Shackled by Diamonds

She could only be grateful.

It was the best way to get it over and done with.

She just had to keep her nerve, that was all. Endure. Let him take what he wanted and it would be over.

At least for now. Tomorrow night she’d have to go through it all again, but that was tomorrow. She’d think about that then. Now she just had to focus on getting through tonight.

She walked into the villa ahead of him, every footstep, his and hers, falling heavily on the marble floor, and let him guide her up the shallow flight of stairs into a room that was not hers.

His, evidently.

She stood for a moment in the middle, not sure what to do. There was a large bed in here, just like in her bedroom, but this one was not a four-poster, and it did not have yards of muslin draped. The air was cool from the air-conditioning, but not as chilly as the setting in her room. On either side of the bed low lamps provided the only illumination, making the room shadowed, intimate.

‘Wait there.’

She did as she was told. Leo Makarios disappeared into his en suite bathroom. She heard the sound of water running. Anna went on standing there, immobile. Her brain was frozen, her mind empty. She couldn’t think, couldn’t feel. She was standing in Leo Makarios’s bedroom, waiting for him to emerge from his bathroom and take her to his bed. It was impossible, outrageous.

And yet it was happening.

Now.

Tonight.

She should be feeling something, she knew—but she felt nothing. Nothing at all.

Only the hard, heavy thumping of her heart in her breast, the tautness in the line of her jaw told her that, numb though her mind was, her body was registering the anxiety, the tension in her psyche at what was going to happen.

Tonight.

Now.

She went on standing there. Not looking. Not thinking. Not feeling.

Completely numb.

The bathroom door clicked open and Leo Makarios reappeared. He was wearing a white towelling robe. Short. To the knees. Belted tight. The whiteness made his Mediterranean skin tone even darker in the subdued lamplight.

Anna felt some kind of emotion prickle out across her skin.

She watched him as, scarcely glancing at her, he went across to the bed, drew back the covers, and lounged down against the pillows, propping them up behind him. His long tanned legs stretched out bare on the white sheets.

He settled his gaze on her.

Time seemed to stop. Stop completely. As if the world had stopped turning.

His eyes were dark, unreadable. His face immobile.

But something in his eyes made the prickling intensify across her skin.

A pressure started to build.

Inside her—outside her. In the room, in the space between where she was standing, motionless, numb, in the middle of Leo Makarios’s bedroom, and where he was lounging back on his bed.

Looking at her.

Waiting for her.

For one endless moment the silence held.

Then he spoke.

‘Come here,’ he said softly.

For the space of a single heartbeat—which lasted an unbearable agony of time—Anna did not move.

Could not move.

Somewhere deep in her head words were forming. She could hear them, very low. They were telling her to run. To yell. To shout abuse at the man who lounged back against his pillows like some eastern pasha, waiting for his slave woman to come and pleasure him…

But even as she heard the muffled, vehement words they were stifled. Extinguished.

She could not listen to their siren call. Must not.

If she did, Jenny would be doomed.

Slowly, like a puppet, Anna started walking towards him. Feeling nothing, she stood beside the bed.

Docile. Compliant to his will.

Holding down with iron force the voice that was trying to speak deep inside her head. The pressure that was building, molecule by molecule, inside her veins.

It wanted to get out, she knew. She must not allow it.

Must not.

She went on standing there, motionless beside Leo Makarios’s bed, with him lounging back against the headrest.

Looking at her.

There was something in his eyes, dark and hooded, something that made the prickling in her skin intensify again, as if the voltage applied to her flesh had just been increased.

She felt her breath quicken and tried to suppress it.

His eyes washed over her.

Her heart started to slug in her chest; her veins dilated.

Desperately she tamped it down.

Leo’s voice was murmuring. Slow, and low, with a creamy, sensual timbre.

‘Oh, Anna Delane, you have no idea how much I’m going to enjoy this.’

His voice was soft and heavy. His eyes slumberous with desire.

He reached a hand out to her, taking hers in his. Her hand was limp, inert.

He drew her down on the bed and she sat there, half twisted towards him. Looking at him. Nothing in her eyes. Nothing at all.

She was a doll, a puppet. Capable of no feeling at all…

Slowly, never taking his dark, slumberous eyes from her, he lifted his hands to her hair, pulling out the pins. Her long black hair tumbled down over her shoulders, cascading over the jade-green silk.