bluff and calls the police. I hope he gets a SWAT team sent in to rescue me.’
He reached out to brush a thumb against her cheekbone. It was the lightest of touches but enough for a thrill to race through him at the silky fineness of her skin.
He sensed the same thrill race through her too, the tiniest of jolts before the eyes that had been firing at him widened and her frame became so still she could be carved from marble.
‘If he were to involve the police the news would leak out and his deception would become public knowledge,’ he murmured, fighting the impulse to run his hand over her hair and pull the tight bun out, imagining the effect of that glorious hair spilling over her shoulders like a waterfall. ‘But the police would not do anything even if he did go to them because I have not broken any law, just as Javier has not technically broken any law.’
‘You kidnapped me.’
‘How? You got into my jet and my car of your own free will.’
‘Only because you lied to me.’
‘That was regrettable but necessary. If lying is a crime then the onus would be on you to prove it.’
‘You paid someone to disconnect my phone.’
‘Again, the onus would be on you to prove it.’
Her throat moved before her voice dropped so low he had to strain to hear. ‘How do you sleep at night?’
‘Very well, thank you, because my conscience is clear.’ Finally he moved his hand away and took a step back from her lest the urge to taste those tempting lips overcame him. ‘I will get a member of staff to show you to your quarters. Sleep well, ma douce. I have a feeling tomorrow is going to be a long day for both of us.’
Then he half bowed and walked away.
FREYA PACED HER bedroom feeling much like a caged tiger prowling for escape. The only difference between her and the tiger was she hadn’t been locked in. She could walk out right now and never look back. Except it was now the early hours of the morning and her feet would rightly kill her if she tried to escape again. Third time lucky, perhaps? A third attempt to escape into the black canopy of Benjamin’s thick forest? She might even emerge on the other side alive.
She slumped onto the bed with a loud sigh and propped her chin on her hands. Her feet stung, the corset of her dress dug into her ribs and she was suddenly weary from her lack of food. The pretty pyjamas on her pillow looked increasingly tempting.
A young maid had shown her to her quarters. She hadn’t spoken any English but had been perfectly able to convey that the pyjamas were for Freya and that the clothes hanging in the adjoining dressing room were for her too. There were even three pairs of shoes to choose from, all of them worse than ballet slippers for an escape in the forest.
All the clothes were Freya’s exact size, right down to the underwear. She guessed Benjamin’s sister had passed on her measurements.
The planning he must have undertaken to get her there made her shiver.
He was remorseless. Relentless. He left nothing to chance, going as far as installing a camera outside her bedroom door. She’d seen the flashing red light and known exactly what it was there for. A warning that should she attempt to leave her quarters she would be seen in an instant. If she found a landline phone she would never get the chance to use it.
Without laying a finger on her he’d penned her in his home more effectively than a collie rounding up sheep.
But he had touched her.
The shivers turned into tingles that spread up her spine and low in her abdomen as she remembered how it had felt to have his large, warm hands holding her feet so securely, different tingles flushing over her cheek where he had brushed his thumb against it.
She had never met a more unrepentantly cruel person in her life and being part of the ballet world that was saying something.
But he had cleaned and tended to her feet with a gentleness that had taken her breath away. She had expected him to recoil at them—anyone who wasn’t a dancer would—but instead she’d detected a glimmer of sympathy. Bruised, aching feet were a fact of her life. Smile through the pain, use it to drive you on to perfection.
She had to give him his due—in that one respect Benjamin had been the perfect gentleman. If she’d allowed any of her straight male colleagues to clean her feet she could only imagine the bawdiness of their comments. The opportunity for a quick grope would have been almost impossible for them to resist. The ballet world was a passionate hotbed, the intimacy of dancing so closely together setting off hormones that most didn’t want to deny let alone bother to fight. Freya wasn’t immune to it. The passion lived in her blood as it did in everyone else’s; the difference was when the music stopped the passion within her stopped too. She had never danced with a man and wanted the romance to continue when the orchestra finished playing. She had never felt a man’s touch and experienced a yearning within her for him to touch her some more.
Benjamin had held and touched her feet and she had had to root her bottom to the chair so as not to betray her own body’s betrayal of wanting those long fingers to stop tending and start caressing. She had had to fight her own senses to block out the thickening of her blood at his touch, had fought to keep the detachment she had spent a lifetime developing.
She squeezed her eyes shut, her brain-burn deepening at how she reacted so physically to the man who threatened to ruin everything.
She was caught in a feud between two men—three if she counted Luis—but it wasn’t Freya who had the potential for the greatest suffering as a consequence of it, it was her mother. Her mother was the only reason she had agreed to Javier’s emotionless proposal.
You know the kind of man he is yet still you chose to marry him. What kind of woman does that make you...?
It made her a desperate one.
Dance was all she knew, all she was, her life, her soul, her comfort. She had achieved so much from her humble beginnings but there was still so much to strive for, both for herself and for her parents who had made so many sacrifices to get her where she was today. Imagining the pride on their faces if she were to get top billing at the Royal Opera House or the Bolshoi or the Metropolitan gave her all the boost she needed on the days when her feet and calves seared with such pain that she forgot why she loved what she did so much.
Javier’s proposal had given her hope. He would give her all the space she needed to be the very best. Marriage to him meant that if she did make it as far as she dreamed in her career then she would have the means to fly her parents all over the world to watch her perform. Much more importantly, her mother would have the means to be alive and well enough to watch her perform, not be crippled in pain with the morphine barely making a dent in the agony her body was putting her through.
But she did know the kind of man Javier was and that was why she had no faith he would pay Benjamin the money he owed. She didn’t doubt he and Luis owed Benjamin money, although how they could have got one over the French billionaire she could not begin to guess, and right then she didn’t have the strength to care.
Her forthcoming marriage was nothing more than a marriage of convenience. Javier’s feelings for her ran no deeper than hers did for him.
If he didn’t pay Benjamin then it meant their marriage was off. It meant no more money to pay for her mother’s miracle drugs.
If he didn’t pay it meant she would have to trust the word of the man who’d stolen her and hope he’d been telling the truth that he would marry her on the same terms.
Because if Javier didn’t pay she would have to marry Benjamin. If she didn’t her mother would be dead by Christmas.
* * *
Benjamin