Mackenzie's Pleasure (11 page)

her close by, to make the exchange for money easier? No, the very fact that they'd taken her

out of the country meant they'd kidnapped her for another reason. Maybe they would have

asked for money anyway; since they already had her, why not? But money wasn't the primary

object. So what was?

She didn't know, and since she didn't know who the leader was, she had no way of

guessing what he truly wanted.

Not herself. She dismissed that notion out of hand. She wasn't the object of obsession,

because no man so obsessed with a woman that he was driven to such lengths would let his

men maul her. Nor was she the type to inspire obsession, she thought wryly. Certainly none

of the men she'd dated had shown any signs of obsessive behavior.

So... there was something else, some piece of puzzle she was missing. Was it someone

she knew? Something she'd read or seen?

Nothing came to mind. She wasn't involved in intrigue, though of course she knew

which employees at the embassy were employed by the CIA. That was standard, nothing

unusual. Her father often spoke privately with Art Sandefer and, lately, Mack Prewett, too.

She'd often thought that Art was more bureaucrat than spy, though the intelligence in his tired

gaze said he'd done his time in the field, too. She didn't know about Mack Prewett. There was

something restless and hard about him, something that made her uneasy.

Her father said Mack was a good man. She wasn't certain about that, but neither did he

seem like a villain. Still, there had been that time a couple of weeks ago when she hadn't

known anyone was with her father and had breezily walked in without knocking. Her father

had been handing a thick manila envelope to Mack; both of them had looked startled and

uncomfortable, but her father wasn't a diplomat for nothing. He'd efficiently smoothed over the

slight awkwardness, and Mack had left the office almost immediately, taking the envelope with

him. Barrie hadn't asked any questions about it, because if it was CIA business, then it wasn't

her business.

Now she wondered what had been in that envelope.

That small incident was the only thing the slightest bit untoward that she could

remember. Art Sandefer had once said that there was no such thing as coincidence, but could

that moment be linked to her kidnapping? Could it be the
cause
of it? That was a reach.

She didn't know what was in the envelope, hadn't shown any interest in it. But she had

seen her father giving it to Mack Prewett. That meant... what?

She felt as if she was feeling her way through a mental maze, taking wrong turns,

stumbling into dead ends, then groping her way back to logic. Her father would never, in

any way, do anything that would harm her. Therefore, that envelope had no significance—

unless he was involved in something dangerous and wanted out. Her kidnapping made sense

only if someone was using her as a weapon to make her father do something he didn't want to

do.

She couldn't accept the idea of her father doing anything traitorous—at least, not

voluntarily. She wasn't blind to his weaknesses. He was a bit of a snob, he didn't at all like

even the idea that someday she might fall in love and get married, he was protective to the point

of smothering her. But he was an honorable man, and a truly patriotic man. It could be that the

kidnappers were trying to force her father to do something, give them some information,

perhaps, and he had resisted; she could be the means they were using to force him to do what

they wanted.

That felt logical. The envelope probably had nothing at all to do with her kidnapping,

and Art Sandefer was wrong about coincidence.

But what if he wasn't?

Then, despite her instincts about him, her father was involved in something he shouldn't

be. The thought made her sick to her stomach, but she had to face the possibility, had to

think of every angle. She had to face it, then put it aside, because there was nothing she could do

about it now.

If the kidnappers had been going to use her as a weapon against her father, then they

wouldn't give up. If it had just been ransom, they would have thrown up their hands at her

supposed escape and said the Arabic equivalent of, "Ah, to hell with it."

The leader hadn't been here. She didn't even know where "here" was; she'd had too

much on her mind to ask questions about her geographic location.

"Where are we?" she murmured, thinking she really should know.

Zane lifted his eyebrows. He was sitting down, lounging against the wall at a right

angle to her, having finished cleaning up, and she wondered how long she'd been lost in

thought. "The waterfront district," he said. "It's a rough section of town."

"I meant, what town?" she clarified.

Realization dawned in his crystal clear eyes. "Benghazi," he said softly. "Libya."

Libya.
Stunned, she absorbed the news, then went back to the mental path she'd been

following.

The leader had been flying in today. From where? Athens? If he'd been in contact with

his men, he would know she'd somehow escaped. But if he had access to the embassy, and to

her father, then he would also know that she hadn't been returned to the embassy. Therefore,

she would logically still be in Libya. Also logically, they would be actively searching for her.

She looked at Zane again. His eyes were half-closed, he looked almost asleep. Because of

the heat, he hadn't put his T-shirt back on. But despite the drowsy look on his face, she

sensed that he was vitally aware of everything going on around them, that he was merely

letting his body rest while his mind remained on guard.

After the humiliation and pain her guards had dealt her, Zane's concern and

consideration had been like a balm, soothing her, helping to heal her bruised emotions

before she even had time to know how deep the damage went. Almost before she knew it,

she had been responding to him as a woman does to a man, and somehow that was all right.

He was the exact opposite of the thugs who had so delighted in humiliating her. Those

thugs were probably searching all over the city for her, and until she was out of this country,

the possibility existed that they would recapture her. And if they did, this time there would

be no respite.

No. It was intolerable. But if the unthinkable happened, she would be damned if she

would give them the satisfaction they'd been anticipating. She would be damned if she

would let them take her virginity.

She had never thought of her virginity as anything other than a lack of experience and

inclination. At school in Switzerland there had been precious few opportunities for meeting

boys, and she hadn't been particularly interested in those she had met. After she left school,

her father's protective possessiveness, as well as her duties at the embassy, had restricted

any social life she might have developed. The men she met hadn't seemed any more |

interesting than the few boys she had met while in school. With AIDS added in as a threat, it

simply hadn't seemed worth the risk to have sex simply for the experience.

But she had dreamed. She had dreamed of meeting a man, growing to love him,

making love with him. Simple, universal dreams.

The kidnappers had almost taken all that from her, almost wrecked her dream of loving

a man by abusing her so severely that, if she had remained in their hands much longer, she

knew she would have been so severely traumatized that she might never have been able to

love a man or tolerate his touch. If Zane hadn't taken her out of there, her first sexual

experience would have been one of rape.

No. A thousand times no.

Even if they managed to recapture her, she wouldn't let them murder that dream.

Scrambling to her feet, Barrie took the few steps to where Zane lounged against the

wall. She saw his muscled body come to alertness at her action, though he didn't move. She stood

over him, staring at him with green eyes burning in the dim light. The look he gave her was

hooded, unreadable.

"Make love to me," she said in a raw voice.

"Barrie..." he began, his tone kind, and she knew he was going to refuse.

"No!" she said fiercely. "Don't tell me I should think about it, or that I really don't

want to do it. I know what I went through with those bastards. I know you don't believe it, but

they
didn't
rape me. But they looked at me, they touched me, and I couldn't stop them." She

stopped and drew a deep breath, steadying herself. "I'm not stupid. I know we're still in

danger, that you and your men could be wounded or even killed trying to rescue me and that I

could end up back in their hands anyway. I've never made love before, with anyone. I don't want

my first time to be rape, do you understand? I don't want them to have that satisfaction.
I
want

the first time to be with you."

She had surprised him, she saw, and she had already noticed that Zane Mackenzie

wasn't a man whose expression revealed much of what he was thinking. He sat up straight,

his pale eyes narrowed as he examined her with a piercing gaze.

He was still going to refuse, and she didn't think she could bear it. "I promise," she

blurted desperately. "They didn't do that to me. I can't have any disease, if that's what you're

worried about."

"No," he said, his voice suddenly sounding strained. "That isn't what I'm worried

about."

"Don't make me beg," she pleaded, wringing her hands together, aware that she was

already doing exactly that.

Then the expression in those pale eyes softened, grew warmer. "I won't," he said softly,

and rose to his feet with that powerful, feline grace of his. He towered over her, and for a

moment Barrie felt the difference in their sizes so sharply that she wondered wildly what she

thought she was doing. Then he moved past her to the blanket; he knelt and smoothed it,

then dropped down on it, stretching out on his back, and watched her with a world of

knowledge in his slightly remote, too-old eyes.

He knew. And until she read that knowledge in his eyes, she hadn't even been aware of

what she really needed. But watching him lie down and put himself at her service, something

inside her shattered.
He knew.
He understood the emotions roiling deep inside her, understood

what had brought her to him with her fierce, startling demand. It wasn't just that she wanted

her first time to be of her own volition, with the man of her choice; the kidnappers had taken

something from her, and he was giving it back. They had tied her down, stripped her, humiliated

her, and she had been helpless to stop them. Zane was giving control back to her, reassuring

her and at the same time subtly letting her exact her vengeance against the male of the species.

She didn't want to lie helpless beneath him. She wanted to control this giving of her body,

wanted things to move at her pace instead of his, wanted to be the one who decided how

much, how far, how fast.

And he was going to let her do it.

He was giving control of his body to her.

She could barely breathe as she sank to her knees beside him. The warm, bare, richly

tanned flesh lured her hands closer, closer, until the urge overcame her nervousness and her

fingers lightly skimmed over his stomach, his chest. Her heart hammered wildly. It was like

petting a tiger, knowing how dangerous the animal was but fascinated beyond resistance by

the rich pelt. She wanted to feel all of that power under her hands. Carefully she flattened her

hands along his ribs, molding his flesh beneath her palms, feeling the resilience of skin over

the powerful bands of muscle and, beneath that, the strong solidity of bone. She could feel

the rhythmic thud of his heartbeat, the expansion of his ribs as he breathed.

Both heartbeat and breathing seemed fast. Swiftly she glanced at his face and blushed at

what she saw there, the heat in his heavy-lidded eyes, the deepened color of his lips. She knew

what lust looked like; she'd seen the cruel side of it on the faces of her captors, and now she

saw the pleasurable side of it in Zane. It startled her, because somehow she hadn't considered

lust in the proposition she'd made to him, and her hands fell away from his body.

His lips parted in a curl of amusement that revealed the gleam of white teeth, and she

felt her heart almost stop. His smile was even more potent than she'd expected. "Yeah, I'm

turned on," he said softly. "I have to be, or this won't work."

He was right, of course, and her blush deepened. That was the trouble with

inexperience. Though she knew the mechanics of lovemaking, and once or twice her escort for

the evening had kissed her with unexpected ardor and held her close enough for her to tell

that he was aroused, still, she'd never had to deal directly with an erection—until now.

This particular one was there for her bidding. Furtively she glanced at the front of his

pants, at the ridge pushing against the cloth.

"We don't have to do this," he offered once again, and Barrie flared from hesitance to