unable to resist as he took her hand in his larger one, lifting her to her feet. She trembled at his touch, barely feeling strong enough to hold the bodice of her wedding gown closed with her other hand. She pressed her fingers against her heart. She felt faint, her knees weak as she tried to walk. Stopped.
She looked up at him in the dark, shadowy hallway. She saw the roughness in his expression. He was everything Lars was not: brutal, ruthless, vengeful. Truthful.
Abruptly, Xerxes lifted her into his strong arms, holding her against his chest. She felt the rush of electricity, the overwhelming awareness sizzling through her just as it had when he’d first touched her, when he’d kissed her on the plane.
He didn’t know that it had been her first kiss. And that her whole body trembled now with all the desire and yearning of twenty-nine years of loneliness.
He carried her down the shadowed hallway and up a sweeping flight of stairs. The rhythm of his footsteps was heavy against the marble floor, mingling like percussion against the music of the roaring surf outside.
She glanced up at his face. His expression was brutal, even cruel. And yet he held her so gently. She’d thought him some kind of malevolent demon, but perhaps he wasn’t. Perhaps he was a dark angel, who’d unexpectedly come to save her.
At the end of the hall, he used his shoulder to push open a door with a low creak. Supporting Rose’s body with one arm as if she weighed nothing at all—which she probably did, compared to him—he switched on a small lamp with his free hand.
She dimly saw a large, Spartan bedroom, utterly masculine, devoid of color. The walls were white. The bed was black. The wide windows had a balcony overlooking the moonlit sea.
He set her down on the bed. Looking down at her, his eyes were dark as night. Dark—and full of hunger.
He was going to kiss her again. She knew it. He was going to kiss her, despite his promise. Promises meant nothing to men. They’d meant nothing to Lars. Now Xerxes would ruthlessly possess her. He would take everything she had once hoped to give her husband in innocence and faith.
Rose no longer had the strength to fight.
He pushed her back against the enormous bed. Slowly, he pulled the fabric of the bodice from her clenched fingers, leaving her silken bra and the bare skin of her belly in clear view. She felt the magnetic force of his body over her own, his powerful strength and size as he stared down at her, pinning her with his dark gaze.
She stared at him numbly. She had to fight. Why couldn’t she fight? She breathed, “I…I hate you.”
His sensual mouth curved as he looked down at her. “I don’t need you to love me. I just need you to obey.”
Rose closed her eyes, waiting for him to rip the wedding dress down her legs and throw his body over hers. Waiting for him to ravish her without hesitation, to ruthlessly and brutally seduce her naked body.
She almost didn’t care. She’d lost herself completely. Just a few hours ago, she’d been idealistic, romantic. Now, she felt—nothing.
Then he touched her.
His fingertips were feather-light, running along her bare collarbone to her shoulder. Strange sensations coursed through her body, an odd tumble of emotions that frightened her. Fear? Yes. But also…something more than fear. Something greater than fear that made her tremble deep inside.
His hands moved slowly down the naked valley between her breasts, causing prickles to spread all over her body. His hands sizzled everywhere he touched. Her breasts felt heavy, her nipples tightening to aching points beneath the silky white bralette that Lars had insisted on ordering for her from Paris. She’d blushed when he’d given it to her. Now, she was wearing it in front of his enemy.
His fingers moved down her bare belly to the tattered wedding gown pulled down around her waist. He gently pulled the layers of lace and tulle down her legs, then dropped it to the floor in a crumpled heap.
“I knew I’d get that off you eventually,” he whispered.
She started to reply, then saw that he’d fallen to his knees at the foot of the bed. The image of him kneeling before her half-naked body was so shocking that she squeezed her eyes shut.
But if anything, the sensation only grew more intense as she felt his hands on her thigh, unhooking a lace garter that held up her white silk stocking. The warmth of his breath curled against her naked belly, and she gasped with the sweet agony of forbidden desire. She shouldn’t feel like this—not for a stranger!
He slowly pulled the stocking down her leg, his fingers brushing her skin from her thigh to her knee. The sensual silk slid slowly down her calf, down her ankle to the sensitive hollow of her foot. And suddenly her leg was bare.
He moved on the mattress, moving up between her legs. With a gasp, she opened her eyes.
He was looking down at her, his dark eyes hungry. Holding her gaze with his own, he tossed the stocking to the floor. Reaching for her other thigh, he unclasped the garter and moved the second stocking down her leg, sliding the silk down her skin like the whisper of a caress.
Heat built inside her, coursing through her body, sizzling her with his every look and every touch. Tension tightened her nipples to aching points, coiling low in her belly. Her breaths came in increasingly quick gasps.
She shouldn’t do this. He was her captor, a criminal, a stranger to her! She shouldn’t let him touch her!
But even as her mind screamed for her to push away, she couldn’t move. She just lay there on the soft cotton sheets, feeling the breeze from the open window, seeing it wave through white translucent curtains. In the distance, she heard the plaintive call of seagulls and her own hoarse breath. Biting her lip until it bruised, she looked up at his brutal face.
But he did not look brutal anymore. He stroked her concave belly with concern. “So thin,” he murmured. “Why so thin?”
It broke the spell. She sat up abruptly.
“Gullible. Clumsy. Skinny,” Rose said bitterly, as her fingers gripped the cotton sheets, pulling them up. “You are cruel. Lars always said I was the most beautiful girl in the world—”
Then her throat choked as she remembered that Lars was a heartless, soulless liar.
Xerxes’s fingers stilled. “Växborg did not lie,” he said quietly. “You are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen, Rose Linden.”
He pushed her down firmly with his rough hands, and she did not resist. She closed her eyes. When she felt a soft sheet cover her body, she looked at him in shock.
From beside the bed, Xerxes looked down at her with a crooked smile. His rugged face was impossibly handsome in the circle of lamplight. He lifted a white goose-down comforter over the sheet. And suddenly, she realized what he was doing. He wasn’t trying to seduce her.
He was tucking her in for the night.
“You’re leaving me?” she whispered as he turned away. “Just like that?”
He paused at the door, his expression half-hidden by shadow. The dim golden light illuminated the edges of his muscular body as he spoke to her without turning around. “Good night.”
“I don’t understand. Why are you acting like this?”
“Like what?”
“Like a gentleman. Like…like a good person.”
Abruptly, he clicked off the light, and the room fell into darkness. “Don’t think I’m a good person,” he said in a low voice. “If you do, you’ll regret it. ’Til the day you die.”
And he left, closing the door heavily behind him, locking her in—alone.
ROSE