Taming The Prince (Crown & Glory Book 8) Read online

  The man turned his attention to Shane and grinned an evil little smile. “Well, we don’t know that for sure, now, do we? And neither do the king and queen. Oh, you have value to us, Mr. Cordello. You have no idea how much. Now return to your seats,” the man repeated. “We’ll be landing shortly.”

  “Where?” Sara demanded.

  He chuckled. “As if we’d tell you.” Then he smiled. “All right. Not Penwyck. There. That should narrow it down for you.”

  “And what will happen when we get there?” Sara commanded.

  The man’s smile broadened. “You ask too many questions, Miss Wallington. You and Mr. Cordello are safe for the time being, provided you do exactly as you are told and don’t try to escape. But if you try anything improper, we will kill you.” He turned his icy gaze on Shane then, too. “Both of you. In the world of the Black Knights, all people are created equal, whether they be a mere student or heir to the throne.”

  “Meaning all life is equally cheap to you,” Sara said flatly.

  In reply, the man only turned his gaze back to her and smiled that grim smile again.

  And somehow Shane knew that none of it was true. Not that the Black Knights were activists. Not that all people were created equal in their world. Not that their cause was a noble one. Not that he and Sara were safe.

  And not that Sara was a mere student, either. He just wished he knew for sure who—and what—she really was.

  Sara wasn’t surprised when she exited the jet approximately two hours later—with her hands bound behind her back and her cheek throbbing from where the ferocious Fawn had struck her—to find that they had landed on a deserted, poorly lit tarmac out in the middle of nowhere. Of course, she couldn’t be positive that two hours had passed, but she was reasonably sure that was how long they had remained in flight after the hijacking. She’d been forced to guesstimate the passage of time, as the Black Knights had taken her watch. And her pearls. And her textbooks. And her purse and luggage. And her shoes.

  Strangely, it was the textbooks about which she was most concerned. She did hope the Black Knights didn’t examine them too closely. And she hoped she got them back eventually. They’d been frightfully expensive.

  She had only been able to guess at what their final destination might be, as well, though she had done her best to gauge the jet’s direction at one point by opening the screen over the window beside her seat and noting the position of the moon and stars. Unfortunately, one of the terrorists had seen what she was doing—hence her tied hands—and had slammed the screen back down again. Before he’d managed to do so, however, Sara had been able to discern with some confidence that they had been heading southeast. Which would have put them in Spain, or perhaps Portugal.

  Nevertheless, with it being night, she had been unable to determine anything in the landscape that might have proven to be a landmark—no mountains, no shorelines, no lakes, nothing. The air was cooler and crisper than what she was accustomed to, not to mention surprisingly windy, leading her to believe they were at a higher elevation than one might find in Penwyck. But with so many variables in place, she honestly couldn’t say with any real certainty where they were.

  Of one thing, however, she was completely certain: she and Shane could be dead by dawn if they didn’t behave exactly as they were told.

  The Black Knights were a nasty group, completely without morals or scruples. They wouldn’t balk at killing a young student or a man who might be king. They wouldn’t balk at killing anyone. Over the last decade, they’d been responsible for a number of assassination attempts on King Morgan, and numerous episodes of political sabotage. Oh, they’d started off as a small faction of seemingly ineffective upstarts, but it hadn’t been long before they’d organized into a formidable enemy of the crown. They were even suspected of kidnapping Prince Owen of Penwyck, and Sara couldn’t help wondering now just how deeply their involvement had run in a number of other intrigues that had plagued the royal family over the years. Certainly they were capable of just about anything.

  Her right cheek throbbed again, reminding her that she probably had a very impressive black eye by now. Honestly, she wouldn’t have thought the tittering Fawn would have even known how to make a fist, let alone use one. Just the first of many mistakes that Sara now realized she had been making since leaving L.A. The first had been in trusting that the crew who boarded Her Majesty’s jet in L.A. were the same ones who regularly flew with the royal family—clearly, they were not. The second had been in assuming that their flight would be a boring, uneventful one—clearly, it had not been.

  Sara mentally berated herself yet again. Good heavens, the most important lesson she’d learned as a first-year student had been “Trust no one and nothing.” But no. She had been under the spell of Shane Cordello, too wrapped up in dreamy fantasies about his blue eyes and silky hair and what it would be like to—

  Drat it all, she was doing it again. It was no wonder they were in their current predicament, so foolishly and school-girlishly had she been behaving. Well, no more of that. Sara Wallington would not be caught with her pants down again. To put it in the charming American slang.

  The Black Knights had by now herded Shane off the jet, and she saw that, although they’d allowed him to don his denim jacket, they’d taken his shoes, too. And, like Sara, his hands were bound behind his back, as well. They’d separated the two of them after that initial confrontation, putting Shane at the front of the cabin and Sara in the back. He didn’t seem much the worse for wear at the moment, she noted, though he did look even more tired—and angry—than he had before. When he glanced over at her, his expression went harder still, and she realized his focus lingered on her cheek. Oh, yes. Even in the darkness, she must look like the very devil—or, at the very least, like the new world heavyweight champion—if his expression was any indication.

  The biggest of the Black Knights pushed him toward Sara, and Shane stumbled a bit before regaining his equilibrium and righting himself once more. Somehow he seemed even larger as he completed the action, as if he were flexing every one of his—not unimpressive—muscles as he straightened. His expression was murderous when he stood upright again, and it occurred to Sara that, between the two of them, if no others joined the dissidents, they might stand a chance of escape. All she had to do was plan well. And wait for the proper moment. And hope that Shane Cordello was as good as he looked.

  Ah, for escape plans, she meant.

  “You okay?” he asked softly when the Black Knight who had shoved him toward Sara returned to his compatriots and began to confer with them in low tones.

  She nodded, thinking his concern was sweet…before halting herself from thinking about him at all. No need to get lost down that route again. She’d already caused enough trouble that way. “I’m fine,” she told him quietly. “Just feeling very stupid at the moment.”

  He looked puzzled. “Why should you feel stupid?”

  “Because I should have been prepared for something like this,” she told him. “I never should have allowed it to happen.”

  His expression grew even more confused. “How could you possibly have been prepared for something like this? And why should the responsibility for it happening be yours anyway?”

  In response, Sara only shook her head. Things were much too complicated to try and explain it all to him at present.

  “What’s going to happen to us now?” he asked. But he didn’t sound fearful or anxious when he voiced the question. No, there was only hostility and contempt in his tone.

  “I imagine they’ll hold us hostage while they make their demands,” she told him.

  “What kind of demands?”

  “Judging by their comments on the jet, they’ll threaten to harm you if Penwyck doesn’t cancel its alliances with Majorco and America.”

  “You mean it’s my fault that we’re in this situation.”

  She looked at him, surprised. “I didn’t say that.”

  “You didn’t have to.”
/>   “Shane, I’m not blaming you for this.”

  “I know. You’re blaming yourself.”

  “I’m blaming those bastards who hijacked the plane and took us hostage. No one else.”

  “But if I hadn’t come…”

  He left the sentence unfinished. Not that it needed finishing. In spite of that, Sara wanted to finish it for him, wanted to point out that if he hadn’t come, then she never would have met him, never would have seen his beautiful blue eyes or his bewitching smile that made her heart turn over, or—

  Drat. She truly must put an end to all this fantasizing, or else the two of them really would be dead by dawn.

  “Neither of us could have known something like this would happen,” she said.

  He inhaled a deep breath, as if he were going to argue with her again. Instead, though, he only asked, “So what happens after they make their demands?”

  Sara tried to smile reassuringly, but she had a feeling the gesture fell well short of its mark. “I wish I could tell you that we’ll be safe until those demands are met or refused, but I can’t be certain about our safety at all. Nothing is certain with this group. They’re a ghastly bunch. And I can tell you that their demands, regardless of what they are, will almost certainly be refused, because the royal family has a zero tolerance when it comes to dealing with the Black Knights.” She hardened her expression, so that he would understand she was perfectly serious when she told him, “They’re capable of anything. Even murder.”

  “You talk like you know a lot about them,” Shane said.

  Oh, she knew more than he realized, Sara thought. She’d made it her life’s work to know about the Black Knights and other factions like them. She intended to make a career out of disbanding and punishing such groups. That small, private college near Santa Barbara that she attended was a world-renowned facility for counterterrorist training. But, of course, there was no reason why Shane needed to know that. In fact, the less he knew about her, the better off they’d both be.

  “I’m from Penwyck,” she said by way of an explanation. “Everyone in Penwyck knows about the Black Knights. They’ve gone out of their way over the years to make their presence there known.” Which was certainly true, Sara reminded herself. So she wasn’t voicing a deception to Shane when she said it. Not really.

  He had opened his mouth to say something more, but he closed it again suddenly, staring at something in the distance behind Sara. When she turned to follow his gaze, she saw two automobile headlights bearing down on them from a few hundred feet down the tarmac. They ended up being attached to a big, black Mercedes sedan that seemed not to emerge from the dark night so much as it did become a part of it. The windows, too, were darkened by tinting, so she couldn’t see who was driving. One of the Black Knights approached the car as it rolled to a stop, but the window went down just a few centimeters—enough to allow conversation between driver and terrorist that was too quiet for Sara to hear.

  After a few moments—and what appeared to be a rather heated exchange, she couldn’t help noticing—the Black Knight turned to his companions and signaled them to escort Sara and Shane into the back seat of the car. Of course, they didn’t so much escort the two of them as they did manhandle and dump them, but the end result was the same. Sara and Shane were forced into the back of the car between two of the Black Knights, behind a smoked glass screen that prohibited them from seeing the occupants of the front seat, a point which soon became moot anyway, as she and Shane were promptly blindfolded.

  The group rode in silence for a good half hour, Sara deduced, all of it uphill, she also noticed, until the car finally came to a stop. Still blindfolded, she and Shane were shepherded out of the car and across what felt like a grassy yard, to an unevenly cobbled walkway. Then she was nudged up three steps—wooden steps, because they creaked and felt warped—and through a door that was then closed, and ominously locked, behind her. She felt Shane’s presence through all of this, even though no one spoke a word. She thought the Black Knights would separate the two of them, but they were both shoved into a room together. Then she heard another door closed, and locked, behind them, followed by the sound of receding footsteps and muffled voices. And then she realized that she and Shane were alone for the first time in hours. Well, alone in a room, at any rate. She was certain they were still under guard stationed elsewhere in the building.

  The room where they found themselves smelled dusty and faintly of cinnamon, and Sara sensed that the dimensions were quite small. Her suspicion was confirmed when, in just two small steps, she bumped into what seemed to be shelves. Empty shelves. Four steps in the opposite direction had her bumping into more.

  “Shane,” she said softly. Only after voicing the word aloud did she realize it was the first time she had called him by his given name, and she couldn’t help grinning a little wryly. She supposed there was nothing like being taken hostage with someone to breed immediate intimacy with him.

  “What?” he whispered back.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Gee, except for being tied up, blindfolded and taken hostage by dissident traitors, not to mention exhausted, thirsty and starving to death, yeah. I’m just peachy keen.”

  Well, at least he hadn’t lost his sense of humor, Sara thought. Sort of. “I’m going to move toward you,” she said. “When I’m standing in front of you, use your teeth to remove my blindfold. Then I’ll turn around and you must untie my hands.”

  He said nothing in response to that, something Sara found curious. She would have thought he’d want to be free of his bonds, and he couldn’t be free of them until she was free of hers. Perhaps he’d received a blow to the head at some point in the evening, she thought, and now his wits were addled.

  “Shane?” she said again.

  “What?” he grumbled.

  “Can you do as I’ve asked?”

  He hesitated a moment, then snapped, “You haven’t asked me to do anything. You’re issuing orders like a drill sergeant.”

  Strangely, she felt a giggle bubble up at that. Oh, dear. All the exhaustion and tension and upheaval of the last two days were definitely catching up with her. She was getting hysterical. Now, now, Sara, none of that, she cautioned herself. Still, she couldn’t quite keep the—albeit erratic—laughter from her voice when she replied, “Well, my goodness, aren’t we just behaving like the slighted debutante?”

  “Debutante, hell,” Shane retorted. “I just don’t see who died and made you general.”

  “Well, the family name is Wallington,” she reminded him. “It’s not such a far cry from Wellington.”

  There was another curious silence from him, then, “Oh. Well. Yeah. Okay. But I still don’t see why you’re suddenly the one in charge.”

  Sara bit back an exasperated sound. Men. Honestly. They were such delicate creatures. Trying again, she said—in a sweeter tone this time—“Please, Mr. Cordello, if you could be so kind, I’d very much appreciate your liberating me from my bonds. If it pleases you, I’ll move in your general direction, and if you have a moment to spare, perhaps you could orally remove my blindfold, hmm? Would that be doable, do you think? It makes more sense, after all, since you’re the taller of us. I might have a bit of a problem using my mouth on you.”

  And oh, how she wished she hadn’t said those last words, Sara thought immediately after voicing them. Because even though she had not meant them the way they sounded, and even in their current situation, when she should have her mind on a million other things, the thought of using her mouth on Shane was just too, too tempting not to consider it. As if she even had a choice in the matter. Because try as she might since meeting him, Sara had been unable to think of little other than Shane Cordello. Now, bringing her mouth into it…

  Oh, dear.

  He seemed to be thinking about her using her mouth on him, too, because yet another silence ensued, and it was infinitely more awkward than any of the others had been. She was actually grateful to hear him eject another impati
ent sound when he finally did, because it told her that he, at least, was able to move his mind on to other matters. At least she hoped that was what it meant. She’d hate to think that he was thinking about her using her mouth on him as she was thinking about using her mouth on him and feeling impatient as a result. Unless of course, that impatience resulted from the fact that he was so anxious for the two of them to get down to—

  Drat. She was doing it again. Thinking errant, erotic thoughts about Shane Cordello. While being held hostage, no less. What on earth was wrong with her?

  “You don’t have to pour it on so thick, Miss Wallington,” he finally said, and with the mention of pouring thickness, her thoughts once again turned to the, ah, unacceptable. Then she realized he was talking about flattery and not—Ah…he was talking about something other than what she was thinking about. “I’m not a child,” he added petulantly.

  Oh, she was frightfully aware of that. But all she offered in response to his assurance was a noncommittal “Mmm.”

  “Come over here,” he said.

  And there was something in his voice, something velvety and seductive and rough, that sliced through the darkness and made her skin fairly prickle with anticipation. What an odd reaction, Sara thought. Odder still was the way she so automatically and immediately moved toward him. Because she realized she was responding to his command not because it was one she had initially proposed herself, but because this time he was the one uttering it. And somehow, with that one simple utterance, everything between them changed.

  Sara moved forward uncertainly, sensing where he was without seeing him. And blindfolded as she was, she realized she was acutely aware of him in ways she hadn’t been initially. She could smell him now, a musky mix of manly scents that combined to put her senses on red alert. And she registered his breathing, deep and low and a little ragged. As she drew nearer still, she felt the heat of his body mingling with her own, and the very air surrounding them seemed to grow damp and heavy with it. And she quickly recognized the fact that she’d misjudged his distance when she bumped softly into him, her front to his.