Page 15 of Prohibited

Treacherous bitch.

Only half dressed, the shadows in the room draped over her skin like sheer lingerie, tantalizing him with what he could only barely see.

He’d had the sense to snatch a silken robe off of the foot of the bed and wrap it around her before hauling her out the door and down the stairs. Carrying an unconscious woman was suspicious enough. Carrying a half dressed unconscious woman was out of the question.

He acted with help, of course. He knew some of the staff. Knew how disgruntled they were and how willing they were to share some information for a handsome fee, to forget to lock some doors, to keep an eye out while he completed his unsavory task.

Every footstep through the mansion had been one of heart pounding terror. He could be discovered at any moment with the lady of the house held in his arms like a sleeping babe. But miracle of miracles, nothing went amiss. He stepped out the side door and down to thewaiting car with his precious cargo. He slipped sideways into the back seat with her in his arms and Alex put the car into gear and hit the gas pedal before he had the door shut.

Now she was here with them.

It felt surreal. A dream manifesting. They’d talked and planned for days and days to get everything just right and the first part of the plan had gone just as they had hoped.

He squinted his eyes at her through a ribbon of cigarette smoke, a troubling thought occurring to him. The chloroform should have only lasted a couple of hours at most, but here she was, still sleeping without a care in the world, hours later.

He had tumbled into a few hours of fitful sleep on one of the couches in a side room of the Crystal and had woken, expecting to find her awake.

Yet, she still slept.

Had he used too much chloroform? That was a damnable thought. It made his heart leap in his chest while he fumbled to get the key out of his pocket. All this hard work and planning, just to kill her with carelessness before they could even get started.

He turned it in the heavy lock of the cell with a swift flick of his wrist and pulled the heavy door open. Alex had had this room outfitted in one of the tunnels adjacent to the Crystal in the event that he had to manage an unsavory drunk without alerting the police to the source of the trouble.

How convenient it turned out to be. They had tested it on numerous occasions to discover how well the sound traveled. It turned out, not at all. The loudest shrieking could only be heard as a glimmer at the far end of the passageway and disappeared entirely in the Crystal, even while it was quiet.

Ryan put the key in his pocket and walked slowly into the cell, toward the sleeping woman. The robe was draped over her now, a beautiful silk thing, embroidered with roses and filigree. The damn thing probably cost more than a hard working man made in a year. He sneered at it.

He stopped next to her, eyes trailing down the length of her leg, the expanse covered by the silk of her skirt, and the sheer silk stocking-covered flesh that appeared below the hem, which had ridden up past her knee. The stockings themselves were shredded in various places, red abused flesh showing through. He hadn’t done that to her.

Who had?

It wasn’t his concern. He pushed the thought away.

She was still luscious in all the right ways. Her stockinged feet looked tender, vulnerable, tucked together on top of the rough wool blanket. Standard Army issue.

He bit his lip to curb his desire to slice her stockings up and taste the tender, creamy flesh of her thigh. It wasn’t often he was presented with the opportunity to simply stand and observe the sleeping figure of a woman. He’d been with many. Had even loved one or two of them sincetheir catastrophic love affair all those years ago. But none since he’d come back from the War.

His hatred for her snapped inside of him at the thought of it. The thought of everything she had managed to destroy for him. How was she the card that kept coming up in his life?

Well, now she was nothing to him. A means to an end. He buttoned up whatever urges were trying to pry his chest open and bent to touch her shoulder.

His mistake.

Her foot shot out and caught him right in the knee cap.

“Fuck!” The pain was like a shotgun blast radiating up and down his leg. For an instant, he thought she might have dislocated the goddamn thing. But that didn’t stop him from throwing his weight on top of her when she tried to scramble past him and out of the cell door.

She screamed, a loud, horrible sound of pure, unbridled rage. She turned underneath him like a demon cat, all ferocity and violence. Clawed at his face and kicked beneath him, but he pinned her with his hips and got both of her hands in the grip of one of his large hands. Something cool dripped down the side of his face and fell on her chin, her cheek. Brilliant crimson bursts of color. His blood. He was bleeding. The bitch had cut him open with her fingernails.

She shook her head back and forth and cried out in horror. He slapped his free hand down on her mouth.

They were both breathing hard, staring at each other from inches away. He’d forgotten how mesmerizing hergolden brown eyes were with the heavy curtain of lashes and the slender wing of her eyebrows. For a moment, it stole his breath away. He hadn’t looked into her face with his waking eyes in over a decade. There were times when he thought he’d imagined the effect she had on him, that the passage of time had only exaggerated the sheer force of her presence.

He was wrong. His heart beat harder. His blood surged.

Slowly, her eyes widened. Her breaths came more slowly, but no less deeply as her eyes darted between both of his. Body gone rigid, likely from surprise. A horrible squeezing sensation rippled over his heart and through his belly. For one horrible instant he was sure he had made a mistake.

This was Evie.

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