Mistress of Deception

'Is that so? Well, maybe Bob and your family could do with a bit of enlightenment of your character as well? You're hardly holier-than-thou. Maybe I should tell them what's been keeping you away all those nights this past year.'

'You won't do that,' he ground out as he urged her down the steps that led to the next level, and the bedrooms. But he didn't turn down the corridor to where his mother's and Vicki's bedrooms were, sweeping her instead round the other way and into his own bedroom. Her cry of protest was muffled when his hand closed over her mouth and he kicked the door shut behind him.

She bit him. Hard.

'You bitch!' he gasped, flicking his hand madly before trying to suck the pain away. His blue eyes blazed as he glared hate at her.

'You're lucky I didn't do you more damage. Keep away from me, Alan,' she warned. 'I don't want you any more.'

Now he laughed.

'I mean it!'

'Might I remind you you've said all this before.'

'This time it's different.'

'How is it different?'

Ebony was about to throw Gary and Paris in his face again when she stopped. That would be a stupid thing to do. Alan in a jealous rage was both frightening and insidiously attractive to her. Desperately she searched around for something to say. Anything!

'You're beginning to bore me,' she bit out, not realising till the words were out that it was an even more stupid thing to say.

Alan's face darkened, then filled with scorn. 'Is that so? Well, you could have fooled me. Only the other night you couldn't get enough of me.'

She flushed fiercely, shame a bitter sword in her heart. 'That was then,' she went on, digging her own grave even further. 'This is now.'

'So it is,' he smiled. 'Shall we see how different now is, then? Shall I give you a little test?'

Ebony backed up against the door when he took a step towards her, her hand reaching blindly for the knob. She found it at the same time as his hands closed tightly around both her wrists, holding her in a grip of iron while he pressed his body up against hers, his head dipping to kiss not her mouth but her neck.

A shudder ran through her.

His mouth travelled slowly up the long white column of her throat, his sipping kisses soft and moist and seductive. They moved along her jaw line, up over her ears, across her temples to press gently against her suddenly closed eyelids. By the time he worked his way down to the corner of her mouth, she was aching to part her lips to invite the sort of kiss that could only end one way.

'No,' she moaned, in protest against her own flaring passion.

'Stop being silly,' he rasped against her quivering lips. 'You still want me as much as I want you. There's no use denying it, Ebony. I can feel you trembling already.'

Sensing her inability to struggle at that moment, he let go of her wrists, his hands moving up under her jumper while his mouth continued to hover over hers.

'This is what you want, isn't it?' he tempted, stroking her braless breasts till she was really trembling.

But not entirely from desire. Despair was sending her crashing down a tortuous path she'd never been before. For the first time she could not totally block out the ugliness of it all, the sordidness behind the sensuality. A feeling of intense desolation flooded in, tears filling her eyes. She made a choking sound.

Alan's abrupt withdrawal bewildered her for a second. Her soggy lashes fluttered upwards, her blurred vision gradually taking in an Alan she had never seen before. He looked quite shattered.

'You're... you're crying,' he said, obviously shaken.

She blinked, gulped, and said nothing. She couldn't. The tears were still running down her face and the back of her throat. Yet now that he'd stopped touching her, she felt oddly desolate, which was a perverse reaction, given her devastation of a moment ago, not to mention her ongoing weeping.

'I.. .1 don't like you crying,' he went on in a type of angry confusion. 'Stop it!'

Now she began to laugh as well as sob, bringing her rapidly to the edge of hysteria. His stinging slap across her face sent her mouth gasping and her eyes flinging wide.

'Stop it,' he groaned into the sudden electric silence, his face a tortured mask.

Her answer was a single strangled sob.

'God, Ebony,' he shuddered. 'I'm sorry. Sorry...'

And then he was cupping her stunned face, pressing impassioned lips to her eyelids, licking the tears away, tracing the red imprint of his hand on her cheek with trembling fingertips, whispering more wildly apologetic words that sent her heart soaring and her defences crashing. Her own hands lifted to his face, inviting him to take her mouth in a proper kiss.