The Unforgettable Husband

‘Neither are you,’ she replied. Then, ‘André,’ she murmured tauntingly into his hard, dark, handsome face. ‘Are you real or aren’t you?’

‘You’re about to find out,’ he said, dropping her down onto a high, French-style antique bed; he pushed her to lie back, then with a few grimly economical movements began unfastening his trousers. Her shoes fell off, a set of bare toes came up to rub against the centre of his chest, and his eyes narrowed into glinting slits which threatened retribution as he stood over her and let her torment him while he rid himself of his clothes.

She didn’t know that this was the real Samantha playing her old sensual games, André mused grimly. If she did know she would not be seducing him, but screaming at him like a maniac.

But instinct had taken over. And instinct was instinct, whether or not it had the memories to go along with it. And the real Samantha’s instinct was to tease and to provoke and to play the seductress until she drove her poor victim crazy.

What lack of memory didn’t tell her was that this poor victim had taken her measure a long time ago. Anything she could dish out he could give back tenfold. It was one of the major ingredients that had made their marriage so excitingly volatile. But, a

s with any volatile substance, it was also dangerously unpredictable. And it was just that unpredictability which had finally torn them both to shreds in the end—because neither had been able to trust the other not to behave like this with anyone else.

Mistrust led to suspicion, and suspicion to lies. When he’d first met her she’d had no less than three boyfriends in tow. Three other men knowing her like this? Three other lovers to share the addiction? The very idea had driven him into taking some desperate measures to gain exclusive rights to this beautiful, wanton, glorious woman.

Within the month he had married her, holding the arrogant belief that marriage was all it would take to tame the tiger that lived inside her. What he’d actually discovered was that he had his own tiger, waiting to leap out and roar. Despite discovering Samantha was a virgin, her tiger became an intense sexual appetite. His tiger was jealousy. He’d had to lose her to discover that her seductress act had hidden a vulnerable heart, which had only wanted him to love her but could not quite believe that he did.

Jealousy was love’s natural predator. It was mean and cruel and naturally devious. So he’d fed her desire and had held back that which she had needed most from him—his love. In the end it had killed her—or as good as, when he saw what it had left her with. This… The desire for his body. And a fear so great, of the love resurrecting itself, that she preferred to remember nothing than risk going through that torment again.

So, what did all of that say about him? he finally concluded. Standing here in front of her—bold in his nakedness, with her foot circling exquisitely arousing caresses against his flesh as he prepared to begin feeding those desires again.

‘André?’ she murmured questioningly, because he’d been standing there too long doing nothing but stare at her.

André. Dear God, the name ripped him to pieces with self-contempt, disgust and a sickening dismay.

‘No,’ he uttered thickly, stepping back from the foot then turning his back on her so he didn’t have to watch while she shattered.

She didn’t say a word, not one word. Her silence cut into him like a nine-inch steel blade.

‘We won’t do this again unless we do so as equals,’ he told her flatly.

‘Equals?’ he heard her whisper.

‘Yes!’ he barked, dragging up the zip over a burgeoning shaft which was making an absolute mockery out of his grand gesture. He swung round to sear her with the flame of his own filthy anger. ‘Equals as in you saying my name and knowing this man called André who you are about to give your body to!’ he all but snarled at her.

She was sitting up, hair a mass of crackling fire around her shoulders and coiling sensually over her lily-white breasts. But her face was whiter, and he saw her flinch, saw her beautiful eyes fill with the horrible glint of shame. Remorse almost choked him. He’d started this. He’d given in to temptation when he’d promised himself he wouldn’t, done it all on the flimsy excuse to himself that he was diverting her attention away from what they had been discussing.

‘I do know him,’ she said quietly. ‘He’s a rat.’

She was right and he was. His anger melted down into grim self-mockery. ‘Well, the rat is going to go scavenging in the kitchen,’ he threw back satirically. ‘Get dressed and come and join me when you’re ready.’

With that he got out of there before she threw something lethal at him. Instincts were instincts after all, and Samantha’s instincts were all damned dangerous…

CHAPTER TEN

SHE didn’t go down. He had to be crazy to think that she actually would.

Or just plain arrogant.

What she did was remain sitting on the edge of the bed, silently drowning in a pool of her own humiliation. And it was all her own. Because she’d done it all by her stupid self. He might have started it but she’d certainly encouraged it. When she should have been pushing him away she’d kissed him, bitten him, lured him and provoked him like a sex-mad teenager without a moral in sight.

Sex-mad. She shivered, feeling goose-bumps of dismay break out all over her flesh. At least they had a strong enough effect to make her get up and gather up her clothes with the intention of putting them back on. Then she just stood there, looking around the bedroom with its beautiful French furniture as if none of it was even there. Then, without thinking twice about it, she dropped the clothes to the floor again, walked back to the bed and crawled beneath the cool white percale duvet, shut her eyes and sank into a deep, dark slumber filled with dancing nymphets and leering dark devils.

She awoke hours later, feeling heavy-eyed and so sluggish she could almost believe she had drunk herself into a bad hangover.

That would be a first, she thought with a smile, and got out of the bed to walk into the bathroom, where she showered, dried herself, strolled across the thick creamy carpet towards another door that led into the dressing room. Taking her time, she selected a long, emerald-green, Japanese silk robe, slipped it on and began tying the silk belt around her waist as she walked back into the bedroom. Her head was down, watching her busy fingers, and her movements were as smooth and relaxed as anyone’s should be who was moving around their own bedroom, in their own home.

André was away, she was thinking idly. Raoul was out on the town somewhere. Which meant she had the whole house to herself to—

That was when she noticed the suitcase standing by the door, frowned at it—then heard a sound across the room and turned her head to see André, dressed in black silk trousers and a white silk shirt, standing by the window, with his hands in his pockets and his handsome face wearing a very sternly closed expression.