He took her hands and hauled her unceremoniously out of the bank of snow, the familiar sensation as her slender fingers curled around his slamming into his body. To smother it he said, with what he hoped would come over as bland indifference, ‘I never knew you were so ticklish. You live and learn.’
‘Well, we never did play games, did we?’ Still slightly breathless, her voice emerged huskily and she gave him an unknowingly provocative glance from beneath tangled lashes.
‘As I recall, we did.’ His face went hard. ‘The games we played in bed were mind-blowing.’ He turned from her, covering the last few yards to the cottage quickly.
Bella scurried after him. ‘I didn’t mean that!’
Why dredge up all that had been so wonderful, so right between them, and throw it in her face? To her intense aggravation she felt herself blushing as he turned those narrowed black eyes on her.
She looked so flustered, so innocent. With a harsh inner voice he reminded himself that she wasn’t. ‘No? You could have won an Olympic gold, the games you played. You must have had an excellent coach. Just Maclaine? Or were there others?’
For a moment his words didn’t sink in. And when they did she didn’t believe it—and then she did. Oh, she believed it, all right. He would hold her relationship with Guy against her for the rest of his life, not understanding it, twisting it, making it ugly and unrecognisable with his total lack of trust—the way he could think the very worst of her. No room for doubts, questions. No fair hearing. Simply a blind and devastatingly insulting acceptance of her non-existent infidelity!
She stared at him, her face drained of colour, her eyes wide and dark with pain. ‘Guy has never been my lover.’ Her eyes dropped from his, her soft mouth trembling. The purity of her profile tugged at his heart, making it ache. ‘Though there seems little point in telling you. You won’t believe me.’
Too right, he wouldn’t.
Before he’d met her, her relationship with Maclaine had been common knowledge. The two of them—with the bastard’s wife of the moment making an uneasy third—had been the subject of endless behind-the-hand gossip, according to Alex Griffith, the long-time friend who had persuaded him to go to that fateful party. He had no reason to doubt his friend’s word. He would have had no reason whatsoever for inventing such a story.
Neither of them had ever discussed her long-running affair. She, naturally enough, had never brought the subject up, and he had done his best to forget it. She’d been his—his alone—and he hadn’t been able to bear to think of her sharing such intimacies with another man. It had made him sick with jealousy. So he’d pushed it to the back of his mind, the present and the future all that mattered.
But the present and the future had been irreversibly soured when he’d walked in and found them in each others arms. Though the rot had set in long before that, when he’d discovered she’d been seeing the other man and had gone back to work for his agency.
He took his bunched hands from his pockets and pushed on the door, and she said, her voice shaky but challenging, ‘There was only one man before you. And that was a short-lived disaster.’
He turned to look at her. It was a mistake. The huge eyes were pleading, begging for his trust, and she was trying to blink back tears, biting down on her lip to still the trembling. The desire to stop the trembling with his own mouth was strong enough to make him shake.
He pulled in a ragged breath, forcibly reminding himself of her acting abilities, of the manipulative, devious side of her nature which had hatched the complex plan to get him here.
‘And why was that? Wasn’t he wealthy enough?’
The deliberate insult was sheer, instinctive self-defence. The moment the words were said he regretted them deeply. His own wealth had never interested her during their marriage, and afterwards she’d returned every one of the generous monthly allowance cheques he’d had his solicitor send on his behalf.
To his eternal shame, he saw her slim shoulders shake with sobs, her pale hands covering her face. He abandoned his hard-won caution and pulled her into his arms. What he felt for this woman was far stronger than wisdom.
He loved her, moral warts and all. He had tried, God knew he’d tried, but he couldn’t stop loving her.
‘Don’t cry. Please don’t cry!’ His voice was raw with emotion. He couldn’t bear her to be hurt. He’d accused her of being something she never could be—a gold-digger, someone with her eye on the main chance. He knew that whatever else she was, she wasn’t that. She had always been extraordinarily naive about financial matters. ‘What I said was unforgivable,’ he declared against her hair, gathering her closer.
Bella lifted her head from his shoulder to search his face, and the emotion coming from him bound them together in something sweeter than mere forgiveness. The anguish in his eyes was unmistakable. He rarely showed his emotions—she knew that—but when he did they were the genuine article.
The way he’d lashed out at her had torn her apart, but his remorse was cementing the pieces back together. She opened her mouth to accept his apology and heard him groan, his head dipping as his lips stopped the words in her throat.
His kiss was raw passion. Bella returned it—because this was what she’d been born for. To be his love, and only his. She had always loved him, always would. Like it or not, this man was her destiny.
The wild race of blood through her veins matched the burning fever of his as, bodies clinging, lips plundering and willingly plundered, they moved, dreamlike, into the tiny hall and Jake closed the door behind them with his foot.
‘Bella—’ he murmured, but she made a guttural sound of protest and pulled his head down to hers again. She moved her mouth slowly, erotically, over his, tasting, stroking, melting under the onslaught of his wild response, her sweet seduction bringing his answering driven passion.
She curled her arms more tightly around his shoulders, wanting to stay where she belonged. In his arms. Under his skin.
In his life?
CHAPTER NINE
IT WAS the sweet breath of sanity at last, drawing them back to where they belonged. Together. As they were meant to be, as they’d been born to be—no longer apart, lost souls in an empty, cold, black void. Together.
Her bedroom. Bella didn’t exactly know how they’d got there. It wasn’t important. Only the hot hunger of Jake’s mouth as he branded every inch of her body with his raw possession mattered.