She didn’t reply, and he laughed again. Her fear should have made him sick. Instead it simply awakened his hunter’s instinct. He considered making her fears come true but decided against it.
There would be plenty of time when they landed.
* * * * *
She watched in a daze as he stalked into the bathroom. When he was gone she could hardly imagine he’d been there. He was too unreal, too scary. It reminded her of the one time she’d tried drugs during college. Intense, scary, almost unbelievable when it ended.
Only the pictures her friends had taken of her dancing wildly in a club were enough to convince her she’d really been that crazed girl.
Her gaze drifted across the room, coming to rest on the door. No point in trying to run. Even if they weren’t in the air, that outside cabin was filled with his friends. She wasn’t sure about Valzar, but she’d bet every last penny she had that Del wanted her dead, assuming he was on the plane. She had no way of knowing who might be out there. The cold reality of the situation was that as long as Sean wanted her, she was his.
It was the best way to stay alive.
She thought of the heroines in romance novels, fighting bravely to preserve their precious virginity.
Fuck that.
She’d do whatever it took to keep alive, including blowing every man on the plane.
The thought was so overwhelming that she sat down on the bed, letting the towel fall the floor.
She really was prepared to do whatever it took to stay alive. It was as if a switch turned within her head. Suddenly she felt lighter, freer. The old inhibitions fell away as everything stood out with stark clarity in her mind.
Staying alive was all that mattered.
The shower stopped running as a burst of turbulence hit the plane He gave a muffled grunt from the bathroom, and she fell back on the bed, bemused. He was strong, the other men respected him. Even
Valzar, their leader, listened to him. As long as she kept him happy, he would protect her.
Eventually she’d find a way to escape. All she had to do was make him want her…
He came out of the bathroom. Mentally she poured herself a shot of vodka, drank it back and sat up.
“We didn’t exactly finish before, did we?” she asked, hoping her voice was sultry and sophisticated. He froze, eyes searching her face. A slow, curious smile came over his features.
“No, I guess we didn’t finish,” he said.
Sandra sat back, spreading her legs across the silk sheets. Her br**sts thrust forward as she leaned back on her hands.
“I think we need to come to an understanding,” she said softly. “I don’t know what’s going on here and I don’t care. All I care about is me. If you take good care of me, I’ll take very good care of you.”
He didn’t react at first, and she flushed nervously. Would he notice? She hoped not. She wanted him to see her as a sophisticated woman of the world. If he took her offer at face value, he’d be less careful.
“I suppose we could do that,” he said slowly. “Although I think we should make things clear from the start. It sounds to me like you’re a professional?”
“Yes,” she said, hoping her smile wasn’t slipping. “You were right about that before. I’m a professional, and I don’t make it my business to pry into the personal affairs of the men I serve.”
“So why weren’t you more accommodating before?” he asked softly.
“Because you startled me,” she said, trying to look up at him through her eyelashes. “Even a professional can get spooked when her new client tries to kill her old client.”
His face grew thoughtful, and she bit the inside of her lip. She shouldn’t have reminded him that she knew about the murder. Big mistake.
“Enough about that,” she said quickly. Pushing herself forward, she stood and strolled slowly toward him.
“Why don’t you turn those lights down and come over here?” she asked softly. “I like to work with my hands, and you strike me as being very…tense.”
He watched her without moving, and she thought he’d seen through her for sure. Then he turned and walked across the room to the light switch, turning it off. A dim glow—emergency lights?—came from the corners of the room. Not bright enough to keep a person from sleeping, but enough that she could see the outline of his form as he came toward her.
Lord, he was big.
His bulk came from muscles, too. She realized with a start that if he really was a client of hers, she’d be thrilled. There was nothing she loved more than going to work on a body that was well put together. She could tell just from watching him move where his trouble spots would be…
Tension in the shoulders, of course, and perhaps in the lower arms. His thighs. There would be tension there, too, although not the kind she could easily massage away. She backed slowly around the bed, beckoning him to follow her.
Instead, he crawled on to the silken sheets like some great predatory cat. She met him halfway across the bed with a smile. He reached for her, but she raised one hand and planted it in the middle of his chest.
“This is what I do best,” she said firmly. “Let me do my work and I’ll guarantee you won’t regret it.”
He hesitated before allowed her to roll him on to his belly.
She knelt beside him and closed her eyes, formulating her strategy. He was just like any other massage client, she reminded herself. The only difference was that this massage would be more sensual.
She knew how to do it.
She’d had dreams about giving a massage like this, private fantasies about taking one of her clients and changing his entire worldview in an hour. She couldn’t do such a thing, of course, even if she had a client she wanted to do it . It wasn’t right; it wasn’t professional. to Professional ethics hadn’t been created for situations like this, however.
She stretched out her fingers and touched him.
His flesh was cooler than she’d expected and still slightly damp from the shower. She started at the back on his neck, slowly running her fingers down along the smooth line of his back, gaining a feel for how he was built. She’d underestimated just how muscular he was; thank goodness she wasn’t doing a deep tissue massage. It might kill her fingers to work with those muscles. After a few experimental strokes she allowed herself to move more aggressively. Not too hard yet, she was still warming him up, but hard enough that she could feel his strength.
In the darkness it was easy to imagine this was nothing more than a dream. It was easy to let her fingers wander, and before long, she noticed that she wasn’t following her regular routine.