Against the Wind by Anne Stuart

a teenage boy in the advanced stages of exhaustion who’d fallen asleep and let his vicious prisoner escape.
    Very carefully she slid the padlock from the links of chain, letting the heavy steel swing silently to the floor. The wide wooden bar was another barrier, and she could feel the splinters dig into her palms as she shoved it upward, straining against its stubborn tightness. The two heavy bolts were rusty and hard from disuse and shrieked in the stillness. Maddy tugged at the door, but it didn’t budge.
    Maddy pulled at the door, hard, but it remained firm. She yanked at the door, throwing all her weight behind it, and with damnable perversity it flew open, out of her hands, banging against the wall with a crash that doubtless could be heard throughout the three floors and meandering ells of the old villa.
    Maddy didn’t wait for pursuit. The garden was brightly lit from the almost full moon, the outer stairway hidden in the shadows. She was through the door like a shadowy wraith herself, only vaguely aware of the figure that had raced down the stairs in her direction. Her white shirt stood out like a beacon in the moonlight as she ran through the tangled growth, the stairway beckoning her. She heard a shout behind her, calling her name, and she knew it was Jake, and that he was close behind her. With a burst of speed she leaped ahead, over a low-growing bush, suddenly desperate.
    It all happened at once. She heard his voice directly behind her. A hand clamped down on her shoulder, spinning her around, a heavy body slammed into hers, knocking her to the ground and flattening her beneath it, and the sudden whine of a bullet sped past her head as she fell.
    She opened her mouth to scream, but his hand clamped across it, just as his heavy weight pressed her into the dusty ground. She could hear his voice in her ear, feel the moist warmth of his breath. “If you make a noise, a sound, even a tiny movement, I’ll snap your neck.”
    She didn’t believe him. His hand was on her mouth, not her neck, the other arm holding her tightly against his body. She also wasn’t about to test her theory. She looked up into his eyes in the dark, moonlit night, her own mutely pleading. “Will you do as I tell you?” Hisvoice was no more than a thread of sound. “Blink your eyes twice if you will.”
    Dutifully she did so, and his hand slowly pulled away from her mouth. “That’s better,” he whispered. “Because they’re waiting to shoot again—the slightest sound, the tiniest movement, and we’ll both be Swiss cheese. And I’m not ready to die.”
    There was a stone beneath her shoulder blade, but she couldn’t shift, even if she’d wanted to. Her rib was throbbing again, and she tried to concentrate on that pain, on the grinding beneath her back. But all she could think about was the feel of his hips weighing hers down, his long legs that lay on top of hers, of the warmth of his skin where it touched hers and the strength in his arms. And the smothering, enveloping weight of him, pinning her there.
    She couldn’t help the words that slipped out. The whole situation was absurdly melodramatic. “Do you know what the definition of a gentleman is?” she grated in a tone barely audible. “It’s a man who takes his weight on his elbows.”
    He laughed then. It made no sound, but she could feel his stomach vibrate against hers, and for a brief moment his cold, merciless eyes lit up. “Sorry, lady.” He bent down so that his mouth hovered directly above hers. “But I’ve never been a gentleman.”
    His breath smelled just lightly of whiskey. It was a pleasant smell, faintly erotic, mixing with the heat of the night and the overwhelming scent of the flowers. Wild gardenias and roses and something else she didn’t quite recognize. Maddy lay beneath him, conscious of a thousand strange and maniacal longings. She wanted to bridge that gap, press her mouth against his, she wanted to wrap her long legs around his and pull