Bittersweet Passion

‘Damn you …’ she gasped wrathfully, tears stinging her molten eyes in a wild, angry surge; yet that fire continued to build higher and higher in her under the provocative touch of his far too knowledgeable hands.

He brushed aside the lace and silk fragility of her bra and bent his head, finding the dark bud of her nipple with his lips and his fingers. Sensation clawed at her in mute defiance of her wishes, sensation that was hunger and despair and seduction all rolled into one hateful attack on her control. And after a while she lost the urge to struggle that had become quite automatic for another more basic instinct, an insane need that was beyond her restraint, had forged its hold upon her, its path through her resistance an

d the sensations then bordered on torment.

In that storm there was only Dane and a flashfire desire that burned in her very bones until she was crying, gasping she knew not what and he gazed down at her in masterly and triumph when she was quite blind to such calculation, her abandonment drawing an answering shudder from the hard, virile length of his body. For the merest instant he hesitated and she collided with the febrile glitter in his beautiful eyes before he possessed her and even the pain did not prevent that instantaneous explosion of pleasure that shattered her into a thousand pieces.

Afterwards she burrowed under the duvet like an escaping convict, at sea with herself still, unable yet even to gather those incriminating pieces of self together again, or to forget what her photographic memory had journalled while her wits, her self-respect and her morality were on temporary vacation.

She listened to Dane in the shower. Her mind was a blank. She listened to the silence and then she waited to listen to him dress. But she missed his return to the bedroom, felt with a jerk of reaction his fingertip trace the exposed line of her backbone. ‘Playing dead, Claire? Or were you hoping I’d come back to bed?’

Her body ached and she felt that ache of discomfort with a masochistic satisfaction. ‘I hate you!’

‘My appetite runs more to food right now. When you’ve trailed yourself out of the sulks, join me in the lounge,’ he ordered in that same murderously cool voice, and she learnt that one could hate a voice, too.

‘I’m not hungry,’ she mumbled.

‘Do you want me to dress you? And wear something presentable,’ he added drily. ‘This is threatening to turn into a wake.’

He had not baulked at taking her virginity. And should he have? The days when men retreated from innocence were long since gone. Dane. Her husband. A sound betwixt a giggle and a sob seized her taut body and she buried her hot face in the pillows. Dane whom she had trusted … yes, she had trusted him and she had respected him and, in a tiny corner of her subconscious, Dane had still held sway as an unrealistic hero, lacking only a white horse and a pair of pirate topboots in an immature girl’s fantasy.

He wasn’t her husband. She didn’t feel married any more than he did. She felt violated. He had torn all her privacy from her and left her naked and vulnerable. How had it happened? Like someone emerging from a fevered dream she looked back miserably on the past hours. She just couldn’t begin to understand how Dane could rouse her to a state of such abject and mindless passion. Max was the man she loved. Max, with his all-on-the-surface personality and old-fashioned principles. Dane was as treacherously beautiful as a glacier and, like ice, he burned. Surely her love for Max ought to have conferred immunity upon her?

She wasn’t an animal. Animals mated without emotion. Horribly confused by what she had become in his arms, she lay there. There was no get-out clause. Seduced was a great word but it scarcely supplied excuse for her behaviour when she loved Max. Her very loyalty should have made her freeze. Instead she had wanted him, wanted him so fiercely that in the end nothing else had mattered but the assuagement of her desire.

She would have to tell Max. Her stomach turned over at the humiliating, shameful prospect. She had never really done anything wrong before. She had never been tempted and the temptation had come just like Eve’s serpent proffering an outwardly innocent bait. And right now she couldn’t even begin to sum up what the end result would be.

She crawled out of bed, lingering to make it although she had no doubt Thompson was well aware where they had been. Under the shower she scrubbed herself raw, washing away the scent and the touch of him in an orgy of bitter self-reproach. If she could as easily wipe the memory away, how much more simple facing him again would be and, had she not had a hideous vision of being forcibly yanked back should she try to leave, she would have been packing again.

On the threshold of her bedroom she froze, tucking her towel more carefully about her. A tall redhead in a superb sable coat spun round to view her with equal incredulity.

‘My God!’ the stranger evinced, moving forward. ‘What did he see in you? You’re little and—’ the heavily mascaraed eyes roamed over her ‘—skinny. Are you pregnant? Not that I think he’d be so easily caught, but one never can tell, even … well, especially with Dane because one never quite knows what he’s thinking. He’s not exactly in a bridal mood either, is he?’ she mocked.

Claire was having trouble getting and keeping oxygen in her lungs after that monologue. ‘Will you get out of here?’

‘You can’t blame me for being curious,’ she replied coolly, turning on her heel. ‘By the way I’m Zelda, Zelda Carlotti. I’m married to Dane’s cousin, Matt.’

CHAPTER FIVE

DANE was in the lounge, and a stockily built, middle-aged male with improbably dark hair was accepting a drink from him. The Mouth, as Claire had christened Zelda, was nowhere to be seen. Probably freshening up her tongue on a kitchen knife. Dane strolled gracefully up the steps to meet her. ‘You could try a smile,’ he reproved softly.

‘If you keep that harpie out of my hair,’ she whispered, avoiding his eyes.

‘I happen to like Zelda.’

‘Like to like,’ she hissed.

‘Very vocal in company, aren’t you?’ he noted in a lion’s purr. ‘Come and meet Matt. Zelda’s very friendly with a gossip columnist. That’s how she found out so fast about our wedding.’

Matt chortled, his aspect that of a man who had already had a few drinks. ‘And she rushed here to pull your bride to pieces. Or was it to dig out the details her friend Wilma didn’t have? She’s raving mad because she had to hear about it from a third party.’ He laughed again. ‘Say, this is good Scotch, Dane. Why don’t you throw us out? It seems a gloomy location for a wedding night, but with us thrown in, it becomes gruesome.’

Dane pressed her down on a leather settee and he walked away from her again, talking about his last trip to Jamaica. Not a phrase did she absorb.

The room was starkly modern, yards of pale carpet merging into walls, a colour scheme that did not detract from the effect of sparse, expensive furniture. She clutched the sherry Dane deposited in her nerveless fingers and pretended to sip when she glanced up accidentally once and clashed with his narrowed, assessing stare.

What was he waiting for? A scene of hysterical recriminations, regardless of the company they now had? He had chosen the punishment wisely and cruelly. Having betrayed her vulnerability to him as a lover, he had destroyed her pride and, until that moment of truth, Claire had never realised just how proud she was deep down inside. How did he feel? Satisfied? Against her volition a heady blush swept her skin. She could feel his eyes on her, seeking to probe, and she willed herself not to meet his gaze. Did he feel revenged? Or, more probably, was he regretting the loss of control that had swept them both into an intimacy that went far beyond the bounds of their relationship?

He couldn’t have desired her as a woman. Somehow that made it that much more agonising. That he could take her and forget her again. That he could be calm now, when she seethed inside. That he had demolished the one barrier that enabled her to meet him on an equal level.