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

  Somehow, though, she couldn’t quite make herself take even a tiny step backward. She told herself it was because she needed to be this close to him in order for him to perform the action she had requested—oh, all right, commanded—that he perform. Then she had to force herself to admit that although she did indeed need to be this close to him, that need hadn’t necessarily come about because she wanted him to free her bonds. No, her need in that moment stemmed from something else entirely, something Sara told herself she’d be better off not pondering.

  He was taller than she remembered, perhaps because she no longer wore the low heels she had initially been wearing, and his chin grazed the crown of her head when they made their first contact. It occurred to her then that this was the first time the two of them had actually physically touched each other, and somehow that made the gesture seem almost poignant.

  Before Sara had a chance to consider anything else, she felt his lips brushing over her forehead, and she realized he was doing just as she had asked—or, rather, commanded—he do, trying to remove her blindfold with his mouth. But he had trouble finding it at first. His coarse, unshaven jaw grazed her forehead and temple, and she remembered then how she had wondered what such a touch would feel like. Now, suddenly, she knew. It felt exquisite. Seductive. Arousing. His mouth began brushing against her sensitive flesh then, again over her forehead and temple, a good half-dozen times before he finally gripped the scrap of cloth with his teeth. And with every soft brush of his lips against her skin, with every faint breath that warmed her flesh, her heart gathered speed and beat more frantically against her ribs.

  Good heavens, she thought. How could he possibly be making her feel aroused at a time like this? Before she had time to consider that question, he had tugged her blindfold down from her eyes, then lower still, over her nose and mouth, until he could bend over enough that the fabric hung loosely around her neck. She couldn’t be sure in the dark, but he seemed not to straighten right away, but lingered a bit, inhaling deeply. She felt his warm breath dampen her sensitive flesh, and if she hadn’t known better, she would have sworn he dragged his open mouth lightly along the slender column of her throat before he rose to his full height again. Surely, though, that had only been a product of her overly heated imagination. Hadn’t it?

  Oh, good God, what had come over her?

  “You smell good,” he said as he pulled slowly away from her, surprising her. “You smell…sweet.”

  And although the exchange seemed completely inane considering their circumstances, Sara felt helpless not to respond. “It’s, ah… I suppose it’s the, um, the toiletries I use. They’re…um…” She expelled a nervous chuckle before finally managing to conclude, “It’s lavender.”

  In the darkness, she could discern nothing of Shane’s expression, but somehow she thought he smiled. “It’s nice,” he whispered. And something in that whisper warmed her entire body, inside and out.

  She swallowed with some difficulty, then turned her back to him. “Can you, ah—” She halted abruptly when she realized how rough her voice sounded, then took a deep breath and tried again. “Can you reach the ropes round my wrists?” she asked.

  She felt him turn around, too, and lifted her hands as much as she could, to the small of her back. He stooped down some, to meet her halfway, and she felt his fingers fumbling over the heavy nylon line they had used to bind them both. It took some doing, and a good amount of time passed as he worked at the loops and knots, but finally Sara felt the bonds loosening. She, too, began to work her hands and fingers, and with one final tug from Shane, and a last jerk of her own hand, she managed to free herself.

  Hastily, she shook the ropes to the floor, untied the blindfold from around her neck and tossed it aside, then went to work on the cords wrapped around Shane’s wrists. She had him freed in no time, and he immediately reached up to loosen his own blindfold. Even without the benefit of light, she knew he ripped it from his face and hurled to the floor as if it were the most despicable thing he had ever encountered.

  Then he cupped his hands roughly over Sara’s shoulders and pulled her close. For one scant second, she honestly thought he was going to kiss her, and she was stunned to realize she would have liked it very much if he did. But he only curled his fingers insistently into her shoulders and demanded furiously, “What the hell is going on?”

  Four

  Well, so much for more soft remarks about how good she smelled, Sara thought. Obviously he wanted to move on to more immediate—and more realistic—matters. Damn her luck.

  “You know very well what’s going on,” she said, hoping she didn’t sound as breathless as she felt. “We’re being held hostage by a dissident group in exchange for their demands.”

  His grip on her shoulders tightened, and he jerked her closer still, close enough that her body was flush against his. Once again she felt the heat of him mixing with her own, only this time the sensation was compounded by the frantic beating of his heart. It mimicked the wild acceleration of her own, and Sara grew almost dizzy in response.

  “That’s not what I meant,” he said. “I meant who the hell are you?”

  Sara hesitated only a moment before replying, “You know that, too, Mr. Cordello. I’m a friend of the queen’s who happens to be attending university near where you live. Her Majesty asked me if I might do her a favor and act as your escort on your journey to Penwyck. And as a loyal subject, I couldn’t possibly tell her no.”

  For a moment, his grip on her shoulders intensified even more. Then, suddenly, he pushed her gently away. “Right. Escort. Whatever.”

  She heard him begin to pace restlessly from one side of the tiny room to the other. “So where do you think we are, Miss Escort?”

  She answered his sarcasm with some of her own. “Well, it appears to be a small room, doesn’t it? Probably a pantry of sorts, judging by the lingering aromas of cinnamon and sage.”

  “And just where is this pantry, would you say?”

  “In a house, I imagine.”

  He grumbled something unintelligible under his breath, something Sara was certain she was better off not hearing. “And where do you think the house might be?” he asked impatiently.

  She sighed, losing interest in their derision. “I’m guessing Spain, or perhaps Portugal,” she told him. “Though, truly, I can’t be certain.”

  “How long do you think we’ll be here?”

  Again, she answered honestly. “I have no idea.”

  “Do you think we’ll survive?”

  Sara straightened, stiffening her spine. “We will if I have anything to say about it.”

  The muffled voices returned then, and both Sara and Shane turned toward the door. It opened as if they’d willed it to by their simple attention, and Fawn stood framed there with a small, battery-powered flashlight, a thermos and a basket. In the light that slanted through the door from behind her, Sara saw that they were indeed in a pantry, because beyond the flight attendant was a small, tidy kitchen. Without warning, Fawn tossed the flashlight toward Sara, and, even unprepared for the gesture, she caught it quite capably. Then the other woman extended the thermos and basket to Shane, who stood nearer her.

  “So you’ve saved me a bit of work and untied yourselves,” she said. “Well done.” She nodded toward Shane’s burdens and added, “There’s food and tea enough to get you through the night. Don’t think about escaping, because you’re well guarded, both inside the house and out. We’ve sent notice to the queen that we have you and that if she wants to see either of you again, alive and unharmed, then she’ll call off the alliances with Majorco and America. With any luck, in a few days, you’ll be in Penwyck. Without luck, in a few days, you’ll be lying by the side of the road somewhere with bullets lodged in your brains.”

  And with that, she closed the door and locked it again, her footsteps fading. Sara switched on the flashlight, and was a bit surprised to find that it actually worked. She was almost sorry it did, though, when she got a good look
at Shane’s face in the spastic light.

  Good heavens, he was angry, she thought. She told herself that his anger was directed at the Black Knights, but there was something in his look, too, that indicated at least part of his unhappiness was with her. As quickly as she had detected the anger, however, it vanished. Without even heeding what he was doing, he shoved both thermos and basket onto a shelf beside him.

  “I thought you were thirsty and starved,” Sara said. “Not that I wouldn’t be surprised to find the provisions tainted in some way, mind you, so I can understand your reluctance.”

  “Thirst and hunger are the least of my worries right now,” he said.

  Then he covered the distance between the two of them in three long strides. She was about to take an instinctive step in retreat when he lifted his hand to her face and brushed the backs of his bent knuckles gingerly over her right—and, she knew, bruised—cheek.

  “That bitch,” he said in a low, menacing voice. “I can’t believe I actually thought she was cute.”

  Somehow Sara refrained from pointing out that Fawn’s thighs were much too large, and her eyebrows much too heavy, and her demeanor much too obvious for her to ever be considered cute. Instead, she only said quietly, “I’m all right.”

  And then somehow she did force herself to take that step in retreat. Not because she was frightened of Shane. No, she was far more fearful of the way he made her feel standing this close. The soft brush of his fingers over her skin had just been too exquisite for words.

  “I’ve encountered worse than Fawn over the years,” she added.

  He grinned, but there wasn’t an ounce of happiness in his expression. “Have you now?”

  She nodded slowly. “I was on the girls’ cricket team at school. And we were a vicious lot, I assure you.”

  Shane dropped his hand back to his side, and blew out an exasperated breath. “So what do we do now?”

  Sara dipped her head toward the basket and thermos. “Do you want to risk eating something?”

  He didn’t turn his attention in that direction, but nodded. “I don’t think it’ll hurt us. Something tells me they don’t want us dead just yet.”

  Oh, no, Sara agreed silently. She was sure the two of them were of much more use to the Black Knights alive. For now, at any rate.

  “Then shall we?” she said.

  He nodded again. “Sure. Your place or mine?”

  Shane palmed his weary eyes, scrubbed his hands over his face, and wished like hell that he had access to a razor. And a sink. And a bar of soap. And—hey, why not?—a really big bottle of Scotch. He had no idea how much time had passed since he and Sara had been thrown into this little room, but they had long ago finished off the stale bread and weak tea that their captors had given them, and they’d both been allowed to take a couple of bathroom breaks. Not that knowing the time would have helped him out, anyway. He was still on Pacific Standard Time himself. His gut told him that the sun was just now rising over the east coast of the U.S.—because he was really in the mood for a dawn patrol surf—which would make it midafternoon where they were.

  Not that he had any major plans for the day or any important appointments he had to keep. So what was the big deal, right?

  He told himself he should try to get some sleep, that he was useless to himself and Sara in his current state of exhaustion. Although he’d nodded off once or twice since they’d eaten, he hadn’t been able to do anything more than doze intermittently. He supposed he was still a little buzzed over all the adrenaline that had pumped through his body in the last few days, ever since receiving that fateful phone call from Marcus and the queen of Penwyck. Between that and this little episode with the Black Knights, his body and mind both were on overload. He guessed he shouldn’t be surprised that sleep eluded him.

  He glanced over at his companion to find that she suffered from no such problem herself. In fact, Sara had succumbed to her own exhaustion and fallen into a deep sleep a long time ago—though he wasn’t sure exactly how long. Hell, he couldn’t be sure about much of anything at this point. Except for the fact that Sara Wallington looked pretty damned adorable when she slept.

  Her pink sweater and white blouse were smudged with dirt and dust in a number of places now, and her crisp tailored skirt was more than a little sooty and rumpled. Her stockings bore a long run in one of the legs, and the hijackers had taken her shoes along with his own. Her hair had long ago spilled from its terse binding, and now it cascaded in a tangle over her shoulders and forehead. He’d been surprised to see that it was slightly curly, so tightly had she had it bound. Even the shiner she sported courtesy of Fawn the Terrible couldn’t harden her appearance. She was still Miss Pink Sweater and Pearls, even if the terrorists had swiped her pearls along with her shoes.

  Still, there was something about her current state of disorder that made Shane smile, because it hinted at a rash, untamed nature that might lurk beneath her carefully created, pink-sweatered exterior. And even though she’d been through hell, she’d managed to hang on to her spirit and her courage and her dignity. She might be pink sweaters and pearls, but there was steel and fire beneath them. And all Shane could think about at the moment was what an appealing bundle of contradictions she was, and about how very much he wanted to wake her up and make love to her right here.

  Whoa. Hold on thar, Babalooie. Make love? To Miss Pink Sweater? Was he crazy?

  It was the weirdest damned thing he’d ever thought. Here he was, in a situation that defied reality, his life hanging in the balance, and suddenly he wanted to make love to a woman he’d met only a couple of days ago. Certainly an immediate physical response to a woman wasn’t exactly uncharacteristic behavior for Shane. But it was unusual for him to want a woman with the vigor that he wanted Sara at that moment.

  He told himself he shouldn’t be surprised by the intensity of his response, and that it was the very nature of their bizarre circumstances that probably generated it. Hadn’t he read somewhere that being in a dangerous situation heightened a person’s awareness and created an artificial sort of intimacy with anyone else who might be caught up in the perilous doings? So of course he shouldn’t be surprised by his reaction to Sara right now. But he was. Even danger and peril shouldn’t make him feel this way about a woman. Especially a woman like her. Because, in spite of the steel and fire, she was much too decent and much too sweet for the kind of thoughts he was having about her.

  Even if she was lying about who she was.

  Oh, he didn’t doubt she was a student. She was much too…too…too studious not to be. But she for sure wasn’t majoring in English or home ec or library science, as he had originally supposed. Not unless it was a front for something else. He just wished he knew who and what she was and why she was misleading him.

  He shoved his fingers vigorously through his hair again, as if he were trying to literally push the troubling thoughts out of his brain. Man, he was tired. He couldn’t remember a time when he’d felt this exhausted, not even when he’d pulled a double shift hauling bricks after a day-long surfing tourney last year. He closed his eyes, thinking maybe if he just sat still enough, cleared his mind enough, he might fall into the same kind of deep slumber that Sara had fallen into.

  No sooner had the thought unrolled in his head, however, than he heard her stirring on the other side of the tiny room. When he opened his eyes again, in the weakening light of the flashlight, he saw her push herself into a sitting position. She groaned as she extended her arms outward and launched herself into a stout stretch, and Shane tried not to notice how the action thrust her breasts against the thin white cotton of her shirt, tried not to think about how the sound she made was so like the one a woman uttered when she was thoroughly—sexually—satisfied.

  For a moment, she seemed not to remember that he was there, probably didn’t even recall the details of her current predicament. She looked like a woman just waking from a long sleep, and Shane was reluctant to say anything to hurry her awareness. Hell,
she deserved a few moments of forgetfulness when the reality to which she would finally awaken was so awful. So he only watched in silence as she pushed her arms over her head, then folded them behind her neck for another long stretch. The top button of her blouse freed itself when she did, revealing the merest hint of pale pink lace and ivory flesh beneath. And just like that, Shane went hard as a rock with his need to have her right now.

  Dammit. That was the last thing he needed right now.

  But he couldn’t take his eyes off of her as, with one final flexing of her fingers and one last lusty sigh, she eased herself out of her stretch. Slowly, she curled her legs behind herself and dropped her arms to her sides, leaning back on one hand as she settled the other in her lap. She rolled her head back and forth a time or two, then finally opened her eyes—her bewitching pale green eyes—and turned her gaze to Shane. Immediately, those eyes went wide, and he realized she had indeed, until that moment, forgotten where she was and what had been happening.

  And then, as if to illustrate, she said softly, “Damn. I was so hoping I’d only dreamed all that.”

  He smiled halfheartedly at the way she swore in such a dignified, rarefied voice, then murmured, “Hey, welcome to my nightmare.”

  She expelled a reluctant chuckle. “You mean our nightmare.”

  “Well, I guess I don’t mind sharing it,” he said. “If you insist.”

  She sighed wearily and cast her gaze around their meager prison. “Doesn’t look as if we have much choice, does it?”

  Man, he was loving her voice, loving the dulcet, cultivated accent and the soft pitch, and the way her tone went down at the end of a question instead of up. It was just so different from the way he talked himself, and so incredibly sexy. Especially now, because her voice sounded so refined while the rest of her looked so reckless. And now, with her looking the way she did and sounding the way she did…