Why? Shaan stared at him blankly, the question totally throwing her, because she didn’t really know why any of this was relevant. Only that it was—very relevant.
Then the answer hit her, and a sudden cold shiver shook her, sending her arms inside the sheet wrapped round her slender frame in protection.
‘Madeleine,’ she whispered thinly. It all revolved around Madeleine. Piers loved Madeleine. Rate loved Madeleine. Neither loved Shaan, but both were prepared to use her for their own purposes!
‘Jealous of her, Shaan?’ Rafe taunted silkily.
‘Yes!’ she cried, tears washing across her eyes at the blunt, cruel way he’d made her face that. ‘Don’t you think that it’s humiliating enough to know she took the man I loved away from me, without knowing she was there haunting every moment we shared together last night?’
‘And Piers wasn’t haunting every moment along with her?’ he threw right back in shrewd comparison, and watched stark realisation wipe what was left of the colour from her face, leaving her totally exposed and painfully vulnerable.
For some reason her reaction infuriated him. He strode forward, his hands cruel as they fixed on her shoulders. ‘Well, let’s get one thing straight,’ he gritted. ‘No other man haunts my bed, Shaan. And if you’ve a modicum of pride inside you you won’t allow another woman to haunt yours!’
‘Never again!’ she agreed. ‘No!’
His eyes narrowed. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ he demanded
‘Get your hands off me, Rafe.’ She tried to push him away.
But he wasn’t letting go. ‘Explain what you meant,’ he insisted grimly.
Her chin came up, brown eyes flashing with a blaze of that pride he had just challenged. ‘Since it won’t be happening again,’ she informed him stiffly, ‘neither of us has to worry about any resident ghosts—which also renders this discussion redundant!’ Once again she tried to shrug him free, and once again his grip tightened.
‘Because you overheard something you didn’t like?’ he prompted derisively.
Her eyes flashed again. ‘Because it shouldn’t have happened in the first place!’ she snapped, still struggling.
‘But it did happen,’ he pointed out. ‘We made love, Shaan—’
‘We had sex!’ she scathingly corrected his interpretation.
‘Sex, then,’ he conceded. ‘But incredible sex! Mind blowing, out-of-our-heads sex!’
‘Which you would know, wouldn’t you?’ she threw at him bitterly.
‘Yes,’ he sighed. ‘I would know.’ Then his eyes darkened to a look that was almost primitively possessive. ‘But you wouldn’t know,’ he added succinctly, and watched the colour rush into her cheeks as his meaning sank in. ‘So I am telling you this so you won’t be labouring under any misguided notion that what we shared last night could be had with anyone, because it couldn’t!’ he stated gruffly. ‘It was special—too damned special for you to mock it!’
She wasn’t mocking it; she was doubting it
‘But that is not the point at issue here,’ he went on grimly. ‘The point at issue is whether, when you took me inside you with all that—’ He stopped, something crazily like agony raking across his hard, handsome face. ‘With all that wretched, begging passion,’ he finished rawly ‘were you pretending to yourself that I was my damned brother?’
‘No!’ She hotly denied that, managing at last to pull herself free of him and almost tripping over the trailing sheet as she did so.
The action tautened one corner, tugging it loose from her fingers so it dropped down to expose one creamy shoulder and the globe of her breast, where the nipple still protruded, tight and sore after last night’s ravishment.
‘Oh!’ she choked in wretched dismay, embarrassed heat pouring into her cheeks as her fingers grappled with what was left of the sheet in an effort to cover herself.
But Rafe’s hand was there first—not helping, but claiming possession of that exposed mound with long fingers that stroked arrogantly, then cupped, so his thumb-pad could run a knowing caress over that cruelly sensitive nipple.
And suddenly the angry mood flipped over into something much more dangerous as she stood there staring down at those tanned fingers against her creamy flesh and felt the hot sting of desire drown out any ability to protest.
He stepped closer. Her eyes flicked up to plead with him, then stuck when she saw that same dark, rousing heat burning in his eyes.
‘Please don’t,’ she wrenched out shakily.
But he shook his dark head. ‘Your body wants me, Shaan,’ he stated huskily. ‘Even if your mind wants to reject that fact.’
Her body wanted him. Tears slashed across her eyes. Her body wanted him so that made it all OK, did it?