Mackenzie's Pleasure. Linda Howard

exactly blend in himself, despite his black hair and tanned skin, because of his dark cammies, web gear and weaponry. Most people noticed a man with camouflage paint on his face and an automatic rifle slung over his shoulder.

      He reached the room where he’d left Miss Lovejoy and entered as quietly as he’d left. The room was empty. Alarm roared through him, every muscle tightening, and then he saw the small, dark hump on the floor and realized that she had curled up with the thin survival blanket over her. She wasn’t moving. Zane listened to the light, almost inaudible evenness of her breathing and realized she had gone to sleep. Again he felt that subtle inner clenching. She had been on edge and terrified for hours, obviously worn out but unable to sleep; the slight measure of security he’d been able to give her, consisting of his shirt, a blanket and a temporary, precarious hiding place, had been enough for her to rest. He hated to disturb her, but they had to move.

      Gently he put his hand on her back, lightly rubbing, not shaking her awake but easing her into consciousness so she wouldn’t be alarmed. After a moment she began stirring under his touch, and he felt the moment when she woke, felt her instant of panic, then her quietly determined reach for control.

      “We’re moving to someplace safer,” he whispered, removing his hand as soon as he saw she was alert. After what she had been through, she wouldn’t want to endure a man’s touch any more than necessary. The thought infuriated him, because his instinct was to comfort her; the women in his family, mother, sister and sisters-in-law, were adored and treasured by the men. He wanted to cradle Barrie Lovejoy against him, whisper promises to her that he would personally dismember every bastard who had hurt her, but he didn’t want to do anything that would undermine her fragile control. They didn’t have time for any comforting, anyway.

      She clambered to her feet, still clutching the blanket around her. Zane reached for it, and her fingers tightened on the fabric, then slowly loosened. She didn’t have to explain her reluctance to release the protective cloth. Zane knew she was still both extrasensitive to cold and painfully embarrassed by her near nudity.

      “Wear it this way,” he whispered, wrapping the blanket around her waist sarong-style so that it draped to her feet. He tied the ends securely over her left hipbone, then bent down to check that the fabric wasn’t too tight around her feet, so she would have sufficient freedom of movement if they had to run.

      When he straightened, she touched his arm, then swiftly lifted her hand away, as if even that brief touch had been too much. “Thank you,” she whispered.

      “Watch me closely,” he instructed. “Obey my hand signals.” He explained the most basic signals to her, the raised clenched fist that meant “Stop!” and the open hand that meant merely “halt,” the signal to proceed and the signal to hide. Considering her state of mind, plus her obvious fatigue, he doubted she would be able to absorb more than those four simple commands. They didn’t have far to go, anyway; if he needed more commands than that, they were in deep caca.

      She followed him out of the room and down the west staircase, though he felt her reluctance to step into the Stygian depths. He showed her how to keep her back to the wall, how to feel with her foot for the edge of the step. He felt her stumble once, heard her sharply indrawn breath. He whirled to steady her; his pistol was in his right hand, but his left arm snaked out, wrapping around her hips to steady her as she teetered two steps above him. The action lifted her off her feet, hauling her against his left side. She felt soft in his grip, her hips narrow but nicely curved, and his nostrils flared as he scented the warm sweetness of her skin.

      She was all but sitting on his encircling arm, her hands braced on his shoulders. Reluctantly, he bent and set her on her feet, and she immediately straightened away from him. “Sorry,” she whispered in the darkness.

      Zane’s admiration for her grew. She hadn’t squealed in alarm, despite nearly falling, despite the way he’d grabbed her. She was holding herself together, narrowing her focus to the achievement of one goal: freedom.

      She was even more cautious in her movements after that one misstep, letting more distance grow between them than he liked. On the last flight of steps he stopped, waiting for her to catch up with him. Knowing that she couldn’t see him, he said, “Here,” when she was near, so she wouldn’t bump into him.

      He eased his way down the last couple of steps into the faint light. There was no one in sight. With a brief wave of his hand, he signaled her forward, and she slipped out of the darkness of the stairwell to stand beside him.

      There was a set of huge wooden double doors that opened onto the street, but Zane was aware of increased noise outside as dawn neared, and it was too risky to use that exit. From their left came a raised voice, shouting in Arabic, and he felt her tense. Quickly, before the sound of one of her kidnappers unnerved her, he shepherded her into a cluttered storage room, where a small, single window shone high on the wall. “We’ll go out this window,” he murmured. “There’ll be a drop of about four feet to the ground, nothing drastic. I’ll boost you up. When you hit the ground, move away from the street but stay against the side of the building. Crouch down so you’ll present the smallest possible silhouette. Okay?”

      She nodded her understanding, and they picked their way over the jumbled boxes and debris until they were standing under the window. Zane stretched to reach the sill, hooked his fingers on the plaster and boosted himself up until he was balanced with one knee on the sill and one booted foot braced against a rickety stack of boxes. The window evidently hadn’t been used in a long time; the glass was opaque with dust, the hinges rusty and stiff. He wrestled it open, wincing at the scraping noise, even though he knew it wouldn’t carry to where the kidnappers were. Fresh air poured into the musty room. Like a cat he dropped to the floor, then turned to her.

      “You can put your foot in my hand, or you can climb on my shoulders. Which do you prefer?”

      With the window open, more light was coming through. He could see her doubtful expression as she stared at the window, and for the first time he appreciated the evenness of her features. He already knew how sweetly her body was shaped, but now he knew that Miss Lovejoy didn’t hurt his eyes at all.

      “Can you get through there?” she whispered, ignoring his question as she eyed first the expanse of his shoulders and then the narrowness of the window.

      Zane had already made those mental measurements. “It’ll be a tight fit, but I’ve been through tighter ones.”

      She gazed at his darkened face, then gave one of her sturdy nods, the one that said she was ready to go on. Now he could see her calculating the difficulty of maneuvering through the window with the blanket tied around her waist, and he saw the exact moment when she made her decision. Her shoulders squared and her chin came up as she untied the blanket and draped it around her like a long scarf, winding it around her neck and tossing the ends over her shoulders to dangle rakishly down her back.

      “I think I’d better climb on your shoulders,” she said. “I’ll have more leverage that way.”

      He knelt on the floor and held his hands up for her to catch and brace herself. She went around behind him and daintily placed her right foot on his right shoulder, then lifted herself into a half crouch. As soon as her left foot had settled into place and her hands were securely in his, he rose steadily until he was standing erect. Her weight was negligible compared to what he handled during training. He moved closer to the wall, and she released his right hand to brace her hand against the sill. “Here I go,” she whispered, and boosted herself through the window.

      She went through it headfirst. It was the fastest way, but not the easiest, because she had no way of breaking her fall on the other side. He looked up and saw the gleam of pale, bare legs and the naked curves of her buttocks; then she vanished from sight, and there was a thump as she hit the ground.

      Quickly, Zane boosted himself up again. “Are you all right?” he whispered harshly.

      There was silence for a moment, then a shaky, whispered answer. “I think so.”

      “Take the rifle.” He handed the weapon to her, then dropped to the floor while he removed his web gear.