Sweet: A Dark Love Story (4 page)

After catching her breath, Kat got up from the sand and brushed it off her naked body as well as possible, grimacing at the uncomfortable lodging of small granules in intimate places. That was something she could add to her list of items she had no interest in ever doing again: Having sex in the sand. Struggling to block out the last few minutes, to forget how she’d almost caved and begged him for a moment as she had hovered on the edge of release, she picked her way carefully over the vegetation in the sand as she made her way to the boathouse.

It was at the bottom of a steep incline, and she slid down it carefully, thankful for her sandals. At least he hadn’t taken those. As she reached the beach level, where the boathouse stood, she looked to the left and saw a rough set of stairs cut into the embankment. “Son of a…”

She trailed off with a sigh, appreciating the fact that at least her trip back up the embankment would be smoother—assuming she had to make a trip up. If there was a way to get out of here, she intended to do so, even if it meant grand theft auto. Or grand theft nautical? Whatever the crime, it couldn’t compare to his crime of luring her here under false pretenses and attempting to hold her captive, could it? Surely not, though she shared Declan’s lack of faith in the justice system.

She walked around the wooden structure for several minutes, peering in through the windows and trying the set of doors double doors at the back more than once. She didn’t approach the front, where water had collected and kept the boat afloat. Instead, she kept her exploration to the wooden platform sitting above the water. It was up on stilts, from what she could determine, so perhaps the boathouse wasn’t always filled with water.

If she could get up early enough in the morning to beat the incoming tide, maybe she could slip underneath the boathouse and into the boat that way. Of course, she’d still have to figure out how to turn it on, drive it, and get it out of the boathouse before the tide came in.

The thought of being trapped in the rising water on a boat that couldn’t sail out of the boathouse sent a chill through her, and it was purely an irrational fear of the water, but she couldn’t help the fear just the same. She didn’t have to be a genius to know where it came from, and she backed away carefully as irrational fear took hold of her, and she was suddenly convinced the ocean would come in much stronger than it currently was and sweep her out with it.

She eased back toward the steps, taking three of them before she looked down again. As she surveyed the area, she realized the boathouse was built on an incline, and not near the water’s edge as she had thought. She wasn’t certain if water always remained in there, and perhaps she would feel braver about checking it out if she could get up early enough tomorrow.

The whole structure seemed like an ingenious design when observed from a distance. One could enter the boathouse through the double doors, walk on the platforms she had observed from outside that also went around the boat in the interior, and get on the boat, which was fairly large, but not what she would call it a yacht—though she was certainly no expert.

Once in the boat, there had to be another mechanism or lock on the inside that opened the other set of double doors in front of the boat, allowing the driver to follow the sluice of water downhill and into the ocean beyond. She wondered briefly how one got the boat back up, especially if the water wasn’t approaching at high tide, but as she examined from her perch, she saw a pulley system on the outside of the boathouse and assumed there was a hook below, probably anchored to something so it didn’t wash away. It most likely hooked onto the boat and allowed one person to bring it back up the hill and easily store the vessel in the boathouse again and out of the elements.

If it really was his only mode of transportation off the island, aside from helicopter, he would clearly want to take good care of it. That could work to her advantage, if only she could find a way to hijack the boat, though that brought its own set of fears and worries.

The idea of traveling on open water in the small boat, even for just twenty-six nautical miles, was enough to make sweat bead her brow. The water would be so close, and if the boat failed, or if she fell in, there would be no one to save her there, because he wasn’t likely to join her for her ride to freedom.

Feeling weak and shaky, and hoping it was simply lack of food since the apple had done little to take the edge off her hunger, she made her way up the steps and in the direction of the center of the island, plowing toward the large house with determination. She would endure dinner, because she was starving, and then she’d lock herself in the room she had commandeered and try to devise a firm plan for escape.

When she entered the house, she heard a pan rattle from the kitchen, and the smell of something that seemed divine filled the air. She hesitated before entering the kitchen, since she was still wearing only her sandals. She nibbled her lip as she looked up the stairs and decided to go that way instead.

A few moments later, she entered the room she had taken over as hers and found a stack of boxes and bags on the bed that hadn’t been there before. A quick glance revealed several names with which she was unfamiliar, and a few that even she had heard of, including La Perla. She grimaced at the pile, assuming they were all the lingerie he had mentioned buying for her, and all that she was allowed to wear besides nothing, if she followed his rules.

She wanted to be defiant and pick another one of her own outfits, but she didn’t want it to be cut or torn off her and ruined beyond all repair as the last dress had been. Having him cut off yet another outfit would also leave her naked to him again. Even one of the flimsy pieces of lingerie he’d picked had to be better than that, right?

She sat down on the bed and began sorting through the underwear, nightgowns, and skimpy teddies, some with matching peignoirs and others without even so much as a pair of panties underneath. She hated the circumstances, and she was humiliated at the idea that he had ordered all of these with her in mind, but that didn’t stop the pieces from being beautiful and exquisitely made.

She’d never held anything so pricey in her life, and when she saw a price tag still attached to a sheer pair of underwear that had nothing to them besides mesh and lace, her eyes widened at the amount. She could buy about a hundred pairs of her usual brand of panties for that price. They were gorgeous, but seemed to be ridiculously extravagant for something so insubstantial.

With a shrug, she set them in the Absolutely Not mound, having established three piles. The first were things she would never wear under any circumstances, because they revealed far too much. The second pile were Maybes; things she would wear if she had no other options available; and the last were the ones she was mentally classifying as Acceptable. They were a little more modest than the others and at least gave the pretense of trying to cover her intimate places.

After everything was sorted, she shoved the Absolutely Not pile into a bottom drawer of the empty dresser before filling the second drawer with the Maybe pile, and finally tossing everything into the top drawer that were Acceptable possibilities for wearing—at least until she could find a way to keep her own clothes without getting them cut off of her.

For dinner, she picked a demure white gown and matching peignoir, deciding when she had it on that it wasn’t quite as modest as she had hoped, since the peignoir tied under her breasts, and the nightgown dipped lower than she would like. If she bent over too far, her nipples would pop out, but it was better than nothing at all. With a sigh, she decided it would have to do, since all the other Acceptables were equally immodest.

Anger and anxiety warred for supremacy inside her as she stomped from the room and down the hall, clattering down the stairs with all the stealth of a marching band. It was deliberate, because she wanted him to know how angry she was.

When she strode into the kitchen, Kat froze at the sight before her, so stunned that she didn’t know whether to laugh, ignore it, or make a scathing remark. Declan stood with his back facing her, including his bare ass, with the ties of an apron showing at his lower back and around his neck. When he turned to her a moment later, the comical sight of him wearing a black apron and nothing else made her giddy enough that she felt lightheaded for a moment as she held in a laugh.

Her mirth fled when her gaze settled on the large knife he held in his hand, and she remembered just exactly who was standing in front of her. Even in just an apron and nothing else, she should still be terrified of him, not amused.

He waved the knife in her direction with a casual swish. “Have a seat and pour yourself some wine. Food will be ready in a moment.”

She’d not grown up in a household where manners were important, but Claire Blake had taught her a few over the years she’d lived with them. Her first instinct was to offer to help, but that fled when she reminded herself she wasn’t a guest by her choice, and he could wait on her hand and foot, because she wouldn’t offer to help him with anything.

Taking the suggestion, which was probably more like an order, she went to the table and sat down, grimacing at the small, intimate setting in the kitchen. It was definitely a table built for two, and their knees would likely touch under the table when he joined her. “You don’t have a dining room in a mausoleum like this?”

He didn’t look at her as he continued with whatever he was doing at the stove, but he did nod his head. “No. I mean, of course we have one, but I don’t usually use it. The formal dining room is far too…well, formal, especially for just the two of us. We might redo it when we start having children, to make it a warmer and more inviting place, but that will be a year or two in the future, considering you’ll be breast-feeding for the first few months.”

She glared at him, though he couldn’t see her. “You’re certainly presuming a lot. First of all, I have no intention of giving you any children, and secondly, if I somehow spawned your offspring, I wouldn’t nurture it at my breast.”

His spine stiffened, and his shoulders straightened. “You’ll take good care of our children, Kat, and you know it.” With a flourish, he turned toward her, carrying a tray that he placed on the table precisely in the middle. “You’re too kind to do otherwise.”

She rolled her eyes even as her stomach grumbled. “How do you know how kind I am? You don’t know me at all.”

“I know a lot about you. Almost everything. I know you were reaching out to offer me comfort the day the judge dismissed the charges against your father, and that indicates a soft heart.”

“You weren’t holding me captive then, and you certainly didn’t expect me to fall in line with some crazy-ass plan of yours to marry you and give you kids.”

Declan arched a brow as he pulled the lids off the dishes on the tray to reveal some kind of fish, covered with a creamy sauce dotted with capers, and a heaping serving of steamed baby vegetables. “I think you misunderstood me a bit.”

She hesitated as she reached for the plate nearest to her, waiting until he had taken his before doing the same. “How did I misunderstand? Are you not holding me captive on this island because you think I somehow owe you for what my father did to your wife and daughter?”

He lifted his shoulder. “That’s mostly true, but I never said anything about marrying you. I don’t expect you to say ‘I do.’”

For some reason, that offended her. “So now you expect me to be an unwed mother and your slut. I’m so glad we cleared that up.”

He laughed softly. “I can’t marry you, because I can’t trust you to leave the island yet. Someday, when you’ve completely accepted you’re mine, we’ll consider it. In the meantime, there’s no reason to delay starting a family just for an old-fashioned concept. You won’t belong to me anymore with a piece of paper saying you’re mine than you do right now, sitting across from me in your virginal little nightgown.”

His eyes darkened to a steel-gray. “That pleases me, by the way, because that’s the one I’d hoped you would wear on our wedding night.”

She frowned, pausing in the process of bringing a forkful of fish to her mouth. “You just said there wasn’t going to be a wedding night.”

Declan’s eyes smoldered. “No, I said there wasn’t going to be a marriage for a while. We’re definitely having a wedding night.”

“Over my dead body.”

He laughed, looking entirely too confident. “Just wait and see. You’ll come to me.”

“You’re out of your mind, Mulgrew.” She finished bringing the fork to her mouth and briefly closed her eyes at the explosion of flavor on her tongue. For a psycho man with a fetish for abduction, and apparently for performing sex acts in the outdoors on dirty ground, he could certainly cook very well.

“Tell me about your life, Kat.”

“I thought you knew everything about me,” she said sullenly before scooping up another bite of fish.

“I know the general details, but fill me in on the day-to-day. What do you do?”

Feeling ridiculous, but deciding it was a safer topic of conversation than the others they had tackled, she dabbed her mouth with a linen napkin before replying. “Until last week, I attended college and lived in a dorm room, which my foster parents paid for.”

He shook his head. “No, Claire and Clay didn’t pay for all that, sweet Kat.”

She stiffened when he said her foster parents’ names. “They had to have. I was only in their care through the state for a couple of years, and they took on the expenses after that.”