"So are you," he said quietly, "really pretty." She was locked in, his hands on the arms of her chair and his body making the bars, against which, even had she wished it, escape were impossible.

She tried to take it with a little smile, the ordinary compliment in the ordinary way.

But the note in his voice refused to harmonize with that.

Her smile was forced, her expression unnatural.

And there she was caged, locked in by his eyes and, like a bird in the first moments of its captivity, her heart beat wildly against her breast.