'Like a rumpled golden kitten, all silky curls and great honey and green eyes,' he continued softly. 'I want to make you purr, Annie, do you know that? And I could… beautifully.'
She didn't doubt it for a minute, she thought feverishly.
'And you know it too.' She lowered her lids quickly but it was too late; he'd read her innermost desire. 'So what's holding you back?' he asked with silky determination.
Derision was her only escape and she took it. 'You'd like to believe that, wouldn't you?' she said cuttingly, wielding the weapon of disdain as best she could, considering she was fluid inside. 'The great Hudson de Sance, best lawyer, best lover… Is there anything you don't think you're the best at?' she asked with lethal sarcasm, feigning disgust as she turned on her side away from him, jerking the bedclothes mote tightly round her shoulders.
'Stop it, Annie.' His voice was gentle, his touch tender as he reached over and turned her to face him, holding her still when she would have jerked away. 'You're playing a part, and not even very well. I've met too many real bitches in my work to doubt it'
'I don't know what you mean,' she said desperately.
' You spoke my name in your sleep, not once but several times,' he continued evenly. 'What were you dreaming about, Annie?'
'Nothing.' The sensation of entrapment was so real she could taste it, her stomach shuddering and twisting as the cool grey eyes pierced hers, and although she struggled to let nothing of what she was feeling show in her eyes he read the hot panic and fear. And this time he was allowing her no evasion.
'You moaned it,' he whispered relentlessly. 'Breathed it out in little soft sighs—and I knew what you were dreaming. Do you know how I knew?'
'I don't care,' she muttered frantically.
'Because I recognised the longing, the desire, the need.' His grip was firm, preventing her from moving and increasing the feeling of being cornered He watched his words sink in before he continued, 'I want you, Annie. Badly.'
She lay motionless, conscious of a tearing pain deep inside. There were probably hundreds, thousands of men she could have married and to whom her connection with undesirables like Michael wouldn't have meant a thing. But Hudson wasn't one of them. She could never marry a man like Hudson and expect him to take the consequences of having a wife with the sort of family ties she had. She… she was no good for him—bad news.
'I don't want you.' She forced the words out through numb lips. 'It… it wouldn't work.'
'Liar.' His voice was without enmity, almost expressionless. 'I can't get you out of my head, Annie—strange that, isn't it?' he said reflectively. 'It's like you're in my blood, my bones, and I don't like it. I'm a man who likes being in control, but you know that,' he said, with a self-deprecating grimace. 'I don't like the feeling of being vulnerable,'
'I… I don't make you vulnerable.' She was stunned by his revelation, and scared. She could just about take it when he was cold and arrogant, or charming and beguiling. Even the sensual, dark side of him was something she could recognise and fight against. But this exposure of his inner self was lethal.
It made her want to cover his face in kisses, to hold him close and tell him she cared more than he would ever know. It was… pure torture, she thought, trembling.
'Yes, you do.' He drew back slightly, his voice steady and his face shadowed. 'There is only one other person who has ever done that to me, and I worked through that one.'
One other person? He saw the blow register in her eyes but she couldn't have spoken; the pain was too sickening.
It's not what you're thinking.' There was a peculiar look on his face now, but although she searched his eyes his expression was inscrutable. 'It wasn't a woman—at least not in the sense
you assume.'
'Wasn't it?' She didn't believe him and it showed.
'No.' And then he sighed, frustratedly, as he said, 'Damn it, I've told you tins much, I may as well tell you the rest I've never talked about this before to anyone, but I don't want you to get the wrong idea. I've a feeling there are too many secrets between us as it is.'
'You needn't explain anything to me,' she said stiffly, her voice and face telling him just the opposite.
'It was my mother, Annie,' he said softly. 'She left my father, me, our home when I was almost six years old—just walked out one day and didn't come back.' He had let go of her now but she made no effort to move, her eyes on his face. 'She left to go and live with her lover, my father's brother,' he continued with a quiet, steady flatness that told her the memory was still caustic.
'Your uncle?' She stared at him, horrified.
'My uncle,' he confirmed softly, his eyes growing reflective as he looked back down the years to the devastation and confusion of a little six-year-old boy and desperate husband.
'He left my aunt and cousins to be with her. It was an… unusual twist to the eternal triangle and rocked the immediate family, as you can imagine; the repercussions were endless. First the patriarch of the clan—my mother's father from whom I got my name—ordered my mother home but she wouldn't listen. He was a harsh man, strong, and I don't think he had imagined she wouldn't do as she was told—even though she was a grown woman of twenty-seven. Apparently he tried everything—blackmail, threats, enticements—but she wouldn't budge. She had far more of him in her than he realised,' he added bitterly.
'After a few weeks it became apparent she wasn't coming back. She… she made no effort to contact us, so my grandfather made my father see her to ask for a reconciliation. She didn't want it She told him she wanted a new life with Claude, that he was all that mattered to her.'
Marianne didn't dare ask what his mother had said about him, but in the next breath he told her, more by what he didn't say than what he did.
'She wanted all ties with her old life cut,' he said quietly. 'Severed clean. She made a deal with my grandfather after my father had seen her. In payment for her and Claude moving right away, to a different country where Claude had business contacts and where the scandal would be kept to a minimum, he would see that she was rewarded financially. My grandfather agreed.'