his grip. How secure.
‘Thank you,’ she said, lifting her eyes to his as she negotiated the last step, wondering at the suddenness with which he turned his face away, only to be distracted by the sudden space around them here, as the tunnel widened into a wide, low room. There were tables set around, and shelves built into the walls containing racks of bottles—dozens and dozens of bottles. ‘What is this place?’ she asked, stepping around him.
‘Welcome to my wine cellar. Here you’ll find every vintage of Vino de Volta going back to 1797.’
‘Hell of a place for a wine cellar,’ she mused, strolling past the racks of bottles, pausing to peer at a label here and there, the lover of ancient and even not-so-ancient treasures inside her completely fascinated.
‘There’s more,’ he said, ‘through here.’ He dipped his head under a low doorway leading to another room, this one more like a cavern, its walls similarly stacked.
She followed him in, made a wide circle as she took it all in. It was the perfect place for a wine cellar, the air cool and dry, with no telltale dripping. And a spark of excitement flashed through her. Because if it was the perfect place to store wine.
‘Are they here?’ she asked, unable to keep the excitement from her voice. ‘Is this where the pages were found?’
Her enthusiasm lit up the cavern more effectively than any amount of torchlight. She was like a child, excited about a present she’d asked Santa for and for which she’d promised to be good, her eyes bright with expectation, a dancing flame alive on their surfaces.
And he felt a sudden twist in his gut that made him wheel away, for she was so vibrant and alive and everything that Adele had once been—everything that he no longer was.
Blackness surged up and threatened to swallow him whole; not the black of the caves but the blackness that came from within, the blackness that had been his constant companion since that night. He’d thought he’d learned to control it, but it was there, lurking in the scars that lined his face and body, lurking on the very edges of his sanity, waiting to seize control, and he cursed himself for giving in to the urge to amuse himself with her. Cursed himself for putting a hand to her slim shoulder. Cursed himself for wanting more and for then finding an excuse to take her fragile hand in his own.
It had been a long time since he’d touched a woman he hadn’t had to pay.
Such a long time …
He dragged in one breath and then another, forcing the blackness back down, refusing to give in to its power, determined not to succumb. Not here. Not now. ‘This way,’ he managed to grind out, through a jaw that ached with the effort of those two simple words.
Behind him she blinked, letting go a breath she hadn’t realised she’d been holding. What had just happened? For a while she’d imagined he was loosening up a bit around the edges, losing some of his antagonism and resentment towards her. She’d even sensed he was getting some kind of sick pleasure from his teasing about secret passageways and the atmospherics of torchlight.
And then suddenly he’d changed. In the blink of an eye his entire body had set rigid, his skin pulling tight over a face in which his eyes had turned harder than the stone walls that enclosed them. As he’d turned from her she’d witnessed the tortured expression that strained his features and in the shadow-laden light had turned the scarred side of his face into the mask of a monster. A legend, she told herself, her heart thumping as she was reminded again of the story of the Minotaur. Just a legend.
But she must have gasped, she must have made some small sound, for he turned back, studying her face, his eyes strangely satisfied with what he saw as he leaned closer to her. ‘What’s wrong, Dr Hunter? Do I frighten you at last?’
‘No,’ she said shakily, praying for composure, trying to block out thoughts of monsters and Minotaurs and the twisted maze of passageways that lay between her and freedom, wondering if he would chase her if she ran. Wondering what he might do if do if he caught her. ‘No.’ This time she said it with more certainty, even though her heart was still pumping furiously and her breathing too shallow. Once again she sought to regain control. ‘I’m not afraid of you, Count Volta.’
He drew back momentarily on an intake of air, his lips curling to bare his teeth, before he exhaled in a rush as he came closer again. ‘Then you should be, Dr Hunter. You should be.’
He was too close. She could feel the heat from his face and his breath against her skin. But, while her heart was thumping loudly, she realised it wasn’t fear that was making her blood pound and her heart race.
It was the man himself.
And in spite of herself, in spite of his implicit threat, she felt herself drawn towards him, her skin prickling with awareness, her breasts strangely, achingly full.
And from somewhere deep inside her, some dark, dangerous place she hadn’t known existed, she managed to summon a smile. ‘If you want to frighten me, you’ll have to do better than that.’
The torchlight flickered gold in his dark eyes, until she could almost imagine it dancing with the devil within—the devil that made him grind his teeth together as if he was battling with himself even as he leaned still closer. So close that his face was scant millimetres from hers. So close that his lips were a mere breath away.
CHAPTER FOUR
SHE heard his growl of frustration as he swung away, leaving her with only heated air scented by his musky scent and wondering shakily why she was trying to bait him, what she was trying to achieve. What was happening to her?
‘Do you want to see these papers or not?’ he said, already heading deeper into the secret cellar, and she thanked her lucky stars that one of them was thinking straight. For what had she been thinking? That he was going to kiss her? A man she’d met barely an hour ago? A man who had made it plain she was not welcome here, who had objected to her presence and then set out to make her uncomfortable in his?
Difficult? The description didn’t come close. The sooner she was finished with her assessment and away from the Isola de Volta, and its scarred Count, the better.
Tentatively she followed him into a smaller cavern, the doorway rammed firm with beams the size of tree trunks. The room was sparsely furnished, with an old table and two chairs. There was a well-thumbed pack of cards in one corner, and what looked like a bunch of old ledgers on a shelf nearby.
‘Over there,’ he said, indicating towards the shelf. ‘Do you see it?’
Her hopes took a dive. Surely she hadn’t been brought all the way out here—surely she wasn’t being subjected to all this—for a bunch of mouldy old records? But then to one side she saw something else—what looked like some kind of cleft in the rock-face, almost invisible except for the shadow cast by the torch he’d shoved into a ring set into the wall. Intrigued, she took a step closer. Could that be what he meant?
He was already there—impatient to be rid of her, she guessed—his hand seemingly disappearing into the rock-face before it re-emerged, this time holding a flat parcel.
In the flicker and spit of torchlight she held her breath, excitement fizzing in her veins as he brought the package to the table, depositing it more gently there than she could imagine someone his size doing anything. And then he stood abruptly. ‘This is what you want so desperately to see?’
He was angry with her, but right now his bad mood rolled off her. Her eyes, her senses, her full attention were all focused on the parcel on the table. She licked her lips, her mouth dry with anticipation, her eyes assessing. A quick estimation told her the size was about right for something containing the long-lost pages, but that didn’t mean this was it.
She took a step closer, and then another, the man beside the table and his disturbing presence all but forgotten now as her eyes drank in the details of the worn pouch that looked as if it was made from some kind of animal skin, of the rough clasp that had been fashioned