The Temptress

by Jude Deveraux

  Dysan smiled. “I can assure you that there is no way to escape. You got in because I allowed you to enter.” He took the cigar from his mouth and looked at it. “I wondered which one of the women you’d go after first.”

  Dysan stood and walked to stand behind Chris, putting a gun to her head, running his hand along her throat and pulling her head back. “Why do I get the feeling that she’s not what she seems? Hamilton said she was his cousin, a mousey little thing that allowed her husband to beat her, but here she is, having escaped down the side of a four-story building, and I somehow sense that she isn’t what she appears.”

  “What do you want? If it’s money, you’ll be paid. All you have to do is release her.”

  “Money?” Dysan sounded genuinely surprised. “And do you have money to pay for her ransom?”

  “I can get it.”

  Dysan walked away from Chris but not far enough that he couldn’t have hurt her if Tynan tried anything. “And what do you have that you can sell? Do some of the prostitutes you know have money? Will they sell their diseased bodies to get money for you? Or has that miner of yours finally found gold?”

  Tynan just looked at the man, not saying a word.

  “Ah, the rescuing hero doesn’t want to tell what he knows. What can I do to loosen your tongue? Remove pieces of this little lady?”

  Still, Tynan didn’t move.

  Dysan moved closer to Chris and began to run his hands down her arms. “Do you mind that other men touch her? Do you insist that this one is yours alone?”

  “Do what you want with her,” Tynan said. “She’s just a job to me. I get paid to take her back to her father.”

  “And who is her father that he would pay for her?”

  Tynan took his time in answering. “Del Mathison,” he said into the silence.

  The only sign Dysan gave that he heard was that his cigar shook just once as he held it in his hand.

  There was a long silence in the room as Dysan stared at Tynan. “I think I have underestimated you. I thought you only went in for whores.”

  “I do. I want nothing to do with girls like her. She’s been nothing but trouble so if you have some grudge with me, you can leave her out of it.”

  Dysan ran his hand along Chris’s neck. “Shall I test your words? Shall I see how little you care about her?”

  “Mathison won’t take kindly to his daughter being mistreated and I don’t think you’re big enough to buck a man like him.”

  Dysan seemed to be considering this, but, after a moment, he walked toward the door, his gun aimed at Chris and looked out. Immediately, two men appeared. “Take them to the cellar and lock them in.”

  Tynan stood back as he watched Chris being untied, and when she was released, she fell forward. One of the men caught her arm roughly and jerked her upright. Ty still stood where he was as she looked up at him as she was being pulled along.

  Without any protest, he followed behind her, in front of a man bearing a rifle.

  They were led downstairs into a deep basement. There was a door against one wall and one of the men took a key and opened it, throwing Chris into the dark, dank little room. Tynan entered of his own accord, standing by the door until the men closed and locked it behind them.

  Instantly, he was across the room to Chris, groping for her in the darkness. “Chris, Chris,” he whispered repeatedly while running his hands over her body as if he were inspecting her. “Are you hurt?”

  Chris clung to him as if she were drowning. “He’s a horrible man,” she gasped, then choked over her tears. “He told me about three women who’d been here. He told me about using a riding crop and—”

  “Sssh,” Ty said, holding her, stroking her back. “It’s over now.”

  Chris hiccupped. “The woman died. He killed her. He told me in florid detail what he did and how he made the other women watch. The woman bled to death.”

  “Chris, stop crying. He won’t do anything to you now.”

  “But how could one human do something like that to another? He told me about it and he wasn’t sorry. Why wasn’t he punished?”

  “I don’t know, just so long as he didn’t hurt you.”

  It took Chris several minutes more to control herself. “What does it matter to you?” she asked, pushing away from him and moving back against the wall. “I’m well enough to get back to my father if that’s what’s worrying you.” She sniffed.

  Ty’s hands moved away from her and there was resignation in his voice. “I’ll see if I can find a light.”

  She leaned against the wall and listened to him rummaging around the room. Her head ached, there were rope burns on her ankles and wrists and along with Dysan’s hideous stories, her ears were ringing with Tynan’s words that she was nothing to him.

  She watched as he struck a match and lit a candle. It was a dreary little room, dirt walls on three sides, the heavy wooden door on the other. There was a crude wooden cabinet against one wall, the door hanging off its leather hinges, exposing a few jars of canned fruit and a couple of half-burned candles on the shelves. Except for a few plants trying to grow out of the walls, the room was bare—and cold.

  “Let me look at you,” Tynan said, his voice cool, his face set.

  Chris jerked away from his approaching hands. “Don’t touch me. I am perfectly all right,” she said. “You don’t need to concern yourself with me.”

  Ty rocked back on his heels. “We’ll get along a lot better if we work together. As long as you fight me, we’ll never get anything done.”

  “So you can get me back to my father and you can get your money? Maybe Dysan will let you go free now that you’ve told him who I am. Maybe you two can share the money from my father.”

  “Of all the ungrateful—I ought to leave you here.”

  “Go ahead. There’s the door.”

  Tynan opened his mouth to speak but closed it again, then stood and walked to the door and began looking at it.

  “You have on new clothes again,” Chris said after a while.

  Tynan didn’t answer her but kept looking at the door.

  Chris tried to stand up, using the wall for support. “I guess you got Pilar out safely.”

  “If you’d stayed in your room, you’d be out now, too.”

  “He knew when you were inside the house so what makes you think he didn’t know when you were in the upstairs room?”

  Ty didn’t look back at her but kept searching the room, inspecting the ceiling which looked as if it were always wet, and the floor which was nothing but hardened mud.

  “Dysan said he’d sent out a hundred men to stop anyone from finding us, so how did you get here?”

  “Your father’s money was a powerful incentive. It got me through clouds of gunfire.”

  Chris leaned against the damp wall, flexing her sore ankles. “All right, maybe I was rude and I apologize. I thank you for trying to rescue me and I’m sorry that I’m going to cause your…that I’m going to cause whatever will happen to us.”

  He turned back to her. “I think that finding out that you’re Mathison’s daughter will curtail whatever Dysan planned. Now, I suggest that you sit down and get what rest you can because, come morning, I think he’ll take us out of here.”

  Chris sat down on the floor and was silent for a moment. “You could have gotten away in there. You could have overtaken those two men. Why didn’t you?”

  Tynan stretched out with his back against the door, his eyes half closed. “Maybe, maybe not. Why don’t you get some sleep now? You might need to do some running in the morning.”

  Chris couldn’t sleep, but she was quiet as she sat and watched Tynan across from her. Since that awful night in the cabin, she’d done her best not to think of him, not to remember what he looked like, how he smelled, how he’d touched her, but now, with him so near, it was impossible not to recall every bit of it.

  And with the pleasant memories came his words: he only wanted to get her back to her father, that all she was to
him was a possibility of a pardon, that she was just one of hundreds of women he’d bedded, no more, no less. Chris remembered with shame the way she’d tried to talk him into marriage. In the flickering darkness, she could feel her face turning red. How childish she’d been, how immature.

  And how childish she was acting now, she thought. She kept thinking that he’d betrayed her when the truth was, he’d been more than honest with her, never had he insinuated that he wanted any more from her than a job and a good time.

  As she watched him, he opened his eyes and looked at her, and for a moment, Chris almost threw herself into his arms. Whatever she felt for him was not returned and she’d better get used to that fact. He didn’t love her and she was going to stop loving him—even if it killed her.

  “Would you like to see what I found?” she asked.

  He gave a nod, but said nothing, just sat there looking at her with hot eyes.

  Probably thinks that since we’ve made love once, we will again. Not on your life, cowboy! she thought.

  Turning away from him, she unbuttoned her blouse and withdrew a long narrow belt of what looked to be silver links. “It’s mine,” she said, caressing the belt and taking her time before handing it to him.

  “It’s worn out and it looks old. Where was it? In your carpet bag?”

  “No, of course not,” she said, taking it back. “I found it here, when I was looking through Dysan’s things. He had several treasures in a little cabinet. I think he found them in the sea—salvage. But I knew right away that this was mine so I took it.”

  Tynan looked at her in confusion for a moment. “You mean that you’ve never seen this thing before but you think it’s yours?”

  She looked up at him with a stubborn expression on her face.

  “Is this your second sight again?” he said and there was laughter in his voice.

  Chris merely kept her jaw set and put the belt back into her blouse.

  “What is the thing anyway?”

  “I think I’ll get some sleep now,” Chris said with her nose in the air.

  “I didn’t mean—” Ty began but he stopped himself. “You want to hear why I have on new clothes again?” he said after a moment.

  Chris tried to control her curiosity but couldn’t. She was a reporter to the tip of her toes and she was not capable of resisting a story. Reluctantly, she nodded.

  He started with entering Red’s place secretly and then went on to tell of the men waiting outside for him. He told of his reluctance to wear the sideshow man’s white leather outfit, and of at last agreeing.

  Chris listened with held breath, in awe of what he wasn’t telling her: of how difficult it had been to get to her. She didn’t laugh until he started telling her about Chanry and how the man had loved the suit.

  “But won’t the men chase him when he’s wearing the white suit, and won’t they think they’re chasing you?”

  Tynan grinned at her. “That’s the idea.”

  “Oh, Ty, that’s dreadful of you. That man could get killed.”

  “Hmph! You’d rather I’d have worn the suit and let myself get killed?”

  “That isn’t what I meant and you know it.”

  “Then you’ll be happy to know that I’ve already heard that Chanry escaped, a little dented maybe, but he’s alive.”

  “And looking for you, no doubt.”

  “I seem to be a popular fellow,” Ty said.

  “Do you have any idea why Dysan wants you? He seemed to be very interested in you.”

  “I doubt it. He just wanted to see who could get through that gauntlet he set up. Chris, seeing as this might be our last night alive, would you like to—”

  He didn’t get to finish. “Of all the audacious, disgusting things I have ever heard, that’s the worst. After the things you said to me! How dare you ask me something like that! What kind of woman do you think I am?”

  “But in the cabin—”

  “In the cabin I thought I was in love with you and I thought you were going to marry me. That was before I found out what kind of low-life scum you really are, that you have no more feelings for a woman than what you can get out of her. But I can tell you that you will never, ever get anything out of me again.”

  “I just thought I’d ask,” he said and there was a hint of a smile in his voice. “Let’s get some sleep now.”

  Chris didn’t say anymore but she didn’t sleep either as she sat there, her blood boiling. How dare he? How dare dare dare he?

  She was still angry when the door was unlocked and opened.

  Chapter Twenty

  A man grabbed Chris’s arm before she was out the door, roughly pushing her toward the stairs.

  “You’re ours once he’s through with you,” the man whispered in her ear as she stumbled up the stairs. “And after he’s killed the pretty boy,” he added, meaning Tynan who was walking behind them. Another man, holding a rifle, brought up the rear.

  At the top of the stairs, they were shoved into the dining room where Dysan waited for them. Dysan didn’t say a word as the men tied Tynan to a chair, then left the room.

  Dysan lit a cigar, looking at Chris standing at the end of the dining table and at Tynan as he sat immobilized in a chair by the window.

  “I have waited a long time for this,” he said at last. “I’ve spent years planning this, what I would do, how I would do it. I had no idea that you’d drop the answer into my hands so easily.”

  As Dysan was speaking, he was looking at Tynan, it was as if Chris weren’t even in the room, but she got the impression that she was the answer to which Dysan was referring. She was what Dysan was going to use to do what he wanted to Tynan.

  “Before we…die,” Chris said, “could you tell us why? What have we done?”

  Dysan took a long draw on his cigar. “I have no intention of telling you anything. By tomorrow, this house will be a pile of cinders and in the ashes will be the bodies of two people. No one will even be able to identify the bodies. Your father will never know what happened to his little daughter.”

  “What about the world? Won’t they want to know what happened to Nola Dallas?”

  Dysan didn’t speak for a moment. “You are certainly full of surprises.” He turned to Tynan who was still and silent in the chair. “As well as yourself. She isn’t like your usual women.”

  “What is it you have against Tynan? And if you think he wants me for anything, you’re wrong. I’m nothing to him, absolutely nothing.”

  Dysan gave a little smile of delight. “Of course you’re not. Now, come here.”

  Chris stiffened. “I will not.”

  “For every order of mine that you disobey, I will take an hour from his life. You obey me and he lives longer.”

  “I can’t…” Chris began but she stopped at the look on Dysan’s face. She didn’t look at Tynan because she was beginning to feel her first anger at him. Why didn’t he at least make some form of protest? Did he care so little about her that he’d allow whatever happened to just happen to her?

  Chris tried to clear her mind. Tynan wasn’t going to help, wasn’t going to even say anything that might discourage Dysan so it was up to her. What would she do if she were alone in the room with an aggressive man?

  She tried to look about the room without seeming to do so and she saw that on the sideboard were two built-in silverware holders. Inside one of them had to be a table knife. If she could lead Dysan that way…

  She began moving toward Dysan, and his eyes never left hers. “What makes you think that I care anything about him? He’s only a cowboy who was hired by my father to take me through the rain forest. Did you know that he’d been in jail? My father had to get him out of prison to lead the expedition. He’s not my type of man at all.”

  Dysan watched her and Chris was glad to see that his eyes went down to her hips a couple of times, from the way she was swaying them, he could hardly miss them.

  “I like a man with power.” She was standing close to him now,
both of them in front of the sideboard. “Do you have any idea how very wealthy my father is? Can you imagine what an empire you’d have if you were to merge your kingdom with his?”

  Dysan looked amused. “Are you trying to seduce me? Do you think you can make me forget what I really want? You are a bystander who got caught in the crossfire.”

  Chris was inches away from him now, her face just below his. “I’m trying to save my own neck. If you and I merge, so to speak, we can have control of a great deal. If you murder me, my father will pursue you to the ends of the earth. Your life will be hell.”

  “And what about him?”

  “What does he matter? Let him go. We don’t need him.”

  Dysan smiled down at her. “Nice try, princess, but it won’t work. The both of you die. Mathison would never let someone who’d once threatened his little girl into his kingdom.”

  Suddenly, he grabbed Chris about the waist and pulled her to him, grinding her mouth with his, forcing her lips open and thrusting his tongue inside.

  When he released her, her revulsion showed on her face.

  He thrust her away from him. “And you think you could pretend to want me,” he said between closed lips. “I don’t like to be thought a fool. Now come here.”

  Chris was really afraid of him now. He wasn’t going to fall for anything she’d planned, he was going to torture her in front of Tynan, then kill Tynan in an equally disgusting way—and she wasn’t even going to be told why she was dying.

  Hesitantly, she walked toward him, and when she was in front of him, she voluntarily put her arms up to go about his neck. She began to kiss his neck, moving over his lips, trying to shift his interest entirely onto her—and while she was kissing him, she was trying to reach the box of silverware behind him.

  Feigning passion as he again put his tongue in her mouth, she managed to get the box open, and with one eye open, she saw that there was a set of six table knifes, handles up, in the box. Now, if she could only reach one of them. She was almost there when Dysan suddenly turned and grabbed her hand, her fingertips held an inch above the handle.

  “Going to stab me in the back, my dear?” he said before he slapped her across the face.