Jenna was stunned, left wordless and totally bemused. James had called round to see Graham and told him that! She could hardly believe it.
‘But you never said,’ she protested weakly. ‘You…’
‘I didn’t what?’ Graham sounded angry and bitter. ‘Tell you that your precious husband threatened me with physical violence if I so much as laid a finger on you? What would you have done if I had? I wanted you, Jenna,’ he told her fiercely ‘… and tonight you let me think you wanted me too. There was no room in the things I wanted to say to you to talk about your husband.’
Slowly, Jenna opened the door and walked down the steps. James had actually threatened Graham. She could hardly believe it. She let herself into her car and started the engine, dismayed to see that already it was gone twelve.
She drove all the way home in a tense, numb state of shock. Her mouth she discovered when she touched her tongue to its aching contours was bruised from the violence of Graham’s kiss. She shuddered faintly at the memory of it. Well, she had had more than one shock tonight. If nothing else she had learned that what she felt about James, what he was able to arouse inside her, wasn’t something that could be magically conjured up by just any man.
She stopped the car outside the house and started to tremble wildly as the truth burst upon her. She loved him. She loved James. No…She denied the thought even as it was born, but it refused to die. How could she love him? How could she not? a tiny derisive voice whispered. How could she not know that she loved him? Why else did she fight so hard and fiercely against him, if she was not motivated by fear, a fear that sprang from the deep inner knowledge that he threatened her indifference to his sex, that he made her feel all the things she had sworn she would never…ever feel?
‘Jenna!’
The cool crispness of James’s voice as he strolled out of the house and towards the car acted on her sensitive nerve endings like a cruel lash. She recoiled from the sound of it almost visibly and in the light streaming out of the open door she saw his eyes narrow and harden as he observed first her recoil and then the swollen fullness of her lips.
‘So, the wanderer returns. Are you going to stay there all night or do you intend to come in?’
His derisive tones lacerated her aching heart, unleashing a healing flood of anger. On shaking legs, she got out of the car and walked towards him. How dare he treat her like a child incapable of running her own life? How dare he tell Graham he wasn’t to see her again? And most of all how dare he make her fall in love with him?
‘I’m not a child, James,’ she told him curtly. ‘I am perfectly capable of running my own life. There was no need for you to wait up for me.’
‘I quite agree,’ came his bland reply. ‘I was just on my way back from an evening stroll.’ He stood aside to allow her to precede him into the house, and then Jenna headed straight for the stairs. She knew that he would have to stop to lock the front door and she fully intended that by the time he came upstairs, she would be fast asleep—in her own bed. She still had her own room, although James insisted on her sleeping with him. Well, tonight…
In her heart of hearts, Jenna knew her actions were motivated more by cowardice than defiance. How could she sleep next to him and not betray to him how she felt about him? It would be an unbearable form of torture to be anywhere near him. And if he should…Her whole body shuddered at the mere thought of his touching her.
Cursing the fact that there was no lock on her bedroom door, Jenna undressed rapidly, not bothering to hang up her dress, or take another shower. Quickly pulling her nightdress over her head, she slid beneath the sheets, switching off the bedside lamp as she did so. It was torture to lie there feigning sleep, trying to slow down the frantic thud of her heart, her ears listening for the slightest indication that James had come upstairs.
When he did arrive, he was so quiet that she didn’t hear a sound until he pushed open the communicating door between their rooms. Lying tensely beneath the covers, she monitored his progress towards the bed. As he leaned over her to snap on the light, she could smell the male heat of his body. He was angry, she realised intuitively despite the calm indifference he was manifesting outwardly.
‘Did you have a pleasant evening?’
Jenna swallowed nervously. So there was going to be no fiction allowed that she might be asleep. Without looking at him, she shrugged and said huskily, ‘It was okay…’
‘Only “okay”? Dear me, I shall have to see if I can improve on that, won’t I?’
There was a wealth of menace in his voice as he reached for her, and Jenna tensed, trying to buy time by saying hoarsely, ‘I will not have you telling me who I may and may not have as friends, James, nor will I have you threatening those people who are my friends.’
‘So…’ He sounded more indifferent than perturbed. ‘He told you that, did he?’
His hands wrenched away the bedclothes with a muted violence that made her nerve endings ache, and then fastened on her shoulders, lifting her round so that he could look at her.
His eyes rested briefly on hers and then lingered on her mouth. It felt sore and tender and Jenna had to fight the impulse to touch her tongue to its bruised contours.
She heard James make a savage sound beneath his breath and then his mouth was on hers, grinding her sore lips back against her teeth, savaging, brutalising, punishing, she recognised wildly, as she struggled to push him away from her, knowing as she did so that despite what he was doing to her, she was experiencing none of the terror she had felt in Graham’s arms. She felt humiliation and pain, yes…anger too…but strangely, no fear.
At last he released her throbbing mouth, his eyes glinting fiercely blue as he stared at her.
‘You hurt me…’ Her fingers touched her sore mouth.
‘Damn you, do you think I don’t know that?’ His fingers cupped her face, forcing her to look at him. ‘Did you let him make love to you, Jenna? Did you? Or was this…’ his thumb touched her bruised mouth, ‘as far as he got?’
‘We didn’t make love.’ She stared back at him defiantly, loathing him for his dominance of her, for his ability to make her ache for his possession even when he was ill-treating her. She hated him for all the things he made her realise about herself that she had never previously known, for making her aware of woman’s infinite capacity to respond to man in all his many moods, both cruel and kind, and she hated herself even more. And because of that she lied to him, adding huskily, ‘But I wanted to.’
The words seemed to drop into a bottomless abyss and hang there echoing into the taut silence.
‘Well, then, so you shall.’
She shivered beneath the silvered menace of his voice, wanting to call back the lie, but forbidden by her pride to do so. ‘And this time, Jenna,’ he added with soft surety, ‘I promise you, you will know who I am.’