“Hello?” she called out once more, but again only silence answered her.
She found a fully appointed kitchen, the stainless-steel fridge full of soda, juice, and perishables, the cupboards stocked, the newest and best small appliances sitting atop granite counters. An intimate table sat in the dining room, the welcoming seats of the chairs covered with a light green fabric.
She saw a hallway and moved down it, sure that it led toward the bedrooms, and instead encountered a set of open double doors with a soft light coming from the room behind them. Stepping inside, she froze.
She’d called out twice with no answer. But Jewell now knew she wasn’t alone.
The figure took its time turning toward her, and the color drained completely from Jewell’s face. She’d almost have preferred some sadistic sheik to the man now facing her, his eyes hard and unreadable, his muscles tight. He looked ready to pounce, and her throat closed with nervous tension.
“Good evening, Jewell. We meet again.”
Chapter Four
Shock…fear…relief…
Why was she feeling relief? No. She didn’t want to be with Blake Knight. Just the sound of his voice colliding with her already fractured nerves, and she was barely able to stand. A week she’d been with the man, just a week, and she had barely survived the ups and downs.
And now her sentence with him lasted for a month. Why had he bid on her? Why did he want her again when he’d dumped her so coldly and with such finality? He’d told her she was a liar, that he never wanted to see her again. Why would he have paid a quarter of a million dollars to take her back when he’d been the one to return her — as if she’d been defective?
Yet here he was, standing before her in all his dark glory, his custom suit molded to his shoulders, his gray eyes boring into hers, his very presence overwhelming her, making her knees shake.
Jewell finally managed to tear her gaze from his, and she looked around the room, a room that he seemed so out of place in. For a mere mortal like her, this place was elegant as sin, but the Blake Knights of the world lived on a far higher level.
Still, she had no chance of forgetting he was there. Without moving a muscle or saying a word, he commanded a room — commanded her — though she hoped to the highest reaches of heaven that he wasn’t aware of that fact. The man was so raw, so powerful. His presence seemed to suck all the air from the room.
When he took a step toward her, Jewell found herself riveted to the floor. Yet every instinct inside her told her to run, told her that retreat was her only option. She’d thought she’d seen the last of him. No matter how much she had tried to prepare for the new person who would be entering her life, she couldn’t have ever prepared for it to be Blake.
Her heart thudding violently, she watched his slow but deliberate approach and wondered whether she would pass out. It wouldn’t be surprising if she did; after all, she couldn’t breathe.
When his eyes caressed her body from the tips of her toes to what seemed like every last strand of her hair, a shudder passed through her. She was his property and he was assessing the merchandise, and though his expression should have frozen her, it did the impossible and heated her to her very core.
“Why?” She couldn’t seem to get any other words past her closed throat.
His lips turned up in the tiniest of smiles as he invaded her personal space, seeming to drain her very essence from her as he lifted a hand and ran a finger along her cheekbone. Looking into Blake’s eyes became way too much for her, and she briefly closed her own as she took a breath and tried to gain some semblance of strength.
“May I offer you each something to drink?”
It took a moment for Jewell to realize that another person had entered the room. Opening her eyes, she turned to find an attractive woman in her early thirties at most, with a neutral expression on her face.
“No. You’re dismissed for the evening, Elsa,” Blake said without glancing in her direction.
Jewell watched as the woman disappeared. What in the world was going on?
“Blake, I don’t understand this,” Jewell said, the shock beginning to wear off as agitation took its place. “I’m in a strange place with some woman mysteriously popping in, and you…and…I don’t understand,” she finished quietly, twisting her fingers together.
“Sit down, Jewell.”
She waited a moment for him to continue, and when he didn’t, she looked around. Should she obey like the puppet she was supposed to be? She just didn’t know.
“Unless you’d rather walk straight into the bedroom,” he added.
There was no mistaking the desire that was burning in his eyes. Though this room was new and strange to her, Jewell thought it a safer zone than the room Blake had proposed. So she moved backward, somehow found a chair, and fell into it.
“I don’t know why you came back for me. I don’t know why you paid so much money for me when it was you who dumped me back off at the agency. None of this makes sense, Blake. This isn’t what you want — not really. This has to be about power…or revenge…or something I can’t even fathom.”
He walked up to her and leaned down, caging her against her chair, making the breath she’d finally gained rush back out of her tight throat.
She couldn’t read the look in his eyes, couldn’t figure out what was going on inside his head, but she knew that, no matter what he was thinking, it couldn’t be good. A man who paid so much money for a woman would certainly get his money’s worth — one way or another.
“We have things to discuss, Jewel. The two of us began a journey three months ago, a journey that we haven’t yet come close to finishing,” he said, his tone smooth, his eyes on fire.
“Our journey is long over, Blake,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.
“That’s where you’re so very wrong, Jewell. I’m not done with you yet,” he said, leaning down farther and letting his breath wash over her burning skin.
“No…,” she said, her body quaking.
“Oh yes, Jewell, we are only just now beginning.”
Chapter Five
Jewell closed her eyes and tried to think, tried to get her head around what was happening. “You don’t want me,” she told him, not sure if she was trying to convince herself or trying to convince Blake. “You know you don’t.”
“Yes, I want you, Jewell. Just as much as you want me. I discovered some facts after you were gone,” he began when he paused.