“Church elder, historical society, my ass,” he snorted. “He was a greedy, unscrupulous son of a bitch.”
“Who deserved to be shot in the head.”
He raised one shoulder. “Quick and painless.”
The statement and his matter-of-fact tone seemed to repel her. She tried to back away from him, only then realizing that her wrist was bound.
Honor’s head began to swim as she clawed at the stocking around her wrist. “Take this off me. Take it
He grabbed the hand frantically trying to unwind the stocking and began wrapping the other stocking around that wrist. “No. No!” She batted at his hands, then at his face with her free hand.
He dodged her flailing hand. Swearing, he pushed her back onto the bed and was on her in a heartbeat. His knee held down her left arm while he quickly tied her right hand to the iron headboard.
Only the fear of awakening Emily kept her from screaming bloody murder. “Let me go!”
He didn’t. He hauled her left hand up and wrapped the end of the stocking around one of the curved iron rails, ruthlessly knotting it. Frantically she tugged on the bindings. Panic had her gasping. “Please. I’m claustrophobic.”
“I don’t give a shit.” He came off the bed and stood looking down at her, breathing hard from exertion.
“Untie me!”
He not only ignored the demand, he left the room.
She bit down hard on her lower lip to keep from screaming. He’d left about six inches of give on each hand, permitting the backs of her hands to lie against the pillow beside her head, but the slack didn’t lessen her feeling of entrapment. Overwhelmed by panic, she renewed her effort to get free.
But soon it became apparent that her attempts were futile and that she was only wasting her strength. She forced herself to stop struggling and to take deep, calming breaths. But reason had never succeeded in ridding her of claustrophobia, and it didn’t now. It only ameliorated it enough for her to slow down her heart rate and respiration to levels that weren’t life-threatening.
She could hear Coburn moving through the house. She supposed he was checking the locks on doors and windows. The irony of that caused a bubble of hysterical laughter to escape her before she could catch it.
The hallway light went out. Coburn reentered the bedroom.
She made herself lie still and to speak as evenly as possible. “I’ll go crazy. Really. I will. I can’t stand it.”
“You don’t have a choice. Besides, you’ve got no one to blame but yourself.”
“Just untie me and I promise-”
“No. I’ve got to sleep. You’ve got to lie here beside me.”
“I will.”
He shot her a skeptical look.
“I swear.”
“We had a deal. You welshed on it. Twice. And almost shot one of us in the process.”
“I’ll lie here and not move. I promise I won’t do anything. Okay?”
Their recent tussle had reopened his scalp wound. A thin trickle of blood slid down his temple. He swiped at it, then looked at the red streaks on his fingers before wiping them on the leg of his jeans. Eddie’s jeans.
“Did you hear me?”
“I’m not deaf.”
“I won’t try to get away. I swear. Just untie my hands.”
“Sorry, lady. You blew what trust I had in you, and I didn’t have any to start with. Now lie still and be quiet or I’ll stuff something into your mouth and then you really will feel claustrophobic.”
He set the pistol on the nightstand, then switched off the lamp.
“We have to keep a light on,” she said, keeping her voice low. The thought of a gag terrified her. “Emily is afraid of the dark. If she wakes up and the light isn’t on, she’ll get scared and start crying. She’ll come looking for me. Please. I don’t want her to see me like this.”
He hesitated, then turned away. Her eyes followed his dark form as he went into the hallway and switched on the overhead light. His silhouette showed up large and menacing as he came back into the bedroom.
He seemed even more menacing when he lay down on his back inches from her. She hadn’t been in bed with anyone since Eddie. Emily, of course. But Emily’s forty pounds hardly made an impression in the mattress. She didn’t rock the bed when she climbed onto it or create a decline, which caused Honor to focus on keeping to her side rather than rolling against him.
The motions and sounds of his settling down beside her harkened back to the familiar, yet it felt strange. This man lying close to her wasn’t Eddie. His breathing was different. His sheer presence felt different from Eddie’s.
And somehow
Once he was settled comfortably, he didn’t stir. From the corner of her eye, she looked over to see that he’d closed his eyes. His fingers were loosely clasped and resting on his abdomen.
She lay as straight, still, and stiff as a plank, trying to talk herself out of having a full-blown panic attack. She was bound and unable to get free, true. But, she told herself sternly, she wasn’t in mortal danger. She counted her heartbeats in order to keep the rate of them under control. She made each breath long and deep.
But these exercises worked no better than reason.
Her anxiety continued to mount until she began pulling against the bindings, straining against them with as much effort as she could muster.
“You’re only making them tighter,” he said.
“Undo them.”
“Go to sleep.”
A sob burbled out of her and she started jerking at the bindings until the headboard banged rhythmically against the wall.
“Stop that!”
“I can’t. I told you I couldn’t stand it, and I
She began to pull so viciously against the stockings that the recoil caused the backs of her hands to rap painfully against the iron rails of the headboard. The pain caused her panic to rise until she was bucking like someone demented. Her legs bicycled as though trying to outrun the feeling of suffocation. Her heels pushed hard against the mattress. Her head thrashed from side to side on the pillow.
“Shh, shh. Calm down. You’re okay. Shh.”
Realization came to her gradually. Coburn was leaning over her. He was holding one of her hands in each of his, his thumbs planted solidly in her palms. His voice was a soothing whisper.
“Shh.” His thumbs began massaging small circles into her palms. “Take deep breaths. You’ll be fine.”
But she didn’t breathe deeply. Following one stuttering exhale, she didn’t breathe at all. And when he angled his head back to look down into her face, he stopped breathing too.
His face was close to hers, close enough that she could see his eyes as they looked down at her mouth, then at her chest, making her achingly aware of her breasts. Not even the semi-darkness could dim the blue intensity of his eyes when they reconnected with hers.
In order to stop her convulsing, he’d placed his leg across her thighs. His lap was pressed against her hip. His arousal was unmistakable. And Honor knew that her perfect stillness was a giveaway that she felt it.
It seemed like an eternity that they lay there, frozen in that position, but it was probably only a few seconds. Then he swore viciously as he released her hands and rolled off her. He lay as before on his back, close but not touching. Only now he placed one forearm across his eyes.
“Don’t pull another stunt like that.”
It hadn’t been a stunt, but she didn’t refute him. He hadn’t specified what her punishment would be if she freaked out again. But the gruffness in his voice warned her against testing him.
Chapter 13
