By Desire Bound Page 2

Red. . . bright, burning, liquid . . . In her eyes, her mouth, clotting in her throat, con­stricting in her veins ... no help, no hope ... he was too powerful, and fueled by pure animal rage . . . she was losing, losing to his strength, his heat, and his savage instinct to defend himself.

  All the answers—she had all the answers ... if he would just—she couldn't breathe . . . agonizing— smelled his fear, felt the beast roar, felt her body giving up, going limp, words gagging in her mouth . . . last gasp—last ounce of strength . . .

  She twisted her body wildly against the encroaching darkness . . . such a puny defense against a lion . . . . . . and yet—

  . . . she gasped for breath as his arm eased away from her throat . . . coughing, rasping, inhaling weakly, her body shaking, gulping air now as she felt him release the pressure just enough . . . just—

  Not an animal then; something had broken through the fury, the fear.

  He wanted those answers. Maybe.

  She swallowed convulsively. He might kill her anyway.

  He would, if he didn 't like the answers.

  She didn't like the answers.

  The silence took on a heavy sentient quality. He waited

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  with the patience of a predator, his muscular arm around her throat, tense, taut and hot.

  She swallowed again, just to feel the movement in her throat.

  And he waited, his body alert, poised as if he were marking the passing moments by a dozen other senses.

  The silence became elastic, stretching just to the breaking point of his patience and her fear.

  And when he finally spoke, his voice was deep, rich, and rough with the hard edge of a man who was on the knife edge of sanity.

  "Who are you?"

  And she thought, she didn't have the answers, not even that one. What could she say to vanquish a lion?

  "My name is Darcie Boulton," she said finally, her voice raspy from the tightness in her throat.

  He ingested the information. There was no other word for it. It was as if he took every word and turned it over and examined it to see if it had any meaning.

  She could feel it, the long slow parsing of that one sentence.

  "My name is . . . "

  Liar. Cheat. Thief. Relation by marriage . . .

  He locked his arm against her throat again in a sudden sharp move.

  "Who are you?"

  She choked. "I—"

  "Goddamn it, . . I" He pulled tighter.

  "Darcie . . .

  Tighter still.

  "Truth . . ." she gasped.

  He moved his arm—just a fraction. "Why should I believe you?"

  "Tell you . . ." she panted, between deep gulping breaths, ". . . everything . . ."

  "I live to hear it—Darcie. Boulton."

  "Stop .. . please . .." she whispered, and he eased the weight on her throat, but his arm remained like an iron bar across her shoulders,

  "Talk."

  She felt the aftershock immediately. Her body quaked like she was in a firestorm. Her throat cramped up. She couldn't think of one coherent word that would make sense or that he would believe.

  Her throat was so raw, she sounded like a croaking

  frog.

  "I know who you are," she whispered.

  Tension: immediate and palpable. She felt as if she had a knife at her throat; his arm inched threateningly

  closer.

  "Tell me." "I_"

  "Tell me—"

  Pressure just at her collarbone; she coughed violently, then she caught her breath and choked out: "Pengel-lis—your name—" Another spasm of coughing and then: "Connack Pengellis . . ."

  Again she had that sense of him absorbing the sound, the texture of the words. His hold loosened slightly and

  his body shifted.

  "Tell me more," he commanded, his voice guttural

  and hard.

  She heard just the faintest wariness in his tone. He didn't know. He had meant it: he really didn't know. And so how could he believe her?

  She drew in a long shuddery breath. "Please . . . don't— I'll tell you everything—just don't. . ."

  "Don't what? Strangle you? Attack you? I'm to believe a stranger—Darcie? I can't tell the truth from a fairy tale. I wonder what lies you'll spin to gain your freedom."

  "I'll tell you the truth," she said desperately.

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  "Whose truth? Your truth? How can I know it when I don't even know that name."

  "Let me tell you what I know." She wasn't pleading; God, she hoped she didn't sound like she was begging. But even so, what she would tell him was the stuff of a penny novel. He wouldn't believe her anyway.

  She felt a swamping hopelessness. His situation was fantastic, incredible, improbable, and she had been rash and imprudent. He could kill her as easily as believe her.

  But he needed her. And she had to make him under­stand.

  "Let me tell you," she whispered, "and maybe some­thing will strike you."

  "Tell me who you are."

  She thought about it—one beat, two, how much, how little, the details, the omissions.

  He is real; he is here. He must have found the diamond. The. biggest, most legendary diamond on earth . . . he knows where it is. And if I could get a piece of it, I could be free forever—

  "I told you—my name is Darcie Boulton. I was married to your brother. I'm your sister-in-law."

  His arm tightened. "My . . . brother. . . ?"

  She closed her eyes against the inevitable. "You have ... had—a brother. He inherited your wealth, your companies, your title. He died in an accident not a week ago."

  "And his wife wound up—where?" His voice now was dangerous, silky with a kind of repressed anger.

  "In a ... whorehouse," she whispered. "A male brothel."

  That silence again. Long and rubbery, thick with all the conflict within him. His arm moved closer to her throat.

  "And what exactly am I doing here?"

  "I don't know."

  "And you—"

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  "Hiding . . ."

  "Hiding," he echoed. "Hiding. You buried your hus­band and you're hiding."

  "From your mother."

  His arm tightened again. "Jesus God—my what?"

  "Mother—" she choked out. "Dead. They said— dead . . . you. Died. Years ago. No one knew. No one. I found out. Dangerous. They wanted to kill me."

  "No—no ... I don't believe you—God, are you a

  liar—"

  And she was. She knew it. Just not about this, which sounded, even to her, like the biggest lie of all.

  She swallowed raggedly. "Roger—your brother—he took over everything. He ran the companies, the mining operation, the store. He . . ." "Liar."

  "They made you a saint."

  "Really?" he sneered. "And on what altar was I sacri­ficed?"

  "'You gave yourself up to The Eye of God." He went still. A tight eerie stillness as if he were oblit­erating himself. As if he recognized that in some deep recess of his forgetfulness. "Go on," he hissed.

  "Nine years ago—they said. You disappeared. They said you'd died. Somewhere in India. It was in the newspa­pers—everything. You gave up the company, the day-to­day operation of the diamond mines. You wanted The Eye of God. You went after it And you never came back.

  Aghhhh..."

  He jerked his arm against her throat again.

  "Jesus God . . . what hell is this? What kind of shit is this? Who the hell are you?"

  She gulped a precious mouthful of air. "... married your brother five years ago . . . I—father . . . money, gold—Roger wanted ... to nind company—"

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  "What company?" he growled.

  ". . . Pengellis-Becarre . . . mining . . .jewels—dia­monds ..." she
gasped out.

  He went dead still again.

  She had a moment, the merest moment, to persuade him that her story wasn't a fairy tale, that it was real, he, was real, and she could save him.

  "My father—looking for investment and a title. Roger needed the money. Knew you were still alive. Knew it, and he and your mother, kept the secret for years. I found out Couldn't risk my telling. Imprisoned rne. Everyone thought you were dead. Everyone. Roger took everything— years before I came. And then they thought—they knew—I would tell everything. They locked me up. They would have killed me."

  "They didn't," he said flady, coming out of the silence and filling in the one detail that could puncture her

  story.

  And now, and now—the biggest lie of all. She sagged against the chair, rolling the phrasing around in her mind to find the way to say it that wasn't a lie and didn't bend the truth.

  "I told them I'm pregnant," she whispered. He listened to the words and the tone of her voice closely, too closely, as if he were weighing every nuance. "Are you?"

  She chose not to answer that. "Lavinia—your mother—wanted the baby. I was to stay locked in the tower at the Abbey until it was born." He heard that too. He heard it.

  She took advantage of his hesitation as he absorbed the information.

  "You need me." Brash of her when he could choke her to death in one abrupt motion. But he had eased the pressure, and considered her words even as he dis­missed them.

  "Hardly," he said sardonically.

  "No—somewhere inside you know it's true, and you need me."

  "I know nothing, Darcie Boulton, except you are a con­summate liar."

  "I know," she said with a hint of desperation. "It sounds impossible. But I paid the madam with the silver from Goole Abbey to have you for two nights."

  Another hard pull against her collarbone.

  "What a sweet detail, Darcie," he growled close to her ear. "You just can't stop yourself, can you? What kind of woman are you?"

  "It's true. All of it."

  And she thought maybe he felt it, viscerally, because he hadn't killed her—yet.

  "So let me summarize what we already know," he mur­mured, his voice icy now with danger and distrust. "My name is Connack Pengellis, and I am believed to have died nine years ago in quest of something called The Eye of God. But my family has known and kept secret that I am alive, and meantime, my brother took over my busi­ness properties, but conveniently died last week, and his pregnant wife, who had discovered I was still alive, es­caped from a tower where she was kept prisoner in order not to reveal to the world the mesmerizing secret that I had survived, and somehow wound up in a brothel in order to hide from my nasty—I guess my mother now— who allegedly wants to kill her . . . have I got it right, Darcie? Is that what I'm to believe?"

  It sounded awful. It sounded spur of the moment, out of her mind, ridiculous, crazy, absurd, impossible.

  Insane.

  "Yes," she whispered. "Yes. "

  "Bravo, Darcie. Bravo. You're good. It's a fabulous tale. Fabulous. A tale out of A Thousand and One Nights. You made it all up. Am I right?" His arm tightened. "I

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  have to be right, Darcie, because nothing else makes sense."

  "It's the truth," she muttered. "It is. I swear it. I'll take you to Goole. You'll see. It's all there. The scrap-books, your portrait. Yes—the portrait. That's how I knew. There's a painting of you in the entrance hall at Goole . . ."

  He pulled against her throat and choked off her words.

  "You're good, Darcie. You're very good. Take me to Goole—it sounds so authentic—what the hell is Goole? No!—don't answer. Someplace you'll make sound im­possibly plausible that has a portrait that looks amazingly like me . . , how clever of you, Darcie . . . how damnably clever of you . . ."

  His hold loosened. She felt his hands on her shoulders as he rose to his feet and came around the chair so that his hips and his blatant nakedness were level with her gaze.

  He was a big man, bigger than was evident when the porters had lifted his unconscious form to carry him to this room.

  He scared her. She could never have imagined the reality of him from her pristine daydreams about his powerful figure in the portrait. Nothing she knew about him had prepared her for the sight of him, and the scent of him, as he knelt beside her so that now his face was devastatingly close to hers.

  That face—she had studied that face forever, in pic­tures and in his portrait. She thought she knew that face, she thought she loved that face, but he looked older than in the portrait, and his face was pale from lack of sun and carved with lines from years in the field. His brows were thick and well defined, and his mouth, sensual in the portrait, was thin with impatience and frustration both.

  "Take a good look, Scheherazade."

  His eyes bored into hers; they saw into her every lie, her every deceit, and straight into her soul.

  And then he lifted his hands and touched her face. Moved his fingers to feel the shape of her eyes, her nose, her lips, the curve of her jaw, the line of her neck.

  Cupped her cheeks and moved his head still closer, as if he were about to kiss her—

  —but he didn't.

  Instead, he settled his hands lightly around her neck, exerting that slight threatening pressure that told her clearly and firmly who was in control.

  And then she understood: those eyes that looked so clearly and frighteningly into the deepest recesses of her

  mind saw nothing.

  He had not only lost his memory, he was also blind.

  And now she had the power.

  And she didn't need to state the obvious. He needed her, and he had known it all along. He wasn't going to fight her: he would use her, just as she would use him. And nothing more needed to be said.

  The silence lengthened.

  "You're a real terror," she said finally. "You ought to untie me."

  "I ought to kill you."

  "I can help you."

  "I don't think so."

  "I'll be your eyes."

  "For the five minutes it takes to get out of here."

  "Why did I save you?"

  He looked down at himself, his naked body, his turgid member. "For just the reason you said, Scheherazade. For two nights, no questions asked."

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  "Damn you. Don't you understand—if she finds you, she'll kill you."

  "I thought that was your story," he said nastily. "She wants Roger's baby."

  "Roger . . . my brother, do I have it right? Roger's

  dead. They should welcome Con back with open arms."

  "They heard you'd escaped, that you were on your

  way to England. I overheard them . . . they were going

  to find you first—contain you, kill you if they had to—"

  "And Roger died first," he interpolated. "Or maybe

  Con killed him?"

  "Don't do this . , . Lavinia will kill you. She inherits everything. She wouldn't stand for anyone getting in her way."

  "Or maybe they're trying to smoke Con out?" he sug­gested with a note of irony.

  She froze. Oh, my God . . . he thought it was a joke. He didn 't know, he didn 't remember—anything was possible, any­thing, with Lavinia, even such a bizarre scheme to find Con before he found them. It was so likely, so like Lavinia. And Roger.

  But she had seen Roger fall, seen him in the coffin, attended the lavish funeral. . .

  Insane that she was even considering the ridiculous theories of a blind amnesiac... they were both insane because she could almost believe it.

  She would believe anything to stay safe and keep him alive long enough to lead her to The Eye of God.

  And maybe Lavinia wanted that too. She was evil enough, and devious, and cold-blooded. Anything was possible. Anything.r />
  "You—you—are Con Pengellis, and if they want to get to you, they will get to you. You need me. You're as help­less as a baby."

  "I got here," he pointed out.

  "And you don't remember how or from where. You have no clothes, no money, no papers, no eyesight. Exactly how do you expect to proceed?" "I'll figure it out." "You need me." "What's in it for you?"

  "You won't kill me," she answered imprudently. He smiled nastily and cupped her neck again with his large callused hand.

  "So you'll kill me instead. Or turn me over to the dreaded Lavinia. I don't think so. Maybe you 're the trojan horse. Maybe you'd better make up a better story than this poppycock about a baby and a wicked stepmother because I'm going nowhere with you, Darcie Boulton." He leaned into her menacingly, and for one moment she could have sworn he saw everything. And then she thought, he would be a millstone, a drag, he would load her down, and pull her back. She was crazy to consider going on the run with him.

  But without him, she would have nothing. And with him, with his memory, with the most legendary diamond in the universe, she could own the world.

  She considered the ramifications of being totally hon­est. Always, always, it was a delicate balance of how little to say, how much to withhold to accomplish her purpose. She was skilled at it; she and her father had dealt with the incongruities of fate for all the years they had sifted for gold. But Con Pengellis blind and naked was a propo­sition she could never have conceived of.

  How much truth, how much lie? What would convince him to go with her, to let her be his eyes, his memory, his motive power?

  Honesty. And on a point he couldn't remember. Maybe that was a plus. Maybe.

  She had another moment to decide.

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  He smiled knowingly, almost as if he sensed her strug­gle. "Give up, Darcie. It was a good try." She made up her mind.

  "I want a piece of the diamond," she said abruptly. "—the diamond—?" "The Eye of God. "

  "The thing that Con Pengellis supposedly died for—?"

  "I think you found it," she interrupted relentlessly. "I think you know where it is, and I think Lavinia thinks

  you know where it is, and they want it, and that's why they want you."

  He started clapping. "Scheherazade is back in form again. Excellent story, Darcie."