Taken by Moonlight (13 page)

He quickly
moved into the room. Evelyn was on the floor, her legs crossed and her back to
him. He let out a deep sigh of relief and shook his head.

The woman
was going to be the death of him.

“Evelyn,
it’s two-thirty in the morning. What are you doing?” he asked softly, moving
farther into the room. He’d been wrong; the lights were off. The strange light
he’d seen must have been the moon.

When she
didn’t move, Charles walked around and knelt before her. Her eyes were closed,
her arms propped in a relaxed state with her elbows against her thighs, and one
hand cupped in the other, almost as if waiting to be given something. Her hair,
lustrous black curls that attested to her mixed heritage, streamed down her
back, and cast an eerie contrast to her pale nightgown. Was his wife
sleepwalking?

He reached
out with both hands and touched her shoulders, a frown marring his lips.
“Evelyn?” he called softly, giving her a soft shake. Her eyes opened
immediately, and his widened.
Her eyes
….

What were
usually a warm, honey color was now completely black. Everything was black, her
irises, her pupils. Dear God! He pulled back and closed his eyes tightly before
opening them again. A black void stared back at him.

Suddenly,
she blinked and her eyes returned to normal. It was almost as if he’d imagined
it, yet he knew he had not. Charles couldn’t speak, couldn’t think. What—her
eyes—Evelyn—?

Evelyn
began to speak in a language that was neither English nor French and he
released her, pushing to his feet as he stared at her in open-mouthed shock. He
didn’t know that language, and neither should Evelyn. She knew only her native
tongue and English, didn’t she? They’d raised their girls bilingual because of
that.

She
continued to speak as she rose and faced him. Her face was calm, her body
relaxed, while he was frantic.

“Evelyn,”
he said, his voice shaky. Charles ran a hand over his face, closing his eyes,
as he thought of what he’d just seen. What
had
he just seen? He’d been
searching for his wife, and he’d found her in Vivienne’s old room.

He opened
his eyes. Evelyn sat on Vivienne’s bed, a little smile on her face. She stood
and walked over to him, wrapping her arms around his larger body. At his six
feet, one ninety pounds, Evelyn looked tiny next to him. She’d always been
small of frame, the top of her head barely touching his upper chest.

“I’m sorry
I worried you, Charles. I just miss them sometimes,” she told him in a low
voice, leaning her head against him.

Charles
nodded and smiled. He leaned down and kissed the top of her hair. He knew what
she meant. His babies were now young ladies who no longer jumped onto his knee
and demanded he tell them stories of princesses. Cassandre had been the bossy
little terror, but Vivienne hadn’t minded, enjoying the princess stories just
as much.

Evelyn
looked up at him and he leaned down and kissed her lightly.

“Maybe we
should have another,” he told her softly.

She chuckled
and swatted him lightly on the bottom. “I’m too old to be having babies,
Charles.”

“You?” He
kissed the tip of her nose. “Old?” He kissed her lips. “Never.”

Evelyn
smiled, but he recognized it didn’t quite reach her eyes. Before he could ask
what was wrong, she pulled away from him and took his hand in hers.

“Come on.
Let’s go back to bed.”

He nodded
and followed her, wondering at the sadness he’d just seen in her gaze. As she
lay curled against him, Charles vowed to ask her about it in the morning. He hated
when his wife was sad, and would do anything to remove that look from her eyes.

Vivienne
awoke with a smile on her face, unable to suppress the moan of pleasure that
left her lips. She felt…brilliant. She felt as she did after eight hours of rest,
which had become rare and almost impossible in the past year. Yawning and
pressing a hand to her mouth, she contorted her body as far as it would go,
stretching out the tension in her muscles. As she did so, a dull, delicious
throb erupted at her center, and she pulled her legs closer to her body even as
her brows began to furrow. She’d never felt a throb
there
before. As if
her brain finally took pity, memories flooded back to her. Of Conall between
her legs, of her kneeling before him, eagerly awaiting his ministrations!

She
shrieked and sat up, eyes widening as she frantically looked around. This was
obviously not her walk-in-closet-sized room, nor was it the hotel. She had not
been paying that much attention to the hotel suite in the first place but she
would remember if it had looked anything like this. Everything in the room was
either black or gold. The curtains, the comforter, the sheets—the chair in the
corner. She mentally kicked herself. Not only had she lost her virginity to a
man she knew little of, she’d been kidnapped!

A frantic
laugh escaped her lips and she struggled to calm herself. No, she had not been
kidnapped. Conall would have some logical explanation to why she was in this
room and not the hotel. She sat up, tugging the covers with her so they covered
her breasts, and looked over the side of the bed. Where were her clothes? She’d
watched movies where people had slept together and their clothes were usually
scattered about somewhere on the floor. As she took in the dark gold carpet on
the floor, she wondered if anything had ever been on the floor. She lifted her
eyes and skimmed the rest of the room: chairs, a large armoire, a large
television. Where the hell were her clothes?

She’d just
secured the throw around her body and was about to swing her legs over the edge
of the bed when the door was pushed open and a blond head pushed inside.
Vivienne’s eyes widened as mortification kept her still.

“I knew
it,” Eli said, grinning broadly as he entered the room without any care, it
seemed, for her embarrassment. He wore a red T-shirt with some form of writing
on it—it looked like “Such an Animal,” gray sweat pants, and sneakers. His
green eyes sparkled. “I
knew
you were here.”

“What are
you doing in here?” she squeaked, looking about and feeling heat creep up into
her cheeks. This was even more embarrassing than the time she’d visited her
parents for Thanksgiving and her dad had walked into her room without knocking.
They’d both learned a lesson that day: knock and lock. “And where am I? Where’s
Conall?”

Eli paused
and Vivienne saw his nostrils flare as he inhaled deep. His face lost its smile
momentarily as he took quick steps away from her. Vivienne’s brows lifted. Had
he just decided to become shy after boldly walking into the room when she was
barely covered?

“Sorry,” he
said sheepishly. “I’ll get him.” He turned to leave and Vivienne called out.

“Wait!”
When he stopped, and turned to look at her, his brows lifted in puzzlement, she
continued, “Where am I?”

Shrugging
his shoulders, he said, “Cedar Creek.” With that, he left the room, pulling the
door in behind him.

Cedar
Creek?
Vivienne’s
eyes widened. Cedar Creek as in
Cedar Creek Companies?
CCC, the company,
owned hotels, a few clubs, and hadn’t she read something about a Cedar Creek
Estate?

He’d
brought her to his house! Of course she was in his house. How else would Eli
have just walked into the room? Wait, Cedar Creek wasn’t in the city. She felt
a sliver of panic settle in. How had he moved to her to Cedar Creek without her
knowing?

She
remembered Max and Drew telling her she’d been drugged at the club, but she
also remembered Conall, and the hot kisses they’d exchanged there. He hadn’t
drugged her, had he? No. She scoffed at the thought, but she couldn’t shake it,
especially with her waking up in his house when she distinctly remembered
falling asleep at the hotel. Plus, if he’d drugged her, why would he bring her
here? She tried to dismiss the thought, even as she stood and began a more
thorough search for her clothes.

Her search
led her to a door, which opened to reveal a large bathroom and two thick, black
robes hanging inside. She swapped the comforter for the robe, washed her mouth
and face, and was about to go back to searching for her clothes when an even
more important thought occurred to her—the thought that should have been the
first on her mind.

What
time is it?
She
found a digital clock hanging on the wall—it couldn’t be! It was not 10:20 in
the morning. The clock was wrong. She did not sleep this late on a work day.
She blinked. Hastings was going to kill her!

Her body
erupted into movement as she opened the bathroom door, intent on getting to a
phone to call in, although she was an hour twenty minutes too late.

She ran
into Conall…again. This time however, she clutched at his shirt to prevent the
fall that would surely have come, and found herself staring up into those
captivating eyes of his. Even as her face flushed and her body grew warm, she
pushed away and moved around him, heading to the cordless phone beside the bed.

Without
asking, she picked it up.

“Who are
you calling?” His voice was casual and almost lazy. He hadn’t moved from his
stance by the bathroom.

“My boss,”
she replied, punching in the number to the law firm.

“I already
took care of that.”

Her fingers
stilled on the last digit and she stared incredulously at him.

“You what?”
She’d heard incorrectly.

“Arnold and
I are old friends. I took care of it.”

He took
care of it?
She’d
been trying to get Arnold Hastings to give her more days off for months now, and
Conall had taken care of it, because they were old
friends?

It was then
he moved, and as she watched him come toward her, she thought of an animal
slowly stalking its prey. It did nothing to quell the heat coursing through her
body. In fact, it did the opposite. The robe began to stifle her.

He stopped
before her, took the phone from her hand, and placed it back onto the cradle.
Vivienne swallowed audibly, her lips parting of their own volition as she
stared into his eyes. Blue fire. That was what it was—wait! She needed answers.

She stepped
away, almost falling onto the bed in her haste to put distance between them.
Righting herself, she ran a hand down the front of the robe and pulled the belt
tight, making sure it was still secured. A hint of a smile played around his
lips and Vivienne glared at him. She knew he was laughing at her, could almost
hear the taunt in her head.

“When, why,
and how did I get here?”

The smile
faded. He approached her again. Vivienne contemplated backing away but she knew
he would welcome it. She sensed he liked the chase.

When he was
standing directly before her, he spoke. “I brought you here last night.”

“How?”

“In my
car.”

Her eyes
narrowed. “I don’t remember.”

“You were
sleeping.”

Or
drugged
.

She saw his
brows lift and she briefly wondered if she’d spoken aloud. No, she hadn’t. It
wasn’t as if he could read her thoughts!

“Why did
you bring me here?”

His face
grew serious and then he stepped closer. A hand snaked about her waist as the
other cupped her cheek. He pulled until she was pressed against his body.

Slowly,
carefully, he asked, “What are you, Vivienne?”

To say that
Vivienne’s thoughts were scrambled would have been an understatement. Her eyes
followed the movement of his lips, so she knew what he’d asked, it was just
taking a while to formulate an answer that could be deemed coherent.

Conall’s
eyes suddenly darkened and he leaned down and attached his lips to hers.
Moaning, Vivienne threw her arms around his neck, opening her mouth for the
sweet invasion of his tongue. His hips surged against hers and she whimpered as
her body instantly reacted, preparing itself for him. Somehow, she found the
strength to push him back, even if he only moved an inch.

“Wait—s-stop!”
Her hands moved to his shoulders, and she anchored them there. Drawing in quick
breaths, and ignoring the heat that seemed to be licking at every inch of her
body she added, “You didn’t answer my question.”

The hand at
her waist slackened but didn’t fall. “You’re safe here.”

She lifted
a brow and retorted, “I don’t know that.”

“Yes, you
do.”

Vivienne
glared at him. She did feel safe around him, but how was a person to know that
another person wasn’t crazy? Especially as she’d barely met him only twice
before. She flushed when she remembered the things he’d done to her last night.
She’d slept with a man she barely knew and had enjoyed every minute of it. Even
now, as she thought of the names she would heap on people in her situation, she
found she couldn’t regret last night.

She pulled
away and the hand at her waist fell as he straightened to his full height.
Vivienne was in no way short, standing at five eight, but Conall still had
several inches on her. She suspected he was taller than her father, making him
inches taller than six feet. He wore a dark turtleneck, jeans, and combat
boots, a stark contrast to the expensive suit she’d seen him in yesterday. But
God, it didn’t take anything away from his sex appeal. He’d looked scrumptious
in the suit, but he looked rough and manly, very sexy, now.