The Hostage Bride. Kate Walker

      White teeth digging into her lower lip in concentrated determination, she brought her right arm up and out, elbow bent sharply, aimed straight at that square, determined jaw. In the same moment that it connected with the hard strength of bone, jerking his head back, she launched a wild kick at his nearest ankle, allowing herself a faint smile of pleasure as she heard his muffled grunt of pain. For just a split second she was free and she took full advantage of the moment, hitching up her white silk skirts and sprinting for the door.

      She only managed to get a few feet before a hard hand closed over her shoulder, pulling her back. An arm snaked round her waist, clamping tight around her slender frame, and, kicking and struggling, she was lifted bodily from the ground.

      ‘Oh, no you don’t, señorita!’

      Rico had been anticipating the escape attempt. It was quite shocking to realise just how well he had come to know her, even on such a short acquaintance. But just the brief exchanges—he could hardly call them conversations—as they had had on the journey here, had taught him so much about the way her mind worked. He hadn’t expected that she would have so much spirit. That she would be prepared to take him on quite as openly as she had. But he’d observed and learned and as a result he had had a good idea of what was coming.

      It was that tiny grin that had given her away. A smile that she had thought he couldn’t see but which had put a light into her eyes that warned him she was up to something. So he had been ready for the moment she attacked, anticipating the movement of her arm, ready to dodge the full force of it. The vicious little kick to his ankle was more of a surprise, but he soon recovered from that.

      ‘You don’t get away from me that easily!’

      ‘Let me go!’

      She tried to fight; tried to kick out at him again but the long skirts of her dress hampered her and the whirling veil covered her face, half-blinding her.

      ‘Careful, belleza…’ It came out unevenly as he fought to adjust his grip on her, trying to hold her more securely. ‘You’ll have us both on the ground.’

      ‘Do you think I care?’

      Furiously she writhed against his restraining hands until the only thing he could do was lift her higher, his arm going round her waist, the other supporting her legs, her head against his shoulder.

      ‘Now perhaps you’ll do as you’re told!’ he flung at her, clamping down hard on the sudden blaze of anger that had flared inside him, making him want to shake her roughly, drive some sense into her.

      But even as he spoke Felicity moved, her arms coming out in an automatic, instinctive movement to close around his neck in order to make herself more secure. Her action brought a faint rush of perfume to tantalise his senses.

      The fragrance of rose and lily was fresh and sweet, but it was what came with it that delivered the real kick, awakening everything that was truly male and sexual within him. The clean, delicate, and yet potently erotic scent of this woman’s skin and hair, the feel of her warm, soft curves in his arms made his body tighten in hunger and respond with fierce arousal all between one blink and another.

      And as Felicity’s head went back against his shoulder and eyes the colour of an autumn mist met his own sensually darkened gaze, Rico knew that he had just made one of the worst mistakes of his life.

      CHAPTER FOUR

      IT HAD been bad enough when he had managed the change of cars a couple of hours earlier.

      Then at least she had been deeply asleep, totally oblivious to what was going on. Her body had been limp and unresponsive, those soft grey eyes closed and hidden from him.

      Now they were staring straight into his, the sparks of fury and rebellion still burning deep in them, making them shimmer in angry defiance. Her skin was flushed with the after-effects of their undignified tussle, her mouth slightly open as she tried to control her uneven breathing.

      He didn’t want to think that it might not just be the physical exertion that had set her pulse racing. Didn’t even want to consider the possibility that she too might feel the sudden singing tension that had gripped him. Could she sense the abrupt, dangerous change in the mood of the moment, the shift in the sensual temperature that had turned it from winter chill to midsummer heatwave in the space of a heartbeat?

      ‘I’m going to take you inside,’ he growled, shocking himself with the way that his voice didn’t sound like his own but had suddenly become rough around the edges, thickening revealingly. ‘And if you’re wise you’ll not try any more crazy stunts.’

      ‘What did you think? That I was just going to sit there and let you do what you wanted with me?’

      ‘I’d given you my word.’

      ‘Oh, yes, and I know just how much that word is worth. You gave me your word that you wouldn’t harm me even while you were feeding me drugs to knock me out.’

      ‘I’ve already told you, I never planned for quite that effect.’

      He was striding towards the door as he spoke; the ease with which he carried her weight a testimony to the true strength of the muscles beneath that superbly tailored jacket. And the terrible thing was that she had suddenly lost all the will to fight.

      It was as if in that frantic dash towards the house she had drained what little strength she possessed, leaving herself limp and incapable of movement.

      Oh, who was she trying to kid? Felicity reproached herself inwardly. Her sudden mental paralysis had nothing at all to do with her mind and everything to do with an injection of white-hot physical excitement that had set her body throbbing in urgent response. The sensations searing through her in reaction to the forceful, warm strength of Rico’s taut male body so close to hers, the scent of his skin in her nostrils, the iron-hard support of the arms that held her made her skin burn until she felt she was in the grip of some delirious fever…

      ‘And did you not think that maybe a mild sedative was perhaps a kinder way out than others I might have taken?’

      ‘So what do you expect from me? Thanks? Gratitude for the fact that you didn’t treat me any worse than you already have?’

      ‘Oh, no,’ Rico tossed back, caught on the raw by the sudden switch back to cold contempt.

      For a second there she had seemed almost to treat him as a human being. But now the lady of the manor act was right back in place, those soft smoky eyes hardening to the grey of the sea on a winter’s day. Immediately he felt his own feelings change in response as anger put a sharper edge on the volatile cocktail of responses he was already prey to.

      ‘Gratitude would be the last thing I’d expect from you. After all, the woman who was going to marry Edward Venables…’

      Something about her sudden stillness, the shocked, blank look in those misty eyes, brought him up short.

      ‘Oh, come now, querida,’ he derided sardonically. ‘Don’t tell me that you had actually forgotten. That it had somehow slipped your mind that today was to have been the happiest day of your life.’

      She had forgotten, Felicity realised, her mind hazing over in shock. She could excuse herself by saying that the way Rico had exploded into her life with all the force of a whirling tornado had numbed her thoughts, making it impossible to think. But the truth was both deeper and less complicated than that.

      Since the moment that she had first set eyes on this darkly devastating man, her mind hadn’t been her own. It was as if he had taken possession of it, filled her every thought with the stunning force of his presence, wiping away any memories of who she had been, how her life had been.

      ‘You didn’t remember.’ Rico’s voice was thick with contempt. ‘You…’

      ‘Put me down!’ Felicity inserted sharply, hating the scorn in his voice, hating the way he looked at her, dark eyes bleak and cold. ‘Put me down at once! I can walk—’

      ‘Oh,