The Hostage Bride (5 page)

Her flesh was on fire for his touch, her body aching to feel his against her. Her hands were in his hair, tangling tightly in the night-dark strands, closing over the strong bones of his skull, drawing his head down to hers so that she could deepen and prolong the kiss until her senses reeled in a delirium of pleasure.

‘Oh,
mi ángel
…'

With a rough, impatient sound deep in his throat, he crushed her closer, impatient fingers seeking and finding the tiny pearl buttons at the back of her dress, easing them from their fastenings with a devastating efficiency. But even the speed of his actions was not enough for him and with a violent curse in Spanish he suddenly wrenched the slender straps from her shoulders and down over her arms with such force that she heard the fine silk rip shockingly.

But the devastation of the expensive garment went unheeded. She could only concentrate on one thing, her mind centred on the wild, hotly erotic sensations his touch was firing all over her body. Those strong, bronzed hands were now pushing deep inside the dress, over warm, smooth skin, forcing it down to reveal the high, pale globes of her breasts. She wasn't wearing any sort of a bra; the skilfully boned bodice had made it unnecessary and so there was no impediment to his searching touch.

She was being moved backwards all the time, walked slowly, one step at a time towards the wall at the foot of the stairs. With each movement of Rico's, one of his long, powerful legs came between her own for a second, setting up a throbbing ache between her thighs, aggravating it with the pressure of his hard body against hers.

‘Rico!'

The sound of his name was pushed from her lips as she came hard up against the wall. He imprisoned her there with his broad strength, effectively blocking any way of escape as his long fingers curved underneath her breasts, lifting their soft weight free of the remaining confines of the white silk, his thumbs tracing burning erotic circles over their tight, hungry tips.

‘Rico!'

It was a wild, keening cry as she flung back her head, her bright hair resting against the wooden panelling as she abandoned herself to the delight of his touch. With his proud head bent, he replaced the tormenting caress of his hands with the hot tug of his mouth, first on one side, then the other, making her writhe in a fury of sensual delight. The burning pulse between her legs grew more powerful with each provocative touch, the stinging delight of his suckling, until she was straining against him, grinding her pelvis against the hard swell of his arousal, making him groan aloud in his turn.

‘You see,
querida
…'

Briefly he tore his mouth away from her throbbing breasts to look deep into her passion-glazed eyes.

‘This is how it is. This is what has been between us from that first moment, from the second our eyes met. This is as inevitable as the sun rising every morning, as each breath following another. It has to be.'

‘Has to be…'

The husky echoing of his fervent declaration was all she could manage. Even the few seconds' deprivation of his caresses was more than she could bear and the words merged into a moan of complaint, falling away wordlessly.

Her heart was racing, her breathing raw and uneven and the pulse pounded wildly in her veins. She inhaled the scent of his skin like some rawly potent drug, and her fingers scrabbled at the front of his shirt, struggling to tug open the buttons she could barely see through eyes so hazed with desire.

Rico's response was a harsh, thick sound, deep in his throat as his own hands moved lower, bunching up her long white skirts, lifting them higher, higher until the delicate lace tops of her stockings and the matching dainty panties were exposed to his urgent fingers. At the first touch of his hands at the burning centre of her femininity, stroking her softly through the fine satin, Felicity's eyes closed on a choking sigh of surrender. This was what she wanted. The union of all that was most strongly female in her to the deepest masculine drives of this man.

‘So this is what we were both made for,' Rico muttered roughly in her ear. ‘This is what must be between us. But you have to come willingly. It has to be your move—your choice.'

‘My—choice?'

The words made no sense. Couldn't he see? Couldn't he
feel
?

‘You have to tell me,
querida
…'

The low, husky voice had dropped an octave or more, becoming rougher, thicker, harsher and those deep-set eyes burned like molten metal, searching her face, probing deep into her soul.

‘The bedroom is upstairs. Do I take you there, or do we stay here and make polite conversation?'

Yes!
The word burned so fiercely in her thoughts that she was sure he must see it in her face, read it in her eyes, etched there in letters of fire.
Yes, yes, yes!
But somehow she couldn't get the sound past the twisting, constricting knot of emotions clogging up her throat.

‘Do you want me,
gatita
?'

Did she want him?
Ridiculous question! Impossible, preposterous, unnecessary question.

Of course she wanted him! She yearned for him,
ached
for him. Her body was one complete scream of hunger for him. But…

And then as suddenly as if a light had been switched on, illuminating the clouded darkness of her thoughts, she knew what was wrong.

‘Do I want you?' she managed, a thread of weak near-laughter running through her words. ‘But who are you? I don't even know your name. All I know is Rico—if in fact that is the truth.'

Looking into the darkness of his eyes she saw the swift change there, the move from frowning uncertainty to a new understanding and it was like watching the sun come from behind a cloud, lighting his face from within. The transformation took her breath away.

‘The truth,
gatita
?' he laughed. ‘
Si
. Oh, yes, I told you the truth. My name really is Rico—short for Ricardo. Ricardo Juan Carlos Valeron at your service,
señorita
.'

It was like a slap in the face.

Ricardo Juan Carlos Valeron.

The words pounded into her senses like cruel blows, making her heart stop, her breath die in her lungs.

Ricardo Valeron.

If it hadn't been for the hard strength of his body pinning her to the wall she knew that her legs would have given way beneath her and she would have sunk to the floor in a limp, lifeless heap. As it was, her eyes had hazed over,
seeing nothing but an out-of-focus blur, vague, indecipherable shapes that made no sense at all. And in her head was the fierce, whirling buzz of a thousand angry bees, drowning out all thought, all sense, all feeling.

‘Take your hands off me!'

She said it blind and was thankful for the fact that she couldn't see his face. It was a small mercy not to be able to look into his eyes and see now, at last, the real truth. See him as he truly was, with the lies, the deceit, the pretence stripped away.

This man, the man who had kidnapped her, carried her away from her family and friends, from her one hope of putting right all her father's mistakes and repaying the money he had embezzled was Ricardo Valeron! This man on whose mercy she was totally dependent for her safety, her security, maybe even her life, was the one man she knew she should fear above all others. The one man who had the power to make an appalling situation even worse.

And now it seemed that he had done exactly that.

I
T WAS
all her worst dreams come true at once.

Rico was Ricardo Valeron.

It was the only thing her battered, bruised mind could fasten onto. The only thing that made any sort of sense in a world gone suddenly mad. But the only form of sense it made was shadowed by such horror, such devastation that she could only think of it in snatched, fleeting seconds before her anguished brain flinched away again, unable to bear the pain.

Rico the brigand was gone, vanished for ever, destroyed by a few carelessly—even smugly—spoken words. And she couldn't believe how her foolish, desperately deceived heart cried out in distress at the thought.

She actually
missed
him. Rico the brigand had been a villain, a kidnapper, a liar—but she had come to accept that. She had almost let him charm her, come close to putting a sort of trust in him. But she hadn't known the real truth about his lies. She hadn't known the full extent of his deceit. Now she did and she felt as if her world had shattered into cruel, jagged shards of glass that threatened to savage her soul if she so much as thought about it.

‘I said, take your hands off me.'

‘Take…? Felicity—
querida
…'

Rico had never seen anyone change so fast or so completely. One moment he had been holding a hotly willing, sensually responsive woman in his arms. The next moment it was as if her blood had frozen in her veins, turning her into an immobile ice woman from head to toe. The transition took only seconds, bringing him up hard against this
new reality so fast that he actually felt bruised by it, his body jarred by the force with which hers repelled him even though she hadn't moved or even touched him.

‘And don't you dare “
querida
” me! I'm not your darling—I'm not
anything
to you! And that's exactly the way I want it.'

‘What the…?
Por Dios, señorita
—what is going on here?'

‘Not what you thought was going on—that's for sure!' Felicity flung at him, turning on him a glare of such loathing that he actually took half a step backwards, stiffening sharply, his hands loosening so that the freed silk skirts slithered back into place around her legs. ‘And nothing else is going to happen—
nothing
! I'd rather die!'

‘Is that die in the same way that you vowed to kill me if I so much as touched you again?'

Shock combined with blank confusion and the slow beginnings of the cruel ache of frustration to blacken his mood. Already his fiercely aroused senses were beginning to realise that the sexual release, the consummate fulfilment they had been expecting was now to be denied them. And the nagging complaint blended with his already off-balance state to create a cold fury that was impossible to suppress.

‘Well, look at me,
darling
—look at me!'

His hands flew out in a wild, expressive gesture, drawing her attention to his obviously uninjured state.

‘I touched, all right—did more than touch! I kissed you, caressed you. I all but stripped the dress from your body and you didn't even protest—not so much as a single letter of the word “no” passed your lips.'

‘That…' Felicity began huskily, but he ignored her, swept aside her weak attempt at an interjection as the words flowed out like the rush of a flood swollen river, impossible to contain.

‘I could have had you right here—against the wall and
you would have been urging me on. But now you freeze like an ice maiden or a nun who's taken a vow of chastity.'

‘That was before I knew who you were!'

She flung the words in his face, desperate to have them said, as much for her own sake as out of any need to explain to him.

Ricardo Valeron.
She had let Ricardo Valeron touch her, kiss her…more. Her skin crawled just to think of it.

Far, far too late, Edward's warning sounded in her ears.

‘The one man you really must beware of—the one who could do your father some real damage—is Ricardo Valeron. He's a cut-throat—vicious, ruthless, and totally without morals. He won't just see the money Joe owes him as a financial debt but as a personal insult and, if he found out that your Papa has been fiddling the books, he'll want blood in reparation. He's Argentinian, you see. Latin blood and all that.'

Argentinian. Not Spanish as she had first thought. Miserably Felicity cursed herself for not realising sooner. For not even suspecting.

‘Before you knew who I was?' Rico pounced on her words. ‘So you know of me, then? You've heard my name?'

‘Of course I've heard it! My father's your accountant. And I'm—I was—I'm supposed to be marrying Edward. I know you and he are business rivals.'

She also knew that it was common knowledge that there was no love lost between her supposed fiancé and this man. That commercially and personally they had been at daggers drawn for a year or more.

‘Rivals is something of an understatement,' Rico muttered, dark threat lacing the words with danger so that Felicity shivered apprehensively.

If only she knew exactly why he had abducted her like this. Was it because of her ‘fiancé's' business interests—to
ensure that some valuable contract went the way Rico wanted?

Or, even more worrying, was it because of whose daughter she was? Did he want her as a hostage to ensure her father's behaviour and the repayment of the money Joe owed? Because if it was the latter—her skin crawled with horror at the thought—it would be a long, long time before she was free. That amount of money wasn't easily come by; in fact her father would find it impossible to raise. Wasn't that why she had committed herself to this travesty of a marriage to Edward? Because she could see no other way out.

‘It's good to see that at least you remember your abandoned groom,' Rico added, his dark-eyed gaze searing over her, black with vicious contempt. ‘Even if the concern is a trifle belated to be sincere.'

‘Of course I remember him!' Hastily Felicity tried to recover the ground she knew she had lost dangerously. ‘He must be going crazy with worry.'

‘On the contrary, I think you'll find that he has had plenty to occupy him—so much so that I doubt if he'll even have noticed your absence.'

His smile had nothing of warmth in it but was cold and merciless like the flick of a cruel whip.

‘It seems to me that the two of you would have been supremely well matched. Tell me,' he went on, lounging back against the wall and subjecting her to a slow insolent survey from the top of her head to the narrow fine-boned feet in the elegant shoes. ‘That white dress. Are you actually entitled to wear it or is it, like so many others these days, purely for show and to hide a multitude of sins?'

‘That's no business of yours!' Felicity snapped but unfortunately the effect of the defiance she was aiming for was ruined by the sudden evaporation of all her mental
strength as an unfortunate glance down reminded her of just what a sight she looked.

The bodice of her beautiful dress still hung bunched up around her waist, pushed there by Rico's impatient hands, and her high, smooth breasts were exposed to that searing gaze, the delicate skin still bearing the reddened marks of his passion, the faint abrasions inflicted by his hands and mouth.

Fiery colour flooded her face and neck as she hastily and awkwardly grabbed at the creased garment, pushing her arms into the sleeves and shrugging it up around her shoulders again. And that was as much as she could manage. Fastening the dozens of small pearly buttons that went down her back was totally beyond her. That had been the last task her mother had performed before setting out for the cathedral and one it was impossible to do for herself. The only alternative was asking Rico for help and that was an idea that didn't even have time to actually cross her mind before she rejected it violently.

So she had to be satisfied with folding her arms in front of her in order to hold the dress up and struggling to ignore the way it gaped and sagged at her shoulders and back, threatening to slide revealingly with every move.

‘You promised me a phone call,' she declared tartly, anxious to claw back some degree of self-possession from a situation that was rapidly crumbling to pieces in her hands.

‘Be my guest.'

Rico reached into his pocket and pulled out the slim silver mobile phone she had seen him using in the car earlier at the start of her ordeal.

‘Oh, but… But I thought…'

‘You thought that I would have a regular phone here in the hallway that you could use under supervision now, but hope to sneak away to, to use again privately later to let everyone know where you are,' Rico supplied, seeing her
disturbed grey gaze search the hallway for exactly that. ‘Do you really take me for so much of a fool,
querida
? Do you think that because I'm “not very good at this”—' sardonically he quoted her own impetuous words in the car back at her ‘—that I will have no idea of exactly how your mind is working and the sort of schemes you're planning on coming up with to outwit me? Credit me with a little common sense.'

She'd have to credit him with a lot more than that, Felicity thought unwillingly. Right now she could almost believe that he possessed the ability to read her mind. Certainly, whatever she did it seemed that he was one step ahead of her at every point, recognising and thwarting her plans with an insulting lack of effort.

‘Just give me the phone,' she growled ungraciously, holding out a hand as far as was possible while still ensuring she was covered up, an embarrassed exclamation escaping her as the gaping dress slipped precariously.

Rico regarded her struggles with an undisguised amusement, a fiendish gleam in the depths of his dark eyes.

‘Don't you think it's a little too late to worry about preserving your modesty?' he drawled derisively, that taunting gleam deepening as he spoke. ‘After all, there's nothing there I haven't already seen—and more.'

‘Which doesn't mean that I'm going to offer you a peep show whenever you fancy it! From now on, you keep your prying eyes and wandering hands strictly to yourself.'

Felicity drew herself up, her chin lifting defiantly, grey eyes glacial, as she gathered the shattered remnants that were all that remained of her dignity around her.

‘The phone…' she prompted coolly.

It was the Lady of the Manor act again. The one that had already set his teeth on edge several times in what was turning out to be a very long, very wearing afternoon. Felicity Hamilton was not at all what he had been led to
expect, and as a result, his own behaviour had become so unpredictable that he barely even recognised himself.

What the hell had possessed him to come on to her like that, with all the finesse and subtlety of a rampant bull? He was long past the age when his hormones ruled his head and yet he had come close to being totally out of control in a way that he would have sworn was totally alien to him. Normally he prided himself on treating women with respect and consideration, but with this woman all that carefully learned finesse had evaporated like mist before the sun.

But she'd been with him every inch of the way. She'd needed no persuading, shown no sign of hesitation or doubt. In spite of the fact that she had been on her way to marry one man, she had responded to him as if he was the only male in the world for her, in a way that proved the fancy white dress to be a complete mockery of the symbol of purity it traditionally was.

Maria had been right. This woman had the morals of an alley cat and deserved to be treated as such.

‘The phone…' Felicity repeated, injecting as much ice into the words as she could manage.

She knew she'd caught him on the raw when she saw the flare of something dangerous in those deep dark eyes. But he punished her for her petty triumph immediately, deliberately tossing the phone towards her so that it fell short of the reach she could manage while still holding on to her dress. After an undignified scramble she managed to catch it—just—and hastily dialled her father's mobile number before Rico could intervene.

‘You do realise that this will mean your number comes up on Dad's phone?' she flung at him, the note of triumph at actually outmanoeuvring him lifting her voice.

Infuriatingly he looked totally unfazed.

‘You do realise that that's exactly what I want?' he tossed back, parodying her voice with wicked accuracy.

‘You want…? Oh,
Dad
!' Her voice cracked revealingly as the phone was answered and she heard Joe Hamilton's reassuring deep tones. ‘Dad, it's me—it's Fliss.'

‘Fliss, darling, at last!'

Something was wrong. Something about her father's tone jarred uncomfortably. It wasn't at all what she had expected. But, after the shocks and disturbances of the day her brain was too bruised, too out of focus to register exactly what it was.

‘I was wondering when you would call.'

‘You…'

Her thoughts reeled as she realised just what it was that was nagging at her so uncomfortably. Just what had set all her senses on red alert, screaming warning signals automatically.

Her father wasn't shocked.
He didn't even sound distressed or worried. And yet he must have been waiting for her call for three or more hours now. Three hours of knowing that his daughter who he had last seen disappearing down the drive in a car driven by a complete stranger had seemed to have vanished off the face of the earth. Three hours of knowing that she hadn't turned up for the wedding that was going to save his skin and that he had no idea at all where she was.

And he didn't seem in the least bit concerned.

‘Dad?'

Shock made her voice quaver uncertainly on the word.

‘How's Mum?'

It was the question that was uppermost in her mind. The thought of her frail mother, already being told to take things easy, avoid any sort of stress because of her weak heart, being subjected to the anxiety of the past few hours worried
her sick. What if something had happened? A stroke? Worse?