Faint spiralling circles over the left side of his chest caught my attention. It looked like pale red lines deliberately cut intohis chest, still healing. The mark became much redder at the centre.
His sentence mark.
“Jane?” he asked.
“Huh?” My eyes darted to his face again. “What?”
“You didn’t answer,” he said, grinning as if he noticed where my thoughts went. “Has nobody ever taught you to swim?”
“No.” I shifted my weight between my legs, feeling restless, and focused on the stone walls. “But you go ahead.”
From the corner of my eye, I saw him stepping closer.
“I can teach you, if you want. Besides, I’m not about to leave you to wander alone in this place.”
I wondered if he thought I might try to leave. I probably should, except I didn’t see any train stations nearby, and I wasn’t sure it would be wise to leave now.
When I turned to face him again, his gaze rested on my feet, on the ankle I had been rolling in my restlessness.
“I’m sure you’re offering from the goodness of your heart,” I said, making sure he heard the cynicism in my voice. “But I’ll pass.”
“I’m sure that’s because of your very thorough opinions of me,” he said. “But you know by now that you’re perfectly safe with me.”
It was a bad idea. Putting myself in a very vulnerable position. And for what? To test the water? I didn’t need it. It wouldn’t be wise to do this, even if I were inclined to trust him not to let me come to harm. A tenuous and feeble trust.
“Aren’t you curious?” he asked, as if he had been listening to my every thought, using my weakness against me.
My eyes darted from him to the blue spring.
“I am curious, and that will probably be the end of me someday. I’m not sure I want it to be today.”
He chuckled, his shoulders moving with the sound.
I didn’t need it. I shouldn’t. What would I get from plunging into a deep pool without knowing how to swim, just so my captor could teach me?
Yet . . . he’d played me perfectly.
I reached for my boots and pulled them off.
Reagan watched me, waiting.
Holding my breath, I gripped the hem of my umber blouse, pulled it over my head, and let it fall to the floor.
His brows arched, but he recovered, his hands undoing the button on his trousers as his eyes were locked on mine.
I kept my gaze on him, as if his face were an anchor that I was fixing on so I wouldn’t lose my nerve. I pulled the strings of the black skirt I was wearing and let the fabric drop, pooling at my feet and leaving me with only two pieces of red underwear.
My face and neck flushed with warmth.
Reagan paused mid-motion, his trousers still on, as his gaze dropped to my bare skin. Those eyes roamed over my breasts—lazily and shamelessly. My chest rose sharply, the tips of my breasts hardening.
Reagan’s fingers fidgeted at his sides. He trailed down again, eyes levelling with my stomach, damp with the steam of the room, then to the flare of my hips and thighs.
The corner of his lips curled into the slightest grin. His hands moved back to his trousers, and he pulled them down, revealing loose undergarments that reached the middle of his thighs and long, muscular legs.
“How do we get in?” I asked, looking at the pool that was lower than the floor level.
Before I realised what he was about to do, he rushed forward.
