Bound To Her Desert Captor

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‘Any idea where the call originated from?’ he asked Tarik.

‘Unfortunately not. It was likely made from a burner phone and it was sent through several different carriers. Whoever scrambled the transmission is good.’

Chad had scrambled the transmission, of that Jag was one hundred percent certain; he’d hired the kid in the first place because he was a borderline genius with technology. Anger coursed through him, a hot and welcome replacement for the impotence he’d felt since she’d gone.

He turned to stare outside the window, brooding. On the one hand he was happy that his sister was safe and well, but the reality was that she could have been forced into making that phone call. Not that she’d sounded forced. She’d sounded full of vigour. Almost buoyant. A state he hadn’t seen her in for quite a while. A state he would welcome if the memory of what had transpired three years ago wasn’t like a smoking gun in his mind.

Then there was the obvious assumption that if she hadn’t been forced to leave Santara then she’d gone somewhere with Chad James of her own free will, and that raised a whole host of ugly questions Jag didn’t want to consider. Questions like, what were they doing together that Milena wasn’t able to tell him about? Like maybe she was considering not going through with the marriage to the Crown Prince of Toran? Questions like, was she unhappy, and, if so, why hadn’t she come to him the way she used to when she was a child?

He rubbed his fingers hard across his forehead. Well, of course she’d been coerced. There was no other way to look at this. Just as he had coerced Regan James into coming to the palace. He recalled the moment she had fainted when she had discovered that he was actually the King, the dead weight of her body as she’d slumped in his arms. He’d had a lot of reactions from women in the past when they’d found out he was royalty—everything from obsequious preening to outright manipulation—but he’d never had a woman faint on him before. Which had been a good thing because right before that he’d nearly given in to an urge he’d been fighting all night and leant down and kissed her. In public! He didn’t know what bothered him about that the most: the fact that his inimitable self-control had taken a long hike, or that he would have shocked the hell out of those watching.

Shocked himself, he’d quickly scooped her into his arms and taken her out to his waiting SUV. She’d come to fairly quickly in the car, demanding that he return her to her hotel, but he had calmly reminded her that it had been her choice to come with him and that she was now out of options.

Well aware that his behaviour had been less than stellar with regard to the American woman, he pushed thoughts of her, and his sister, from his head and picked up the raft of reports he needed to sign off. ‘These can go to Helen to have the corrections worked up, these can go back to Finance, and this one I still have to read. Tell Ryan I’ll get to it later tonight.’

‘Very good.’

He rubbed the back of his neck. ‘For once I hope that’s it for the night.’ He gave Tarik a faint smile and saw the old man hesitate. It was only the slightest of movements but Jag knew him too well to miss it. His body immediately shifted into combat mode. ‘What is it? And please tell me it has nothing to do with the American.’

As much as he had been trying to keep her presence in the palace under wraps, she had been trying to stop him. Banging on the door of her suite, demanding that she be given her phone and her computer, demanding that she be released, demanding that he come to her. But Jag didn’t want to go to her. Already her voice and the memory of her scent had imprinted themselves on his brain. He couldn’t imagine that seeing her was going to make that any better.

‘Unfortunately it does. She is refusing to eat,’ Tarik said.

‘Refusing to eat?’ Jaeger felt his stomach knot. ‘Since when?’

‘Since last night, sir. She did not eat her evening meal and today she has rejected all food.’

Jag’s jaw hardened. If Regan thought she was going to make herself ill by not eating she had another thing coming.

Trying not to overreact, he pushed himself to his feet. ‘What time is her evening meal due to be delivered?’

‘It has been delivered. She sent it away.’

Jaeger scowled. ‘Have my dinner taken to her suite in half an hour.’

He made to leave but again Tarik hesitated.

‘Please tell me you’ve left the best to last,’ Jag drawled.

Tarik grimaced. ‘Not exactly, Your Majesty, but I have it in hand.’ He passed Jaeger a printout from a local news website. On it were two photos of himself and Regan standing close together. They must have been snapped by one of the patrons in the hotel, the camera perfectly capturing the moment she had discovered he was the King: her eyes wide, lips softly parted, wild mane cascading down her back like a silken waterfall. The next was right before she’d fainted. Jag had tangled his fingers through her hair to cup the nape of her neck, his other hand tight around her waist. Her face had been upturned, her mouth inches from his own. Would those pink lips have tasted as pure and sweet as they looked? Would the skin of her abdomen feel as soft beneath his fingertips as the nape of her neck? Would—?

Tarik cleared his throat. Jag inhaled deeply, uncomfortably aware that his trousers were fitting a little snugger than they were before. What the hell was wrong with him?

‘Fortunately they were taken down before any damage was done,’ Tarik informed him. ‘And the woman’s name was not discovered. But I thought you should be informed.’

‘Of course I should be informed.’ He glanced at the images again, an idea forming in his mind at rapid speed. If he was going to detain Regan James until her brother returned then by damned he would make her useful to him. ‘Republish the photos.’

‘Your Majesty?’

‘Make sure her name is attached and that the images are picked up by the international Press. If the sight of her in my arms doesn’t bring her brother out of the woodwork, I don’t know what will.’

Tarik looked at him as if he wanted to protest but Jag wasn’t in the mood to listen. He wanted a hot meal, a cool shower and a peaceful night’s sleep. Since meeting her the American woman had interfered with the latter; now it seemed she would be interfering with the first two as well.

* * *

Regan’s stomach grumbled loudly in the silent room and she pressed her palm against her belly. ‘It’s been one day,’ she told her objectionable organ. ‘People can survive a lot longer than that without food, so stop complaining.’

She didn’t know exactly how long a human being could survive without food, but she recalled various movies about survival and knew it was more than a day.

Mind you she was starving and her errant brain advised her that food would help to keep her strength up. And that the arrogant ruler of Santara wouldn’t care about her eating habits anyway.

But it wasn’t just the lack of food bothering her. It was the boredom and worry. She’d come to Santara to make sure Chad was okay. Not only was she not doing that but she wasn’t doing anything at all. She’d never had so much time on her hands and she was going crazy. The first day she had kept herself busy taking photos of the amazing garden suite she was imprisoned in; the arched Moorish windows, the Byzantine blues and greens that were used to colour the room and the amazing studded teak doors, the one keeping her locked in being the most beautiful of all, which she refused to see as ironic in any way.

Then there was the garden with the swaying palm trees, and deep blue tiled pool. The whole place was stunning and she itched to download her images onto her laptop and play around with the lighting and composition. If she’d been in this magical place under any other circumstances she doubted she’d want to leave.

But more than that she wanted to see the King again. Not because she wanted to see him per se, but because she wanted to know if he had an update on Chad. She hadn’t realised when she’d made the choice to leave her hotel room that she’d be swapping one prison for another. Perhaps if she hadn’t been so tired and strung-out, if he’d given her more time to consider her options, she would have made a different choice. She certainly wouldn’t have thought about what it would feel like to kiss him!