She sucked in a sharp breath when he finally achieved success, gasping when he drove his desire home to the hilt.
'This is what you want, isn't it, Celeste?' he said through gritted teeth, surging into her again and again. 'But it's not love. It's pure unadulterated lust. Say it like it is for once, Celeste. Tell the truth and shame the devil. You want this, and only this ... '
Her body convulsing uncontrollably around his made him cry out with raw satisfaction. His back arched away, his hands pressing her wrists down in the pillows as his own arms straightened. And then he was pulling her up from the bed, keeping their spamming bodies fused together as he sat back on his heels. With a tortured groan, he released her wrists to wrap his arms
around her, clasping her close and rocking her to and fro, his head dropping to bury his face in her hair.
Reaching up her back, he grasped a clump of hair, pulling her head back so that he could feed on her throat like some ravenous animal.
Celeste was beside herself with the awful ambivalence of the sharpest emotional pain yet the fiercest of sexual satisfactions. To have the man you loved find such pleasure in your body, despite his despising you, had a kind of perverted triumph to it. Celeste chose to lock on to this bittersweet victory, rather than any crippling despair, for she'd long learnt that there was no future in harboring hurt over Byron's opinion of her, just as there was no point in arguing with him over Irene's lies.
Byron would never believe her version of events, just as he would never believe the truth about the way she'd lived her life since. She'd been hoist by her own petard and she would just have to live with it.
At least there was some consolation in a new understanding of the events on that day in the billiard-room at Belleview, two years after he married Irene. Byron hadn't been quite the callous bastard she'd always believed him to be, merely a man torn apart by unwanted feelings for a girl he thought unworthy of anything but the basest treatment.
Which was how he’d treated her that day, taking what she had unconsciously offered him again, then scorning her afterwards when she broke down and told him how much she loved him? It was at that point that Irene had walked in, taken one look at their guilty faces then left the room, whereupon Byron had launched forth into a bitter tirade.
'I'll never forgive myself for hurting a good woman over a slut like you,' he'd flung at her. 'And you dare to speak of love. That wasn't love you gave me on the billiard-table just now, you little tramp. It was the same thing you give every man who looks sideways at you. I'm married, for pity's sake, to your own sister. Doesn't that mean anything to you? Haven't you any decency at all? God, you disgust me, almost as much as I disgust myself for being too weak to resist your insidious appeal. Go and screw up some other poor bastard's life, not mine! I don't want to set eyes on you
again, do you hear me? Get out, out of this house and out of my life. I can't stand the sight of you any longer!'
Much as she had never forgotten those words, nor forgiven them, Celeste could now understand them a little better.
Besides, she thought with a black satisfaction, whose arms is he in now? Whose bed is he in? Whose body can't he keep his hands and eyes off?
Mine!
Celeste ran tantalizing fingertips over his sweat slicked back, squeezing her muscles tightly around him, teasing him back to arousal once again. With the quickening of his flesh, she began to lift her hips in tiny up and down movements, gripping and releasing him till he was fully erect again.
'Yes,' she insisted huskily when he groaned. She pushed him back on to the bed, holding his shoulders down while she straddled him as mercilessly as he had straddled her. This time she was on top and she aimed to keep it that way, riding him as relentlessly and ruthlessly as he had her, closing her eyes so that she didn't see his contempt.
'Yes,' she cried out in exultation when his body finally arched up and exploded into her.
'Yes,' she sobbed as her own body shattered into pieces and she collapsed in a spent heap across his chest.
Did they sleep? They must have, limbs tangled, bodies exhausted.
Celeste snapped awake to the sound of Cora calling out to her up the stairs.
'Are you still awake, Celeste? Shall I lock up for you?'
Celeste lifted her head and spoke in a stunningly calm voice, even though her heart was instantly pounding. Dear God, what if Cora had come up and found her like this? They'd left the bedroom door open, the bed in full view of anyone who even walked past.