Tori gave in to the protective urge to spread her arms as wide as she could around his brawny shoulders. She rested her head on his chest, absorbing the reassuring heavy thud of his heartbeat. She’d wait till she caught her breath. Then she’d try to define the change she sensed with every cell yet couldn’t name.
It was her last cogent thought for hours.
* * *
‘Tori.’
The luscious deep voice was warm and seductive in her ear. Ash’s hands moved over her body and she stretched sinuously, arching to meet them.
She frowned, for he wasn’t caressing her, he was—
‘It’s time to wake up.’ His hands were deftly doing up her shirt buttons, right to the collar.
‘Ash?’ She opened her eyes to discover pale light filtering through the small windows.
He was dressed, she realised, his torn shirt buttoned and tucked into dusty trousers. Then she recalled him insisting in the night that they dress again. For warmth, he’d said.
Now she felt a chill that was only partly due to the temperature. Grey dawn light revealed a clearer view of Ash than she’d had so far. His features were starkly sculpted and compelling. His face would turn any woman’s head. But now she saw clearly the blood caked in his hair. His torn clothes were liberally marked with dark stains and the chain securing him looked brutally heavy.
Tori’s stomach turned as dread reality hit her full-force. Nausea rose. Her pulse accelerated to a panicky rhythm. Impossibly, in Ash’s arms the peril they were in had been pushed to the back of her mind. Now realisation slammed into her.
She clutched his hands and he paused. His eyes met hers and something passed between them. Then Ash took hold of her hands. In this light she still couldn’t make out the colour of his eyes, yet the warmth she read in them counteracted the chill crackling across her bones.
Slowly, as if he had all the time in the world, he raised her left hand and kissed her palm, his warm lips soft on her flesh. He repeated the gesture with her other hand, sending a squiggle of heat from her palms to her breasts and lower, arrowing to her core.
He murmured something against her palm that she couldn’t catch. But his eyes as they met hers glowed with a message that made her chest clamp.
‘Thank you,habibti.’ He inclined his head, sketching a quick, graceful movement with his hand that spoke of respect and admiration. ‘You did me great honour last night. Your gift is one I’ll carry with me.’
Tori was about to respond when Ash’s expression changed. His head whipped towards the door, his features intent, as if he heard something she couldn’t.
‘Quickly.’ He grabbed her boots and shoved her feet into them.
‘What is it?’
But she guessed the cause of his urgency. Someone was coming.
The thought of their captors made her fingers shake, and she watched Ash push her hands aside to do up the laces with swift efficiency.
‘Remember what I said.’ His voice was urgent and low. ‘Don’t fight back till you’re alone with one of them. You’ll stand a better chance.’
Tori looked into that stern, handsome face and nodded. She swallowed hard. ‘You—?’
‘I’ll be fine. Now the sun’s rising the search party will find it easier to locate the camp.’
Neither admitted that the search party might be too late for him.
His hands tightened on hers as they heard voices outside. Leaning in, he whispered, ‘When you escape—’when, notif... Tori’s heart leapt with hope ‘—keep low and—’
His words were cut off by the door banging open to rattle against the wall. Tori blinked against the light, realising belatedly that Ash no longer held her hands but was on his feet, facing the three men who had entered.
What came next was the stuff of nightmares. Brutal, pawing hands and leering faces. A slap that made her head ring as she struggled to free herself. But far worse was the sight of Ash, pulling one of the men off her and then being set upon by two of them. Hampered by the chain, he was eventually overwhelmed by vicious blows to his injured head and ribs.
The last she saw of him he’d crumpled to his knees and then pitched sideways, a scarlet bloom spilling from his wounds across the dirt floor.
The rusty tang of fresh blood was sharp in Tori’s nostrils as she was shoved, stumbling, into the chill morning.