Chapter Three

I awaken, feeling someone undoing the knots at my wrists. I remember now where I am and the prospect of freedom makes my heart rejoice—even though I sense that any freedom is an elusive deal. My eyes open on Amie again, where she lies prone on her metal pallet. Awake now, she’s as scared as I am, staring at me as though I have answers to the questions battling in her brain.

Although I must have slept for hours, when I’m pulled off the pallet, I’m aching and tired.

“Take off your clothes.” A voice behind me barks the command in awkward English.

I turn, seeing two soldiers in rough, mud-colored military clothing. Their wide belts hold guns and clubs, which by themselves speak with awesome authority. Even so, I don’t act on the order until the most brutal looking of the two speaks again. “Your clothes, on the floor, or they’ll be ripped from you, Mademoiselle Monroe.”

He knows my name!

Are these men in heavy black beards and combat boots, with their puffed up chests and sadistic scowls, the ones who stole me from my compartment on the Orient Express? Or, was it too dark and I too confused to remember anything. There is a thick scar across the cheek of the taller one that looks familiar. He scowls at me, expecting me to obey his order. I know I have no choice.

Quaking nervously, I reach for the buttons of my silk pajamas. They could have easily removed these themselves in the hours since my capture, but considering the way they stare at me, I suspect they find my disrobing entertaining.

I drop the silk shirt to the floor, exposing my breasts for their fascinated eyes while my pale skin beads with sweat in the stuffy and confining car. My flesh trembles, and my nipples—as though this were turning me on—decide to knot into inviting purple knobs. The soldiers’ lurid grins make me wonder what they’ll do next.

The scarred one nods at my pajama bottoms; so I move on to push them over my hips and let them fall to the floor. Even in fear, my body rages. Instincts far beyond me seem to have taken over