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'Even raving nymphomanics don't necessarily want every man they set eyes on,' she threw at him bitterly. 'What do you do when you aren't doing this for a living? Hire yourself out to middle-aged millionairesses?'
She gasped when his hands grasped her body beneath her armpits, threshing wildly as she tried to kick his shins. One brief glance at the icy fury of his expression told her that she had gone too far. Far enough for him to kill her now? she wondered. All at once she wanted to beg him not to torture her any more, to make her death swift and painless. Her eyes darkened with the burden of her emotions, the ragged urchin cut Olivia had given her unintentionally emphasising the delicacy of her bone structure and the fragility of her body, almost too thin after the weight loss of the last few days.
'Saffron ...'
She veiled her eyes immediately, hating the tinge of compassion in his voice, rejecting the pity she could sense in him.
'What's the matter?' she jeered. 'Having second thoughts? Why don't you mention them to Olivia? I'm sure she'll have no problem in disposing of me when the time comes. She'll enjoy it.'
Only bitter anger had prompted the words, but Saffron sensed by the tenseness of his body that Nico was reacting to them.
'Perhaps she will,' he agreed smoothly. 'And if you're trying to goad me into losing my self-control ...' He muttered something under his breath as the moonlight revealed the contempt in her eyes and then she was in his arms, feeling the heat coming off his body in the subtropical evening, his lips tracing the exposed line of her throat, his hands moulding her body against him.
Saffron tried to fight him, but his strength was too great. Fear leapt inside her when she felt Nico's hands on the bare skin of her back, stroking the supple contours of her spine, but it was a fear that soon gave way to spiralling tremors of pleasure.
Her lips parted in mute invitation without her being aware of it, her gasp of shock when Nico's hands moved round to cup her breasts lost in the warmth of his mouth on hers.
She forgot what had led up to this encounter; what had happened between them already and the reason she was here with him at all, as some deep primaeval instinct rose up to subdue everything but the need he was skilfully arousing within her. She had expected violence, but this was something else, and she had no power to withstand his subtle arousal of her untutored body.
When her bra was pushed aside to allow his seeking fingers access to the rounded warmth of her breasts, she was beyond caring that he was taking without permission the intimacy she had never allowed anyone else. When her breasts swelled and hardened to his touch she trembled with shock.
She shivered when one hand left her skin to slide possessively down to her hip, holding her so intimately against his own body that she was immediately aware of his arousal. Her flesh seemed to burn from the contact. She wanted to push him away, but instead her body seemed to cling erotically to his her arms lifting to encircle his shoulders, her breasts pressed against the hard warmth of his chest. She felt him tugging at her blouse, but didn't realise what he was doing until she felt the rough scrape of his body hair against the softness of her flesh, the contact instantly arousing. A strange sensation curled through the pit of her stomach, a husky moan torn from her throat as Nico's thumb stroked sensuously over the throbbing tip of her breast.
The male lips which had been exploring the soft vulnerability of her throat ceased their slow torment and the dark head bent. Tense excitement churned through her, desire flaring moltenly inside her as her fingers curled feverishly into his thick dark hair.
'Nico!'
His reactions were swifter than hers, and he had released her and stepped away before Olivia reached them, but Saffron didn't think for one moment that the Italian girl was deceived.
'We were concerned about you,' Olivia told him, 'you have been gone for so long.'
'Concerned?' Nico drawled coolly, 'or curious?'
'You have been making love to her!' Olivia blazed furiously, suddenly abandoning restraint. 'You have been making love to the little whore!'
'It is not a crime. Indeed one might almost call it one of the perks of the job. Surely you are not jealous, cara?'
He was deliberately baiting the other girl, Saffron realised, although she could not understand why, any more than she could understand what had driven him to touch her in the way that he had.
Her flesh still burn
ed in memory of that touch, and no matter how much she berated herself now, she could not deny that she had responded to him. Her response had been purely physical, she assured herself; in her situation who would not act in a way that was out of character? But why had she experienced desire for Nico when all the other men she knew left her cold? It was just that she was in a highly charged emotional state, and those emotions had betrayed her.
Engrossed in her thoughts, she hadn't been aware of the fury in Olivia's eyes, but she was made abruptly conscious of the other girl's feelings on the way back to the farmhouse, when Olivia pushed her deliberately out of the way, almost causing her to stumble in the darkness. She had made a dangerous enemy in Olivia, Saffron acknowledged later when she had been locked in her room for the night, and the look she had given Saffron as they entered the farmhouse earlier had promised punishment for daring to usurp her own position with Nico.
Olivia was welcome to him, Saffron decided wearily. Oh, she herself had been attracted to him initially, but that attraction hadn't lasted once she realised what he was. Once again the desire for revenge burned bitterly inside her, but it was a revenge she wasn't likely to get, she acknowledged unhappily, unless she planned to return from the dead to haunt him.
So slowly that she hadn't realised it was happening until it was too late, she had come to accept the fact of her own death. Occasionally in a downhearted frame of mind she had contemplated the thoughts that must run through a person's mind when death was imminent, wondering what hers would be, but somehow, even knowing what was going to happen to her it was difficult to focus her thoughts on the actuality of it. Catholics approaching death were bidden to prepare themselves for it, but how did one prepare? Saffron wondered. With prayers? With forgiveness of one's enemies? She wasn't capable of either.
It was almost dawn before she drifted off to sleep, lulling herself into a false sense of security by pretending that she was a small child again held safe in her father's arms.
CHAPTER FIVE
'Not quite what we're used to, is it?'
Saffron closed her ears to Olivia's insults, recoiling automatically as she always did from the indignity of being watched while she stripped and washed as best she could in the small bowl of water that was supplied. However, this morning there was even more resentment than usual in the Italian girl's voice, and Saffron knew why.
Almost from the moment of her kidnap Olivia had been at pains to imply to Saffron that she and Nico were lovers, but Saffron had sensed early on that the Italian girl was not as sure of Nico as she like to pretend.
