Wendy Rosnau - Sleeping With Danger

Sully looked over his shoulder at the woman standing there in front of his cell – an exotic island nymph with the face of an angel .

No way. He was either drunker than he thought, or he was still asleep and in the middle of the same dream from last night. Oh, yeah, this was the little honey from his dream. His hands had tangled in all that black hair. She had the same sexy dark eyes. The same pouty lips, too.

Grinning, he muttered, “Come on, baby, climb on in here and we’ll start the party all over again.”

He was two steps from the bed when his sexy dream-lover spoke and stopped him in his tracks.

“If I were you, I would be thinking about a way out of here instead of having a party. The men who visit this cell don’t usually live very long.”

Sully turned slowly. “You’re real?”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Wendy Rosnau resides on sixty secluded acres in Minnesota with her husband. She divides her time between her family-owned bookshop and writing romantic suspense. She is the 2004 recipient of the Midwest Fiction Writers’ Writer of the Year Award.

Wendy loves to hear from her readers. Visit her website at www.wendyrosnau.com.

Dear Reader,

In Sleeping with Danger , you’re about to meet the most menacing of all Merrick’s elite agents – the Irish gun-runner dubbed Mad Dog Paxton long before he left Dublin to become Onyxx’s deadly weapons expert. It’s been eighteen months since Sully Paxton was left for dead in an Onyxx incursion that went sour in Greece. Where has Sully been all this time? What has he survived?

As many of you know, I’m a huge fan of bad boys. I hope you enjoy spending time with him and with the woman who is about to steal his heart.

For updates on future releases, my backlist or if you missed one of the previous books, log on to www.wendyrosnau.com.

Wendy Rosnau

WENDY ROSNAU

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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For Jerry

Chapter 1

They had stopped beating the hell out of him five days ago and started feeding him regularly. The thick gray mush and a cup of water now came every day instead of three times a week.

No longer numb, he slowly became aware of his wretched existence, as well as the pain that raped his body with every breath he took. He was given two weeks to contemplate the change in the routine—to consider whether it was a blessing or a dark omen—before they came for him.

Even though the sun was low on the horizon, he squinted against the brightness as the heavy iron grate overhead was unlocked and he was pulled from the pit and dropped like a sack of garbage on the rocky ground.

In the beginning the hole in the earth where they kept him had been a tight fit, but that was months ago. These days they could have flushed him down a sewer pipe, he was so damn thin.

“On your feet. Greegorah! ”

The old instincts that had kept him alive for a year and a half were still a part of his memory. Those memories urged him to get up and fight back, but he was physically broken. Even the guards’ orders didn’t rally him to his feet.

“Get up. Now!” Pedro gave him a vicious kick. The guard’s steel-toed boot connected with his ribs. He grunted, bit back a pitiful moan, then flattened his dirty hands out on the hard ground and pushed his body upward. After three tries he managed to get to his knee, and there he remained, too weak to stand.

Again Pedro used his foot, and like a rotten stump in a windstorm it toppled him easily. His head struck a jagged rock and split open his forehead.

“That’s enough.”

It was Argo who had spoken. A man twice as brutal as Pedro. He waited to feel more pain from the commander of the guards, but for some reason the short-legged Greek with a passion for sadistic torture wasn’t interested in making him scream today.

He forced himself back to his knees, and as soon as he did, the two men grabbed him under his arms and began dragging him toward the old Greek monastery. A few yards from the back entrance he managed to get his feet under him. When the guards let go of him, he leaned heavily against the stone wall while Argo retrieved a key from his pocket. When the door swung open a blast of sour air stole his breath. Whatever was down there was dead, or close to it.

Pedro pulled him away from the wall and that’s when he saw the steep stairwell that led down into the bowels of the sanctuary. There was no way in hell he was going down those narrow steps on his own power.

“Move. I don’t have all day to babysit your ass.”

Pedro gave him a shove and he reached out and saved himself from eating another rock by grabbing on to the door.

Argo took a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket, shook one out and pinched it between his lips. Firing it up, he said, “A smoke takes me four and a half minutes. See you at the bottom.”

With the clock ticking, he shuffled forward and flattened out one hand against the cool stone wall. Then, like an old man, one step at a time, he started down the narrow steps as the faint smell of tobacco was swallowed up by the stench below.

With each painful step he imagined Argo’s cigarette between his own lips. Imagined inhaling the nicotine—what he wouldn’t give for a little buzz right now.

You can make it, he told himself. Slow and easy. One step at a time.

A smoke takes me four and a half minutes. See you at the bottom .

In the old days he would have taken the steps four at a time. Hell, in the old days he would have turned on the two guards and snapped both their necks in less than… four and a half minutes .

He never let go of the wall, and like an infant who had just learned to walk, he tested out his balance with each step he took.

He heard Argo and Pedro start down.

Three more steps.

Two.

One.

He came off the last step just as Pedro came up behind him. The guard looked disappointed that he’d managed to make it without falling on his face.

Out of breath, he sagged against the wall as Pedro pulled a wooden stick from the belt loop on his pants. One quick jab to his ribs and he was on his hands and knees.

The stick came at him again, this time it made contact with his bare ass and the hard whack drove him forward and he sprawled spread-eagle on his belly.

The caustic odor in the air burned his nostrils, and it reminded him that this hellhole was definitely a death trap. So this is it then, he decided. This was where he would die.

“We have our orders, Pedro?” Argo grumbled. “Get him on his feet.”

“Stupid orders, if you ask me.”

“Do you want to tell him that?” Argo asked. “Every man here is expendable. Even you and me. Now get him up.”

Pedro reached down and hauled him to his feet, then gestured down the corridor. “Move.”

He shuffled forward, heard voices in the distance. After he’d gone twenty yards he realized that what he was hearing was a chorus of moaning.

He continued on toward the noise, each step twice as painful as the one before it. The corridor took a hard left, and when it straightened out he was standing in a large circular dungeon—a dungeon of horrors.