The Heat Of Passion

sending shivers of hot, burning need running through her.

'Don't stop!' She didn't recognise the desperate edge in her own voice.

And suddenly she was free. Carlo lounged back against the pillows and watched her with hooded, calculating, dark-as-night eyes. Wildly disorientated, she stared back, not understanding, not comprehending anything but the painful ache of her own hotly aroused body,

'Never dare to tell me again that you don't want me,'

Carlo murmured softly, sibilantly, studying her with

chilling detachment. ‘I can make you want me. You're

a very sensual woman. You were made for pas

sion '

Too late she understood, and she dragged the crumpled sheet over her exposed limbs in an agony of mortification. 'No...' she said sickly, stricken by such cruelty.

'Yes. Six years ago I could make you burn just by

looking at you '

'That's a lie!'

'Your skin would flush, your eyes would fire and you'd shift in your seat like a cat being forced over hot coals. You wanted me then... you just wouldn't admit it,' he condemned fiercely.

Stunned, she buried her hot face in the pillow.

'At first, I didn't think of you as a tease. You

were so patently unawakened. I knew you were a

virgin '

'Stop it!' she gasped.

'But then came that afternoon here when we only made it on to this self-same bed by a mighty feat of self-control on my part. If we hadn't been disturbed, I'd have had you,' he reminded her callously. 'After that, you were mine.1

'No, I wasn't!' she cried in turmoil.

'No woman, inexperienced or otherwise, responds like that to one man and then marries another a week later.

still busily maintaining that she madly loves the unfortunate groom. At least, no honest, decent woman..,’ he gibed.

'Shut up, Carlo!' There was a sob in her voice. Initially she had gone to Simon, determined that their marriage should not take place. Confessing all, she had expected Simon to be outraged. Instead he had asked her if she loved Carlo. And she had uttered a vehement no. Nothing in the emotions Carlo aroused had fitted her concept of love. She had seen only lust and a terrifying self-seeking greed for pleasure in what had happened between them. She had grown up watching her mother demonstrate those same traits.

Carole had always done what she wanted, taken what she wanted, careless of the pain she caused others. And Jessica had seen the same frightening stamp on her own behaviour with Carlo. She had seen what she believed she might become without Simon to hold her steady. What Carlo had made her feel had petrified her. And Simon's love offered unconditionally had seemed a safe sanctuary. At the time she had been desperately, humbly grateful for his seeming loyalty, his pleas and assurances about needing her.. .and not being able to face the future without her.

Hard fingers abruptly closed round her wrist. Dully she lifted her head. Carlo wrenched off her wedding-ring and sent it skimming across the room. 'You don't need that in my bed. He wasn't very much on your mind anyway, was he, cara?' he breathed with an insolent smile.

'I have a photographic memory of you walking down the aisle in your virginal white dress to marry another man!' he raked back at her.

'Well, why should that have bothered you? You didn't want to marry me!'

'That rankled, did it?' Carlo incised.

‘I hated you.. .how could it? And I certainly had no desire to be your travelling tart!'

'ScusiV He looked blank.