Captured Boxed Set: 9 Alpha Bad-Boys Who Will Capture Your Heart (40 page)

As if to reward her for a correct
answer, he got a sandwich from the plate on the table and lifted it to her
mouth. It took her only a second to realize the hunger pangs that would come
from refusing weren't worth her dignity. If a person cuffed to a chair had any dignity
left. The sandwich was fantastic, filled with chicken flavored with exotic
spices. She barely controlled her instinct to open her mouth for more, begging
like a newborn bird in a nest.

"So," he continued after
he swallowed his own bite and took a drink of wine. "Who do you work for,
then? And how long have you worked for them? Is it the Crimson Hand?"

She frowned at him. "You suck
as a stalker, don't you? I've been on LinkedIn for two years now. You could
have checked it out there. I work as a project manager at RocketSoft. I've been
there thirteen months now. I don't know any company called Crimson Hand, and if
I did, I'd tell them to hire better marketing folks to rebrand them with
something less creepy."

"This is a fun game," he
said, in a bland tone that said the opposite.

"I'd like to play," she
responded.

"By all means."

She shrugged as best she could with
her arms restrained. "Who are you?"

A muscle twitched in his jaw, as if
it was the only part of him out of his control. He reached for a sandwich and
chewed a bite while he seemed to chew his answer in his mind. She waited,
trying to seem patient, just as casual as him.

Finally, he decided on his answer. "I
am Sayd al Zahar, of the kingdom of Ramadi. And I am your husband."

Chapter
Two

Max couldn't help it. Maybe it
was the jetlag or the drugs or the leftover adrenaline from being kidnapped.
She couldn't control the peals of laughter that busted out of her. She laughed
until her abs hurt. She laughed until tears streamed down her face. Her
uncontrollable shaking threatened to overturn the chair.

The guy—the so-called Sayd al
Zahar—didn't laugh. He just watched her, white teeth showing between parted
lips as if he couldn't figure out what to say.

"Okay—okay—" she gasped
between hoots. "You can murder me now. I'm ready. I've just heard the best
joke of my life and I'm ready to die. Best. Abduction. Ever."

For the second time, he captured
her chin between strong fingers and tilted her face to his. Compared to her,
with her small boobs and her upturned nose, he was a god. Though, truth be
told, she must have gained some weight at the resort because her breasts had
strained at her bra for the last couple of days. Still, she tried to imagine
any possible world where this man would tie himself to her. The idea was so
stupid she nearly started giggling again.

"I always thought you the most
wretched liar. That's why when you disappeared from the hospital three months
ago, I was certain you had been taken from us. Then last week, you checked in
to the hotel in the Dominican without even trying to conceal your identity, I
couldn't understand. These actions made no sense." He seemed confused to
his core, trying to understand what was going on by talking it out.

But she was way ahead of him in his
delusion. She closed her eyes and let the scenario wash over her. It was better
than the plot of any outrageous soap opera. Actually, if she'd seen it on TV,
she would have changed the channel. "I get it." She couldn't stop
grinning, though he was probably working up to suffocating her with a pillow. "I'm
your wife, but I don't remember it. This explains everything."

She gasped as the sheer depth of
his psychosis plunged clearly before her. "The Crimson Hand. It's not a
software company. It's a terrorist organization. They're using me to get to
you. You're going to have to kill me to protect yourself. I might be a sleeper
agent. Someday I'll get a phone call that will activate me, turning me into a
mindless automaton, bent on your destruction."

He seemed less amused by the idea.
In fact, he seemed to have trouble breathing. "What year is this?"

She told him the year. And she told
him the name of the current U.S. president, just for kicks.

He exhaled a sigh, his shoulders
drooping just an inch. "No, there is a new president now. You have lost
two years of your life. If you can be believed."

"Gained a husband, though,"
she said, brightly.

"And lost him again."

His
grief, as he scrubbed a hand over his suddenly tired face, seemed genuine. Max
felt a twinge of sadness for him.

* * *

"And this one? Does it mean
nothing to you?" He held up another photo.

Sayd had left her handcuffed to the
chair as he showed her doctored photo after doctored photo on his mobile phone.
Now that she felt like he wasn't going to slit her throat in the next few
minutes, she found herself just as interested in the phone itself as the
photoshopped pics. The cell seemed like a prototype model of something a
certain high tech company had just announced for release in two years. She
didn't know how he'd managed to get a beta testing model, but he was a damn
lucky madman. The photos showed her living a blissful life in her "husband's"
arms. Too bad he was so very insane, because he could make photo editing
software sit up and beg. Serious waste of a graphic artist there. She looked
smiling and happy and natural in every picture. Every once in a while, he
skipped over one before showing it to her. Those might have been his less
brilliant creations, she imagined.

"Don't remember that one
either," she told him. "Have I told you how much I like your version
of my life?"

He set his jaw, clamping down on
something he badly wanted to say.

Now that she saw the whole thing
from his point of view, his actions made total sense. The kind of sense that
include committing a federal crime, but sense. To his mind, they'd been
together for years when she'd disappeared mysteriously. He'd assumed someone
had kidnapped her (Irony there), but hadn't received any ransom demands. In his
fantasy world, he'd searched for her for months with no luck, suffering the agony
of wondering if she was hurt or dead and not being able to save her. Her "reappearance"
having a fun time at a resort didn't fit with his made-up scenario. If she'd
been taken from him by force, wouldn’t she run back into his arms? The only
answer was that she'd left him, and instead of telling him, she'd just
disappeared. No wonder he was so pissed off he'd abducted her. In his delusion,
they'd had this great relationship that she'd ended with a huge betrayal. Thus,
the kidnapping. To get some answers, and to punish the hell out of her. She
even went over some of their conversations in her mind and found his reactions
to what she'd said a lot less crazy than when they'd been actually happening.
No wonder her telling him to get off her doorstep had enraged him. To him, she
was pure evil.

Still, the name Sayd al Zahar
itched in the back of her mind. She knew it from somewhere, or maybe something
like it, but not quite the same. A Bollywood star? It could be the name of the
actual ruler of the real-life Ramadi. It was so familiar. She should be able to
place that name. It was going to drive her crazy—and he already had enough
crazy for the both of them.

"Uh, Sayd? Do you think we
could take a break here?"

"Just as well," he
agreed. "I need more wine to face this."

"Hmmm, wine might be the
problem for me."

Gray eyes looked at her in
confusion. He'd done that a lot since revealing he imagined she was his wife.

"Do I have to say it?"
She'd crossed her legs a dozen photos ago. "I need to use the washroom.
Unless you want me to have an accident in this chair, you're going to have to
unlock me."

Her bladder wasn't that bad. In
truth, she hoped she could find something to use to escape in the washroom.
He'd drugged her, so if she found something in his medicine cabinet to use
against him, turnabout was fair play. She might get out of this after all.

To her irritation, he didn't undo
the cuff on her wrist, but unlocked the cuff from the chair. Her gut soured as
he clamped it on his own wrist. So much for that plan.

"Uhm, I think I can hold it,
actually," she told him.

"And I was so looking forward
to watching you use the toilet," he said. "
Hayati
, I promise
you your privacy, but I can't let you leave here without me."

"Because of the Crimson Hand,"
she said, unable to keep the misery out of her tone.

"They would have Ramadi stay
in the dark ages forever. They do not care for you as my queen. You are in
danger from them until we get you back to the palace and under protection."
As he talked, he freed her other hand.

She made a show of rubbing her
wrist.

"The cuffs were not tight,
Max. You are a terrible liar," he said. "Or an Oscar-worthy actress."

She held back a snort and gave up
trying to make him feel bad. She got to her feet, but sitting for so long, plus
the bike ride, and maybe the leftover drugs, had turned her knees to goop. Her
legs gave way.

Just as she thought she was doomed
to do a face-plant on the Turkish carpet, she felt herself caught around the
waist by Sayd's muscled arm. Rescued.

In her relief, she leaned on him.
She didn't have a choice; her legs refused to hold her up.

His solid, warm chest pressed
against her larger-than-usual breasts. They each wore a tee shirt, but that
seemed like nothing now. They might as well be skin to skin. And his skin
smelled great. A little smoke from the bike, a little pine from the forest, and
some spicy undertone that seemed to be his natural smell. She just breathed it
in, helpless to stand on her own.

He lowered his face as if he
couldn't bear to look at her. "Forgive me," he said simply. "I
have missed you so much."

She opened her mouth to ask what
she should forgive him for—and he took advantage of the moment to kiss her.

He pulled her even closer to him as
he pressed her lips with his own. The kiss was hard and insistent. He gave her
no choice. He explored her mouth with desperation, as if she might disappear at
any moment.

He tasted even better than he
smelled. Every molecule in her body responded on cue, turning into a charged
particle. Her cuffed hand, carrying his along with it, clamped against the back
of his neck, feeling the contrast of hard muscle with the silk of his hair.

It wasn't a tender, tentative first
kiss. It was the kiss of long practice, of knowledge of secret desires. Of
intimacy.

And then he broke it off, leaving
her legs even more jelly-like than before.

"I'm sorry,
hayati
."
He leaned his forehead against her own, his beautiful grey eyes closed in
something like pain. "I shouldn't have done that. But I once vowed I would
never lose you again. Now it seems that I have. And I was a fool for so long,
thinking I would forget you, that my life meant anything without you in it.
When I admitted to myself it was hopeless, that I could love you only... That
was the day I truly began to live. Yet I had known it all along. I studied in
school only so you would think me intelligent. I worked hard so you would not
think me a useless person who had only inherited his position. And I trained my
body so you would want me in your bed."

She was too stunned to say anything.
All she could do was hang on and try to absorb the insanity coming out of his
mouth.

"So, I did stalk you, as you
say. I had kept up with your life by sending detectives to tell me about you
every few years, telling myself I did it out of friendship. But once I admitted
it was a love I could feel for no other, I arranged for you to win tickets to a
resort."

"You're a liar," she
said, but her voice came out weak as dishwater. "It took me three tries to
win that radio contest."

"And if I'd had to pay for ten
more tickets before you won, I would have. Radio WYOW found me an excellent
patron. They kept their silence well."

She stiffened. When she'd finally
gotten through on the line, she'd known the answers to all seven trivia
questions, no problem. Like the contest was designed for her to win it.

"I knew that if you could
return my love, no man would be happier than me, but if not, no man was more
wretched." He bent his face into her shoulder, inhaling her scent. "It
was no difficulty for me to find you at the resort. Charming you into spending
time with me was more difficult. But once someone gets past your defenses, you
have the warmest heart. I still don't know why you fell in love with me,
hayati
,
but I will always be grateful."

Max's pulse beat in her ears like
the countdown to an explosion. Even though she wasn't sure of her legs, she
shoved him away. He was deluded, even if it was a tempting delusion. She
couldn't believe a word he said. This was the man who kidnapped her, she
reminded herself, trying to call up the terror being abducted, of having a
drugged cloth pressed to her face and losing consciousness and control.

Pain crossed his features, but he
masked it quickly. "Yes. It is too soon. I know it is too soon. I
apologize."

"I
need the washroom," she said, unsteady on her feet and in her mind.

* * *

Sayd gave her privacy, in a way.
He stood outside the door; she closed it as best she could, but the chain
between the handcuffs held it open a crack. Luckily, he had planned well,
since...

"Why did you free my left hand
instead of my right?" she asked, a little afraid of the answer.

"Because you're left-handed."

She was. But he could have seen
that or something. He'd admitted to stalking her, after all. It was a 50/50
chance, really. It didn't mean he knew her better than that.

Once she flushed and arranged her
clothes, he came in, filling the small room with his large body.
I trained
my body so you would want me in your bed
, he'd said. If he wasn't insane,
she would want him, she admitted. Hard to get past the whole "abduction"
thing, though. No matter how certain he seemed that she belonged to him.

Sayd stood behind her at the sink
and they washed her hands together. He entwined his fingers with hers. His
hands were even warmer than the water. He took his time sliding the soap over
her palms like they were an erogenous zone. With his arms around her, it felt
like they were.

"Sayd." Her voice was barely
louder than the water. "Why was I in the hospital?"

"Routine check-up," he
answered instantly, as if he'd prepared to say it.

She let it go. Just his
imagination, after all. If she'd been in the hospital, she'd remember. Besides,
there were more important things. "If you're royalty, where are your
bodyguards?"