5
Candlelight, golden and gentle, greeted her when she woke.
She shifted, the glide of warm velvet under her cheek, the brush of a soft fur blanket covering her. So peaceful and cozy. Her lashes looked like black lace against the warm light. Sighing, she snuggled in, drowsy and peaceful.
What the hell?
With a bolt of panic, she sat up, the throw falling away, and tried to absorb her surroundings.
It was something out of a dream.
She sat on an antique chaise, sort of a carved wooden fainting couch, covered in emerald velvet with throw pillows in satin jewel tones. The fur blanket felt real, soft as chinchilla, in a dazzling light pearly gray, nearly a luminescent silver. The rest of the room held similar furniture, an eclectic assortment of Victorian-style lines and fabrics, breathtakingly elegant. Plush Oriental carpets easily worth tens of thousands of dollars covered the floor, one bordering another in a stained-glass pattern of color.
On every surface, white pillar candles glowed, their flames straight and true in the draftless cavern. For a cave it was, rough rock walls a disconcerting backdrop for the lovely pieces. As if she were some sort of exotic animal, displayed in a zoo habitat created by some well-meaning but misguided keeper—who couldn’t disguise the impression that the abandoned lion’s den of rocks and crags had been hastily converted just for her.
Little doubt who her captor might be. Or that Tara’s fate might yet be in store for her.
The stark terror she’d felt in the prop shop had chilled now, coating her insides with a fine frost. Her mind felt crystal clear, sharp and incisive. Some part of her recognized this as an adrenaline high. This was the state that allowed mothers to lift cars off their children or soldiers to continue fighting with fatal injuries.
Fight or flight.
If escape wasn’t an option, she would fight. Laura Moon’s daughter wouldn’t go down without one.
Resolved, she explored the room. Most of the furniture sat at least an arm’s length from the cave walls, which allowed her to walk behind the credenzas, desks, and settees, even the tall bookshelves. Though the candles didn’t provide much penetrating light, her investigations showed no doors, no tunnels, not even a mouse hole.
She circumnavigated the room twice. Then a third time, just to be sure. The only egress appeared to be the chimney. The fireplace seemed to have been dug out of the wall, large enough to stand in and deeply inset. Behind a gleaming brass screen, logs burned with fierce heat, any smoke whisked up the chimney. No telling how high it might be.
“Christine.”
She’d been ready for this, so she didn’t startle. Instead, she reached for the fireplace poker and slowly turned to face her captor.
He’d apparently dressed for the occasion, the black cloak swept back to frame his broad shoulders, clothed in a billowing white shirt with poet’s sleeves, a waistcoat of swirling gold brocade fitted to his narrow waist. The black half mask obscured his face but not his ice-blue eyes or his sleekly groomed white-blond hair.
In his gloved hands, he carried a tray with a crystal carafe and a plate of some sort of food. His gaze touched on the poker and moved back up to her eyes, his sharp-edged lips curving. “Does the fire need stirring?”
“You think I won’t use it, but I will.” Her voice sounded even and confident. “You’re not raping me without losing some important soft bits, mark my words.” She eyed his crotch significantly, which was maybe a mistake because the tight fit of his black trousers left little to the imagination.
“I won’t be raping you at all. I told you before, I have no wish to frighten you.”
“Breaking news—kidnapping and imprisoning someone is frightening to them.”
“I did not kidnap you. You fainted in my arms. I could hardly leave you alone in the hallway.”
“Then I can leave whenever I wish?”
“That is always within your power, if you truly want it.”
“Like Dorothy, I only have to click my heels and wish to be home?” She snickered. “That’s hardly a realistic answer.”
He shrugged, the liquid in the carafe sloshing. “What is real?”
She flexed her fingers on the poker. It felt solid. The fire warmed her skin. But her dreams had felt this vivid, too. “I don’t think I know anymore,” she replied, finally.
His lips curved. “I receive little company, so I would love for you to stay and continue to talk with me for a while.”
“Oh, is that what we’re doing?”
“Yes. A clever woman like you should recognize a conversation when she’s in one.” He turned away and set the tray on a low table of glossy wood with frivolous legs that ended in dainty carved hooves.
She lifted the poker. With his back turned, she could strike him over the head. Quick and clean.
“Don’t.” He said it softly, with stern command, never looking at her. He poured the blood-red liquid from the carafe into a glass and brought it to her. “If you try to attack me, I will tie your hands. I’d prefer you to accept my ropes under other circumstances.”
The words sent a pulse of heat between her thighs and her once-clear thoughts whirled. She didn’t know what to think or do.
“Come sit,” he said, in a much gentler tone, warm and coaxing. “Have some wine. Eat something. We’ll talk.” He eased the poker out of her hand, set it back in the stand, and wrapped her fingers around the wineglass. Clearly unconcerned that she might disobey, he turned his back and moved to an antique French chair, unfastening his cloak and setting it aside. He settled himself on the chair and stretched out one leg, as if it pained him, his muscular thigh twitching.
Christy clutched the wineglass. Her self-defense instructor had never said what to do in this kind of situation. Or maybe she had. Make him see you as a person. Trust your instincts.
“Won’t you sit, Christine?” He sounded a little weary.
Forcing herself to move, she took the chair opposite him, at the other end of the long table. In her jeans and Sarah Lawrence sweatshirt, she felt grubby and graceless. She tucked her sneakered feet under the chair, holding her knees pressed tightly together. After an awkward moment, she set the full wineglass on the table and, for lack of something to do with her hands, folded her arms.
“No wine for you?” He always sounded so amused by her.
“I can’t help but notice you aren’t drinking any. I’m really not interested in being drugged into submission.”
He stilled, intensity burning through him. “I’m not interested in using drugs to entice your submission, Christine.”
She had to look away. Jesus, why did those things he said eat through her like that? Shifting a little in her chair to ease the ache between her thighs, she caught him watching the movement with avid interest.
With deliberate care, he poured himself a glass of wine and lifted it to her in a graceful toast. “To new beginnings.” To the most beautiful girl in the room. A shiver ran through her.
He drank from the glass, like a flesh-and-blood man, to all appearances, then cocked his head at her. “You won’t seal the toast either?”
“No, thank you.”
“I want to earn your trust, Christine.”
“Why?”
“So I may pay my court to you.”
That stopped her. A frisson of shock, fear—and, curiously, pleasure—ran over her skin. It all felt like stepping into some old story. A fairy tale.
“I don’t understand.” It came out as a whisper.
He set his wineglass on the table, a bookend to hers, leaned his elbows on his knees, and laced his fingers together. “Surely in even such a modern world, a young woman understands what it means to be courted. I want to woo you, Christine. I want to seduce you, to unfold your petals and open you like the sensuous flower of womanhood you are. I want to peel away every layer of resistance until I hold you trembling and naked in my arms, until I know you more intimately than any other being on this earth.”
Her nails were digging into the wooden arms of the chair. Somewhere in that speech she’d unfolded her arms and leaned toward him, helplessly entranced by the images he created in her mind.
It was all so strange, as in the dreams. The urge to go to him overwhelmed her. He held out his gloved hands, opening his arms. “Come to me, Christine. Give me a kiss.”
“No.” She clutched the chair, as if it would anchor her there. “I won’t. I can’t.”
“But you can. Am I such a monster?”
That cleared some of the spell. “I don’t know—if you murdered poor Tara, you are. And perhaps I simply don’t want to.”
His lips curved, making her wonder how he’d feel and taste. “You want to. You are as drawn to me as I am to you. You’re too intelligent to delude yourself on that point. You want to kiss me now, to taste me as I wish to taste you. All you have to do is ask.”
Christy shook her head, both in refusal and to dispel the desire his voice created in her. “Gotta point out here that you didn’t respond to the part about Tara.”
“I didn’t kill that girl.” Anger rippled through his voice. “It grieves me deeply that you could think it. Have I done the least thing to harm you?”
Christy shrugged elaborately. “No. Not a thing. I suppose the rape, torture, and murder part of our program is still to come.”
“Beneath this mask and these clothes, I may be scarred, but I do not possess the twisted soul to do such a thing. I promise you that.”
“Okay, then how did her body get there? And so conveniently after you ambushed me in that hallway?”
He adjusted the mask, showing a touch of uncertainty—the first she’d glimpsed in him. “I don’t know.” He said it softly, a confession.
“How can you not know?” she demanded in a tumult of emotion. “You’re the theater ghost! You see all and know all! You come and go like the wind and no doors are locked to you!” Her voice rose perilously high and she strained forward in the chair even as she clung to the arms, as if she might launch herself at him. “Tell me how any of this is possible!”
He regarded her somberly. “I am bound by flesh and blood. I am only a man, Christine.”
“I don’t believe you,” she hissed.
“No?” He stood abruptly and came around the fragile barrier of the coffee table in a single stride. She shrank back in her chair, but he only held out a black-gloved hand. “Touch me and see.”
She knotted her hands together. “I don’t want to.”
“Give me that much.” He sounded equally distraught. “Let me at least prove to you that I am not a ghost.”
“And then you’ll let me go?”
“It is always within your power to come and go, if you want to. Touch me. Trust me.”
He stood over her, so tall, his fair hair shining in the candlelight. Hesitant, she laid her hand in his, the leather soft and supple from his body heat. He drew her to her feet with great care, so she stood close enough to smell him. Like cedar chests and pine smoke, warm leather and man.
Taking her hands by the wrist, he laid them flat on his strong chest. Then let go and stood at her mercy. She flexed her fingertips on the brocade waistcoat, feeling the contour of muscle beneath. His breath rose and fell, his strong heart thumping. She trailed her hands down, over his flat abdomen, enticed by his masculine form. But the fabric, stiff and scratchy, got in the way. He wasn’t watching her but instead stared steadfastly over her head, concentrating on not moving, perhaps. She unfastened one of the elaborate gold frogs and his breath caught.
Only a man.
That small response, more than anything, emboldened her. One by one, she unhooked the closings, then spread open the waistcoat, freeing the white linen crushed beneath. It was damp from the sweat of his skin, fragrant with his scent. Intoxicated, she ran her hands up his hard belly, ribs, and pecs. All man. When she reached his collar, her fingers found the button there and set about to undo it.
His hands came up, clamping her wrists, holding them there.
“No.”
She stared up into his intent, icy eyes. “Why not?”
“I don’t want you to see me. Some of it is . . . not pretty.”
“Is that why you wear a mask?”
“Yes.” He searched her face with a kind of yearning. “Can you look past that?”
“I want to see.”
“Not yet.”
“Then I want to touch. I’ll close my eyes.”
He hesitated.
“You asked me to trust you. Trust me.” Trust your gut.
He breathed a humorless laugh. “Such a simple thing to ask, is it not? And so terribly uncomfortable to give.”
For the first time, she felt she might understand him. A ghost pain from her own scars sparked across her belly. “You also asked me to touch you. Let me.”
His gloved fingers flexed on her wrists. “I want to blindfold you. Will you let me?”
It seemed the room spun around her in a long, slow whirl, a carousel of exotic beasts whispering to her of dread and exhilaration. The few logical thoughts she could muster all muttered that this was a bad, bad idea.
But something deeper and stronger overrode them. She wanted this.
Trust yourself.