terrible isolation and fear. When she touched him, because she couldn’t help herself, couldn’t stop the need, he had placed a glacier between them. Her warmth didn’t seem enough to penetrate that blue ice, thick and hard and impenetrable.
Marguarita shivered and rubbed her hands up and down her arms. He was coming and he was in an ice-cold rage. She felt the slightest tremble in the ground. In the stable, the horses grew restless. Above them, the sky grew a shade darker and clouds rolled in from the south. A wind blew leaves and debris across the yard. The men exchanged quick, uneasy glances.
Dread built in the pit of her stomach. She
His breath. His mind. All ice. Turbulent and stormy, but held it in tight check. Just as the storm was controlled, so was Zacarias, striding up to the house, tall and dangerous, wide shoulders and thick, muscular chest. Ice blue flames glowed in his midnight black eyes. He was the most intimidating male she’d ever seen, and the police and ranch workers must have felt the same. They went silent as he approached, looking at one another uneasily.
He carried danger with him in the set of his shoulders, the fluid way he moved, the set of his jaw and ice in his eyes. He looked what he was—a dangerous predator—and just as he made the animals uneasy, so did he make humans. He moved in complete silence blending in to his surroundings, and yet he commanded the space around him, filling it completely with his power.
He looked only at her. Focused. Locked on. Those glacial blue flames leaped higher, glittering like dark sapphires of pure ice. The men gathered in the front of the house parted without a word, leaving him a clear path to the front porch—to Marguarita. Her mouth went dry and her stomach somersaulted. Her fingers found the material of her skirt and bunched it in her fist. If she could have screamed, she might have.
He blocked out everything and everybody extending his hand toward her. It seemed a solicitous gesture, but she knew better. Her hand trembled in his as she stood up, facing him. She wanted him to pull her into his arms and hold her. To comfort her. But his expression was as remote as his eyes. Ice flowed in his veins and formed a glacier in his mind far too thick to penetrate.
He was wholly focused on her; she felt his concentrated attention like a spear going through her heart. For Zacarias, no one else existed. He cared nothing for the men standing like statues in his yard. There was only Marguarita—and her disobedience.
His hand moved over her face, fingertips brushing every bruise, her swollen eye and cracked lip. His breath hissed out, a long, slow menace that sent another shiver creeping down her spine. Her heart accelerated and he heard it, but he didn’t soothe her. The pain in her face and head lessened with his touch—but that featherlight brush of fingers had been remote, not at all personal.
His disapproval of her actions hit like a hard blow to her heart. She had known he had forbidden her actions and he would be angry, but this was more than anger. His remoteness cut her to the bone. Even her soul and heart. He was taking care of her, but there was no comfort in his actions.
She swallowed hard and tried to reach him.
The blue flames leaped, and for a moment his eyes seemed to glow with a strange, frightening fire.
Marguarita refused to cry. She had known all along what she was getting into and Zacarias separated himself from emotions. He had all the long centuries of his existence. She’d put him in touch with feelings, allowing him to tap into them. He had suffered, lying there trapped beneath the earth while she was in danger. She had chosen her own path, disobeyed his direct orders, something probably no one did. She had told him she gave herself into his keeping, and pride and honor refused to allow her to weep.
She nodded her head and swept past him, head up, moving away from the crowd, knowing they thought Zacarias so solicitous of her.
Zacarias went next to Lea, giving her that same featherlight brush of his fingers, and softly whispering, his voice hypnotic, easing her grief a little, as well as the pain of the beating at DS’s hands. Marguarita could hear him assuring the girl that he would see to all arrangements and that Julio would take her home and stay just in case to watch over her.
Next came his low voice convincing the commander of everything he wanted the man to believe. Of course the commander went along with it all, half bowing to Zacarias, the elusive billionaire one heard so much about. He would have bragging rights; he met him in person and the De La Cruz legend would only grow.
Eventually everyone was gone and the house was dark and quiet. Marguarita was left to face Zacarias alone. She wanted him there, and yet she was very scared of what he would do. He had warned her numerous times she would face consequences. She couldn’t imagine him beating a woman. It simply wasn’t his style. He had taken the pain from her face, so he didn’t want her to suffer physically, right? She had to be right.
She wrung her hands together. Waiting. Where was he? It was worse waiting in the dark for him to appear and pass sentence on her than not knowing. She sat for a few minutes, her heart pounding and the taste of fear growing. Unable to sit still, she went to the open door and looked out. He was there, big as life, staring into the night.
He turned his head and looked straight at her. Of course he’d known she was there. His eyes burned through the screen, burned like a brand into her heart. She stepped back, her hand moving defensively to her throat. The lines in his face were etched deeper than usual and his jaw was set. There was no mercy in that dark expressionless face. His sensual mouth seemed a little cruel, and his eyes held nothing but all that blue, flaming ice.
He swung around in a swift fluid movement and was on her in a single beat of her heart. The screen never opened and closed. He stood a moment, holding her gaze, drinking in her terror, his mind closed to her, his heart and soul distant—so distant she couldn’t reach them. This was not her Zacarias. This was the predator.
Without preamble, he gripped her upper arms, dragging her to him, his teeth sinking into her neck. Pain sliced through her, pain that slowly gave way to pure erotic heat. She struggled for one moment, still afraid, knowing his control had slipped dangerously. She couldn’t connect, he refused to let her in, yet he was there in her mind, commanding—
The growing dread didn’t cease, even as heat swept through her body and her breasts ached for him, her core heated and wept for him. He didn’t stop. Didn’t slow down. She found herself sinking into that place, that sort of subspace of mind where Zacarias became her world. Where there was only his strong body and phenomenal strength, his need and hunger. It was a primal place, forged by his will, older than time, where laws of the jungle applied.
In the midst of all that sensual heat a shiver started somewhere and began to increase. She was cold. Growing colder, as if the ice in his veins had poured into her veins and slowly was spreading throughout her body. Her legs turned to rubber, very wobbly as if she could no longer support herself. She caught at Zacarias’s neck to anchor herself, but her arms were too weak to hold herself up.
Even as she fell, his arm locked her to him, lifting her from her feet, but he didn’t stop. She had the sensation of floating, but her eyes refused to open. Panicked, she tried to struggle.
Marguarita heard the soft hiss of menace, the need for domination and his iron will that was implacable. She had no chance to save herself. Life or death. Live or die. It was up to him. She gave herself up completely, no longer struggling, not even in her mind.
