Bridal Bargains

‘No,’ she said, grimly pulling herself together, the coolly indifferent Mia sliding back into place. ‘It’s more comfortable for me to wear it like this. It annoys me when it’s loose.’

‘Then suffer,’ he said unsympathetically. ‘I hate liars. And that prim hairstyle makes such a damned liar of you. At least when your hair is down …’ he took a tense gulp at the drink in his glass ‘… people are forewarned about what you really are.’

‘And what am I?’ she asked, the green eyes glinting with challenge—while every fine muscle in her body was held tensely, waiting for him to say the word her father had been throwing at her for so many years now that she couldn’t remember when he had not seen her as a whore.

This man would be no different. This man and her father had so much in common it would shock and appal Alexander Doumas to know just how much.

Or maybe he did know, she corrected herself when he didn’t say it but took another deep slug from his glass instead.

‘Do it,’ he commanded as he lowered the glass again. ‘Or I will make you do it.’

‘Dinner,’ a carefully neutral voice announced behind Mia.

She turned abruptly and caught Elena’s frosty expression. She knew the other woman had overheard most of their telling little conversation, and looked right through the housekeeper as she strode proudly past her.

But the hand landing on her shoulder brought her to a sudden standstill. How Alex had managed to move across the room so quickly Mia didn’t know, but it was certainly his hand, burning its already familiar brand as he detained her.

‘Leave us.’ He grimly dismissed the housekeeper.

She turned and left as he propelled Mia back into the room then closed the door. A half-moment later and the tortoiseshell clasp that was holding up her hair was springing free, and the silken coil of hair was unfurling over his fingers in a heavy fall of fire that rippled its way to the base of her spine.

The tortoiseshell clasp was discarded and she heard it land with a clunk on a nearby table. Then he turned her round to face him.

‘Don’t fight me,’ he warned her very grimly, ‘because you won’t like the consequences.’

To prove his point, the hand still lost in her hair tightened, tugging her head backwards until she had no choice but to look at him. His eyes were still hooded, but she could see the anger simmering beneath those heavy eyelids as he began to rearrange her hair to his own satisfaction.

It hurt her inside. For some reason Mia could not work out at all the way he was asserting his control over her like this hurt—when it shouldn’t. It was only what she had expected from him from the very beginning after all.

‘You don’t like who you are, do you?’ he murmured suddenly.

‘No,’ she replied. It was blunt and it was honest.

‘It is why you hide your true nature behind prim clothes and stark hairstyles. You are ashamed of what you are.’

‘Yes,’ she confirmed, again with the same cool bluntness.

‘But you could not keep the passion hidden in that bed upstairs, could you? It broke free and virtually consumed you.’

‘You weren’t so controlled yourself,’ she hit back.

‘I didn’t quite reach the point where I completely stopped breathing,’ he countered grimly.

Her cheeks went pale, her lowered eyes squeezing together on a fresh bout of self-revulsion.

‘Was it like that with the rock star?’ he questioned. ‘Did you fall apart as spectacularly for him as you did for me?’

She didn’t answer that one—refused to answer. Whatever had gone on in her life before this man was none of his business, and she was damned if she was going to feed his ego by telling him she had never lost control of herself like that before—ever.

His hand came to her chin, closed around it then tightened, demanding an answer, but her eyes showed him nothing except cold,

green defiance. Her mouth, so red and full and still clearly swollen from his kisses, remaining resolutely shut.

‘Well, I tell you this much, yineka mou,’ he murmured very softly. ‘You have set your own boundaries with what took place up there. You will not move from this estate without my say-so. You will not be left alone—either in this house of out of it—with another man. You are now, in effect, my personal prisoner.’

‘Points you had written into my contract,’ she reminded him. ‘Did you see me arguing with you about them then?’

‘Ah, but I have a … worrying suspicion that you were not so aware of your own passions when you agreed to that contract. Now you do know, and I am going to take no chances with you falling apart like that for any other man—understand me?’