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Her eyes were drawn again to the chair. She couldn't remember undressing herself, which meant...
'Good, you're awake.'
She froze, acutely aware of her near-nude state beneath the thin sheet, and blurted out unthinkingly, 'Did you undress me?'
'You passed out, and it seemed a pity to get your finery creased ... It isn't the first time, and I doubt it will be the last,' he mocked her, 'although normally my women don't pass out on me.'
The laughter in his eyes, and the knowledge that she was his prisoner, combined to form a hard, tight anger.
'I'm not one of your women,' she pointed out freezingly, 'and I object to being classed as one.'
Nico's face hardened, his eyes narrowing as he prised his shoulders away from the door and walked slowly towards the bed, careless of the fact that his only covering was the towel he had knotted round his hips. Saffron tried to drag her eyes away from the raw masculinity of his body, as pagan and malely beautiful as a Greek statue, only unlike marble, his flesh would be warm and responsive to touch.
'So you object, do you?' He was standing beside the bed and Saffron flinched under the cold fury of his eyes. 'Why, I wonder? Because you can't dominate me the way you've dominated your other lovers? Or is it because I get a response from you that they can't?'
'You don't!' She flung the words at him in heated denial without thinking, gasping as the bed depressed under his weight and he pinned her to it, arms either side of her body while he studied her flushed face.
'No?'
There was a wealth of cynical disbelief in the softly spoken word, and Saffron flinched as he bent towards her, turning her head wildly from side to side to escape the punitive force of male lips intent on branding her a liar, as they touched mockingly along the sensitive column of her throat, teasing apart compressed lips and tasting the soft sweetness she had fought to withhold from him with a sensuality that half shocked her.
'Stop acting the virgin!'
The words were more mocking than angry, the hand that had slid beneath the sheet swiftly expert in removing the barrier of her bra. Saffron tried to protest when the sheet was pushed aside, modesty outraged by the lazy appreciation in his dark grey eyes as they made a thorough inspection of creamy white flesh which had never been touched by the sun and rosy pink nipples.
'Clever girl,' he admired. 'Total nudity lacks challenge, and you have obviously learned that a man wants most what he must fight to obtain. That pale band of flesh suggests a modesty we both know you don't possess, and yet even knowing I find it very erotic to think I am seeing something that has been hidden from others. Very erotic,' he reaffirmed huskily, his fingers stroking slowly over the curves of her breasts and causing tiny spirals of pleasure to curl insidiously through her body. Against her will she was responding to him, and there was nothing she could do about it, Saffron thought bitterly. This was the price she paid for being inexperienced; if she had had the many lovers he had suggested she might have some inkling of how to preserve a cool facade; indeed, she might not need to—surely a woman of experience could not be as vulnerable to a single caress as she was to Nico's?
'You're trembling.'
'Because I hate you so much,' she told him. 'Hate and loathe you.'
'You do?' Amusement masked the anger glowing darkly in his eyes, but Saffron only had a moment to wonder why he should be so angry before his mouth came down on hers, hard hands trapping her head so that she was powerless to move. She moaned protestingly deep in her throat, straining to push him away, but Nico was too strong for her. Her small fists were captured, the fingers spread and placed against his skin, the roughness of male body hair tingling against her soft palms. Against her will she felt a response stir deep inside her, and as though he sensed what she was feeling the bruising pressure of his mouth eased as Nico teased and stroked her lips into soft surrender, small moans of pleasure lost against his throat as his lips moved slowly over her skin, tracing her collarbone, and then moving downwards to where his fingers still caressed the hardening peaks of her breasts.
Molten fire erupted inside her, a feverish need clamouring through her body. Beneath her lips his skin tasted salt and male, and oddly vulnerable. She could see the darkened colour tinging his cheekbones, his eyes dark with sexual desire.
'Nico ...' His name shivered past her lips, a plea for mercy, and a cry for fulfilment, and a shockwave of rejection shuddered through her as she felt him stiffen and slowly release her.
'You'd better get dressed. We've got to get back.' The flatly spoken words and the coldly dismissive curve of his back as he turned away from her were like a physical blow. She wanted to rage and scream, to ... To what? she asked herself bleakly; demand that he gave her the fulfilment her body was now craving? Sickness clawed at her stomach. What sort of woman was she? Always she had prided herself on her fastidiousness, on her refusal to indulge in sex for sex's sake, for cheap thrills, and yet here she was suffering the most acute pangs of sexual frustration over a man she loathed and despised. What was happening to her? She had read stories of the bitterly intense relationships that developed between captor and kidnapped; perhaps now she was experiencing them at first hand. She stole a glance at Nico's impassive back through downcast lashes, shuddering with the realisation of how he had awakened he
r senses to sensuality. Before, the male body had held no attractions for her; now she longed to touch the smooth skin of his back and feel his muscles clench in a need as great as her own; and yet she hated him. She ought to despise herself, but somehow her overriding emotion was one of frustration that he had turned his back on her. He got up and picked up his shirt, pulling it on, his hands reaching for the towel wrapped round him. Saffron touched her tongue to hot, dry lips, her eyes mesmerised by the taut suppleness of his body.
'I'm not the sideshow!'
The terse words shocked her into awareness, and the air left her lungs on a painful hiss as she dragged her eyes away,
'Here, take these and get dressed.'
She turned just in time to catch the clothes Nico threw her, her face scarlet as she realised her sudden movement had exposed the top half of her body, but unlike her, he seemed to have no inclination to let his eyes linger and grabbing the skirt and blouse, Saffron hurried into the bathroom the moment he turned his back.
When she re-emerged she found that breakfast had been brought to the room. The coffee tasted delicious after the food they had been eating at the farmhouse, and she drank several cups, before she realised that Nico had finished his breakfast and was waiting for her. Absurdly she wanted to prolong her time with him but there was nothing absurd about her reluctance to return to the farmhouse. She shivered, remembering what waited for her there.
'Come on. You've got to see the doctor and I want to send this tape off to your father. So far he's done everything we've told him, for your sake I hope he continues to do so.'
The doctor gave her cut a cursory glance and told Nico that it was healing well. He had insisted on accompanying her into the doctor's surgery, telling Saffron blandly that the doctor would see nothing odd in his determination. 'Italian men are loath to leave their women alone with other males, the good doctor will quite understand why I don't want him to be alone with my beautiful wife.'
Strangely enough that taunt hurt more than anything else that had happened to her. She knew she looked far from beautiful with her cropped hair and make-upless face; there was no need for Nico to rub salt in the wound and mock her for her lack of femininity.
Once outside he directed her steps towards the piazza where he had bought her clothes, never releasing his firm grip of her arm. Under her lashes Saffron watched him, wondering about him; about the events that had brought him to his present situation. He was plainly well educated and intelligent; he spoke English fluently and was far less volatile than she would have expected for an Italian. That he could control the other members of the gang was self-evident, and that in itself was no easy task, so qualities of leadership and diplomacy must be added to undeniable charm and shrewdness. Surely such a man could have made his mark in any number of legitimate careers, so why had he chosen to live outside the law? Was it the challenge of living in such close contact with danger; or was it simply the money that appealed to him? The answer was something she was never likely to know, Saffron decided, as he drew her into a small building which she realised belatedly was the post office.
