Chapter Four

Shock … fear … relief …

Why was she feeling relief? No. She didn’t want to be with Blake Knight. Just the sound of his voice slamming into her already fractured nerves had left her barely able to stand. She’d been with the man for a week, or not quite a week, the last time around, and she had barely survived the ups and downs.

And now her sentence with him lasted for a month. Why had he bid on her? Why did he want her again when he’d ditched her so coldly and with such finality? He’d told her she was a liar, that he never wanted to see her again. Why would he have paid a quarter of a million dollars to take her back when he’d been the one to return her — as if she’d been defective?

Yet here he was, standing before her in all his dark glory, his custom suit molded to his shoulders, his gray eyes boring into hers, his very presence overwhelming her, sucking all the air out of the room where he seemed so out of place. For a mere mortal like her, this place was elegant as sin, but the Blake Knights of the world lived on a far higher level.

Still, she had no chance of forgetting he was there. Without moving a muscle or saying a word, he commanded the room, any room — commanded her — though she hoped to the highest reaches of heaven that he wasn’t aware of that fact. The man possessed so much raw power.

When he took a step toward her, Jewell found herself riveted to the floor. Yet every instinct inside her told her to run, told her that retreat was her only option. She’d thought she’d seen the last of him. No matter how much she had tried to prepare herself for the new person who would be taking over her life and her body, she couldn’t have ever been prepared for it to be Blake.

As her heart continued to thud violently, she watched his slow and deliberate approach and wondered whether she would pass out. That wouldn’t be surprising; after all, she couldn’t breathe.

When his eyes caressed her body from the tips of her toes to what seemed like every last strand of her hair, a shudder rippled all through her. She was his property and he was assessing the merchandise, and though his expression should have frozen her, it did the impossible and heated her to her very core.

“Why?” She couldn’t seem to get any other words past her constricted throat.

His lips turning up in the tiniest of smiles as he invaded her personal space, seeming to drain her very essence from her as he lifted a hand and ran a finger along her cheekbone. Looking into Blake’s eyes became way too much for her, and she briefly closed her own as she took a breath and tried to gain some semblance of strength.

“May I offer you each something to drink?”

It took a moment for Jewell to realize that someone else had entered the room. Opening her eyes, she turned to find an attractive woman, in her early thirties at most and with a neutral expression on her face.

“I … Where did you come from?” Jewell asked. She’d called out twice with no answer. And yet Blake and some strange woman had both been there.

“She was told to wait in back,” Blake said with a smile.

Of course the woman would be at his command, whoever she was. Everyone was at Blake’s command. Jewell herself … hell, and the rest of the world was simply there to do his bidding, or so he thought.

“No,” Blake then said. “You’re dismissed for the evening, Elsa.”

Jewell watched as the woman disappeared.

“Blake, I don’t understand this,” Jewell said, the shock beginning to wear off as agitation took its place. “I’m in a strange place with some woman mysteriously popping in, and you … and … I don’t understand,” she finished quietly, twisting her fingers together.

“Sit down, Jewell.”

She waited a moment for him to continue, and when he didn’t, she looked around. Should she obey him like the puppet she was supposed to be? She just didn’t know.

“Unless you’d rather walk straight into the bedroom,” he added.

There was no mistaking the desire in his eyes. Though this sitting room was new and strange to her, Jewell thought it a safer zone than the room Blake had proposed. So she moved backward, somehow found a chair, and fell into it.

“I don’t know why you came back for me. I don’t know why you paid so much money for me when it was you who dumped me back off at the agency. None of this makes sense, Blake. This isn’t what you want — not really. This has to be about power … or revenge … or something I can’t even fathom.”

He walked up to her and leaned down, caging her against her chair, making the breath she’d finally taken rush back out.

She couldn’t read the look in his eyes, and she couldn’t figure out what was going on inside his head, but she knew that, no matter what he was thinking, it couldn’t be good. A man who had shelled out so much hard cash for a woman would certainly get his money’s worth — one way or another.

“We have things to discuss, Jewel. The two of us began a journey three months ago, a journey that we haven’t yet come close to finishing,” he said, his tone smooth, his eyes once again on fire.

She answered in a voice barely above a whisper. “Our journey is long over, Blake.”

“That’s where you’re so very wrong, Jewell. I’m not done with you yet.” He leaned down farther and let his breath wash over her heated skin.

“No …,” she almost wailed, and her body quaked.

“Oh, yes, Jewell. We are only just now beginning.”