Beauty Ravished (3 page)

Cher blinked at him as he fished a key out of his pocket. Stepping out of the way as he reached for the lock, she simply stared at him while he unlocked it and stepped through the opening, closing the door behind him and locking it once more.

She was still staring at the door in bemusement when the sound of his retreating footsteps faded away. He had kissed her into mindless oblivion—rubbed that delicious body all over her until she was melting, wallowing in his scent like a cat high on catnip—and then he’d just stopped. Cool as you please! “Asshole!” she said angrily.

And she was back in the room again! A prisoner, again! She paced the room furiously for several minutes and finally moved to the window again, wondering if she quite dared make another try for it.

He
thought
he’d cowed her with all that macho, male chauvinistic bullshit.

Actually, he
had
cowed her. The thought of climbing down the trellis and meeting up with him again was almost as terrifying as it was tempting.

The door opened while she was staring down at the yard below, enacting a mental scenario of meeting up with him and being thrown to the ground and fucked senseless. Her head snapped around. Her eyes widened guiltily when she saw it was Nigel.

He had a hammer in his hand and she scurried away from the window, hovering in the corner while she watched him warily to see what he had in mind. Ignoring her, he strode to the window, dug a handful of nails from his pocket and proceeded to nail the window shut.

She gaped at him in disbelief.

“You’re
nailing
the window shut!” she gasped.

He sent her a look and finished what he was doing. Without a word, he turned and strode from the room again.

Cher shivered. What the hell was going on? Locking her in? Nailing the window shut? This went just a
lit-tle
bit beyond what she figured she might expect for gate crashing.

She frowned. Ok, well, obviously this wasn’t one of those little real-estate jaunts like she’d expected, but it couldn’t be a private party either since her friend had gotten the invitation and she hadn’t known the guy.

She was almost ready to cross the guy off as totally whack-o, but, despite the things he’d done, he didn’t strike her as a mental case. Something was going on and he thought she needed protecting. He was the host. Whatever the something was, he would certainly know.

A drug free for all? They were going to do ecstasy and have a wild sex orgy?

Because it sure as hell sounded like a regular old party going on down there to her. Well, a little wilder than a regular party, she supposed.

Still, she hadn’t seen a thing that might suggest there was anything sinister about this place. It had looked like a really posh vacation getaway, but when all was said and done,
just
a vacation getaway.

Maybe Nigel knew
of
Sheri? Didn’t actually know her personally, but did know about her through some of her friends? And he’d freaked when she’d shown up because he didn’t know her at all and thought she might be a narc or something?

That actually made a little more sense than she liked. The way they were partying down there seemed a little excessive for regular old alcohol induced freedom from inhibition. They were
baying
now, for chissake!

Frowning, she moved to the window once more, wondering if maybe the reason she could hear them better was because the party had spilled around the side of the house.

The full moon had risen above the trees when she reached the window and peered out. The lawn below was bathed in its light. Sure enough, the party
had
moved around within plain view of her window now, and she could see dozens of men milling about.

Nigel stood in the center of the group. Almost as if he sensed her watching, he looked up at that moment and, despite the distance, she felt as if his gaze locked with hers for several heartbeats.

Unnervingly, about a dozen or so other men also looked up toward her.

Cher wasn’t exactly certain why it was, but the moment she realized she’d attracted the interest of at least a dozen of the men milling about on the lawn below, the hair on the nape of her neck stood on end.

It might have had something to do with the fact that, after staring at her for several frantic heart palpitations, they whirled upon Nigel and their body language was definitely both hostile and challenging.

Chapter Three

“What’s this?” Rocco demanded, his voice low and threatening.

“Looks to me like our host has got a female tucked away all for himself,” Zeke growled.

Brandis snarled. “You know the rules, Nigel. You’ve got no right to withhold one from the hunt.”

Nigel dragged his gaze from the woman’s pale face with an effort. The little fool, he thought angrily. He couldn’t protect her now that they’d seen her. The pack would tear him apart if he tried and take her anyway. Their beasts were already upon them. They wouldn’t care that she wasn’t one of them, that she didn’t belong in the hunt. He forced a feral smile. “
Mes amis
! You misjudge me. It was never my intention to withhold her, only to present her when the time was right. But, since you are all so impatient, I will go and get her now.”

He strode briskly toward the house, aware even as he did that a number of the pack, no doubt distrustful of his motives, detached themselves from the others and moved around the perimeter of the house to watch the exits. Several followed him, as well.

Ignoring them, he walked briskly through the house and up the stairs, surreptitiously fishing the key from his pocket as he walked. He had a slight lead on them by the time he reached the door to her room, but not much.

Unlocking the door, he strode quickly across the room. She was staring at him, wide eyed with fear, as if she had sensed, finally, that she was in grave danger. He grasped her upper arms, leaning close and spoke quickly in a low voice. “Don’t ask any questions. Do exactly as I say. When you’re told to run you must go to the old storm shelter and stay there. Take the path through the woods toward the rising moon. When you reach the fork in the path you will see an oak about six feet in diameter. Swing to your right, away from the fork and go into the woods twenty paces. The door is in the ground, covered with leaves. Go inside and lock yourself in and whatever happens,
do not unlock the door
. Understand?”

Cher nodded shakily. “The storm shelter in the woods.”

He flashed her a brief smile. “Good girl.”

He turned as he heard the two men who’d followed him come into the room, holding her tightly by one arm. “As you see.”

The two men looked her over almost … hungrily. Cher shivered, glancing at Nigel.

Without another word, he escorted her from the room, down the stairs and out into the night.

An eerie quiet had fallen over the group gathered in the yard. It wasn’t a calm sort of silence, however, but rather it seemed to shiver with tension, as if everyone who stood on the lawn were only waiting for a signal to launch into action.

To Cher’s surprise, Nigel escorted her to the center of the group, then released her and stepped away. Nervous, she looked around. A wide circle had been cleared at the center of the group. In the circle with her stood four other women. Beyond the opening, several dozen men crowded shoulder to shoulder, their faces taut, their eyes gleaming.

Cher swallowed with a gulp and glanced at the women, wondering if they were as unnerved as she was. She saw that they were studying her almost as intently as the men were, though their faces were filled with suspicion and maybe even a little hostility.

They looked like—gymnasts—lean, taut.

She suddenly felt like a marshmallow—soft and squishy in all the wrong places, although she wasn’t entirely certain why. She kept in shape. She had a good figure, by damn. Maybe she wasn’t as taut as these snotty females, but she wasn’t a blob either.

“Most of you who have come for the gathering have been before and know the rules. For those of you who do not, they are simple:

The females will be given a fifteen minute head start.

The male who catches her can only claim her for his mate if he is strong enough, and determined enough to face any who challenge him for the woman.

Once a male has marked his female, however, she is his by Lycan law and no one may challenge him for his mate.”

Cher stared at him blankly. He might as well have been speaking Swahili for all the sense she could make of it. He couldn’t, surely, mean that she–they—were supposed to try to outrun this pack of men? She glanced around at the other women and saw that they looked as stunned and horrified as she felt—obviously they hadn’t known they were on the menu either.

Outrun them to where? For how long? They were on a fucking island for chrissake!

She glanced nervously at the men and saw that a good half dozen had begun to inch forward into the circle—they almost seemed to be—sniffing her, like they were trying to get her scent.

Exactly what the hell was a Lycan, anyway?

“Get back!” Nigel roared, making her jump and turn to stare at him.

“Shewolves,” he ground out, staring straight at Cher. “Run!”

Cher froze. Stunned as the four women ranged beside her tore off toward the woods as if their life depended upon getting as far away as they possibly could as fast as they could.

“Now!” Nigel growled.

Cher jumped about a foot, whirled around toward the trees and sprawled out on her belly in the dirt so hard she grunted as the air left her lungs. Terror had her firmly in its grip now, however. Without hesitation, she scrambled to her feet and headed for the trees. “Path, path, path,” she muttered looking around frantically as she reached the tree line and began running back and forth along the edge of the trees, too mindless with terror to form a coherent thought. “The moon,” she thought suddenly and glanced around.

She saw a patch of moonlight and realized it had spotlighted the entrance of the path. “One Mississippi, two Mississippi—Jesus fucking Christ! Where the hell was I supposed to go?” she panted out as she swung onto the path at last and spared a look back.

The sight that greeted her put an extra spring in her step. She bounded along the path like a white tailed deer, her mind focused on trying to figure out just how many minutes had passed. Five? Ten?

She heard baying behind her. Her hair stood on end.

She ran right past the oak. Unable to put on brakes fast enough, she skidded like a baseball player sliding into home plate. Clawing at the ground, she gained her feet again and ran back to the oak tree, huffing for breath as she looked around, frantically trying to remember what Nigel had said. The tree. The fork. Left of the tree? Right of the fucking tree?

Right! That was it, swing right. She tore off the trail, ran a couple of yards and remembered she’d been facing the opposite direction. It was her other right.

Swinging around, she charged across the path again, this time away from the fork, like he’d said.

Twenty paces. Her paces? His paces?

She counted twenty long strides and got down on her hands and knees, feeling along the ground frantically. The baying was growing louder and she had a real bad feeling it wasn’t dogs.

She couldn’t feel anything that felt like wood.

Had he been fucking with her?

She widened the circle of her search. Suddenly, as she brushed away a handful of leaves, her hand slipped along something rough, and definitely wooden. Thrusting the leaves aside, she searched desperately, blindly for a handle, a catch. She found the hinges and felt along the opposite side until she found what she’d been searching for. Almost weeping with relief, she heaved upward.

The door was heavy. She felt like she’d ruptured something important before she managed to lever it open far enough to squeeze inside. She screamed as she fell, landing in a stunned heap at the bottom of the hole. “Shit!”

It was as profoundly dark as a black hole—a complete and total absence of light that felt suffocatingly thick.

A totally new terror seized her. Blindly, waving her arms in front of her, she searched for steps, a ladder—there had to be some way into the damn thing besides just falling in!

She found the ladder with her nose. She had absolutely no clue of how she could’ve been waving her arms in front of her and still managed to walk right into the thing, but she did mange it. She was stunned for about two seconds, then she was searching for hand and footholds and scaling the ladder right back to the top.

She’s already stared heaving at the door, trying to get out, when she heard the wolves. She stopped, trying to listen over her heart, which was pounding in her ears like Indian war drums.

It sounded like wolves.

She decided she didn’t want to find out.

Easing the door down, she felt around and finally found the bolt Nigel had told her about and shoved it in place. She slipped off a rung as she started back down and landed in a heap on the floor again.

She stayed where she was, curling into a tight ball and trying not to think what might be in the hole with her.

That wasn’t as difficult as it might have been.

Insulated as she was, she could still hear the baying and hassling of the wolves.

They had to be close.

She heard something scratching at the door and her hair stood on end again. Covering her mouth with her hand, she stared upward, wondering if there was any possibility they could actually get that heavy wooden door open.

Surely not? Surely to god all she had to do was just sit tight, wait, and they’d go away?

They didn’t go away, however. They could smell her. They began clawing at the door, rattling it. Cher began chewing on her nails, her eyes glued to the point where she could hear the rattling growing louder and louder, as if they were heaving back and forth against it.

She jumped all over when she heard the sudden crack of wood. Abruptly, the door was heaved open. A square of dim light appeared above her but disappeared almost immediately as something big and dark leapt through it.