Passionate Retribution

'I'm not sixteen any more, Luke.' She didn't have to turn to be aware in every fibre of her being of the tall, silent figure who had followed her down to the lochside.

'I'd noticed the difference, Emily. I think maybe you've still got a four-year-old unresolved fantasy. Could be therapeutic if we worked it through.'

She took a deep, steadying breath and twisted around to look him full in the eyes. 'You seem a little slow on the uptake, Luke,' she sneered, her heart thudding. 'I'm not interested.'

His eyes were amazingly cold, a blue chill that went bone-deep. 'We both know that's not true,' he said clearly, each word enunciated with terrible clarity.

Combating a rising swell of frantic panic, she swung away, only to be caught by iron fingers and spun back. One hand caught and cupped her chin, wrenching her head upwards. It was true and he could say it with no trace of tenderness. She swallowed. God help me, do I want tenderness…from him? The knowledge appalled her.

'Don't turn your back on me,' he responded savagely. 'I realise a gentleman,' he drawled the word mockingly, 'doesn't mention such obvious facts, but your indifference has taken the form of a combination of petty aggression and smouldering glances interspersed with the sort of tension that only comes when two people are a long way off indifferent to one another.'

Her pupils expanded until the colour of her eyes was almost totally obliterated. 'What are you implying?' she responded shakily. Why had he had to say it, bring it out into the open? Ignore it and it'll go away was out of the question now.

'I'm not implying anything,' he said tersely, his tone scornful. 'I'm observing that denying something makes it no less real. The way I see it, just because our being together can be served up as the ultimate punishment for Charlie, it doesn't alter the fact that it's what we both want.'

'I'm in love with Gavin,' she protested, her voice shrill and discordant in her ears. It was a lie. She had faced the fact that she had never loved Gavin. Gavin had offered a security without the involvement of strong emotional bonds, and that had appealed to her. She had instinctively wanted to avoid any situations fraught with the sort of unpredictable, exhausting, exhilarating elements…exhilarating! 'What you're suggesting makes a mockery of everything marriage is based on. It's a purely temporary measure—two birds with one stone. Once you've inflicted humiliation on my family and lost interest in sleeping with me, a nice clean divorce,' she said with disgust.

'Sleeping with you, Emily? I'm not interested in sleeping, though I've had precious little of that commodity recently.' She was aware of the deepened shadows beneath his eyes as she listened to his dry voice. 'What's been going on with us has been something more…' the low, vibrant throb of his voice was so hypnotic that a debilitating lassitude took a direct route to her limbs '…primitive.' She knew he must have felt the violent tremor that swept through her like a gust of wind.

The small derisive laugh was whisked away by a sudden flurry that swept in off the loch. 'I think you've become too involved with your fiction to see the rather more mundane realities of life clearly,' she continued, her voice containing a betraying quiver as her eyes watched him bend down and select a flat, dull pebble which he casually sent skipping over the water. His air of relaxation was an added injury to her floundering confusion. She was aware of the smooth ripple of muscles in his shoulder tautening against the fabric of his shirt, and the concentration that made his profile still as he delivered the throw.

'The way I see it, you've succeeded in a typically disreputable way to turn my misfortune to your advantage.' Her teeth connected with her lower lip as he dusted his hands on his jeans and turned directly to face her derision with the quirk of one dark brow. 'And don't start all that stuff about mutual advantage and the kindness of your heart,' she swiftly added. 'You planned this whole nightmare.'

'I didn't bind you and gag you to get you here,' he pointed out, pivoting on his heel until he faced her. 'You went along with it because deep down it's where you want to be…here with me.'

His arrogance was breathtaking. 'While the balance of my mind was disturbed, I think is the common phrase. I was kidnapped. In retrospect, I can see that hitching on the motorway would have been preferable.'

One corner of his mouth curled contemptuously and his eyebrows rose in patent disbelief.

'What's wrong, Emmy, have you decided against delivering a taste of his own medicine?'

Her brow furrowed in genuine confusion.

'Wasn't that part of what you had in mind, infant? Give the bastard a taste of his own medicine, see how he likes the idea of you in another man's bed? I rather thought you were experimenting with that idea.'

The concept he was casually outlining made her colour fluctuate wildly as she grasped his crude point with escalating fury. 'You think I had it in mind to sleep with you just to prove to Gavin I can be equally imprudent and promiscuous?' Her voice rose to an incredulous squeak. She was aware that his opinion of her was low…but this!