He met her gaping, shock slackened look with a flicker of amusement, inclining his head slightly. “The Prince sent me to fetch you.”

Chaos instantly erupted in Noelle’s mind, questions colliding with questions for a chance to escape her. She didn’t ask any of them, however. Caution, she told herself. Male dominated society! They were savages and aggressive. Anything that seemed impertinent might spawn violence.

She lifted the chain and showed it to him. “I hope you brought the key because I’m damned well going to fight you if you think I’m leaving what’s attached to this!” she muttered in English.

An unreadable look flickered in his eyes at her tone, despite the fact that she’d done her best to keep it carefully neutral, but he slipped his hand into the pocket of his trousers as he advanced toward her. When he withdrew it, she saw he held something that looked as if it might fit in the hole on the side of the manacle. He gave the piece of metal a twist once he’d inserted it into the hole, the locking mechanism clicked, and the metal anklet opened.

A mechanical key, Noelle mentally noted, curious to study the object. Naturally enough she didn’t get the chance. He shoved it back into his pocket as soon as he’d released her and stepped back, gesturing for her to proceed him.

Noelle was reluctant—for dozens of reasons—mostly because she had no idea where the man might be planning to take her or what was supposed to happen when she arrived.

“The Prince awaits in the great hall. He is not a patient man.”

The comment was enough to galvanize Noelle, and yet she was still reluctant to leave the warmth of the fur coverlet. She climbed off the bed still clutching it and struggled to wrap the heavy thing around her.

Briefly, they had a tug of war. The man was determined to pry it from her grip, however, and although he wasn’t nearly as big a man as the Prince and he seemed a good bit older, she was no match for him. He took the fur away from her and tossed it onto the bed.

She gaped at him for a moment, struggling with resentment, and finally merely curled her arms tightly to her chest and clenched her teeth to keep them from chattering.

He moved to the door, opened it, and once again gestured for her to proceed him.

More than a little bewildered and frightened, Noelle stepped outside and looked around. The man followed her, turned her in the direction she’d come the night before and gave her a slight push.

The smells of the great hall vied with the sounds as she approached the broad stone stairway she’d climbed the night before.

She hesitated when she reached the top of the stairs. Gazing out over the huge ‘great room’ below, she felt her belly take a freefall at the height and then clench at the sheer mass of muscle bound (savage) male bodies in the room below.

She didn’t think she would’ve been more unnerved if she’d been standing at the door of a cage full of man eating animals.

Her escort manacled one hand around her upper arm and urged her to take the stairs. Halfway down, she realized the volume of noise had lowered considerably. She thought at first it was imagination, but when she glanced over the stone balustrade, she discovered that a goodly portion of the occupants of the room had stopped what they were doing to stare at her.

Or maybe the man escorting her, she wondered a little hopefully?

Wasn’t that more likely than her paranoia that their attention was on her?

After all, they’d captured quite a few women—and she saw those women were in the hall with the men.

But of course, she wasn’t like the others.

Because she wasn’t one of them.

She didn’t think it was a good idea to look them in the eye defiantly—even if she hadn’t been too intimidated to feel defiant. She was afraid it might be construed as a challenge, much like looking a wild beast in the eyes!

But she also didn’t think it would be in her best interests to allow them to see just how frightened she was and how unnerved by the sheer size of this race of giants let alone the number of them gathered. So although she didn’t look them directly in the eyes, she also didn’t cower as she was escorted across the great room.

She was so focused on trying to hide her fear that they’d made some progress across the room before she began to notice that most of the men bore signs of violence—cuts and bruises—few of which were bandaged. And a few were missing teeth.

Of course, she supposed that might not be a recent circumstance, but the cuts and bruises certainly were and they looked too fresh to be from the battle with the Amazon women.

Clearly, there’d been a drunken brawl in the hall the night before because it wasn’t just the men that looked the worse for wear. There was debris littering the floor from broken pottery and scattered food and there were broken benches and tables, as well.

The men seemed to be in surprisingly good spirits for all that—it was the grins, after all, that displayed the missing teeth.

She would never have thought she would be relieved to see the Prince, but she was and it took an effort to refrain from racing to him the moment she spotted him sprawled in a giant chair near a mammoth fireplace.

The man escorting her released his grip on her as they reached the Prince. Without hesitation, she moved toward the Prince when he lifted his hand and gestured for her to come to him. Actually, she started toward him before he’d gestured, but then she stopped when she reached the chair and looked around uncomfortably, wondering what she was expected to do. Neel? Bow? Before she could jar any possible answers from her confused brain, the Prince reached for her, tugged her closer, and then dragged her onto his lap.

Surprise didn’t begin to describe her feelings when he did that. Before she could react at all, however, he pulled her close to his chest and dragged the heavy fur coat he was wearing around her. She’d stiffened with shock, but the moment she felt the warm of his body, she moved closer, so grateful for the warmth she forgot all about the discomfort of sitting on a strange man’s lap in front of a room full of savages—aliens.

It wasn’t that she felt no discomfort or embarrassment or uneasiness. It was simply that the desperation for warmth far outweighed every other consideration.

And she was still stiff with discomfort.

Despite all resolve to the contrary, when he hooked a finger beneath her chin and tipped her head back inexorably, she resisted, refusing to lift her gaze to meet his even when he prevented her from twisting her head aside.

He caught her off guard again.

She jerked all over in reflex when she felt the warm brush of his lips as they coasted along her cheek. A harder jolt went through her when he captured her mouth beneath his. He took instant advantage of her surprise slackened lips and deepened the kiss, thrusting his tongue into her mouth to explore the warm, wet cavern.

She hadn’t been forewarned or had any expectation that he would immediately instigate intimacy beyond the very public display of holding her on his lap. She had no time to brace herself to accept or fight, or to analyze her situation for the best defensive reaction. And because she didn’t, she couldn’t, later, tell herself that it simply didn’t happen the way she thought.

She wasn’t just as bowled over by his kiss as she had been the first time. She was more affected.

The uneasy thumping of her heart increased exponentially the moment his scent and taste inundated her senses and set her synapses to firing like a Fourth of July fireworks crescendo. The sense of falling, floating, and spinning dizzily moved over and through her, sapping the starch from her bones so that she couldn’t tell from one moment to the next whether she felt weightless or too heavy to support herself.