Bond of Hatred

‘I decided to finish early...’

‘Oh,’ Sarah muttered.

‘We could have dinner together,’ Alex murmured lazily.

And guess what the after-dinner entertainment is? she thought with a staggering mix of reactions to the underwritten threat. A wave of blinding heat zapped through her, leaving her dizzy. Only then did the shame and self-loathing make itself felt. Just the very thought of Alex touching her again sent her emotions haywire but every haywire reaction could be traced right back to a burst of anticipation that was utterly wanton and without conscience.

‘I’ve already eaten.’ Since Alex hadn’t eaten dinner once in his own home in two weeks, Sarah had taken to having a tray in her room, finding the solitary splendour of the dining-room far too much to handle with at least two staff fighting to serve her and showing in a variety of little ways that, for some peculiar reason best known to themselves, they sympathised with so neglected a new bride.

In fact, staff relations, something which Sarah had worried about, were astonishingly good. She, who had never dealt with a servant in her life, was treated like royalty. Her favourite meals, her favourite flowers...anything she expressed the smallest desire or liking for magically appeared with beaming smiles. She was still wondering just why the cast of thousands Alex employed to maintain the château should be so incredibly nice to her.

‘You could keep me company,’ Alex drawled in the sizzling silence.

Those vibrations he had once mentioned were invisibly lancing through the atmosphere like lightning bolts. Sarah trembled, unnerved, wanting to run...wanting to stay, torn apart.

‘And if I was to say please...?’ Alex prompted thickly.

The no-good swine, she reflected abruptly, humiliation devouring her alive. For two weeks you’re the invisible woman. Then he feels like sex late one afternoon and all of a sudden you’re flavour of the day! Dear God, it was just so disgusting to be sexually turned on by a male like Alex Terzakis. It made her want to have a bath and scrub herself raw.

As every scrap of colour faded from her face, she raised an unsteady hand to her literally pounding temples and said, ‘I don’t feel well,’ with perfect truth. This amount of tension was bad for her. It gave her a headache.

Studying the carpet, she uttered a stifled screech as she was abruptly lifted off her feet. ‘What are you doing?’ she gasped.

‘You should lie down—’

‘No! When I’ve got a headache, I walk around... g-go outside, get some fresh air!’ Sarah stammered in a frantic tone.

A foot over the doorway of the nursery, Alex paused and looked down at her. It was lethal. One second she was rigid, the next she was melted honey on its way to boiling-point. The heat of him, his heartbeat, the feel of his arms around her and the unforgettable scent of his skin... ‘Please put me down,’ she mumbled, fighting a rearguard action to the effect of those astonishingly bright eyes of his.

‘You should have engaged another nanny as I instructed. You’ve been overworking.’

Nanny Brown had lasted precisely three days after the wedding, taking her leave in high dudgeon the morning she dared to tell Alex that he was interfering with her routine by showing up before breakfast-time in the nursery. Sarah hadn’t been present but Claudine, the young, pleasant girl hired to assist in Nicky’s care, had been and evidently Alex had blown a fuse and Nanny, mightily offended, had informed him that he didn’t need to sack her, she was leaving to take up employment with some titled couple, who had seemingly offered her the sun, the moon and the stars to come to them instead.

‘Nonsense...’ Lost in the depths of his eyes, Sarah stopped breathing.

Alex loosed a kind of strangled groan and took her mouth so hotly that she scorched in shock, unprepared for a frontal assault of such blatancy. His tongue drove between her lips, searching out the moist interior, and an electrifying excitement shot through her, leaving her weak with longing.

The world spun faster and faster. Coloured lights shot through the blackness behind her lowered eyelids. Her hand lifted and her fingers dug into his luxuriant black hair. At last she was alive again after two weeks hovering on the brink of inglorious extinction.

Abruptly, Alex tore his mouth from hers. A dark tide of blood accentuated his hard cheekbones. He looked shattered, frustrated, outraged. ‘What the hell are you doing to me?’ he growled without warning, dumping her down on the ground again so fast that she had to sag against the wall to stay upright.

‘Me?’ It was the most she could manage, planting shaking hands to the wall to steady herself, her temperature still rocketing tempestuously at fever point.

Alex was breathing rapidly. His gaze dropped below the level of her chin to the visible thrust of her nipples beneath the T-shirt. He swore fluently, violently, the brown hand that she could see suddenly sweeping up between them. He grabbed a handful of T-shirt to haul her closer, frightening her out of her wits.

‘You wear a bra outside the bedroom,’ he grated down at her. ‘And you swim in two pieces of bikini. And you sunbathe in the same two pieces. Is that clear?’

Soundlessly she nodded. You didn’t argue with a madman. It just didn’t seem the time to tell him that she couldn’t swim and hadn’t yet taken the time to sunbathe.

‘You don’t flaunt yourself like this!’ Alex derided. ‘Now go to bed. You have a headache, go to bed...’

Sarah backed away slow step by slow step, lest a sudden move might push him further over the edge of such illogical and utterly incomprehensible behaviour. Flaunt herself? What on earth was he talking about? Her cheeks burned. She wore the least possible clothing for Nicky’s bathtime. Not yet as polished as Claudine at bathing her nephew, Sarah invariably got pretty wet and it got so hot in the nursery bathroom with the heating going full blast lest Nicky contract a chill.

At the top of stairs, she glanced back. Alex had returned to the nursery. She wished she could spy on him the way he had spied on her. Did Alex talk baby-talk? Or was it more along the MCP line of ‘think of all the women out there, all the conquests, all the entertainment available’? Sarah pulled a face. It was to be hoped that Alex had more wit in his conversation with Nicky then he had with the toys that kept on appearing by the day. Did he really think Nicky would soon be playing with that incredible train set in the playroom next door t

o the nursery? And what about the bike? And the talking teddy with the maniacal laugh that made Nicky scream blue murder?

Sarah sagged down on her own bed, knowing she was being unjust. But the truth was she had not been prepared for Alex to take such an interest in Nicky. Instead she got this image of Alex haunting toyshops...Alex, patently ignorant of the stages of child development, purchasing anything and everything which took his fancy and bringing it home to Nicky. On some level she didn’t want to examine, something twisted inside her when she pictured Alex in a toyshop, too arrogant to ask advice but trying so hard all the same.