The Holiday Escapes Collection. Sandra Marton

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.

       Chapter Seven

      ROSE woke up the next morning to find sunshine flooding her with white, almost blinding clarity. It refreshed her, washing away the dark nightmares that had troubled her all night.

      Yawning, she blinked sleepily. It was a dream, she thought. Thank heaven it was all a dream. She was back in her solitary bedroom at Trollshelm Castle. Today was her wedding day, the day she would pledge herself as Lars’s wife for the rest of her life…

      Rose blinked.

      She sat up abruptly. Her blankets fell to her waist as she stared around her. This was not her bedroom.

      She glanced down at the white silk bra and panties that she’d slept in. A blush heated her cheeks as she remembered Xerxes moving over her on the bed last night, his body so close to hers as he slowly undid her garters and pulled her silk stockings off her legs. She could still feel the intensity of his mouth on hers when he’d kissed her on the plane. She touched her lips as she recalled how his lips had seared her, how he’d crushed her to his chest and taken her in a hard, hungry embrace, his tongue sweeping her own as he—

      “Good morning.”

      She looked up from the bed with a gasp, yanking her sheets back up to her neck.

      Xerxes leaned in the doorway, dressed casually in khaki shorts and a black tank top that revealed his tanned, muscular arms.

      “Good morning,” she choked out in reply.

      “I hope you slept well.” He gave her a darkly sensual look. “I unlocked your door. I’m here now to give you what you need.”

       Had he somehow guessed what she’d just been thinking?

      “What?” she said in a strangled voice.

      He sat down on the bed beside her. “Here.”

      He placed a silver tray in her lap that held a silver coffeepot, chocolate croissants, fresh fruit, fried potatoes and orange juice. Staring down at it, her mouth watered. “You brought me breakfast?” she said numbly.

      “You looked hungry last night.”

      She was. But something else caught her eye. Surprised, she reached across the tray to a bud vase that held a tiny pink rose. She breathed in the delicate scent of the bloom. “And this? Am I supposed to eat this?”

      He shrugged. “It reminded me of you.”

      “You picked a flower?”

      “I do know how,” he said dryly. “I have my gardener grow them in our greenhouse in winter.” He paused. “My grandmother grew polyantha rose bushes, fairy roses. They were the only bit of beauty we had then—her weeping rose tree.” He looked at the tiny flower. “It’s so delicate, the bloom’s barely bigger than my thumb, and yet it’s stronger than it looks. It resists disease, poor soil. Even men.” He gave a slight smile. “The thorns are vicious.”

      She looked at the flower, then him, still shocked.

      “It’s my way of saying I’m sorry for the way I kidnapped you,” he said with a sigh. “If I’d known you were innocent, that you hadn’t deliberately