Ravished

By Parris Afton Bonds

Nelli Walzchak was a no-nonsense nurse at Kansas General Hospital, but her personal life was virtually nonexistent . . . until an enforced Mexican vacation altered her life's course - and she found herself kidnapped by a dashing buccaneer and learned that ravished could mean not just to take away by violence but also to fill with pleasure.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Parris Afton Bonds
• Release date: Jul 3, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311281371

Parris Afton Bonds

I am dancing on sunshine that you are visiting my little part of Parris's paradise. I write for the reckless of heart. Not surprisingly, I identify with my novels' characters, both the protagonists AND antagonists. I suffer with their angsts and bewilderments and rejoice in their joys and triumphs. And I believe that if we heroically hold fast to our own vision for ourselves in our journey's confrontations and challenges, then Life WILL manifest our dreams and goals and visions, as it does for my characters in my novels. ~~~~~~~~ Declared by ABC's Nightline as one of the three-best-selling authors of romantic fiction, the award winning Parris Afton Bonds has been featured in major newspapers and magazines as well as published in more than a dozen languages. The mother of five sons and the author of over forty published novels, she donates her time to teaching creative writing to both grade school children and female inmates. She is co-founder and first vice president of Romance Writers of America, as well as, cofounder of Southwest Writers Workshop. The Parris Award was established in her name by the Southwest Writers Workshop to honor a published writer who has given outstandingly of time and talent to other writers. Prestigious recipients of the Parris Award include Tony Hillerman and the Pulitzer nominee Norman Zollinger.

Book preview

RAVISHED

A Novella

by

PARRIS *AFTON* BONDS

Published by Paradise Publishing

Copyright 2013 by Parris Afton, Inc.

All Rights Reserved

Cover artwork by Tell-tale Cover Designs

This is a work of fiction and a product of the author’s imagination. No part of this novel may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. This e-book may not be resold or given away. Any resemblance to characters living or dead is purely coincidental.

BONUS

At the end of RAVISHED is the first chapter of my novel THE MAIDENHEAD.

Chapter One

Dear Mary: I’m having a wonderful time here in Bahia Escondida. Your time-share bungalow is fabulous. You won’t believe it—I had poolside margaritas with a French actor!

Love, Nelli.

Dear Lana: I’m having a marvelous time here in Bahia Escondida. Posada Tangola, its newly developed resort, is dreamy. You won’t believe it—a Texas congressman took me dancing!

Love, Nelli.

Dear Carol: I’m having an enchanting time here on Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula. Bahia Escondida is soooo romantic. You’ll never believe it—I had brunch with a Broadway producer!

Love, Nelli

In the same way that your life flashes before your eyes in the single instant before disaster, all the foolishly fabricated postcards Nelli Walzchak had written to the other nurses back at Kansas General returned to haunt her. They’d never believe the truth now. She wasn’t certain she did. Surely she was still dreaming.

But, no. The moon-drenched apparition that leaned over her bed suddenly clamped a hardened hand over her mouth. Ravishing dreams didn’t feel like this.

Real panic, the kind that strains your heart muscles and sends the EKG needle off the graph paper, stole her breath—that and the large hand of the man who was hunkered over her.

Scream, he muttered, and I’ll do a tracheotomy on you. Cold metal pressed against her throat. Understand?

She mumbled an unintelligible oath beneath his hand. Dead as dirt now were her years-long dream and mountain of hours of work toward the appointment as Kansas General’s hospital administrator. She had had no life out the hospital before – and certainly wouldn’t now.

I want your word, he said, easing the pressure against her skin.

Her head bobbed. She would promise anything—to vote Republican, to contribute to the next PBS fundraiser, to alphabetize her spice rack—if only he wouldn’t hurt her.

She could feel the heat of his damp palm and smell his edgy desperation. In her nostrils, it mingled with her own fear. Over the edge of his callused palm she stared wide-eyed up at him. Slitted dark eyes brooded. She knew he was making up his mind about her. Then, ever so slowly, he removed his hand.

It was her one chance—and she knew enough to seize it. She whipped away, rolled aside and scrambled on her knees across the bed. A king-size bed whose terrain was too wide to allow her to evade the hand that snatched at her calf. She jerked hard, but he held fast. In his grip, her pajama bottoms began slipping over her hips.

Please, she gasped. Let me go. Her slip-sliding knees were taking her nowhere. I won’t tell anyone! I swear! Only don’t ra—

With a mere twist of his wrist, he flipped her over onto her back and fell across her. The breath whooshed out of her lungs as, with one hand, he locked her wrists above her head. Don’t what? he muttered against her cheekbone. Don’t ravish you?

Her eyes snapped open. Are you crazy? Sheer rage bubbled up inside her. What woman in her right mind wants to be terrified in the middle of the night by a strange man wielding a knife?

His lips moved down the slope of her cheek to hover near her mouth. But that’s not what came to mind first, is it? Not terror. His voice. It was as smooth as brandy-laced eggnog. Bizarrely reassuring, considering the circumstances. Strange, he mused, how ravished can mean both to fill someone with pleasure and take away by violence.

You’re crazy. I’m crazy! Lying here talking about being ravished with a man who’s holding a knife to my throat.

Have you ever been? Ravished that is? His mouth was practically brushing hers. Tingling sensations rippled through her, and heat suddenly pooled in her stomach.

No, but I don’t need to be electrocuted to realize that I don’t want that particular experience, either. He had to weigh a ton. His massive chest—quite bare, she realized—was flattening her breasts.

His fingers snarled in her unbound tresses, his teeth glinting in a slightly skeptical but amused grin. Any woman who wears her hair drawn back in a spinster’s bun has to be repressed.

She gasped. How do you know how I wear my hair?

He raised himself on one elbow, but took the precaution of restraining her with a heavy-muscled thigh angled across her body. In a one-burro pueblo like Bahia Escondida, everybody knows everything.

That was true. Bahia Escondida had once been a nearly inaccessible fishing village of dusty streets and a handful of small, inexpensive hotels. She had been appalled by the raw sewage that still trickled down those streets. Since mainly Europeans and a few adventurous North Americans, drawn to Bahia Escondida’s surf and solitude, frequented the hideaway, naturally everyone knew everyone else’s business. But recently the off-the-beaten-path coastline had been enhanced by an exclusive time-sharing condominium that was the forerunner of a planned resort community of hotels, villas and houses.

After all, the stranger continued, you’re among the first of the tourists to arrive at the new resort. Men, especially Latin men, are bound to talk about a luscious blonde.

I don’t believe you. Never in all her thirty-two years had she been referred to as luscious. Maybe over-ripe.

Why should I lie? The moonlight gilded his mouth, which was curved like a scythe. The fact that you wear glasses certainly doesn’t detract from their appreciation of you as a woman. His free hand settled to her rib cage, just below her breast. Nor the fact that you’re a career woman. A nurse.

Her mouth fell open. How did you know that?

Why, the taxi driver who brought you here from the airport last week spread the word that you wore them.

Not the glasses. That I’m a nurse?

He shifted, and his hand brushed the underside of her breast. So lightly that she wasn’t sure she wasn’t imagining it. Or dreaming it. Maybe this whole, absurd conversation was just a nightmare. Your flight bag. Father Hidalgo, the parish priest, mentioned that it has the logo of the American Nursing Association. And your nursing license. It was next to the credit card you presented to the clerk at the registration desk.

Nosey little pueblo, she murmured, but her irritation was distracted by the grazing motion of his lips gliding gently along the line of her jaw. What are you doing? She could hardly breathe. Her voice sounded like the ocean breeze soughing through the palms.

I don’t know, he muttered. Must be the tropical heat. I came here because of something urgent. Not to hurt you, believe me. You were right. I am crazy.

Well, that’s reassuring.

That I came here on urgent business – or that I am crazy?

That you don’t plan to hurt me.

Ahh, but have you never heard that one can only know pleasure through the contrast of pain? he said, almost offhandedly.

Then, he took her by surprise again, lowering his head to brush a kiss across her mouth. Softly, back and forth, his lips grazed hers. At that moment, she knew she had never really been kissed. Not like this. Despite the reluctance that underscored his kiss, she