you have a death wish?’
His angry words cut through the shock and she opened her eyes to find his face inches from her own, furious green eyes boring into hers.
He was holding her as securely as a groom about to cross the threshold with his new bride but staring at her with all the tenderness of a lion about to bite into the neck of its prey.
Then he muttered something unintelligible under his breath and set off back to the chateau.
‘You can put me down now,’ she said, then immediately wished she hadn’t spoken as now that she could breathe again she could smell again too. Her face was so close to Benjamin’s neck she could smell the muskiness of his skin under the spicy cologne.
He shook his head grimly.
She struggled against him. ‘I’m quite capable of walking.’
His hold tightened. ‘And have you run away and put yourself in danger again?’
‘I won’t—’
‘What were you thinking?’ he demanded. His footsteps crunched over the gravel. ‘If I hadn’t been there to catch you...’
‘What did you expect?’ Her words came in short, ragged gasps. The feel of his muscular body pressed so tightly against her own made her wish he were made of steel on the outside as well as the inside. Damn him. If he were a robot or machine she could ignore that he was human and that her body was behaving in the opposite manner that it should to be held in his arms like this.
Her lips should not tingle and try to crane closer to the strained tendons on his neck, not to bite but to kiss...
‘I expected you to listen, not run into the night. The forests around the chateau are miles deep. You can spend days—weeks—lost in them and not meet a soul.’
‘I don’t care. You can’t kidnap me and hold me to ransom and think I’m going to just accept it.’ She squeezed her eyes shut to block his neck from her sight.
If only she could block the rest of him out too.
God, she could hardly breathe for fear and fury and that awful, awful awareness of him.
Pierre had the door open for them. As Benjamin carried Freya over the threshold, the butler saw her feet and winced.
Benjamin sighed inwardly before depositing her onto the nearest armchair and instructing Pierre, who really should have long gone to bed, to bring him a bowl of warm water and a first-aid kit.
‘Telling him to bring handcuffs so you can chain me in your horrible house?’ his unwilling guest asked snidely.
‘That’s a tempting idea, but no.’ Tempting for a whole host of reasons he refused to allow himself to think of.
Holding Freya in his arms like that had felt too damn good. The awareness he’d felt for her from that first look had become like an infection inside him.
He must not forget who she was. Javier’s fiancée. His only possible means of getting his money back and giving Javier a taste of the betrayal he himself was feeling.
Kneeling before her, he took her left foot in his hand. She made to kick out but his hold was too firm. ‘I am not going to hurt you.’
‘You said that before,’ she snapped.
‘The harm you have caused to your feet is self-inflicted. Keep still. I want to look for damage.’
The full lips pulled in on themselves, her black eyes staring at him maleficently before she turned her face to the wall. He took it as tacit agreement for him to examine her feet. The foot in his hands was filthy from walking bare through all the trees and shrubbery but there was no damage he could see. He placed it down more gently than she deserved and picked up her right foot. It hadn’t fared so well. Tiny droplets of blood oozed out where she’d trodden on something sharp.
Pierre came into the room with the equipment he’d requested, along with fresh towels.
‘Going to do a spot of waterboarding?’ she asked with a glare.
He returned it with a glare of his own. ‘Stop giving me ideas. I’m going to clean your feet...’
‘I can clean my own feet...’
‘And make sure you have no thorns or stones stuck in them.’
‘You’re a doctor?’
‘Only a man with a sister who could never remember to put shoes on when she was a child.’ And rarely as a teenager either. Chloe had moved out of the chateau a few years ago and he still missed her lively presence in his daily life.
His much younger sister was as furious with the Casillas brothers as he was and had insisted on helping that night. He’d given her the task of delaying Luis from the gala and she had risen to it with aplomb. Now she was safely tucked up in first class flying to the Caribbean to escape the fall-out.
‘I’m a dancer,’ Freya said obstinately. ‘My feet are tough.’
‘Tough enough to risk infection? Tough enough to risk your career?’
‘Being held hostage is a risk to my career.’
‘Stop being so melodramatic. You are not a hostage.’ He took a sterile cloth and dipped it in the water, squeezing it first before carefully rubbing it against the sole of her foot.
‘If I’m not allowed to leave that makes me a hostage. If I’m being held for ransom that makes me a hostage.’
‘Hardly. All I require is twenty-four hours of your time. One day.’ He rubbed an antiseptic wipe to the tiny wounds at the sole of her foot, then carefully placed it down on its heel.
‘And what happens then? What if Javier says no and refuses to pay?’
‘You have doubts?’ He lifted her other foot onto his lap. ‘Are you afraid his love for you is not worth such a large amount of money?’
She didn’t answer.
Raising his gaze from her feet to her face, he noted the strain of her clenched jaw.
‘You are the most exciting dancer to have emerged in Europe since his mother died. You have the potential to be the best and Javier is not a man who settles for second best in anything. You are not publicity hungry. You will give him beautiful babies. You tick every box he has made in his list of wants for a wife. Why would he let you go?’ As he spoke he cleaned her foot, taking great care in case there were any thorns hidden in the hard soles not visible to the naked eye.
Freya’s assessment of her feet being tough was correct, the soles hard and calloused, the big toe on her right foot blackened by bruising.
His heart made a strange tugging motion to imagine the agonies she must go through dancing night after night on toes that must be in perpetual pain. These were feet that had been abused by its owner in a never-ending quest for dance perfection. And what perfection it was...
Benjamin
