Never Sleep With Strangers. Heather Pozzessere Graham
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overreact. We must just wait, listen, watch…and see what comes.”
She leaned against him. “I’m so afraid. Hold me.”
He did, feeling the movement of her body against his, her touch. He felt her tugging at his clothing. Felt her hands…finding bare flesh. To his amazement, he hardened instantly, a streak of desire flashing through him. He looked around at the ghoulish setting, amazed, somewhat aghast, and all the more excited because of it.
“Someone could come. Look where we are….”
They seemed to be staring at him. Headsmen in their black hoods, murderers, executioners, rogues. Joan of Arc, so saintly on her cross.
She laughed softly, and the sound washed over his senses. He groaned and slipped down with her, and within seconds they were sprawled out on the cold floor. She was as naked as a jaybird as purple light bathed them. She was insatiable, rising above him, crying out. He tried to hush her, but she laughed, and when they were both spent, she lay at his side and looked up at the faces surrounding them. “It was fun, like an orgy,” she teased.
“You worry me.”
“Come on. It was as if they were all watching. It was an incredible turn-on.”
He hesitated. “You liked to watch…her,” he said, suddenly realizing the truth of his own words.
She shrugged. “So? That was a turn-on, too.”
“But this is dangerous, meeting here, like this,” he told her. “Everything we do now is dangerous. The days to come are dangerous. We don’t know what people know, what they saw, what they might have suspected….”
“We’ll be careful,” she whispered. “We’ll be okay. But I have to be with you….”
He nodded slightly.
She knew how to move him, how to make him need her. Because he loved her, of course.
He closed his eyes and opened them, then started.
She was looking at him. Lady Ariana Stuart was turned his way, and she was looking at him with her huge, wide, beautiful blue eyes.
She was watching.
He could feel her eyes. Looking at him, seeing him. Watching…
It was a turn-on.
And yet dangerous.
He was both aroused and afraid.
It was as if she knew….
She didn’t want Jon Stuart; she’d told herself that time and time again. She wasn’t absurdly, naively young anymore; she was older now, wiser. But in her dreams, she was lying in her bed, naked, waiting, wanting….
Because he was there. Tall, towering, dressed in black. Standing over her…
It was Jon.
It wasn’t. The tall figure was surrounded by fog and changed with each slight flutter of a purple-gray breeze.
It was a torturer, intent upon her agony and destruction, and she was caught, tied, unable to move, to escape, because ropes bound her tightly, and all she could do was look up into the eyes of death with a silent, wax-cast scream….
She awoke with a start, shaking, drenched in sweat. She sat up wildly, looking around.
Her room was empty. The fire burned low; moonlight filtered in.
She could see plainly that she was alone, entirely alone.
And yet it seemed…
There was a presence, a scent, a feeling, something in the air. A feeling she couldn’t shake that someone had been there. Jon? Or Brett? Or an artist’s rendering of a medieval torturer in wax?
“Too much time in the dungeon,” she told herself softly. But her unease persisted.
She leaped up. The bolt was still secure. She’d been dreaming, and she was alone.
Shaking, she curled back into bed and tried to sleep again. But the moon began to set, and soon daylight was filtering in.
She sat up again. “Oh, the hell with this!” she groaned aloud.
So she rose and showered and was the first one downstairs for the six o’clock coffee.
But not even coffee and sunlight could dispel the strange feeling that she hadn’t been alone….
Someone had been with her in her locked and bolted room.
5
Sabrina had a pounding headache and felt so tired and wretched that she could barely sit up.
So naturally the first person into the great hall for breakfast was Susan Sharp.
“Good morning! Nice to see you up!” Susan said with a cheerfulness that was doubly irritating. “Don’t you just love this place? I slept like a baby.”
“The castle is beautiful,” Sabrina replied.
Susan drew up the chair beside Sabrina’s at the polished oak table. “Can you believe that Cassandra absolutely hated this place?”
Sabrina told herself that she didn’t want to gossip, but with Susan there was little choice. And despite herself, she wanted to know everything she could about Cassandra Stuart.
“Did she really?”
Susan nodded grimly, stirring sugar substitute into her coffee. “Hated it. I never understood why Jon put up with her.” She shrugged. “Frankly, I never understood why he married her.”
“Well, she really was beautiful. And smart,” Sabrina heard herself comment.
Susan wrinkled her nose. “Yes, but…well, Jon is gorgeous himself. He could have dozens of women. Has had dozens of women. Why marry that one?”
“He must have loved her.”
“Well, maybe he did. But I can tell you this—he was ready to divorce her when she died.”
“How do you know?”
Susan added milk to her coffee. “Because I was here, remember? They were fighting like crazy. Jon has always loved it here. He didn’t grow up with money, you know. The family inherited this place, but it was a disaster, an albatross hanging around his neck when he first came into possession of the property. Cassandra’s family was swimming with cash—she never wanted or needed for anything. Jon’s dedicated to his children’s charities, and these little Mystery Weeks of his make some really big money. Cassandra didn’t like games, hated half of Jon’s friends. She couldn’t bear V.J., because V.J. would never suck up to her. She said whatever she damned well felt like saying—you know her. Cassie tortured Jon every time he held one of these. He’d be in the middle of something, and she’d supposedly be his hostess—and then she’d suddenly decide she simply couldn’t bear it and throw a tantrum or be off. I know Jon had decided that he was done with her when she died.”
“Susan, maybe they had problems,” Sabrina said, “but how can you possibly know their marriage was over?”
“Because I know Jon,” Susan purred. She leaned back, lifting her long-nailed fingers in a casual gesture. “But then again, Jon wasn’t the only one fighting with Cassandra. She and Anna Lee Zane had barely been civil to one another all week. For one thing, Cassandra had given a scathing review of Anna’s last book on national television in the States. And, of course, Anna is stunning, and she and Jon have been good friends for a very long time. Cassandra never understood the concept of friendship, especially not between a man and a woman, even a woman who goes both ways. Then again, I admit, I don’t quite get friendships, either. I mean, it’s hard to like a man and not want to sleep with him.”
Susan shrugged. “But that’s beside the point. Cassie also completely dished Tom Heart in a review that might