When she emerged from the bathroom she expected him to be in the bedroom but he wasn't. That infuriated her. She wasn't finished with him yet. Dragging the towel from her head, she started to ease a comb through the tangled mass of her hair. So absorbed was she in the task that she didn't hear him enter; she suddenly saw him in the mirror. Reaching over her head, he took the comb from her suddenly nerveless hand and calmly began to employ it with a dexterity that took her back four years.
'Don't do that,' she said weakly.
'It was insensitive of me to say it out loud. I should have savoured it in silence,' he drawled mockingly. 'Why don't you do us both a big favour and leave alone?'
'But you know the answer to that.' His reflection threw back the reckless, dangerous glitter of the smile his sensual mouth. Ashley sat there like a statue while he removed the last snarl from her hair. But as his hands cupped her shoulders to slowly draw her up from the dressing-table, she started to tremble.
'This… us.' He seemed to savour the words. 'It's inevitable.'
Under that dark spell, she had to struggle to find her voice. 'Doesn't have to be.'
The sash of her robe slid free and she stopped breathing. Already she could feel the anguish of her body's anticipation. He pulled her back against him, burying his mouth hungrily in the curve of her arched throat, his hands sliding up her ribcage to find the aching fullness of her taut breasts. She moaned as expert fingers toyed with the prominent buds of her nipples, an unbearable spasm of excitement seizing hold of her. 'Why should you be able to fight it when I can't?' Vito demanded roughly, a husky, masculine growl of arousal in his accented drawl as he tugged her round to take her mouth.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THAT taunt powered Ashley's revolt. With a superhuman effort she denied herself the drugging heat of his mouth and broke free. Twisting away, hating herself, she rubbed at her reddened lips as though she needed to cleanse herself of his touch. 'But I can fight it,' she swore, as much for her own benefit as his.
'Why fight yourself?' Vito murmured softly. 'You want me. I believe that you want me more than you have ever wanted any other man. That's why you fight me. With me… you feel threatened.'
The calm confident assurance banished the colour from her cheeks. 'And what book of pop psychology did you dig that out of?' she managed shakily. 'Don't think I don't know why you want to think that. From your point of view it's a very flattering interpretation.'
'Is it?' Mercilessly he held her eyes with his own. 'In my life many women have wanted me, cara. To be desired is scarcely a novelty.'
Hatred flashed through her. It was the truth. He had it all. Power, wealth, charismatic attraction and the kind of banked-down smouldering sexuality that magnetised the female sex. It had never surprised her that she had fallen madly in love with Vito. But the force of those feelings had terrified her. Her fragile security had been based on a need for total control of her own life. Instinctively she had known that, given the smallest opportunity, Vito would dominate her, making her choices for her, carving her up and rearranging her into the image he wanted.
'So what picked me out from the common herd?' she prompted with deliberate scorn. A broad shoulder edged up in a graceful shrug. 'Your beauty, your individuality… and the little things-' 'Such as?' Defensively she folded her arms. A faint smile softened the hard line of his mouth. 'The way you challenge me. The way you deliberately take the opposing view to mine in every discussion whether you believe in it or not. And you make me curious. You're like a Chinese puzzle box.'
A box he intended to open. A mystery he intended to solve. He scared her. Yes, she did feel threatened. He was already stripping away those layers he had talked about, denying her any hiding place.
Tilting his dark head back, he studied her with brilliant dark eyes. 'Why, for example, do you always take cover behind a large piece of furniture when we're having an argument?'
'I don't,' she denied and only then realised that she was standing on the far side of the bed, about as far as she could get from him and still be in the same room.
'You do. Once, it outraged me, but now I'm used to it. Physically you're afraid of me and four years ago I found that incredibly insulting,' he confided, slowly closing the distance between them again. 'How can you be afraid of me when I have never once hurt you? Which brings me to the obvious question… who did?' Pale as snow and trembling, Ashley let her lashes drop to conceal the ravaged turmoil suddenly brimming in her eyes. She was incapable of movement as he folded her into his powerful arms, his extreme tension lost on her for she was far too absorbed in her own. 'Because if I ever get my hands on him,' Vito grated in a savage undertone, 'I'll kill him.'
She had not been an abused child. At least she didn't think so. Slaps, shakings, occasional bruises from too forceful hand grips. Her father was a powerfully built man and she had often told herself consolingly that he didn't know his own strength when he lost his temper. But it hadn't been the fleeting physical pain that caused her the most damage… no, it had been the awareness that she was the only one of her family ever to incite that reaction from him. He had never struck her mother, her sister or her brother, was indeed loud in his disgust of other men who used physical force to subdue those weaker than themselves.
No, what had bothered Ashley the most had been the 'why me?' sensation. Why only her and not her siblings? And somewhere along the line she had started to realise that in her father's eyes she was somehow different, presumably different enough not to inspire the love he had for Susan and Tim. For he did love them. He mightn't show it, and Tim might be his favourite, but he did love them in a way he had never loved his younger daughter. Banishing her from the family circle had cost him nothing… she was painfully aware of that fact. '
'Who did it?' Vito demanded. Her lashes fluttered and she came back to life again. 'You're imagining things,' she whispered.
'I thought I might be until I saw your face.' Long fingers cradled the tender curve of her jawbone. Golden eyes alight with fury were pinned with naked obduracy to her vulnerable features. 'Who?' he persisted.
Had she been an innocent, she reflected sadly, she might almost have believed that he really cared. Hot tears pricked her eyelids and she couldn't understand why his response should make her cry. 'It…it was a long time ago,' she muttered. 'Leave it. Some things are private.'
'Not between man and wife.'
'I'm not your wife!' she rebutted fiercely.
His hand tightened on her shoulder, imprisoning her. 'You are my wife, and the sooner you accept that fact, the happier you'll be. And while you're working on that,' he advised, 'accept at the same time that I will never use my superior strength to hurt you.'
A long shudder ran through her. There were worse kinds of pain he could inflict. The sort of pain that left no visible mark. Four years ago he had been remarkably adept at that brand of cruelty. How could she cope with a male so brilliant at penetrating her defences? How could she fight this ridiculous deluding sense that somehow it was a relief?
'Some day you're not going to need to fight me any more,' he told her levelly. 'Some day you will learn to trust me.'
'You're not just ambitious, you're a megalomaniac.'
'I just don't like failure,' he countered darkly. 'And somehow at some stage, without even realising that it had happened, I failed with you.'
The admission sent chill sparks of dread down her taut spine. What more did he want from her? Love? The undying devotion he had sought in the past and been denied? Helplessly she shivered, shrinking from an awareness of how complete would be his revenge if she fulfilled that aspiration. And she was vulnerable. Wasn't it time she faced that truth? He was holding her close and there wasn't a cell in her body failing to fire
to that proximity. Below her breastbone, her heart was pounding like crazy.
'Failure,' he repeated huskily as he drew her unresisting figure down on to the bed. 'A black spot of dishonour on a perfect record. I can't live with it.' With ever
y word he reinforced her deepest fears. Casually he lifted her slender hand. He pressed his his mockingly to the platinum band on her wedding finger. 'Does it feel like a manacle?'
Breathing rapidly, she said, 'A stranglehold. A symbol of possession. I'm surprised you don't want Cavalieri tattooed all over me in case I stray!'
'You won't be straying, cara. I'm very careful with my possessions.'
'Damn you!' she began, trying to sit up.
He ran the tip of his tongue down the valley between her breasts in an erotic foray only halted by a meeting with the towelling edge of her robe. She fell back again momentarily stunned by the rush of heat fired by that most calculating preliminary.
'Dio… I almost forgot.' Reaching behind him, he produced a familiar little box. One-handed, he deftly opened it and extracted a tiny pill. 'Medical science does have its advantages. I thought about them over dinner and I'm prepared to compromise-'