to take a job safely out of sight of staring eyes. The one bright spot in his reclusive existence has been his furtive glimpses of the beautiful woman who studies the collection every day. But when he comes face to face with the subject of the secret mural he’s constructing in his attic quarters, Evan knows it’s going take a miracle to get him through the next three days.

  An erotic novella (approx. 26,000 words) featuring a man who believes he’s damaged goods, a woman who knows sexy lives far beneath the skin, and one very inspiring library.

  Stranded Series

  Locked in a kinky archive. Snowbound in a primitive mountain hut. Abandoned on a tropical island by the last ferry for a week.

  Sexy strangers. Tight quarters.

  Sometimes getting stranded is the best itinerary.

  Dedication

  For those who challenge us.

  Chapter 1

  When the woman showed up that morning, Evan made sure he was there to see it.

  That was the time of day, after all, when he maintained the office next to the museum entrance, restocking the paper in the copier, emptying the small recycling bins into the big one, making coffee.

  Again.

  “Why don’t you just say hello?”

  Evan looked up, startled.

  Magdalena, the white-haired office manager, wore a knowing smirk.

  Evan turned his attention back to the coffee pot, which was ticking away on its own, no need for him. At least Magda could only see the scarred side of his face, the side that didn’t blush as much. “Don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  She snorted behind him. “Are all American boys such liars?”

  “You want some coffee?” he asked to shut her up. He pulled the carafe from the machine prematurely, causing the still-dripping brew to sizzle on the hot plate.

  “When it’s finished, yes, but I will get my own. Come. I have an errand for you.” She picked up a folded piece of paper from her desk. “Take this to Risa, please.”

  He glanced through the office window. The woman stood across the lobby, talking to Risa, the receptionist, and signing in for her daily archive clearance. He put the coffee pot back. “I’m not done in here.”

  Magda heaved a sigh behind him. “It’s clean, Evan. You frighten my office with your puritanical tidiness.”

  “You want me to leave it messy?” he asked, hoping to distract her long enough for the woman to leave the lobby.

  “I want you to quit stalling.” She fluttered the paper. “Take it.”

  He gave her a narrow look as he took it. What was it about women her age that they thought they knew everything?

  “Suerte, Romeo.”

  Right: luck. He put the paper into his shirt pocket and avoided Magda’s eyes as he left the office. The lobby stood empty except for Risa and the woman. She wore a skirt today, and sandals and some kind of silky-looking top. She had pulled her hair up, but one curling tendril—wayward or deliberate?—was tucked back under the earpiece of her glasses. Even from behind she was beautiful. He glanced at the way her skirt clung to her ass, giving him a hint of the cleft down the center.

  Especially from behind, he amended.

  Keeping his face averted toward the museum’s interior, he walked quickly to reception and slid the fold of paper across the desk. He was halfway to the museum’s main gallery when Risa’s amused voice called, “¡Gra-ci-as!” in a grating sing-song. He could practically feel Magda rolling her eyes behind the office window. With any luck, he could avoid them both for the rest of the day. Then he’d have the place to himself for the long holiday weekend.

  Of course, he wouldn’t see her for three days either. He frowned at the thought, feeling the skin on the left side of his face pull tight as it always did now.

  She smelled like flowers today. He’d caught the scent just as he turned away from reception. And not showy florist flowers. She smelled like she’d shaken every orange tree on the street outside, raked up the blossoms, and then rolled around in them naked.

  Now that image might get him through a long weekend.

  At the far end of the main gallery, Evan slipped through the maintenance door. As it clanged shut behind him, he took his first full breath since Magda had opened her big mouth. Seven hours, he told himself, and then three glorious matchmaker-free days to himself.

  He picked up the short stack of crumpled museum maps he’d set aside from yesterday’s visitors, and he started up the stairs. He thought about the collage on the wall of the storage closet next to his small apartment in the attic—a project he hadn’t anticipated but felt helpless not to finish. Thank God his coworkers hadn’t discovered it, or they’d be calling for a priest. He fanned the maps in his hand. He would have to tear out more of the warm tones to get her hair right.

  And now he needed to add that tendril.

  Fucking stalker, he thought.

  Even so, his fingers got busy ripping paper.

  *

  Laine had sensed him the moment before he put the paper on the reception desk, but as quickly as she had turned, she hadn’t gotten a glimpse of his face. Her mystery man. He seemed to be the janitor, but she only ever caught flashes of him, and only from behind.

  Not that she was complaining. It was a pretty fine angle.

  He had dark hair that curled slightly around his ears. Nice shoulder muscles, though the plain buttoned shirt he wore as a uniform hung too loose, in her opinion, and the long sleeves were just frustrating. The shirt did cinch nicely at the belt of his pants, which were made of the same dull blue-gray fabric but fit better over his lower half. His ass, in particular, was very well served by the uniform. But the best parts were his hands. Nearly every time she saw them, they were clenching in and out of fists. They looked like capable hands, strong and maybe callused. Hands that might slip into her hair and pull her head back to expose her throat. For kissing? Biting? Frankly she would take anything these days. No one had paid any attention to
her neck (or any other part of her) since she’d left Drew. She had been here for two months, and her unsatisfied hormones had taken her mystery man hostage. She kept half an eye and three-quarters of an ear out for him at all times. If she thought he was nearby, her eyes automatically trained themselves at hip height, hoping for a peek of that tight curve of buttock or a flexing fist.

  This morning, though, had dashed cold water on her little game. Risa, the receptionist, had unfolded the paper and then let it lie open on the counter as she called after him.

  Hoy, it had said. Today.

  Ah. So mystery man was taken. She’d let her eyes linger on his retreating form as long as she could before Risa turned back, a little smile curling her lips. She was nice enough, and had eyelashes like a doe’s. Laine could see why the man might give her terse orders by note. Maybe he gave them in private, too. What would one of those orders sound like in his voice?

  Risa had slipped the note under the counter with a sheepish flush to her cheeks, and even though it might have meant hearing his voice, Laine had sincerely hoped she wouldn’t stumble across them later, making out. There was plenty of inspiration to be found, after all, in an archive of erotic works.

  But it hadn’t happened. She had worked the morning in solitude, free of any moaning or grunting from dark corners. After lunch, she’d come back and taken up where she’d left off. Unfortunately, her reading today had included an especially descriptive text, and after about two hours, with afternoon sun warming her neck through the basement archive’s high windows, she’d had to slip into the restroom and quietly masturbate herself back to a state conducive to academic research.

  She tried not to think about how many times she’d had to do that over the past two months, or how often her mystery man figured into those frantic minutes in the bathroom stall.

  Oh well, she thought now. Fantasy is free, even if he isn’t.

  Then again, she wasn’t here to study the native population, intriguing as its members might be. She had pushed her department chair hard to approve this sabbatical. Political winds—and therefore grant funding—were swinging toward conservative. Money to study the kinky words of dead writers was becoming tougher to find. In the end, she had proposed three new undergrad courses based on the research she planned to do, classes with titles just salacious enough to draw students without alarming parents and their tuition payments. She’d also outlined a journal article that, if she found here what she hoped to, would bring a bit of positive notoriety to the university.

  So she wasn’t being paid to gawk at the janitor. In fact, she needed to get busy and finish this text today. Most businesses were about to close for a long weekend to observe the Assumption of Mary. With no particular religious practice herself, she would have plenty of time over the next three days to fantasize about her mystery man.

  Speaking of time. Laine reached for her bag automatically before remembering she’d left her phone at the hotel. It didn’t work here anyway; she hadn’t been willing to pay for overseas access. She had carried it for a few weeks, using the camera, but her short route to and from the archive had yielded its interesting shots already, and now the phone lived in her dresser drawer.

  Right next to the expensive lingerie she’d brought and hadn’t used yet.

  Yet.

  She snorted. Right. Like that was going to happen. She hadn’t even gotten up the nerve to go to a bar after the dinner hour. And granted, dinner here was a late-night affair, but still. Her Spanish was rudimentary. She could order tapas or ask the pharmacist for tampons, but her vocabulary was laughably limited for a seduction scenario. Even if she were to let the guy take the lead, who knew what she might end up agreeing to. The last thing she needed was to become an unwitting viral-video star. Erotica researcher or not, she wasn’t quite ready for that, not after what Drew had said.

  But Drew didn’t get an opinion any more. She was in Spain. She was doing the research she’d dreamed of for years. And when she left today, she just might catch a peek of—

  The fluorescent lights flickered off.

  Time to go. Plenty of sunlight streamed through the high windows, but the ladies up front would be locking up soon. Might as well get up there before they had to come looking for her.

  Laine closed the books she’d been using and stacked them on the shelf Magdalena had cleared for her use. Slinging her bag over her shoulder, she climbed the stairs to the lobby.

  And found it empty—no Risa at reception or Magda in the admin office, which lay dark.

  “¿Hola?” she called. “Risa?”

  No answer. Thinking they were probably closing up the galleries, Laine headed for the front doors.

  But she saw it before she even got to them: the dark shape of the deadbolt connecting one door to its mate across a sliver of a gap. For no reason but disbelief, she rattled one door’s handle, then the other, but it was no use.

  She was locked in.

  Chapter 2

  Laine looked at the clock behind reception. Not quite four. They were still here somewhere. They just wanted to be sure to go home in time for the holiday, that was all, and who could blame them?

  She checked the ground-floor galleries again, and the basement archive. Mounting the stairs, she climbed past the ground floor to the upper level of the museum. Those galleries lay empty as well, except for the exhibits. She looked at a case full of oil lamps in the shape of Priapus. Their long cocks and eager expressions belied their being trapped in a plexiglass case.

  Glad you’re having fun, she thought.

  Laine returned to the lobby. Rounding the reception desk, she picked up the phone receiver, only to hear the weird vacuum of sound only a dead line could emit. Feeling foolish, she tapped at the button on the cradle, hoping the line would magically reconnect. She tried the local emergency digits, to no avail. A quick check of the cord showed the phone was plugged in. Magda’s phone in the office screamed the same dead silence.

  Beginning to feel dismay, Laine stepped back into the lobby and began scanning the doors and windows. The museum sat on a quiet side street—practically an alley. With no shops on the immediate block, she would likely see little foot traffic. Banging on the doors wasn’t going to do her much good.

  Then she saw it.

  Or saw it again—the door through which her mystery man had disappeared after delivering his note to Risa.

  It stood at the far end of the main gallery, a white door in a white wall, painted that way, she supposed, so it wouldn’t distract visitors from the giant painting on the same wall, a florid modern depiction of a woman’s pussy. It had teeth.

  Yeah, she thought, rolling her eyes, let’s keep that myth in the fore.

  She pushed the door’s handle and had her first bit of luck. The door swung open into a dim maintenance stairwell, separate from the one she and other visitors used to access the museum’s levels. Laine pulled a chair from a stack inside and propped open the door.

  The landing at this entrance seemed to serve as a staging area for cleaning supplies and special events signage. Late-day sun peeked through tiny windows ascending the stairs. A table next to the door held a pencil and notepad, which showed a list of items in square-ish letters, all crossed off. The list struck her as odd, and it took Laine a moment to realize why. It was written in English.

  Had the mystery man been British this whole time? Or—ooh!—Scottish? As she looked down the stairwell to its dark basement terminus, she pictured him (well, the back of him) in a kilt.

  Because all Scots wear kilts.

  Hey, if she was going to spend three days having waking dreams about a certain well-formed ass, it was going to get draped in tartan. And then it was going get undraped.

  She grinned as she climbed the industrial stairs, her sandals slapping on the concrete treads. Yes, a kilt. And while he was at it, he could hang a sporran on the front. She’d always gotten a nether-flutter at the way sporrans bounced against their wearers’ crotches, as if to say, I’m not the o
nly thing swinging freely, lassie.

  The upstairs landing held nothing, but to Laine’s surprise, the staircase turned to continue up at least one more level. She tried to picture the outside of the building. Did it have an attic? Maybe it would have a fire escape or something. She hadn’t thought about that yet, the possibility of fire. Not likely to happen—she wasn’t a smoker, and she wasn’t likely to build a campfire. But still, the thought of being trapped-trapped propelled her up the steps to the next landing—the last one, it turned out, with a single door. She turned the handle.

  She wasn’t prepared for the space beyond. She had thought she might find (at best) a small vestibule and an exterior roof door or (at worst) a supply closet. But this was no closet.

  The space was bright, thanks to three large dormer windows whose blinds lay open. The sparse furnishings—a table, a chair, and a cot—and a high ceiling worked with the light to make the room feel airy. A kitchenette in one corner might have suggested this was a break room, but touches of lived-in-ness contradicted that idea. The pencil sketches tacked to the walls. The votive candle on the table. The pair of boots parked neatly next to the door.

  The deep male voice humming in an adjoining room.

  Laine knocked on the door frame where she stood, but got no answer. She tried again, adding a tentative, “Hello?”

  The humming stopped. “Be right there.”

  Whoa. Even deeper when he spoke. Laine stepped back into the hall to wait. Checked the drape of her skirt, smoothed her blouse. Idiot. She hitched her bag higher on her shoulder.

  The adjoining door opened and he stepped through, looking back at the handle as he closed it. He wore his uniform pants but had peeled down to a back-hugging white undershirt. His feet were bare. “All locked up?”

  It was him. Her mystery—