Bond of Hatred

Alex stared down endlessly into her rapt face, strangely hesitant in spite of the blazing hunger in his eyes and the pagan stamp of passion tautening his damp features. He parted her thighs, raised them and stilled. ‘I’ll hurt you,’ he muttered unsteadily.

‘I don’t care,’ she gasped, at fever pitch.

He came down on her then, took her mouth hotly, briefly and then lifted his dark head again to watch her as he entered her by slow, painful degrees. Her eyes flew wide. She was in agony and then he thrust deep into the very heart of her and the agony turned into an ecstasy of sensation so torturously intense, she almost passed out.

He began to move then, sinking his hands beneath her hips, teaching her the primal rhythm of the most mind-blowing pleasure she had ever received. He drove into her again and again, long, sure strokes of possession that threw her wildly out of control, her heartbeat crashing, her entire body centred on the explosive excitement he had generated inside her. And then, without warning, the frantic tension peaked and she was flung violently over the edge into sobbing satisfaction. She clung wildly to him, crying, ‘Alex...Alex!’ without even knowing what she was saying.

There were tears in her eyes and an almost child-like sense of wonder when he shuddered above her and reached the same plateau. In all her life she could never recall feeling so close to another human being. A bewildering tenderness filled her, a gut reaction she could not suppress.

She was in awe of the raw force of human passion, had never dreamt until she learnt for herself that anything could be that overwhelming, that impossible to deny. She had believed herself to be impervious to such physical needs, sensible and sexless, indeed a woman pretty much out of step with modern society, and in one shattering hour Alex had taught her that she had this extraordinary capacity for feeling...and she knew that she had been irrevocably changed forever by the experience.

Alex released her from his weight and rolled away. Instantly her hands fell back from him. She felt suddenly painfully shy and confused, at a loss in a situation new to her. She realised that she didn’t feel any more married than she had felt earlier and that sexual intimacy without communication was no easier to bear simply because her lover was her husband on paper.

‘Alex...I think we have to talk,’ she murmured uncertainly, but forcing herself on by reminding herself how tender and considerate he had been of her inexperience.

He turned to look at her, his hooded dark eyes utterly unreadable. ‘Why?’

Whatever she had expected, it had not been that single discouraging word.

‘You’ve changed the rules as I saw them,’ she persisted, struggling against the most infuriating discomfiture as she met his eyes, instantly recalling the incredible pleasure he had given her. ‘Where does our...our marriage go from here?’

‘But we don’t have a marriage,’ Alex drawled, his sensual mouth taking on a sardonic twist as if the very idea was outrageous. ‘Not in the sense you suggest. I married you because I had no other choice. You gave me no other choice.’

At the reminder, Sarah paled.

‘I wanted Nicky and I paid the price.’

‘You said you wanted me,’ she whispered helplessly, and a second later could have bitten her tongue out for being so honest.

‘In my bed...not as my wife.’

‘You wouldn’t have got me any other way!’ she threw back, frantically attempting to conceal the fact that she was unbelievably hurt by that blunt assurance.

Alex cast her an insolent smile that told her he was remembering just how very easy it had been for him to turn her fear and denial into willing surrender. ‘You think not?’

‘I told you that I didn’t know that Damon was married...that both of them lied to me!’ Hugging the sheet protectively to her breasts, Sarah fought to explain how she had felt after Callie’s death. ‘If I had known the truth, I wouldn’t have felt as bitter and I wouldn’t have blamed you for ruining Callie’s life... Dear God, Alex, Damon told me that you had threatened to disinherit him and throw him out of the family if he married Callie! She was pregnant. Of course I blamed you, of course I hated you after the way you talked about her that day at your office—’

‘What are you trying to prove to me with these lies?’ In one fluidly impatient movement, Alex threw back the sheet and sprang out of bed. ‘If my brother were a murderer, I wouldn’t abandon him. He’s family, whatever his flaws,’ he spelt out succinctly. ‘As to disinheriting him...Damon is a very wealthy young man in his own right and I have no control

over his finances.’

‘Then he lied about that as well,’ Sarah mumbled, her attention clinging involuntarily to the long golden sweep of his back as he began to pull on his clothes. ‘All right, I admit that I shouldn’t have demanded that you marry me—’

‘I think you wanted to catch yourself a multi-millionaire and now you want to hang on to him,’ Alex said with lethal contempt. ‘There has to be some reason why the real bitch routine never got off the ground!’

‘How...how could you touch me feeling like that?’ she demanded, shocked to the core by the condemnation.

‘You’re my wife and you’ll lie down for me whenever I want,’ Alex told her with devastating simplicity. ‘That is my right. But outside that bedroom door you don’t have any rights that I don’t give you. You forced yourself on me. You have no grounds for complaint. As for your laughable assurance that you had it within your power to offer me my freedom back...I haven’t lost my freedom. I will do whatever the hell I like whenever I like and there is nothing that you can do to stop me!’

She sat like a small statue in the vast bed, pride demanding that she should not reveal how shattered she was. But every word still found its target like a thrown knife piercing her flesh. ‘I don’t want to stop you,’ she managed tightly, knowing that after what he had just told her there was no way she would ever share a bed with him again.

‘No? You mean you weren’t planning to get possessive bit by bit?’ Alex prompted with derisive disbelief. ‘Start asking me where I was going, when I was coming home, where I had been and throwing tantrums? I watched my father go through that with Vivien and no woman is ever going to manipulate me like that!’

So that had been why he’d planned to marry Elise. Evidently Elise would not have attached strings, would not have demanded fidelity, would not have sunk to asking awkward questions.

Sarah was in absolute turmoil because Alex had changed the terms of their marriage as she had understood them, plunging them into an intimacy she had been unprepared to handle. And now he was absolutely denying that that development should curtail his own freedom or in any way alter his lifestyle or their relationship. What relationship? she thought sickly, appalled by her own stupidity.

Alex strolled to the foot of the bed. ‘And by the way, you are wasting your time with the maternal routine and Nicky,’ he asserted drily. ‘I’m not impressed. Why don’t you just do what I expected you to do?’