Mackenzie's Pleasure (5 page)

anything to vomit, but they hadn't bothered to feed her.

She couldn't go through that again.

Somehow, she had to get away.

Desperately she fought down her panic. Her thoughts darted around like crazed squirrels

as she tried to plan, to think of something, anything, that she could do to protect herself. But

what
could
she do, lying there like a turkey all trussed up for Thanksgiving dinner?

Humiliation burned through her. They hadn't raped her, but they had done other things

to her, things to shame and terrorize her and break her spirit. Tomorrow, when the leader

arrived, she was sure her reprieve would be over. The threat of rape, and then the act of it,

would shatter her and leave her malleable in their hands, desperate to do anything to avoid

being violated again. At least that was what they planned, she thought. But she would be

damned if she would go along with their plan. She had been in a fog of terror and shock since

they had grabbed her and thrown her into a car, but as she lay there in the darkness, cold and

miserable and achingly vulnerable in her nakedness, she felt as if the fog was lifting, or

maybe it was being burned away. No one who knew Barrie would ever have described her as

hot-tempered, but then, what she felt building in her now wasn't as volatile and fleeting as

mere temper. It was rage, as pure and forceful as lava forcing its way upward from the bowels of

the earth until it exploded outward and swept away everything in its path.

Nothing in her life had prepared her for these past hours. After her mother and brother

had died, she had been pampered and protected as few children ever were. She had seen

some—most, actually—of her schoolmates as they struggled with the misery of broken parental

promises, of rare, stressful visits, of being ignored and shunted out of the way, but she hadn't

been like them. Her father adored her, and she knew it. He was intensely interested in her

safety, her friends, her schoolwork. If he said he would call, then the call came exactly when

he'd said it would. Every week had brought some small gift in the mail, inexpensive but

thoughtful. She'd understood why he worried so much about her safety, why he wanted her to

attend the exclusive girls' school in Switzerland, with its cloistered security, rather than a public

school, with its attendant hurly-burly. She was all he had left.

He was all she had left, too. When she'd been a child, after the incident that had halved

the family, she had clung fearfully to her father for months, dogging his footsteps when she

could, weeping inconsolably when his work took him away from her. Eventually the dread

that he, too, would disappear from her life had faded, but the pattern of overprotectiveness

had been set.

She was twenty-five now, a grown woman, and though in the past few years his

protectiveness had begun to chafe, she had enjoyed the even tenor of her life too much to really

protest. She liked her job at the embassy, so much that she was considering a full-time career in

the foreign service. She enjoyed being her father's hostess. She had the duties and protocol

down cold, and there were more and more female ambassadors on the international scene. It was

a moneyed and insular community, but by both temperament and pedigree she was suited to the

task. She was calm, even serene, and blessed with a considerate and tactful nature.

But now, lying naked and helpless on a cot, with bruises mottling her pale skin, the rage

that consumed her was so deep and primal she felt as if it had altered something basic

inside her, a sea change of her very nature. She would
not
endure what they—nameless,

malevolent "they"— had planned for her. If they killed her, so be it. She was prepared for death;

no matter what, she would not submit.

The heavy curtains fluttered.

The movement caught her eye, and she glanced at the window, but the action was

automatic, without curiosity. She was already so cold that even a wind strong enough to move

those heavy curtains couldn't chill her more.

The wind was black, and had a shape.

Her breath stopped in her chest.

Mutely she watched the big black shape, as silent as a shadow, slip through the window. It

couldn't be human; people made
some
sound when they moved. Surely, in the total silence

of the room, she would have been able to hear the whisper of the curtains as the fabric

moved, or the faint, rhythmic sigh of breathing. A shoe scraping on the floor, the rustle of

clothing, anything—if it was human. After the black shape had passed between them, the

curtains didn't fall back into the perfect alignment that had blocked the light; there was a

small opening in them, a slit that allowed a shaft of moonlight, starlight, street light—

whatever it was—to relieve the thick darkness. Barrie strained to focus on the dark shape,

her eyes burning as she watched it move silently across the floor. She didn't scream; whoever or

whatever approached her, it couldn't be worse than the only men likely to come to her rescue.

Perhaps she was really asleep and this was only a dream. It certainly didn't feel real.

But nothing in the long, horrible hours since she had been kidnapped had felt real, and she was

too cold to be asleep. No, this was real, all right.

Noiselessly the black shape glided to a halt beside the cot. It towered over her, tall and

powerful, and it seemed to be examining the naked feast she presented.

Then it moved once again, lifting its hand to its head, and it peeled off its face, pulling

the dark skin up as if it was no more than the skin of a banana.

It was a mask. As exhausted as she was, it was a moment before she could find a logical

explanation for the nightmarish image. She blinked up at him. A man wearing a mask.

Neither an animal, nor a phantom, but a flesh-and-blood man. She could see the gleam of his

eyes, make out the shape of his head and the relative paleness of his face, though there was an

odd bulkiness to him that in no way affected the eerily silent grace of his movements. Just

another man.

She didn't panic. She had gone beyond fear, beyond everything but rage. She simply

waited—waited to fight, waited to die. Her teeth were the only weapon she had, so she

would use them, if she could. She would tear at her attacker's flesh, try to damage him as much

as possible before she died. If she was lucky, she would be able to get him by the throat with her

teeth and take at least one of these bastards with her into death.

He was taking his time, staring at her. Her bound hands clenched into fists. Damn him.

Damn them all.

Then he squatted beside the cot and leaned forward, his head very close to hers. Startled,

Barrie wondered if he meant to
kiss
her—odd that the notion struck her as so unbearable—

and she braced herself, preparing to lunge upward when he got close enough that she had a

good chance for his throat.

"Mackenzie, United States Navy," he said in a toneless whisper that barely reached her

ear, only a few inches away.

He'd spoken in
English,
with a definitely American accent. She jerked, so stunned that it

was a moment before the words made sense.
Navy. United States Navy.
She had been silent for

hours, refusing to speak to her captors or respond in any way, but now a small, helpless sound

spilled from her throat.

"Shh, don't make any noise," he cautioned, still in that toneless whisper. Even as he

spoke he was reaching over her head, and the tension on her arms suddenly relaxed. The

small movement sent agony screaming through her shoulder joints, and she sucked in her

breath with a sharp, gasping cry.

She quickly choked off the sound, holding it inside as she ground her teeth against the

pain. "Sorry," she whispered, when she was able to speak.

She hadn't seen the knife in his hand, but she felt the chill of the blade against her skin

as he deftly inserted the blade under the cords and sliced upward, felt the slight tug that freed her

hands. She tried to move her arms and found that she couldn't; they remained stretched above

her head, unresponsive to her commands.

He knew, without being told. He slipped the knife into its scabbard and placed his

gloved hands on her shoulders, firmly kneading for a moment before he clasped her forearms

and gently drew her arms down. Fire burned in her joints; it felt as if her arms were being torn

from her shoulders, even though he carefully drew them straight down, keeping them aligned

with her body to lessen the pain. Barrie set her teeth again, refusing to let another sound break

past the barrier. Cold sweat beaded her forehead, and nausea burned in her throat once more, but

she rode the swell of pain in silence.

He dug his thumbs into the balls of her shoulders, massaging the sore, swollen ligaments

and tendons, intensifying the agony. Her bare body drew into a taut, pale arch of suffering,

lifting from the cot. He held her down, ruthlessly pushing her traumatized joints and muscles

through the recovery process. She was so cold that the heat emanating from his hands, from

the closeness of his body as he bent over her, was searingly hot on her bare skin. The pain

rolled through her in great shudders, blurring her sight and thought, and through the haze she

realized that now, when she definitely needed to stay conscious, she was finally going to

faint.

She couldn't pass out. She refused to. Grimly she hung on, and in only a few moments,

moments that felt much longer, the pain began to ebb. He continued the strong kneading,

taking her through the agony and into relief. She went limp, relaxing on the cot as she breathed

through her mouth in the long, deep drafts of someone who has just run a race.

"Good girl," he whispered as he released her. The brief praise felt like balm to her

lacerated emotions. He straightened and drew the knife again, then bent over the foot of the

cot. Again there was the chill of the blade, this time against her ankles, and another small tug,

then her feet were free, and involuntarily she curled into a protective ball, her body moving

without direction from her brain in a belated, useless effort at modesty and self-protection. Her

thighs squeezed tightly together, her arms crossed over and hid her breasts, and she buried her

face against the musty ticking of the bare mattress. She couldn't look up at him, she couldn't.

Tears burned her eyes, clogged her throat.

"Have you been injured?" he asked, the ghostly whisper rasping over her bare skin

like an actual touch. "Can you walk?"

Now wasn't the time to let her raw nerves take over. They still had to get out

undetected, and a fit of hysteria would ruin everything. She gulped twice, fighting for

control of her emotions as grimly as she had fought to control the pain. The tears spilled

over, but she forced herself to straighten from the defensive curl, to swing her legs over the edge

of the cot. Shakily she sat up and forced herself to look at him. She hadn't done anything to be

ashamed of; she would get through this. "I'm okay," she replied, and was grateful that the

obligatory whisper disguised the weakness of her voice.

He crouched in front of her and silently began removing the web gear that held and

secured all his equipment. The room was too dark for her to make out exactly what each item

was, but she recognized the shape of an automatic weapon as he placed it on the floor

between them.

She watched him, uncomprehending, until he began shrugging out of his shirt. Sick

terror hit her then, slamming into her like a sledgehammer. My God, surely
he
wasn't—

Gently he put the shirt around her, tucking her arms into the sleeves as if she was a

child, then buttoning each button, taking care to hold the fabric away from her body so his

fingers wouldn't brush against her breasts. The cloth still held his body heat; it wrapped around

her like a blanket, warming her, covering her. The sudden feeling of security unnerved her

almost as much as being stripped naked. Her heart lurched inside her chest, and the bottom

dropped out of her stomach. Hesitantly she reached out her hand in an apology, and a plea.

Tears dripped slowly down her face, leaving salty tracks in their wake. She had been the

recipient of so much male brutality in the past day that his gentleness almost destroyed her control, where their blows and crudeness had only made her more determined to resist them.

She had expected the same from him and instead had received a tender care that shattered her with

its simplicity.

A second ticked past, two: then, with great care, he folded his gloved fingers around her

hand.

His hand was much bigger than hers. She felt the size and heat of it engulf her cold

fingers and sensed the control of a man who exactly knew his own strength. He squeezed

gently, then released her.

She stared at him, trying to pierce the veil of darkness and see his features, but his

face was barely distinguishable and blurred even more by her tears. She could make out