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.
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 set out to replace Laetitia, I would have…” Leaning back, he raked the back of his dark hair with his hand, then gave her a crooked grin. “Well, I would still have kidnapped you, but I’d have been more courteous about it.”
“Oh,” she said faintly. It made her nervous to have him so close to her again. He was freshly shaved and brutally handsome. And the smile he was giving her now was nothing short of devastating. Quickly, she looked back at the breakfast tray. “This looks delicious. I suppose now you’ll tell me you cooked it yourself?”
“No.” His sensual mouth quirked. “But I run a full-service prison here. Room and board included.”
“Nice.” She lifted her eyes to him suddenly. “It would be even nicer if you’d let me go.”
He blinked, then his eyes hardened. “But we already agreed that I am not nice. I am a businessman. And you are too thin. No more diets. You will eat.”
“I wasn’t on a diet,” she said, stung. “I wasn’t even trying to lose weight. I just couldn’t relax around Lars. I never had an appetite.”
“You found him unappetizing? Shocking,” Xerxes said, lifting his eyebrow. “But you are in my care now.
