‘I saw you with Madeleine!’ she flung at him accusingly.
‘What?’ It was his turn to frown in confusion. ‘When?’
‘Today.’ Why, she wondered jealously, have there been other occasions when you’ve met up with her? ‘On the steps of the Connaught.’ On a flash of shaking contempt she continued, ‘So don’t you dare stand there taking the moral high ground over Piers and me when you are no better yourself!’
Then instantly she wished she had held her stupid tongue when she saw his expression take on a sudden and radical change as all that dark, angry violence was replaced by a sharp, shrewd intelligence.
Angry with herself, she spun her back to him. ‘You were about to leave, I think,’ she prompted into the new stunning silence, in the vague hope that her dismissal would throw him off the scent.
No chance.
‘That’s it, isn’t it?’ he breathed, putting all that sharp intelligence he was so renowned for into words. ‘It’s what all of this is really all about—not you and Piers, but me and Madeleine!’
Madeleine! God—she physically shuddered at the damned, blasted name. ‘Will you just get out of here?’
‘Not until I get the truth out of you!’ He was suddenly standing right behind her again, making her nerves sting, making her heart ache, making the wretched tears burn at the back of her throat because she wanted so badly to just turn round and throw herself on him!
Throw herself and lose herself. Find blissful relief in the illusion again.
Rafe did it. It was Rafe who took hold of her, turned her, drew her into the tight confines of his arms and held her there while she tried desperately to struggle free.
‘Let go of me!’ she choked out wretchedly.
‘No,’ he grunted, tightening his grip. ‘I want the truth!’ he insisted. ‘Have you seen anything of Piers since you married me?’
She wanted to lie and shout yes because she knew it would hurt him. No matter what he still felt for Madeleine, she knew now that she still had the power to hurt him with Piers.
But she couldn’t lie, not any more; she’d had enough of all the lying! ‘I did tell you I hadn’t seen him!’ she snapped out in raking derision of the quick way he had jumped to all the wrong damned conclusions.
It was a derision entirely wasted because he just ignored it. ‘But you saw me with Madeleine today,’ he persisted. ‘And on that one sighting you decided to leave me without even bothering to demand an explanation! Is that it?’
‘I did warn you, Rafe, that I would not live with Madeleine’s ghost hanging over me.’
‘And you think I could live any easier with Piers’ ghost hanging over me?’
‘You have no reason to see his ghost!’ she flashed at him bitterly. ‘Since I haven’t so much as mentioned him—never mind been secretly meeting him!’
‘It was no secret meeting.’ He denied that one.
Shaan just shrugged within his grasp. ‘It doesn’t matter. You met her, I saw you, and now I can’t live with you any more. It really is as simple as that.’ She tried to get away from him.
‘The hell it is,’ he muttered. ‘It’s really as simple as—this…’
‘This’ being his mouth as it closed over her own again. ‘This’ being the well of helpless dark need that surged up over all the anger and hurt and self-contempt she was desperately trying to deal with, drowning it, smothering it, tossing her into that helpless vortex of desire she couldn’t seem to contain, no matter how badly he hurt her.
‘Do you kiss Madeleine that ruthlessly?’ she retorted as he drew away.
She had said it to cut, but all it did was bring a strangely mocking smile to his kiss-warmed lips, and made his darkened eyes burn a trail from her own angrily accusing eyes to her mouth, where her lower lip visibly pulsed now with the power of his two heated kisses.
‘Madeleine,’ he mocked, ‘wouldn’t know real passion if it jumped out and bit her. Like this,’ he added softly, and took that pulsing lower lip into his mouth and sucked so sensually on it that she groaned in hateful pleasure. ‘Whereas you, my darling, just can’t live without it.’
And he set out to make her face the humiliating truth in that remark by holding his mouth a mere fraction away from hers then simply waiting—waiting until she couldn’t stand it any longer and had to be the one who hungrily closed the gap.
He had her then, and he knew it. The way her arms snaked up and round his neck confirmed it; the way her fingers scraped into his silky dark hair so she could keep that mouth clamped fiercely to her own confirmed it. And the way her slender body began to pulsate sensually against the hard length of his most definitely confirmed it.
And the way he had to use brute strength to break the kiss and bodily put her away from him gave the ultimate confirmation.
‘I hate and despise you,’ she whispered in pained mortification as she literally shook from head to toe in sensual deprivation.