KIM LAWRENCE - The Blackmailed Bride

‘You should know, you probably delivered it,’ she retorted through gritted teeth.

‘Actually you ran full pelt into the wardrobe—solid mahogany. Renewable sources of course; the owners have a very green policy…’

This information did actually correspond with Kate’s own hazy recollection of the incident. ‘You make it sound as if I did it on purpose,’ she muttered truculently. ‘Actually, I had my eyes closed.’ Like now.

Her blue-veined eyelids flickered as she felt the pad of one fingertip brush aside a strand of hair from her forehead. Her mind supplied a vivid lifelike image—possibly aided by the fact she could still smell his elusive male scent—to go with the action. The image of long, sensitive, tapering fingers, very dark in dramatic contrast to her fair creamy skin, lingered in her mind as her stomach muscles began to quiver uncomfortably.

Keeping her eyes closed, she told herself, had nothing to do with being afraid of seeing his raw sex appeal up close. The light hurt her eyes—that was all.

‘From the look of your spectacle lenses, it wouldn’t have made much difference if you’d had them open,’ he murmured, his deep voice laced with disparaging amusement. ‘Does the light hurt your eyes?’

‘A little.’ Kate was willing to ignore this insulting slur on her eyesight. He had her glasses—she needed them, and much as it went against the grain it was time for a bit of pleading. ‘You’ve got my glasses? Give them to me.’ She opened her eyes. ‘Please,’ she added gruffly. ‘Being without them is like…like being naked.’ It was hard enough to explain the vulnerability of being short-sighted to anyone not similarly afflicted, but to someone as genetically perfect as this man it was probably a waste of breath.

His perfection was hard to miss this close too. She didn’t need her specs to assimilate the dark, brooding magnificence of his strong-boned features—looking at them alarmingly intensified the dizziness she was experiencing.

‘I’m afraid I stepped on them in the dark.’

‘You did it deliberately!’ she heard herself wail childishly.

‘They say your other senses compensate…’

Kate watched with total fascination as his long fingers made a stroking sensation a hair’s breath away from the pale skin of her forearm. As if those well manicured fingertips were electrified, the fine hairs on her skin became erect.

Was this the unnatural affinity she’d heard abductees developed with their kidnappers? she wondered hazily as her insides dissolved in the flood of scalding liquid heat which cascaded through her body. Like hell it is, Kate! Face facts! This is lust, sexual attraction—at least, on my side—plain and simple. His motivation for playing cat and mouse games were less immediately obvious.

‘…when one sense is compromised,’ the insidiously sexy drawl continued. ‘In my experience, closing my eyes often enhances and heightens tactile sensations…’

Her shameless brain immediately provided several steamy images of situations where he might feel obliged to close his eyes. The situations revealed in those fragmented images uniformly necessitated him being naked, his golden skin gleaming beneath a layer of sweat. The hoarse groan of pleasure she imagined being ripped from his throat was so realistic that a swiftly subdued whimper emerged from her own throat—this was getting out of hand.

So the man was incredibly good-looking, sinfully sexy and packed more masculinity into his little finger than most men did in their entire bodies… That was no excuse to lose the plot, Kate told herself sternly.

‘This might help that naked feeling you were talking about.’

Kate looked blankly from his enigmatic face to the creamy cotton scoop-necked nightdress he handed her. Her brain made the link between his words and the garment and she bit her lip. She wasn’t—was she?

She hardly dared, but she forced herself to look downwards at her own body—it could have been worse, but not much. Her skin looked dramatically pale against the black of the simple bra she wore; she couldn’t see them but she knew her matching pants would afford an equally stark contrast.

‘You took my clothes off!’ she choked, her voice shaking with outrage and suspicion. Was that all he’d done…?

‘I did,’ he confirmed, coolly unapologetic. ‘It seemed the most sensible thing to do under the circumstances. You were burning up.’

If she hadn’t been, she was now! With a fraught squawk of dismay, she belatedly slid beneath the duvet, leaving only her face and tousled ash-blonde hair peeking out.

One dark brow rose expressively. ‘There is really no need for a display of false modesty; women on the beach wear less than you are.’ One corner of his mouth lifted as a devilish gleam appeared in his eyes. ‘Considerably less, actually,’ he added drily. ‘Or are you afraid you’ll inflame my lust? Don’t…I have strong control.’

In other words, he wasn’t that desperate!

His languid drawl sent an extra-sharp stab of pain through Kate’s pounding skull. Though she never normally envied Susie her looks, at that moment she wouldn’t have minded having the equipment to make this man eat his contemptuous words.

‘Oh, yes, you struck me right off as someone oozing strong moral fibre,’ she sneered, oozing hostility. ‘And as for women on the beach, they haven’t been interfered with by a raving lunatic.’

‘Do you always have such lurid fantasies?’

Kate’s cheeks flamed. With one quirk of an eyebrow he’d managed to give the distinct impression he wouldn’t touch her with a ten foot barge pole. ‘None involving you!’

An honest girl, Kate knew she would in the future. It was inevitable; he was the sort of male that made the female unconscious run riot. She just hoped her fantasies would wait until she was safe in the bosom of her family—she refused to allow herself to contemplate if. She was going to get away from this man.

Javier saw her wince. ‘You really should not shout or get agitated,’ he remonstrated.

‘Advice from you I can do without.’

He gave a shrug. ‘I removed your clothes because you were dressed inappropriately for the weather conditions. Though ideally for a spot of larceny,’ he added slyly.

‘Are you calling me a thief?’ she gritted.

‘If the cap fits…?’

‘Takes one to know one…’ she countered childishly.

‘Takes a thief to catch a thief,’ he riposted without a pause.

‘Gosh, your colloquial English is really very good.’ I can’t believe I just said that…! I’ve been knocked unconscious, kidnapped, I’m lying as good as naked in a strange bed in the company of an indisputably dangerous man who could do anything at any moment and all I can do is admire his grammar…!

His heavy lids drooped hiding the expression in his deep set eyes momentarily from Kate. ‘The British, they’re just priceless.’

‘Pardon?’

Those lush dark lashes lifted off his cheekbones revealing cynical blue. ‘Shades of the empire; you refuse to learn another language and delight in commenting on foreigners’ funny accents.’

Kate, who was mortified by this interpretation of her unthinking observation, couldn’t help but observe that his deep velvety drawl could be classified as many things, including dangerously seductive, but funny wasn’t one of them!

‘I didn’t mean it like that!’ she exclaimed, horrified to have him lump her together with an unpleasant, ignorant minority she had nothing whatever in common with. ‘Anyhow, it’s an absurd generalisation, and I was not being patronising.’ Why am I making such a fuss? she wondered eyeing the good-looking cause of her discomfort resentfully. His good opinion is not something I’m going to lie awake at nights thinking about—now his mouth, that was another matter, her wilful thoughts added naughtily.