"Unless you do as I say, that cut on your arm is only a beginning." The naked steel blade of the knife glinted in the lamplight as he waved it back and forth in front of her face.
"I don't think you'd hurt me."
"Don't bet on it."
Cold, unfeeling eyes glittered back at her defiant stare, and she admitted that the odds for her to remain untouched and unscathed through this night didn't look good.
"Why … why do I have to take off my … my…?"
"Do you really want to know?"
No, she didn't think she wanted it spelled out for her because she had a pretty good idea why, and somehow hearing his intent from his own lips only made the prospect more frightening.
"But if you were going to rape me," she said, speaking aloud the question her musings raised, "why didn't you—"
"Take off your clothes."
He pronounced each word carefully. They fell from his stern lips like chips of ice.
She considered her options and decided that she had none. At least if she went along with him, she was granting herself time. Perhaps someone would try to call and find that her phone was out of order. The telephone company would send someone to check, wouldn't they? Someone might come to her door. The paperboy for instance. Anything was possible if she could just keep stalling him. For all she knew the police could have the house surrounded right now, having tracked Greywolf there.
Slowly she raised her hands to the second button of her blouse, the first already having been opened by him. She cast one last, pleading glance toward him. His face could have been carved from stone, his eyes formed from hardest crystal for all the humanity they conveyed. Pride kept her from begging, though she didn't think any amount of pleading would budge this emotionless man.
She pushed the button through its hole and reluctantly lowered her hand to the next.
"Hurry up."
She looked up at him where he stood naked and sinister only a few feet from her. He remained impassive under her seething gaze. She took her time with every single button, testing the perimeters of his patience, until all were undone.
"Now take it off." He made a brusque gesture with the knife. Lowering her head, Aislinn slipped the blouse from her shoulders, but held it up against her chest. "Drop it." Still not looking at him, she let the garment slide away from her body and onto the floor.
After a long silence, he said, "Now the rest of it."
It was summertime in Arizona. She had closed her studio early that afternoon because she had no appointments scheduled. After a workout at the health club, she had slipped on a skirt, blouse and barefoot sandals, not wanting to put on stockings.
"The skirt, Aislinn," he said with tense emphasis.
His use of her first name was the supreme insult under the circumstances and it fueled her anger. Reaching behind her, she virtually ripped the hook on her skirt open, and let it fall from her hips in a show of defiance.
At his strangled sound, she raised her eyes. The skin over his high cheekbones seemed to be stretched so tight she thought it might split. His eyes were moving over her like flickering torches.
She wished her lingerie was plainer, less alluring. The silk bra and panty set was the color of lemon sherbet and was trimmed in dove-gray lace. While they weren't sheer, they were designed for brevity and prettiness, not functionality. They left nothing to the imagination, and a man who had been in prison would have a well-developed imagination.
"The bra."
Trying to stein hot tears she was too proud to shed, Aislinn slipped down the lacy straps, drawing her arms through them and holding the fragile cups over her breasts before unfastening the front clasp. Greywolf extended his hand. Aislinn jumped reflexively.
"Hand it to me," he said hoarsely.
Her hand was trembling as she passed the flimsy piece of silk and lace to him. The garment seemed even less substantial when his fist closed around it and, held in that patently masculine hand, far more feminine. He fingered the soft fabric. Knowing that it would still hold the heat of her body, Aislinn experienced a funny feeling deep inside her as she watched his fingers rubbing the soft cloth.
"Silk," he murmured in a low, growling sound. He lifted the bra to his face and crushed it against his nose. He groaned, closing his eyes, briefly making a fierce grimace of his face. "That smell. That wonderful, woman smell."
Aislinn realized then that he wasn't talking to her. He was talking to himself. He wasn't even talking about her. Particularly. Any woman would have done. She didn't know whether to be terrified or comforted by that thought.
The poignant moment lasted only a few seconds before he tossed the bra down with an angry flourish of his hand. "Come on. Finish."
"No. You'll have to kill me."
He looked at her for an agonizingly long time. Aislinn couldn't bear to watch his eyes moving over her, so she closed hers.
"You're very beautiful." She braced herself for his touch. It never came. Instead, he spun away from her, apparently vexed, either over her stubborn resistance or the vulnerability he had inadvertently expressed.
Whatever it was had made him exceedingly angry. He pulled several drawers in her dresser from their moorings before he found what he was short-temperedly searching for. He came toward her with two pairs of panty hose.
"Lie down." Reaching around Aislinn, who stood rooted to the spot in terror, he flung back the covers on her bed.
She lay down, her body stiff with fright, her eyes wide as he knelt over her. But he wasn't even looking at her. His face was set in tense, remote lines as he reached for her arm and pulled it back toward the rails of her brass headboard.
"You're tying me up?" she asked tremulously.
"Yes," he answered curtly, pulling the nylon tight around her wrist and securing it to the rail.
"My God." A hundred hideous nightmares flitted through her brain. Every deviate practice she'd ever heard about, she was reminded of now.
His mouth tilted into another of those sardonic smiles, as though he had read her mind and seen her fears. "Relax, Miss Andrews. I told you I wanted food and rest and that's what I intend to get."
Still frozen with shock and fear, Aislinn lay docile as he bound her other wrist to his, using the second pair of panty hose. When they were tied to each other, the backs of their hands pressing together, she stared up at him with incredulity. He merely snapped off the lamp and lay down beside her, his back to her.
"You bastard." She tugged hard on the fetter that tied her to him. "Untie me."
"Go to sleep."
"I said to untie me," she shouted, trying to sit up. He rolled over and yanked her back down. Though she couldn't see him in the darkness, the body lying so close to hers communicated a terrible menace that was more repressive than sheer force.
"I had no choice but to tie you up."
"Why did you have me undress?"
"To make it more difficult for you to escape. I seriously doubt you'd go chasing out into the night as you are. And—"
"And what?" she asked angrily.
After a slight pause his reply came through the darkness like a stealthy, sensuous, black cat—anticipated, but unseen until it's there. "And because I wanted to look at you."
* * *