Bond of Hatred

Dark golden eyes held hers in the throbbing silence and then a vibrantly amused smile curved his expressive mouth. He strolled back to the bed, closed his hands over her shoulders and took her mouth with a searing hunger that sent the blood drumming through her veins. He pressed her back and came down on her in one smooth movement.

‘Prove it,’ he muttered thickly, settling his hips between her parted thighs, one hand summarily dealing with the tangled silk of her nightdress, wrenching it out of his path.

She trembled, learning the heat of his arousal, filled by an intense excitement she could not deny. He kissed her again then, forcefully, almost roughly, and she tangled her hands breathlessly in his hair, kissing him back with a kind of crazy desperation, gripped by an urgency that burned.

He took her in a storm of passion, wringing every last drop of response from her quivering body. No smooth seduction this time, nothing but the raw driving ferocity of male possession. Afterwards, she was shattered by the extent of her own enjoyment. The suspicion that Alex had been out of control as well had wildly excited her. She lay in a damp tangle of limbs, her arms tightly wrapped around him.

‘I’m sorry.’ Alex pulled away, threw himself back against the pillows and stared up at the ceiling, a dull flush of colour darkening his hard cheekbones. ‘I need a shower.’

She turned over, wondering what was wrong, afraid to ask in case he told her. Ten minutes later, he left the room and she lay sleepless in the darkness. He came back to her with the taste of brandy on his lips at some timeless stage of the night and made love to her all over again, slowly, gently, and with immense restraint. She told herself that it didn’t matter that he was careful not to encroach on her side of the bed afterwards. She told herself that if she couldn’t have love she would settle for sex and that she wasn’t going to let herself be over-sensitive in her expectations. But long after Alex was safely asleep she cried for what she couldn’t have.

The following days blurred one into another. The staff were very busy preparing for the big party Alex was determined to throw. When Sarah wasn’t putting on a brave show for Alex’s benefit, she was with Nicky, to whom she clung more than ever, taking comfort and strength from his unquestioning love and need for her. She went shopping because Alex told her to. She bought fabulous clothes without any real pleasure.

He took her out to dinner several times, but when they were photographed he froze and looked guilty as hell. She wore the diamonds he had given her and which she had never thanked him for and, when she attempted awkwardly to make good the oversight, he brushed her words away as if they embarrassed him and she fell silent. It was that night that she began to pick up on the edge of guilt that betrayed him.

‘I need you,’ he would admit with a flat lack of emotion that chilled her in the dark of their bed but, even though he gave her extraordinary pleasure, he still seemed to feel the urge to apologise for that same need. He never laid a finger on her otherwise. During the hours of daylight, it was as though she were ringed by a defensive force-field, but at night it was as though he couldn’t keep his hands off her and all restraint vanished. He exhausted her to such a degree that she took to sleeping in late in the mornings.

The beginning of the second week he started coming home with giant bunches of flowers and then the meaningful conversations started. He behaved as though everything about her was a source of endless fascination. He wanted to know about her childhood, her parents, every lousy job she had ever had, and her tension began to build to explosive proportions because she knew he couldn’t possibly be one-tenth as interested as he was trying to pretend.

‘Do you really have to try so hard to live with me?’ The desperate demand just flew from her lips at the end of the second week over dinner.

He tensed, his jawline squaring. ‘What do you mean?’

‘You don’t have to try so hard to make me feel wanted,’ she murmured tautly, her shadowed eyes resting on him. ‘I’d rather you were just yourself.’

Brown fingers beat a silent tattoo of tension on the polished table. His magnificent bone-structure tautened, a tinge of pallor showing beneath his sun-bronzed skin. ‘I can’t do anything right with you, can I?’ he breathed with a ragged edge to his deep voice, his accent thicker than she had ever heard it.

‘It’s not that.’ But how could she say to him that she found the spectacle of his obvious efforts to make their marriage work increasingly humiliating. It would go too close to the bone for both of them. An enormous lump formed in her throat. She wished she had kept her mouth shut. That much effort to give her what he believed would make her happy ought not to be condemned. She bent her head, decided she was an ungrateful bitch and fought the tears threatening.

‘You like flowers in the garden but not flowers I give you. You can chatter endlessly to my servants but you can hardly bear to tell me your favourite colour. The message isn’t subliminal, is it? The only place I feel even marginally welcome is our bed and why is that?’

Shaken by the storm she had ignited, the roughness of his strained intonation, she stared at him, devoured by pain.

‘Why?’ Alex repeated fiercely.

Because I love you...

‘And you’re all over Nicky at every hour of the day. He coughs and you can’t get there quick enough!’ Alex slung from between gritted teeth. ‘In spite of the fact that we have a nanny with several willing supporters, you install a baby alarm and you get out of my bed to go to him!’

Very much taken aback, Sarah surveyed him with shocked eyes. Evidently the baby alarm in their bedroom was viewed as some kind of ultimate insult. Did he think she was smothering Nicky? Was that what he was saying? That she was threatening to turn into one of those ghastly suffocating mothers one read about? She reminded herself that Alex had probably been raised more by nannies than parents and possibly he did consider the amount of time she spent with Nicky excessive.

‘I’m sorry if you think I’m taking my responsibilities too seriously.’

‘If you’re that obsessed with babies, why should we wait until next year to extend the family?’ Alex demanded with sardonic bite, his eloquent mouth twisting as he absorbed her consternation. ‘Now isn’t that a wonderful idea?’

‘I don’t think we’re ready for another child,’ she blustered, wondering what on earth was the matter with him.

‘You’re not thinking clearly, pethi mou.’ Alex unleashed a wolfish smile on her. ‘Instead of lying there in stony silence, tolerating my regrettable sexual demands, you could maybe develop a little enthusiasm, say my name, touch me, shock me to death... After all, it would be for a higher purpose!’

Sarah was chalk-pale with mortification. ‘I didn’t realise...that you were dissatisfied,’ she practically whispered.

‘How could you? You’re probably too busy reciting the multiplication tables or anticipating the excitement of Nicky’s next feed!’

Without a further word, Alex vacated the table, his long stride carrying him from the room within seconds. The door thudded on his exit, and Sarah’s cup of coffee blurred out of focus. She looked down at his empty seat and swallowed hard. He had noticed the difference, the difference she had been too self-conscious even to admit inside her own mind. She felt different with Alex now, hadn’t realised in her naïveté that he would feel it too. No longer secure in the belief that Alex found her ravishingly seductive, she was more shy, more tense, more inclined to...just let him get on with it, the admission slunk in, and she reddened miserably.

She accused him of trying too hard and he accused her of not trying at all. ‘I can’t do anything right with you, can I?’ There had been very real pain and frustration in that statement. He believed that she was concentrating too much on Nicky, not enough on him and therefore not enough on their marriage. Was that true? It was certainly true that she had been cowardly, too busy saving face to risk her shattered pride by making any advances of her own, forcing Alex to make every move. No wonder he was fed up to the back teeth with her. She had been so afraid of him guessing that she was hopelessly in love with him, so sunk in self-pity, she had been selfish and unresponsive.

Tonight she would be different, she swore in desperation. Tonight she would forget all those silly, self-indulgent insecurities which she couldn’t afford to harbour if this very shaky marriage was not to fall apart at the seams. Then where would she be? she asked herself. She loved Alex. The prospect of life without Alex filled her with horror. It was incredible how fast her priorities rearranged themselves when she was faced with that threat.