Prince Of Lies

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He pulled the duvet over them both. ‘Now,’ he said, his voice as level and unhurried as ever, ‘let’s see if we both can get some sleep.’

Her last thought was that he wasn’t naked; she could feel some fine material beneath her hand as she cuddled against him, her body and mind immediately responding to his steady heartbeat.

Towards morning she woke, still in his arms, his body heat encompassing her, his scent in her nostrils, a masculine hand lying laxly along her thigh. At some time during the night she had climbed over him, and was now lying half on top, her leg between his, her arm underneath his other shoulder, using him as a mattress.

Overwhelmed by a demand she didn’t fully recognise, a need she had never experienced, by the sheer, male power radiating from him even in sleep, she woke with her senses fully alert, her body in high gear. Unknown feelings tingled through her and before she realised where she was she felt his awakening, and the surge of awareness through his heated body, the swift compulsion of arousal that gripped him.

Stephanie might have been innocent but she wasn’t stupid; she had read magazines and books, listened to some of her more worldly friends, and she knew that a man could be instantly ready for making love to any woman if she turned him on. She understood what was happening.

What she didn’t understand and couldn’t fight was her own reaction, the heady, draining weakness that had invaded her while she slept, making it impossible for her to retreat as prudence commanded. Anticipation coiled through her in sweet, seductive promise, drowning out common sense, washing away morals and logic and caution.

She had to get out of this immediately, scramble free and get on to her own side of the bed. But her muscles refused to obey her brain. Something world-shaking was making her heart race, drying her mouth, dampening her skin with an unexpected sheen.

He said harshly, ‘Is this what you want?’ And the hand that had been across her back found the full curve of her breast, cupping it, measuring its soft weight in slow, sensual appreciation.

Fire invaded her, robbing her of strength. An incredible sensation shot down her spine and into her loins; in answer she gave a tormented twist of her hips, seeking some as yet unknown response.

‘How many men have you slept with?’ he asked, that raw note in his voice abrading her nerves as savagely as his expert caress. ‘You certainly know how to get what you want.’

She would have sobbed with desolation when his touch lifted if he hadn’t slid his fingers down her back, exploring with lingering thoroughness the sharp bones of her hip and the amazingly sensitive hollow beneath it. She held her breath, and suddenly, fiercely, he clamped her hips down, pushing the newly awakened, violently sensitive portion of her anatomy against his growing hardness. Stephanie gasped, biting back a moan, unable to control the shudder that ran through her at the wild pressure.

And then she was almost flung across the bed, and he said in a voice that left her with no doubt about his feelings, ‘Sorry, princess, I was paid to rescue you, not act as your gigolo.’

Humiliation burned deep into her soul; she had to swallow before she could retort thickly, ‘I didn’t—I woke up like that, damn you! And it was you who forced yourself into this bed.’

‘Clearly a mistake,’ he agreed contemptuously. ‘But then, I didn’t really know what I was dealing with. According to most reports, you’re a sweet, innocent little schoolgirl.’

Sunk in frustration and shame, she lay with her eyes clamped tightly shut while he got out of the bed. However, after a moment she asked miserably, ‘What are you doing?’

‘Making a bed,’ he said curtly.

Her lashes flew up. He hadn’t put the light on, but the wintry pallor of early dawn was seeping through the heavy curtains, and she could see his outline, and the pile of clothes on the floor.

‘No,’ she said involuntarily.

‘Yes,’ he said, lowering himself to it. ‘In another five years, perhaps, I might enjoy taking what you’ve got on offer. In the meantime, however, I’m going to have to say no, thanks. Nothing personal, princess—I’m a professional, and we like things to be nice and tidy.’

Which made her feel even worse.

* * *

When she woke it was morning, and the sun was shining in through the window with a hearty fervour that released something inside Stephanie. For the first time since she had been kidnapped she believed, not merely in her mind but in her heart, that there might be some future for her after all.

And then her eyes fell on the pillow beside her, and she stiffened, remembering. In one involuntary motion she sat up and looked at the floor where he had slept. The clothes were gone.

Heat flooded her skin; bitterly, angrily ashamed, she sank back against the pillow. How on earth had she let down her guard enough to climb all over him while she was asleep? And then, even when she was awake, to lie there and practically invite him to do whatever he wanted? No wonder he had been taken aback, although he needn’t have been quite so brutal.

A self-derisory little smile curled her wide mouth. Perhaps he was afraid she’d make a nuisance of herself. If so, he’d certainly made sure his rejection was cruel enough to convince her never to fall into that trap again. If he still insisted on them sharing a bed, from now on, nightmares or not, she’d keep to her own side.

Forcing her mortification beneath the surface of her thoughts, she gazed around a room in the shape of a half-circle, its walls made of wooden panelling, its ceiling plaster. Both walls and furniture had been carefully carved by superb craftsmen to look medieval. Even the armchair was decorated by over-exuberant fretted wooden carving.

Yet wherever she looked she saw the icy scorn in her rescuer’s expression as he rejected her.

She had to face it. And although shame still stained her cheeks she thought resentfully that he had had no right to be quite so—so scathing. There was some excuse for her behaviour. Surely after an experience like hers it was normal to crave the reassurance of human warmth, the comfort of arms around her, the momentary return to childhood when parents made everything better, even though from the age of four she had known that parents could die, that love was not enough to keep her safe, that the arms and soothing voice of a strong man were only temporary refuges.

Anyway, natural or not, a need for reassurance was a luxury she couldn’t afford, especially if it led to situations like that of a few hours ago. Her fingers crept up to touch her trembling lips. For a moment she fancied she could feel his kiss on them. Very firmly, she banished the memory.

She shouldn’t blame herself for what had happened in her sleep, but afterwards—well, that was a different story. If she had immediately climbed off him and made it obvious she wasn’t trying to seduce him she wouldn’t be feeling like this—embarrassed, ashamed, and with a forbidden fire in her blood that had to be outlawed. Instinct warned her that she was asking for heartbreak if she allowed herself to become even slightly dependent on the man who had rescued her.

Stephanie had learned the value of accepting her own emotions, and now she admitted that keeping her heart whole might be a little difficult. He had come to her like a prince on a charger, saving her from a hideous fate. She was entitled to spin a few fairy-stories about him; he was the stuff of fantasy, the dark hero, at once gentle and dangerous, kind and threatening, armoured in power and a fierce, unknowable authority.

But, tantalising though her fantasies might be, she couldn’t afford to fall in love with him, for as well as the heart-stopping attributes of his strength there was that cool, impregnable self-sufficiency and a callousness that hurt. He might be only seven years older than she was, but what had happened to him in those years set a barrier between them.

He was a loner, a man who walked by himself. Prince of ice, she thought again.

She gazed around once more, searching for clues to the personality of the man who had brought her here. She found nothing. There was a dressing-table made of sombre, highly polished wood, on which was a tumbler with a collection of wild flowers. Stephanie wondered if the brilliant blue one was a gentian, then dismissed the query. Candace, her sister-in-law, would know; she was the expert on gardens and flowers.

But the little posy made a pleasant spot of colour, and in some odd way reassured her. Turning her head, she surveyed the other side of the room. The bedhead was against the straight wall that divided the room from the bathroom and the landing. The other walls stretched around her, enclosing and comforting, as though they were holding her in a protective embrace.

‘It must be a tower room!’ she said out loud, delighted, and flung the covers back.

Still stiff and sore, she staggered as renewed pain throbbed through her, but even so she was halfway to the window when she was caught and pulled back, whirled abruptly and held by a cruel grip on her shoulders, to meet the impassive, glittering eyes of her rescuer. Yesterday she had been too dazed to realise just how unusual they were, although she had registered their concentrated compulsion. Now, imprisoned as unequivocally by them as by his hands, she almost gasped. Instead of the warm, brilliantly clear sapphire she was used to seeing in the mirror, this man’s eyes were so pale as to give an impression of translucence, with white flecks in the iris that made them look like splintered glass. Such was the intensity of those eyes that Stephanie’s struggles stopped immediately. Her own widened, darkness swallowing up the colour; she shivered with some strange inner confusion.

‘Don’t go near the windows,’ he said roughly.

The fragile moment of happiness shattering irrevocably, she nodded. Instantly, he let her go.

It was the most difficult thing she had ever done, but she managed to look fearlessly at him. He had freed her, slept with her, comforted her and finally held her, his strong arms and the solace of his presence banishing the nightmares. Then he had unfeelingly rejected what her innocent body had offered of its own volition.

Those powerful hands held her life and well-being. He could snuff both out as easily as he had pulled her away from the window.

He made her heart falter. Partly it was his amazing eyes, but they were merely the most arresting part of a truly formidable man. At five feet nine she was accustomed to looking many men in the eye, but he towered above her by at least six inches—possibly seven, she thought, gazing up into a face far more impressive than handsome. Slashing bone-structure formed the basis of features that reminded her of an eagle, the fiercely hooked nose and dominant, angular lines of jaw and cheekbones reinforcing an arrogant authority. His straight mouth warned of self-possession and fortitude, although she recognised something ambiguous about that mouth, a hint of sensuality in its sharply cut outline that set female nerves jangling at some hidden, primitive level.

From the top of his blue-black head to the soles of his feet he was all edged, confident masculinity, but it was a masculinity tight-leashed by an almost inhuman will.

‘Who are you?’ she blurted.

Apparently not in the least affected by her bold survey, he’d waited until she spoke. At her question his lashes drooped, and a smile, mockingly amused, curved his mouth.

‘Duke,’ he said laconically, and to her astonishment held out his hand.

Most men looked stupid with a hand held out, a hand that was ignored. This one didn’t; completely relaxed, he merely waited. Once more Stephanie glimpsed a monumental, hard-headed patience that sent a cold shiver flicking down her spine as she reluctantly accepted his invitation. She had long fingers and a strong grip, but in his clasp her hand seemed small and white and powerless.

‘You know who I am,’ she said uncertainly.

‘We haven’t been introduced.’

Later she would wonder whether he had enough intuition to realise that this introduction was a wiping clean of all that had happened previously, and even before entertaining the idea would dismiss it. In spite of his care of her the preceding night he’d been more forceful than sensitive, and his abrupt rejection in the morning hadn’t revealed any insight or empathy at all.

At that moment, however, saying her name, asserting an identity, was a reclaiming of something that the calculated inhumanity of her imprisonment had taken from her.

‘Stephanie Jerrard,’ she said, and her head came up. While they shook hands she asked, ‘Just Duke?’ and thought how strange it was that she had called him a prince, an ice-prince. He looked more like a prince than a duke, and yet the name suited his careless arrogance.

‘That’s all you need to know,’ he said, an indifferent note in his voice warning her off.

As their hands fell away he ordered curtly, ‘The windows look out over the valley, so the only people we have to worry about are ones with binoculars on the far side. Still, remember that if anyone does see you here word may reach the men who kidnapped you.’

At her involuntary shiver he nodded, pale eyes ranging her face. ‘And if that happens we could lose not only the small men but those who gave the orders. Then there are your brother’s negotiations; while you’re thought to be safely stashed he’s working from a position of power. If we can fool them into thinking that you’re still their pawn, we’re going to catch them all, including the ones who’ve kept their fingers clean.’

‘I only saw two men. What makes you think there might be others?’ she asked swiftly, striving to hide the sick panic that clutched her for an unnerving moment.

Broad shoulders lifted in a gesture oddly at variance with his poised, controlled persona. ‘Rumours,’ he said without expression, his eyes searching her face keenly. ‘I need to know everything you can remember about the kidnapping.’

‘Now?’ she asked, realising that she was still in the thick T-shirt she’d worn as a nightgown. From the way it slid down over her shoulders it was one of his.