The Hostage Bride by Kate Walker Read Free Book Online

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
    I T 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?
    â€˜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.’
    â€˜What did you think? That I was just going to sit there and let you do what you wanted with me?’
    â€˜I’d given you my word.’
    â€˜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.’
    â€˜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…
    â€˜And did you not think that maybe a mild sedative was perhaps a kinder way out than others I might have taken?’
    â€˜So what do you expect from me? Thanks? Gratitude for the fact that you didn’t treat me any worse than you already have?’
    â€˜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