The Hostage Bride

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.

CHAPTER FOUR

IT 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?’