Bittersweet Passion

In answer he crushed her mouth under his and it started all over again, that unbelievably strong surge of excitement that she had already learnt to fear. His palms cupped her cheekbones, sentencing her to stillness, his tongue delving with inherent sensuality between her lips until her slim body shook with the force of the sensations he could evoke so easily. One of his hands slid down to span the curve of her hips, tugging her closer to the hard cradle of his thighs. His eyes were a deep, dense blue when he raised his head. ‘I want you,’ he confessed roughly. ‘And you’re fortunate I do want you, so why fight what appears to come naturally?’

‘This is sex,’ she retorted in revulsion. His grip loosened and she side-stepped him to stalk, badly shaken, back to the bedroom. Why, oh, why couldn’t she have remained cold in his arms, she demanded of herself? If she could prove to Dane that she didn’t want him, that would finish this whole baiting game of his.

‘And what’s wrong with sex?’ He was behind her when she turned, poised with the lithe grace of the immensely confident, his mocking gaze rousing deeper colour in her cheeks. ‘You made it sound like some sort of nasty disease.’

If he touched her, she was his. He had proved that indisputably this morning and yet, if he touched her again, she was convinced she would die inside. He wanted her. Now at this very moment he wanted her and it meant absolutely nothing. Dane was very highly sexed and she was available and she was new, sufficiently different from her predecessors to possess a certain novelty value. That was all. Nobody needed to tell her that Dane treated sex as an appetite that required fairly frequent gratification. Their lovemaking was not associated with anything less ephemeral in his mind. Nor was she in any way special to him now. She was just the same as the rest.

‘Claire …’ His voice held a husky note of cajolement. ‘Don’t you think you’re over-reacting?’

He sounded so damned reasonable and polite! It was hard to believe the same male had ruthlessly silenced her objections a few hours ago and made love to her quite exquisitely as if to set the final seal of proof upon his ability not to become emotionally involved. Now all of a sudden he was putting his arms round her again, and she went rigid with dismay. ‘You can’t … want …’ she stammered. ‘Not again …’

A throaty chuckle sounded above her head. His hands anchored her remorselessly to him. ‘Do I apologise for that? I’m likely to be quite a trial to you, Claire. But I’m not a selfish lover. I know that physically you wouldn’t find it very comfortable, so I’ll wait until your pleasure can equal my own.’

With superhuman effort she pulled herself free, her fair skin burning to her hairline with chagrin. ‘I despise you,’ she said, and it was a lie. Of the two of them she despised herself more. Dane owed loyalty to no one else. He was merely taking what he estimated was on offer, what he felt he had already paid for in advance in Paris, while she had no decent excuse at all to supply for her own behaviour.

‘You’re still getting off very lightly,’ he responded drily. ‘And maybe by the time I’m bored, you’ll be lying awake nights praying for me not to get bored because you can’t stop wanting me. I’ll settle money on you, compensation for one seriously damaged fantasy.’

He was flattening her again. Rolling her out and proceeding to walk on her. Her only consolation was that he had about as much hope of making her love him as she had of engendering similar emotions in him.

‘Compensation for being used? What a shame it is that sex is all you can give a woman,’ she heard herself bite out bitterly in retort. ‘Didn’t you ever want a woman who wanted you for yourself?’

‘Like you?’

Instead of drawing his blood, she had drawn her own. ‘I happen to be in love with Max,’ she assured him shakily, but she couldn’t meet his eyes now when she said it, though she still knew it to be true. Love to her was an all embracing, exclusive emotion centred upon one person. It made no allowances for a fiery, renegade attraction to someone else. And the most unbearable thing was that that someone else should be Dane. He wasn’t a stranger she could escape, and he was much too clever to fool. He couldn’t respect her now either, when he recalled how vehemently she had proclaimed her feelings for Max. Her behaviour must exactly fit Dane’s cynical picture of love—or at least it would do when he realised that Max did exist. Then, ironically, he would be even more contemptuous.

‘And you’re so incredibly faithful to him in mind and body?’ Long, brown fingers spun her back to face him. ‘You don’t love me? I don’t want your love, Claire, but I’ll take everything else becasue you’re mine now, bought and paid for just like the carpet under your feet and the sheets on the bed. And, just like them, you have a place for as long as I want you,’ he specified coolly.

‘Dane, let me leave,’ she begged abruptly.

‘Something tells me you don’t fancy a return trip to Paris. I did plan on staying there a couple of days.’

Her breath rattled in her throat. ‘I’m not going anywhere with you.’

‘I guess it doesn’t matter where the bedroom is,’ he drawled insolently.

‘I’ll leave,’ she threatened jerkily.

‘No way will you leave. You don’t even leave this apartment without telling me exactly where you’re going,’ Dane raked arrogantly.

‘And in return I get the same right?’ A shaky laugh left her throat. He looked distinctly taken aback by the idea of being answerable to anyone. ‘Relax, I don’t want those rights,’ she whispered.

His hands settled on her rigid shoulders. ‘I think you need a little breathing space for a few hours. I’ll turn into the office and maybe—’ he dared to murmur intimately ‘—when I come home later, you’ll stop me in my tracks by wearing something …’

Scarlet-faced, she broke free of him. ‘I’m not dressing up like a tart to …’

‘Claire, I doubt if your idea of a tart and mine match.’ There was an unforgivable vein of humour in the interruption. ‘You know, this suffering act isn’t entertaining.’

‘Then I suggest you go where you can be entertained. If—–’ Her eyes glanced off his.

He didn’t let her finish. ‘You mean that?

’ he grated.

If you had let me explain, if there had been room within you to trust, none of this would ever have happened, she had been about to say. But how did she explain Adam’s misleading will when she didn’t understand it herself?

‘You haven’t bought me,’ she replied stiffly, proudly. ‘And I don’t own you. You can sleep with whoever you like, Dane. It won’t touch me.’

For a shocking instant, in collision with the untamed brilliance of his lapis lazuli eyes, she thought he might strike her. Then the threat passed over, his fury gone as quickly as it had come, and he cast her a glittering smile. ‘I confess I’d never hoped for carte-blanche within marriage.’