He swung round, his bronzed, startlingly handsome features and curling black hair damp with perspiration. ‘No need. This is allowing me to work out my anger. And you look as though you’re on the brink of collapse. Why don’t you lie down for a while?’
‘I can do my bit just like you can,’ she insisted, hovering.
‘You can do it tomorrow, or in the middle of the night. The noise will carry further then. If you fall asleep I’ll wake you up,’ he assured her.
She gave a rueful laugh. ‘Sleep with that racket?’
‘Try. We need to conserve our strength to stay alert.’ From the shadows he studied her with slumbrous golden eyes and, astonishingly, for the first time since it had happened, she remembered that savage embrace in the lift—the hard, hot hunger of his mouth on hers, the shatteringly sexual feel of that lean, muscular form of his crushing her to him.
‘Yes,’ she muttered, turning away, barely knowing what she was saying, suddenly engulfed by a level of physical awareness that she had never felt before, struggling to thrust that intimate memory away again.
‘You remind me of a marmalade cat,’ he said abruptly.
‘It’s the hair.’
‘I can see you slinking through the undergrowth, stalking your prey.’
‘I haven’t heard that one before.’ She forced a laugh and vanished back through the curtain. At the sink she washed her face and hands, dried herself on one of the two rough, faded towels available, peered at the still wrapped toothbrush and paste. The kidnappers hadn’t planned to make Rico too uncomfortable. The conviction was soothing.
‘Can we share a toothbrush?’ she called in a lull in the noise.
‘If we can share a bed we can share a toothbrush,’ Rico murmured lazily.
But they were not going to share that bed. They would take turns. Very democratic. Very sensible. One asleep, one awake and alert. And always that background of deafening noise. Thud, thud, crash, crash. It was impossible that anyone could fall asleep against that background. Having removed her boots and her tights in the kitchen section, Bella walked back to the bed. Covertly undoing a couple of the buttons on her fitted jacket, she slid below the blanket, rested her head on the pillow, and turned away from him towards the wall.
But still his image lingered behind her lowered eyelids, stamped there like a cattle brand seared into her flesh. Involuntarily she remembered the kiss, relived the wildness he had unleashed—from inside her, from inside him. Trying to fly off the top of a tall building would have been less dangerous, less foolhardy. She shivered. The fire had simply taken over, burning out all self-control.
No man had ever made her feel like that. And she didn’t ever want to feel like that again. Passion was greedy and mindless. Passion was lust, a purely physical thing which had no staying power. Bella knew that some people were lucky enough to find both love and passion in a lasting relationship but those people were in the minority. Many more mistook infatuation for love and then wondered why their feelings faded so quickly. But Bella knew the difference and knew what to guard against.
Both of her parents had been passionate people and neither Cleo nor Ivan had controlled that side of their nature. Neither of them had ever managed to sustain a stable relationship, not with each other and not with anybody else. Their love affairs had been volatile, short-lived and unfulfilling. Why? Because they had been greedy, impatient and always afraid that the grass might be greener with someone else.
Bella was determined not to fall into the same trap. Yes, she had needs and drives just like any other young, healthy woman, but she wanted to choose her life partner with her intellect, not with her body. It dawned on her that she had not thought of Griff in almost twenty-four hours. She was shaken. But then, it had been a frantic and worrying twenty-four hours, and Griff had hurt her, and no doubt she was already in the recovery phase. Bella’s feelings shut down fast when she was disappointed or betrayed.
But she had been very fond of Griff. She had enjoyed his company, respected his intelligence and believed that his outlook and expectations of life matched her own. That, she had foolishly assumed, had been a sufficient basis on which to build a good relationship. Only it hadn’t been enough for Griff. She had refused to go to bed with him in the absence of any deeper commitm
ent on his part.
That giggle in the background on the phone had told her that he had been finding physical entertainment elsewhere. Griff had made his choice but she knew him well enough to know that he would still believe that he could string her along. But Bella wouldn’t allow that. It was over. Griff was immature, clearly not yet ready to think in terms of permanence in spite of all the things he had said to the contrary.
That sorted out tidily in her mind, Bella contrived to do what she had not believed possible. She fell asleep. And she awakened to a situation that was entirely new to her.
She was lying on top of a living, breathing pillow. Her nostrils flared at the clean, soapy scent of warm male. Her breasts were crushed against a rough-haired chest, her cheek pillowed in the hollow of a smooth shoulder, and her pelvis was in direct contact with the thrust of a very masculine arousal. In the darkness her head flew up, her eyes wide with consternation.
CHAPTER FOUR
A HAND pressed her back down again. ‘Go back to sleep,’ Rico breathed tautly.
‘Like hell I will!’ Bella gasped in alarm, trying to rise but thwarted by the powerful arm wrapped around her hips.
‘Dios! Relax,’ he hissed with raw impatience.
‘You’ve just got to be kidding! You’re in bed with me!’
‘Madre de Dios, it’s four in the morning—’
‘Time I got up and took my turn at thumping walls!’
Both arms closed round her. ‘Forget it,’ he groaned. ‘It’s the middle of the night. I need sleep. If you start, I won’t get any.’