PROLOGUE

      THE BEDROOM WAS still in shadow, the thick drapes masking the early dawn outside. On feet she could hardly drag forward Talia forced herself to the door. Every cell of her body screamed in silent protest, but she made herself do what she knew she had to do.

      Leave.

      Leave the man sleeping in the wide bed, the bare, lean-muscled torso that she had caressed in ecstasy exposed by the half-drawn cover.

      Emotion stabbed her like a knife eviscerating her insides. To walk out on him—oh, dear God—to make herself walk out on the man who had swept her off her feet, who had taken her to a paradise she had never dreamt existed! The man who had offered her for such a pitifully few blissful hours the hope of something she had never known.

      Escape—blissful, wondrous escape—from the prison in which she was trapped.

      The prison to which she was returning now.

      Because she could do nothing else.

      As she turned the door handle as quietly as she could she could feel her phone vibrating yet again in her evening bag. It summoned her back home to the prison in which she had to live.

      The knife twisted again. It mocked the wonders of the night she had just spent in this man’s arms—how he had taken one look at her and with that single look she had known she would do what she had never done in all her life: give herself fully and rapturously to him without hesitation or doubt.

      She had let him sweep her away from the party, their eyes only for each other, glorying in the sensual desire that had consumed her, that she had never known before in all her life. More—oh, surely more than only physical passion!

      Another twist of the knife stabbed yet more achingly. There had been a connection between them as tangible as their bodies entwining in blazing passion in the night—something that had drawn them to each other. An ease in conversation, a natural communication that had brought smiling laughter bubbling up in her, a warmth