“No, I suppose not,” she responded in a breathy whisper. She also realized the answer was obvious. If the guy really was a telepath, obtaining her name was no doubt a piece of mental cake. “God, I can’t believe I am actually considering this is real.”
Slowly, balancing carefully on her rubbery knees, she grabbed for the edge of the mattress and drew herself up until her eyes and nose could peek over it. There he was, laid out and trussed up like a Christmas goose. He was watching her every move, of course, those deep blue eyes steady and unreadable at the moment. His entire frame was locked tight with tension and where his skin was bare he was gleaming with perspiration. He looked like he was in pain. She recalled the blood around the cuffs that bound him and suddenly felt really stupid. She hadn’t even stopped to consider that he was probably in just as much trouble as she was. She’d just acted like such a girl and freaked out.
“Corrine, listen to me very carefully,” the captured male said, his tone both coaxing and compelling. “You have to get back up on the bed.”
Corrine sat down sharply on her heels, a tired sigh jolting out of her as she rolled her eyes. Well, that’s easy for you to say. You don’t have to scale a wall of mattresses with spaghetti arms.
No, I don’t, came the amused response deep inside her head. But if you don’t find a way to get back in this bed you will only get weaker and sicker as time goes on.
It was bad enough that she was listening to a man’s voice in her head where there ought not to be one, but listening to implied threats just topped the cake.
She turned her back hard against the mattresses and frame, sitting down stubbornly on the cold stone of the floor. Crossing her arms under her breasts she gave in to the urge to pout out her bottom lip.
“I’m just supposed to believe everything you say because you can. . can. .”
“Read your mind?”
“Yes! And it isn’t fair that you know my name and everything I think. I don’t know a damn thing about who you are and if you think I am getting back up into that bed with you—!”
“My name is Kane.” He cut her off with the simple announcement. Then he switched to the more resounding impact of his mind within hers. And if you do not get into this bed with me, you are going to die, Corrine.
Corrine couldn’t help the laugh that snorted out of her nose. It instantly mutated into a fit of giggles as the outrageous threat tickled the more perverse side of her sense of humor.
“Listen, buddy,” she called up to him between chuckles, “I’ve met plenty of men who thought they were God’s gift to women, but no one has ever told me before that getting into bed with them was a matter of life or death.” She giggled at that absurdity again. “I gotta give you points for originality though.”
“Damn it, Corrine, get up here!”
“Or what?” she demanded. “What are you gonna do to me, bondage boy? Rattle your chains?”
“I could take control of your mind, turn you into a simple-minded puppet and have you climb into this bed like a well behaved puppy, Corrine. That is what I can do.”
Cold dread sliced down through her chest and belly as she realized he was speaking the truth. Oh, she knew nothing at all about this weird telepathy stuff, but it was a dead-on fact that he had the power to speak into her mind. It wasn’t much of a stretch to believe he could do what he said. Her heart began to race again at the idea of someone being able to take control of her in such an absolute way. Looking around in a frantic renewal of panic, she searched for the door to the room.
It was really, really far away. A good eighteen yards — okay, so maybe it was just feet — away. Christ the room was big! Or maybe it just felt that way because even the idea of crawling across all that harsh stone was exhausting. Corrine leaned forward, her hands touching the stone in the beginnings of a crawl, and suddenly there was an explosion of crashing steel and groaning wood from the bed.
“Corrine, don’t! Don’t leave! Damn you, you stubborn little—!”
“Stubborn?” Corrine sat back on her heels once more, turning her head to glare at the bed, if not the man within it. “You are chained to a bed, you idiot! My coming up there to keep you company isn’t going to help either of us! Maybe if I can get out of here, I can find some help and we can both go back to our lives. Unless, of course, you enjoy being lashed down? If that’s the case I won’t interfere with your fun. But I happen to like my life out there in the free world!”
“Fine. Have it your way.”
Corrine ought to have realized then and there that there wasn’t even a hint of capitulation in his words.
Chapter 3
Corrine felt herself resolving into an awareness. It took only a heartbeat for her to realize that, not only was she back in bed with her blue-eyed boy in bonds, but she was curled up like a contented kitten across his chest. She tried to push away from him in her shock, but her body did not respond to her demands. She felt exhausted and her hair was drenched in sweat as though she’d just run some kind of a marathon. Worse yet, she was bare butt naked again, her breasts mashed between their bodies.
She realized then what he had done. He had made good on his threat to take control of her actions. Somehow he had seized her mind and forced her to climb back into bed with him. In a sudden and dreadful panic, Corrine wondered just what, exactly, he had done to make her break the awful sweat drenching her body.
“I didn’t do anything,” he snapped out with a scowl. “You’re critically ill, Corrine. Just getting your stubborn little butt back in this bed was an Olympic event.” He dropped his head back and stared up at the ceiling, his jaw set with angry tension. “I didn’t want to make you come back like that, but you left me no choice.”
“No choice?” She could barely hear herself. Corrine realized she was short of breath and so damn tired she couldn’t even get a good mad on. “How about the choice where you leave me alone and let me do what I decide to do! You had no right—!”
“I had every right!” he bellowed suddenly into her nearby face. “If you’d just sit still and listen for five minutes you’d understand that!”
“Oh, really?” she hissed out snidely, sliding up against him just enough to put them nose to nose. “Go ahead. Make me understand why you’re chained to a bed like some rabid dog and why you think it’s life or death that I stay with you! I’m listening!”
Kane drew a breath, impatience and temper fueling his desire to hit her with the truth and use it against her. His mind was blind with emotion and need she couldn’t understand. He shouldn’t have had her curl up into contact with him, but he had not been able to help himself. He’d needed her nearness so much. . oh, so much. The feel of her, just the smell of her gave him a measure of comfort, even as it created brand new tortures. It sickened Kane that she had thought the worst of him, that Corrine had thought he’d used his power over her mind to make her obey his need for sex, but maybe that was because the idea had, in fact, crossed his mind several times.
Corrine watched Kane turn his head aside, hiding his face against his biceps for a long, long minute. Her skin almost felt alive with the strange sense of energy she felt radiating from him into herself. It left an odd tasting tang on her tongue. Even in a sea of exhaustion, there was something wildly rejuvenating about the sensation. Slowly the sense of numbing weariness began to fade and a keen sense of perception replaced it. Once again she became acutely aware that he was in a great deal of pain. She felt it was focused physically at the biting raw places where the cuffs held him fast, and yet there was something else, something like a symphony of agony that radiated through him from head to toe.