Marriage on the Rebound

‘Strange emotion, hate,’ he drawled, mocking her with the hard triumph glinting in his eyes. ‘It has a nasty little habit of overwhelming everything, even love, in the end. Now, get your coat,’ he added, arrogantly turning his back on her. ‘We’re going home.’

‘No!’ Shaan protested on an upsurge of a completely new set of emotions as real horror at what he was suggesting ran like acid through her heated blood. ‘I’m not coming back to you, Rafe!’

She would not live under Madeleine’s shadow any more!

‘You’re coming,’ he insisted.

‘But why?’ she cried. ‘When you know you don’t really want me there?’

‘You don’t know what I want,’ he derided with a contempt that actually managed to reach something wretched inside her—because he was right. She didn’t know—except that he still wanted her body, of course. For all his taunting love-play a moment ago, Rafe had not been able to hide his own desire as it sprang up to meet with hers. ‘But it’s time—damned well past time—you found out what it is I do want,’ he added grimly. ‘So you’ve got ten minutes to close this house up. Then we go home—if I have to tie you up and gag you to get you there,’ he added threateningly.

And she believed he would do it, too. There was something about the hard resolve written in his tight expression that warned her he would.

‘Ten minutes,’ he repeated when she continued to stand there, trying to work out what he had in store for her when he did eventually get her home—besides the sex, of course, she acknowledged. That part was so stingingly obvious to both of them that it wasn’t even worth denying it.

And maybe that was all he did want, she suggested to herself as she reluctantly left the room to go and do as he had ordered. Maybe it was all he ever wanted with any woman. And that included Madeleine, she decided on a small sting of pure female triumph over the other woman. Because, whatever hold Madeleine had over Rafe’s heart, she didn’t move him sexually; that much was clear from the way he had mocked her lack of passion just now.

‘I’m ready,’ she said stiffly, coming to stand at the living room doorway in time to catch him pocketing his mobile phone.

The action made her frown, made her wonder just who he had been talking to. But it was clear from his closed expression that he was not going to enlighten her as he sent a swift glance around the room, which, Shaan realised, had already been made safe for their departure.

Then he was walking towards her, one hand going proprietorially about her waist while the other went to switch off the overhead light.

Her spine arched as he touched it, sending that now familiar prickle of awareness chasing through her.

‘Next time we come here,’ he murmured meaningfully, ‘it will be to welcome your aunt and uncle home.’

Shaan said nothing. What could she say? That hand resting on her tingling spine knew it all anyway.

She belonged to him. His sex slave, she mocked herself grimly. If he changed his mind and decided to take her here and now in this tiny hallway she would let him, and they both knew it.

But, ‘I still hate you,’ she whispered as he closed the front door on them.

‘I know,’ he smiled. ‘Hell, isn’t it? Hating someone you can’t get enough of?’

Was that empathy she heard there? she wondered dully. Did Rafe feel exactly the same way about her?

The car journey to his home was completed in a grim kind of silence neither of them attempted to break. She wasn’t sure why, but he was very tense, getting more tense the closer they got to his Kensington home. And that in turn made her tense, as if she were having to armour herself against some unseen horror she was about to be forced into facing.

>

As instincts went, she had to acknowledge that hers were working extremely well today, she noted as they pulled up beside another car parked in the driveway.

She didn’t recognise it, but that didn’t stop her filling up inside with a dark sense of ill omen.

‘Someone else is here,’ she pointed out absolutely unnecessarily. ‘Who is it, do you think?’

Rafe didn’t bother to answer, his lean face tightly closed as he climbed out of the car and came around to help her alight. Maintaining a grip on her arm, he unlocked the front door and guided her inside, then down his beautiful hallway to the sitting room door where he seemed to pause for a moment as if to gather himself.

Then he was pushing the door open and grimly inviting her to precede him inside.

And it was then, and only then, as her eyes locked on the man who stood waiting inside the room, that she realised what that pause had been about.

Piers.

Piers—looking stiff and uncomfortable, the expression in his classically handsome face very guarded to say the least as he flicked his wary blue gaze up to his brother then back to Shaan again.

He didn’t speak. No one did. And behind her she could feel Rafe’s tension pulsing all over her as he stood there in the sudden clamouring silence, watching both of them.