Sephie had never really been attracted to older men, and Ranulf Drake looked to be in his midthirties, which was at least fifteen years older than her own age of twenty.He was also over a foot taller than her own height of four inches over five feet.
And yet…
From the moment she’d first seen him, Sephie had been drawn to him in a way she could never remember having been to any other man.He was so mesmerizing to watch, his movements both graceful and controlled, despite his size, that she couldn’t take her eyes off him.
There was also the fact that he was so handsome, he almost seemed unreal, those rugged good looks making Sephie’s mouth water and setting her pulse racing.
But there was something else about Ranulf Drake that made it impossible for her to look away from him.A compulsion that warned her if she looked away for even a second, he might disappear.
Which she knew was slightly ridiculous, but the feeling persisted anyway.
Her parents had only moved from Glasgow to the inn they’d bought in this quaint village in the Scottish Highlands the previous summer.They had moved here after Sephie had returned to Oxford for her last year of studying European art at the university.Which meant she had only managed to visit them in Scotland for the first time shortly before Christmas.
She’d been in the village for only a little over a week when she first saw Ranulf, along with his two brothers, when they had gathered in the inn with the other villagers about to go looking for a girl who had gone missing in the mountains.
Even then, standing with his two equally tall and compellingly handsome brothers—there must be some really powerful genes in the Drake family to have produced three such gorgeous and imposing men!—Ranulf had been the one whose appearance most called to Sephie.
Like a siren song, but to her, it was coming from a six-foot-six man whose height and build, along with those sharply etched features, most resembled those of a Greek or Roman god.
That compulsion to stare at him, out of fear he might simply disappear if she didn’t, would fade the moment Ranulf was out of her sight.At which time, Sephie would mock herself for being so melodramatic.
And yet the moment she saw Ranulf again, that same fascination to watch his every move would invade and take over all her senses.It was like an obsession.A gnawing hunger inside her that wanted to claim this man for her own.
Which was really odd when she had earned the affectionate nickname Snow Princess from both the male and female friends she’d made at university.They didn’t mean it in a derogatory way.In fact, her female friends tended to say it admiringly.
Sephie had shown she had absolutely no interest in dating any of the students, male or female, who had invited her out.She had no problem with going out with them in a crowd, but dating someone specifically had never appealed to her.
That disinterest had completely evaporated the moment she became aware of Ranulf Drake’s existence.
She had even walked through the snow one day to take a look at Drake House after her father had told her where the three brothers lived.She’d had no intention of actually knocking on the door and speaking to any of them.She had just felt the need to see the house Ranulf called home.
Except…to Sephie, it had looked more like a castle than a house, with turrets and towers and battlements along the top of the high stone walls.There was no moat surrounding it, but it was partly built into the huge mountain behind it, adding to its fortification.
She had easily been able to envisage Ranulf striding along those battlements, sword in hand, lord of all he surveyed as he fought off any and all intruders.
Even now, when there were so many other more urgent things for her to deal with, Sephie could feel that same compulsion to continue looking at Ranulf’s chiseled features.
She gave herself a mental shake, knowing she had been staring at him for far too long.“I was told to give you this, Mr.Drake.”She held out the sealed envelope she had been clutching tightly to her chest this whole time.
“Ranulf will do,” he stated in a gruff voice that sounded as if he didn’t speak often.It sent rivulets of ice-cold awareness coursing down Sephie’s spine.“Told, not asked?”he prompted shrewdly as he took the envelope from her.
Sephie instantly felt a tingling sensation where Ranulf’s fingers had briefly come into contact with her own.A tingling which increased in heat as it traveled down her limbs and body before centering at her core.The following fierce and pleasurable explosion of heat made her draw her breath in sharply.
Between her thighs now felt wet, the lips of her channel swollen, the nubbin above throbbing.
Dear God, she felt as if she was about to climax from just that briefest of Ranulf’s touches!
That feeling deepened as she stared at his large hands.She was easily able to imagine how firmly they would grasp her curvy hips as he pulled her against his thick thighs.No doubt she would then be able to feel what she was sure would be a cock that was fully in proportion to the rest of this enormous, muscular man.
Heat suffused her body at these uncharacteristic erotic thoughts.
She fought against those feelings as she swallowed before answering him.“Told,” she echoed.
Ranulf arched one dark brow.“By whom?”
The man who currently has my mother locked in the cellar of the inn and has tied my father to a chair in the bar with the ropes he brought up with him from the cellar.He’s threatening them both with bodily harm if I don’t do exactly what he told me to do!
But she didn’t say any of that out loud.Or, more accurately, she daren’t say any of it.Mainly because she knew the cold-eyed and unemotional man holding her parents prisoner meant every word he said, and she couldn’t risk Ranulf doing anything more than what this letter instructed him to do.
