'I could understand the way it looked to you about Gina,' Zac said tightly. 'I could even understand why you ran from me instead of staying to thrash it out—the lack of communication in your childhood and your fear of confrontation… But this.' He literally ground his teeth. 'I've never wanted to hurt anyone before like I want to hurt you.'
He turned then, ignoring her agonised, 'Zac, Zac, wait,' and strode up the garden without turning found, entering the house and disappearing from sight as she watched him disbelievingly.
Victoria sat in the gentle summer air for some minutes more, her senses clamouring and a beating in her head that pulsed with her heartbeat. This was going from bad to worse. Was she mad, or was it everyone else?
He thought this was William's baby. She still couldn't believe it He actually thought that she was carrying another man's child. How could he think that—how dared he? The blinding confusion and hurt gave way to sheer white-hot anger. Just because he had the morals of a torn cat, how dared he assume she was the same? This was worse than anything that had gone before.
Well, she wasn't going to beg and plead for him to believe her, she told herself bitterly, her chin rising a notch and her violet-blue eyes dark with pain. He could think what he liked, and he had only married her because it had suited him to, however much he would like her to think differently now. She had been young and naive, and a virgin—a suitable mother for his future son and heir. And the merger of the family fortunes wasn't to be sneezed at either. How dared he act the aggrieved husband now?
By the time Victoria rose from the bench and walked towards the house she was seething with a mixture of injured pride and a deep, deep black rejection that made her soft mouth hard.
He wanted to have his cake and eat it, that was the main component of all this, she told herself as she stepped into the flower-scented conservatory and walked through into the kitchen beyond. A wife to play the gracious hostess and act as a breeding machine for the next generation of Hardings, a mistress for his pleasure. And he'd been caught out, big time.
He had had plenty of opportunity to tell her about Gina before they were married, and if his ridiculous story about Gina's mother asking him to help her daughter was true, why hadn't he explained it all at the time? And what man set an ex-mistress up in an apartment anyway? He must think she was a moronic half-wit, not just naive and stupid. The old cliché of what was good for the goose was good for the gander—or, in this case, what was good for the gander was good for the goose—clearly didn't sit too well with Zac's male chauvinistic tendencies. Well, she wouldn't lose too much sleep over that! she told herself bitterly.
Zac walked out of the enormous, south-facing drawing room as she entered the hall from the kitchen, his face dark and grim, but Victoria found the rage that had her in its grip provided more than enough adrenalin to face him without flinching.
'I'm going.' She made to pass him after one scathing, furious glance, but he caught her arm, swinging her round to face him.
'When I say so,' he bit out savagely. 'And I don't yet.'
'Let go of me, Zac.' She didn't struggle, standing stiff and dignified in his grasp, her face icy, and her regal composure seemed to infuriate him still more.
'Why should I? You're still my wife,' he said bitterly, a muscle moving at the side of his jaw and his handsome face stony.
'In name only.' She tried to ignore the fact that her heart was pounding like a sledgehammer at his nearness, the magnetic dark quality to his virile maleness overwhelmingly seductive even in his rage. 'That's all. It means absolutely nothing.'
Did he and Gina quarrel? The thought popped into her mind with piercing pain. Gina was a full-blooded Italian, Zac was half Italian—that made for a passionate relationship, didn't it? Latin blood and all that. And no doubt they had lots of fun making up. The thought stiffened her back still more.
'Then perhaps we ought to do something about that?' he suggested with soft venom. 'You think me the lowest of the low. I haven't got a thing to lose, have I?'
'Don't you dare touch me,' she gasped wildly as
he pulled her closer, his thighs hard against hers. 'I hate you.'
'And you love the noble William,' he grated harshly. 'What an inconsistent creature you are. Or do you love him, Victoria?' he asked softly, his eyes lethal. 'I wonder. Shall we put it to the test? Could it be that in your desire to punish me you were hoisted by your own petard? Did he take advantage of you? Forgive the old-fashioned phrase,' he added with caustic mockery, 'because we both know you are far from old-fashioned.'
'Let go of me.' Victoria was frightened now. This dark, angry stranger bore no resemblance to the man who had courted her with such tender passion, and who had made her wedding night a wild, sensual experience of pure ecstasy.
'You took it upon yourself to be judge and jury, didn't you, my gentle maiden?' Zac continued relentlessly, his body moving against hers as he spoke, her wrists trapped in one of his strong hands behind her back, and his other hand imprisoning her head as he held a handful of her silky soft hair in his powerful grip. 'I wasn't allowed to speak in my defence; I was hung, drawn and quartered and expelled from your life as though I was nothing. But that was your body beneath mine on our wedding night, your lips that begged me for more until you moaned my name over and over. I was there—I know you weren't thinking of him then.'
'Stop this. Please, Zac, stop it' She had made up her mind she wouldn't beg him for anything again, but now she found herself doing just that 'What do you expect from me anyway?'
'When I married you I thought it was going to be for ever, Tory. How could you do this to us?' he asked thickly.
He kissed her. Not the persuasive, passionate kisses that had always thrilled her and had her trembling and wanting more. This kiss was hot and brutal, a challenge from his hard maleness to her soft femininity, and it was ruthless in its intent.
Victoria tried to arch away, but he merely used her struggles to inflame them both, exploiting every move she made with savage determination, an unmistakable claim in his mouth and hands and body. She knew what he was doing, what he was trying to prove, but it didn't seem to make any difference to her traitorous body. It wanted him. She wanted him. Shock and humiliating dismay ripped through her. How could she still want him to make love to her after all she'd found out? Where was her pride, her self-worth?
'You want me.' As though emphasising her tortured thoughts his voice came low and thick as his mouth lifted from hers for one long moment, his hands now stroking over her body and her arms, freed from their iron constraint, pushing weakly at his chest. 'I could take you now—you want me, Victoria.'
'No…' It was a lie and they both knew it, to her shame.
'Yes, you want me.' His mouth took hers once more, hard and irresistibly knowing, and as she began to melt again she suddenly found herself thrust from him with enough force to make her totter backwards against the wall, her hands going out to steady herself.
'But I don't want you.' He was staring at her with narrowed, glittering eyes that pierced her soul with their contempt, his face dark and angry and his big body taut and rigid. 'Not with the smell of him about you. What sort of woman are you anyway? How could you indulge in the sort of scene you and William were revelling in at lunch-time and then respond to me like this?'
'What sort of scene?' Victoria objected vehemently, hating him, loving him. 'William had just bought me lunch, that's all.'