The Bride's Secret

'Yes, I've booked something in advance, Annie.'

He didn't elaborate, and some perverse little niggle compounded of pride and anger wouldn't let her enquire further. He had expected her to sleep with him—the seduction scene back in the Range Rover outside Tangier had proved that—but that was one thing she wouldn't be persuaded into. He'd already made it clear that in his reckoning she owed him for letting him down so badly, and this was obviously the time he intended to collect. Wel

l—tough. She was here as his travelling companion, nothing more. He didn't love her, he didn't even seem to like her, and if he thought that she—

'You'll frighten the camels if you glare at them like that.'

'What?' She turned to glance his way as the deep, darkly amused voice spoke again. 'What did you say?'

'That frown is giving you a gargoyle fierceness that could well start a stampede,' he murmured imperturbably, indicating a group of tethered camels outside the car window. 'Have pity on them.'

'I was not frowning,' she protested quickly, ignoring his sceptical shake of the head and turning to stare at the vibrant scene outside the Range Rover. 'I was just looking, that's all.'

'That's your normal sightseeing face?' he asked in mock horror.

'And, even if I was, I don't intend to allow anyone to tell me not to,' Marianne stated firmly. 'My face is my own business.'

'Anyone' smiled lazily before drawing into a parking space and switching off the engine. 'A little walk will make you feel better,' Hudson said comfortingly, in the tone one used to deal with a tired and fractious child who was being deliberately difficult.

Marianne gritted her teeth. 'I'm fine, thank you, but a walk would be lovely.' She was quite pleased with the coolness of her voice.

'You look very beautiful in virginal white with your hair loose and your face freshly scrubbed; have I told you that?' he asked huskily, his voice dropping an octave or two and the warm, heady fragrance of him reaching out to entrap her as he leant across and touched the silken curls. 'Like a fallen angel.'

'A fallen angel? I hardly think so,' Marianne responded quickly.

'A green-eyed, rumpled, sexy angel,' he continued thickly, 'with the body of a goddess and a certain way of looking at a man that sets him on fire and makes him imagine—' He stopped abruptly.

'What?' she asked with breathless nervousness.

'How it would be.' His fingers entwined further into her hair, moving her head forward until her face was a breath away from his, her lips half-open and her heart thudding crazily. 'How it would be in my bed, the shower, the back of my car, a cornfield—Hell, you've no idea of the places I've imagined, Annie. I don't even know if some of them are physically possible but it'd be fun trying. Do fallen angels ever think like that?' he murmured softly.

'Hudson, you said you wouldn't do this. You said—'

'I want to eat you alive, Annie. Ravish you, taste you, turn day to night and night to day until you're so full of me you can't take any more. And then I want to do it all over again.'

She shut her eyes at the dark enchantment his words called forth, and when she opened them again, their green depths shimmering, it was to see he had moved back slightly to look down into her face. 'But first you take a step of faith, and you're not there yet, are you?' he said softly. 'You don't trust me; you're afraid for some reason. I can read it in those great eyes of yours.'

Afraid? Yes, she was afraid, but for him—not herself. And she trusted him—she would trust him with her life—but she couldn't very well say so. He was a man of integrity, honour, courage. And although she had killed his love for her she knew his physical desire for her body was still very real, but she wasn't strong enough to give herself to him for a brief interlude and then walk away.

But she would have to. Those very qualities that made him the man he was also made him a target for the men Michael had been mixed up with, men who hated and feared—with good cause—the name of Hudson de Sance. Men who weren't worthy to lick his boots.

'So I'll wait' He moved back further, his hands falling away from her face, but although she was free she sat in exactly the same position, her mind spinning. 'Until the time is right for me to take you,' he said with incredible matter-of-factness.

'I don't want you to,' she whispered softly.

'There's… there's no point in you waiting for something that's not going to happen.'

'I don't agree.' He was quite still'

'And it will happen.'

'Hudson, we are nothing to each other now; you said so yourself—we aren't even friends. Why… why complicate things like this? I don't understand why you wanted me to come here with you. There must be hundreds of women who would be only too pleased to leap into your bed,' she finished miserably.

'Thousands,' he agreed laconically, his eyes tight on her face.

'Then why bother with someone who… who doesn't want to?'

'Call it a whim if you like,' he said evenly.