The desire she always knew exactly how to invoke. The desire she had always scorned and used against him.
The desire he meant to summon within her now.
Just then, he saw her smile and its sweetness jarred his resolve dangerously. In that moment he wavered, knowing a sudden distaste for what he was about to do, but just as quickly he mastered his reluctance.
The agony must be ended, and soon, or he could not vouch for what violence he might do her.
Or himself.
No, he could not turn back now.
Hawke's eyes glinted like cold steel as he leaned down and caught once again the faint fragrance of jasmine drifting up from her soft skin. Suddenly, she curved toward him, and her hand sought his comforting warmth. When her fingers threaded through his, she pulled his broad palm closer, breathing a tiny sigh of pleasure. Good, he thought, very good. This would be easier than he had imagined.
But Hawkesworth had not counted on the fierce desire that her touch provoked. Without thinking he turned her face and bent to meet her lips. Her mouth was achingly sweet, and after a moment her lips parted before his delving tongue. Slowly he slipped within her, seeking out hidden corners, teasing her gently and then more forcefully as she twisted against his intimate caress.
He gave her no quarter, pursuing her ruthlessly, teaching her his power. When a tiny breathless moan broke low in her throat, he stroked deep, initiating the primitive play of man against woman.
She whimpered and tried to escape him, but he captured her face and held her motionless, never ceasing his relentless invasion until she weakened and received him fully.
So, Isobel! the Duke of Hawkesworth thought coldly. That lie is laid to rest! You are no more immune to my touch than I am to yours.
Then the battle was engaged in earnest. Soon, Hawke told himself, very soon, he would brand her with the fire of her own passion.
That same fire would burn her poison from his blood forever.
* * * * *
Lying on the narrow bed beneath him, Alexandra smiled gravely. She tossed upon hazy dreams, fleeing toward a distant continent. In her mind whirled the thousand lights and colors of another place and time, a country where white mirages shimmered and twisted in the breath of a dry, searing wind.
She frowned, studying the high Indian plain before her. Two figures were outlined against the mirage, but she could not make them out. When she heard the proud neigh of a horse, she ran toward the black shape of her hunter with a cry of delight, slipping onto his unsaddled back and twisting her hands deep in his ebony mane.
Ah, Fury, you were worth every sovereign of the fortune the Nawab of Bengal demanded for you! Black and silent as the night, you carried me falconing in the foothills of the Himalayas and tiger hunting in Bengal. And when I froze in fear before the pair of king cobras rising out of the dust, their baleful black hoods spread for attack, it was you who lashed out to save me.
Her ankle had been shattered when the frenzied horse threw her from the saddle. With the acrid taste of death in her mouth, Alexandra had crawled on elbow and knee to the great suffering creature. The long minutes had passed while she stroked Fury's neck, her tears blending with the sweat welling up over his black body.
Each surge of that proud heart had swept the cobras' terrible poison farther through the horse's helpless body. Death was certain — there was nothing to do but wait, and they both knew it. Helplessly, Alexandra watched the slow death creep closer until finally the deadly toxins attacked the heart.
His eyes wild, Fury shuddered one last time and then stirred no more. Even now, the memory still haunted her.
But suddenly, in this place out of time, this place of dreams, Fury was with her again, and Alexandra accepted this as naturally as she accepted the other phantoms she had met in this netherworld. How good it felt to be free again, the wind sleek in her hair, Fury powerful beneath her as they pounded across the white plains!
"Ah, my love," she whispered breathlessly, "where have you been these long years?"
Her lips curved into a ghost of a smile as she slid her hands into Fury's mane, tangling her fingers in the thick sable hair and dropping a kiss on his tensed neck. She exulted in his speed and effortless motion, in the flex and play of rippling muscles beneath her legs. All her pain, all her regrets were forgotten, and she lost herself in the flight toward white peaks beckoning on the distant horizon.
But a hint of warning clouded her happiness. Restlessly, she shifted, shaking her head. Why did she drift so oddly from thought to thought? Why did her body burn with its own life, a thing apart?
Dimly, then, she perceived that she was not alone. The stranger was with her — the man from the fog. She flinched before that hard, bitter face etched with dark shadows. How had he followed her here to the Indian hill country?
The air shimmered with heat and began to hum as the man's image solidified. Slowly, his arms surrounded her. Strong hands circled her waist and pulled her from Fury, slanting her against a broad male chest. His eyes were dark gray flecked with silver, and when she looked down at him, she saw they were smoky with desire.
She wanted to fight him, but the effort was great. Their breaths caught as they faced each other, foe and captive held immobile while their silent struggle raged on. Then slowly he slid her to the ground, drawing her down along the hard, muscled length of his body.
She tried to look away from the smoky pull of his eyes, but he caught her chin in his hand and forced her to face him. Long and hard she fought him, using all the desperate strength of a small animal cornered by a savage predator.
Even as Alexandra fought fiercely, she knew with terrible clarity that she was losing. For in that unforgettable moment she felt the first stirring of a woman's passion. In rich heavy waves it broke over her and swept her along in its relentless path.
Strong hands tightened upon her waist and forced her closer against the saddle of her captor's thighs. With every inch he broke her, teaching her the hot need of his manhood. His lips slanted down, warm and heavy, drinking in her very soul.
Fight! her mind screamed, but her body rebelled.
She had wandered for so long, friendless since her father's death, an outcast from all she had known and valued. Now something promised to blot out her pain and replace it with keener pleasure than she had ever known.
Suddenly, she frowned, fighting the warm waves that licked at her so seductively.
No! She could not yield. Not ever! Not to this man.
* * * * *
As if in a dream, the Duke of Hawkesworth heard his wife's ragged little sob, followed by his own groan of pleasure. Drugged with the magic taste of her, he struggled back and dragged his mouth free, the husky rasp of his breath mingling with her whispered sigh of regret.
Hawke had a sudden feeling that he would never be the same after what he was about to do. He had to fight an urge to turn and leave the room.
Not yet, he told himself. Not when there was so much at stake.
With a frozen sense of inevitability he watched his hand slip to his wife's breast and coax her nipple to aching hardness. Then, as he saw her twist restlessly against him, he spread both hands and spanned her breasts, feeling the taut crests tease his palms.
She murmured softly and arched against him. Hawke's breath caught at this unmistakable invitation, and all his doubts were forgotten.
His broad palm burned where he touched her, and his breath was ragged in his own ears. Get a hold on yourself, you fool! You've come too far to lose everything for a moment of hot-blooded abandon!
The duke's eyes narrowed, and his mouth formed a thin smile. This time she would dance to his tune! In the throes of the drug she would hide nothing from him.
His strong fingers skimmed her perfect white skin, playing across the curve of her ribs and down to her taut belly. Slowly, as if he had all the time in the world, Hawke tangled his fingers in the auburn triangle at the top of her thighs.
When he ranged deeper and parte
d her, he found the liquid fire that confirmed what he already suspected. She wanted him. Triumphantly, he teased her to offer her honeyed sweetness, smiling when she arched slightly against his hand. With a reckless laugh he brought his lips to explore the hollow of her neck and then moved lower to nip the proud peaks of her breasts, forcing her toward the explosive release she had long denied him.
As if in a dream, he felt her struggle and twist against his hand.
Her muted gasp echoed in the small room. "No," she whispered raggedly, tossing beneath his masterful touch. But each movement only pinned her against him more intimately.
The boat lurched suddenly, and Hawke felt the world shrinking around him until all that was left was the little room and the wild sweet abandon of her response.
"Please," she moaned achingly, and this time Hawke heard the fear in her voice.
"Yes, damn it! This time you won't stop me, Isobel!" His caressing fingers eased deeper within her, and a moment later he heard the tiny moans torn from her parted lips. With a raw surge of primal male triumph, he exulted in her cries, in the way her hands bit into his shoulders, urging him ever closer. Then he felt her shudder and watched her eyes flutter open, only to cloud with surprise when the convulsions began to take her.
"No!" she cried, her body arching away from him. "Not—" But the words died on her breath, torn from her lips as her choking cry spilled through the quiet room.
* * * * *
It was over, Hawke told himself.
Small beads of sweat dampened the black hair at his brow as he watched his wife's shuddering release. He had found the passion Isobel had mockingly denied him. Her hold on him was broken at last.
But as he looked down upon her vivid beauty, sunset hair wild against ivory skin, watching her ragged breaths drawn through full lips still swollen from his kisses, Hawkesworth discovered it was he who felt drugged.
He would not have recognized this woman beneath him, a woman who responded with such sweet fury to his urgent fingers. With masculine pride, Hawke told himself it was he who had changed her, claiming her this way.
In that moment, reckless with one triumph, he knew he had to have another. Driven to the brink of exhaustion, he felt the gnawing hunger of the old obsession.
Only this time he did not fight its angry heat. Urgently, he stripped away his neckcloth and pulled his shirt free of his breeches. An instant later he flung the tangle of white cloth behind him, revealing a broad expanse of muscle lush with mahogany hair. His chest rippled as he bent to tug off his boots and send them flying after the shirt. His fingers were already at the buttons on his breeches by the time his boots hit the wooden floor.
Then he was naked, sliding down beside his wife, slanting his hard muscles across her fragile skin. He turned her face into his neck, their bodies fitting together perfectly, softness against aching hardness. With a groan Hawke moved over her, dizzy with the heat of her breath playing across his neck and chest. His face was taut with desire as he checked his passion, feathering kisses across her sweet curves and hollows, readying her for his entry.
She was pliant beneath him now, still burning in the afterglow of the passion he had just aroused. Hawke felt himself slide into the dream that shimmered around them, the same dream that had tortured him for years. Only this time it was real and no illusion when he looked down to see their bodies slick with sweat, his wife softly yielding beneath him.
"Isobel," he commanded raggedly. "Open your eyes and look at me, by God! Look at our joining."
Through a haze of passion, Hawke studied her pale face. Her skin was alabaster, so translucent that a vein showed clearly where it pounded at her neck. For a moment her delicate auburn lashes fluttered restlessly, but even then she did not wake.
He lifted himself above her, his thoughts whirling as he fought to control his raging desire, the hard heat of his body crying out for release in her honeyed softness.
With a harsh curse, he pulled himself from her just in time.
Any longer and he would be lost, Hawke realized. Too far gone to stop himself. Too far gone to prove his mastery over his wife once and for all.
And by God, he wanted her awake and exquisitely aware when he took her to the brink of passion, plunging deep within her again and again until she cried out her need to him.
Fighting against the hot tide of passion, he struggled upright and stood looking down at his errant wife, his face a taut mask. She was beautiful beyond belief, Hawke thought bitterly, studying the alabaster skin still flushed from his heated touch. Her fiery hair cascaded about her like a burnished halo, and he found himself twisting a vibrant curl around his fingers. Abruptly, he caught himself, jerking his fingers back as if he were burned. He of all people knew that this was no haloed angel before him.
Unsteadily, Hawke lifted his breeches from the floor, tamping down the still-flaming embers of desire. He forced himself to look away, for her beauty was a torment to him now. With quick, angry steps he plunged across the room to the porthole, looking out at — but not quite seeing — the sheer chalk cliffs to the east glinting stark and white in the morning sun.
For long hours Hawkesworth paced the narrow room, his anger swelling as he awaited the final bitter confrontation with his wife. Forward he strode along the room's narrow length and then back again, over and over, his face dark with barely contained wrath, sullen like a Channel gale about to break.
But he knew no release — for either his passion or his fury.
For the woman on the bed did not wake.
Chapter Seven
For Alexandra, tossed upon the tide of dreams, the turmoil was already fading. With weary fingers she steered her little dhow, angling the small sail to capture a shifting wind. In the wake of the storm's fury she felt only wretched emptiness.
Briefly she had been buffeted by waves of burning pleasure so sharp they verged upon pain. Mindlessly she had fought the tides, only to feel herself spiral away into darkness.
Now the storm was over. All she felt was the gentle rock of the sea beneath her and the sun pouring down like warm honey.
Tired. Why so tired?
With a muted sigh, Alexandra let herself slip back into the rhythm of the waves that slapped softly upon the sides of the dhow. Beside her, Rajah squeaked demandingly, and she reached to soothe his sleek, warm fur. Gently, she gathered him against her and closed her eyes, sliding down into the peace that beckoned so seductively.
Sleep, sleep, the darkness whispered, and so she did.
* * * * *
For Hawkesworth, the minutes crept by with excruciating languor.
On through the gathering twilight he paced, tense and silent as he wore a path in the still, small cabin. The captain brought him food, but he could not eat. So he drank instead, a glass of claret and then another and another, until the bottle was nearly empty. Then he changed his travel-stained clothes and began to pace once more.
After another quarter of an hour he could contain his impatience no longer, stalking to the bed to study his captive closely. It was then he noticed that her pale skin had grown whiter. Her breathing had slowed, so slight that she seemed not to move at all. Lying on the bed, her hands limp at her sides, she suddenly seemed to Hawke more dead than alive.
She was slipping away from him, he realized abruptly. He chafed her cheeks and called her name, but still she did not respond. For the briefest instant he thought of letting fate decide the outcome. If death was her due, he might as well let it come without a struggle.
But the Duke of Hawkesworth found that the beliefs of a lifetime were not easily forgotten. With a curse, he began to shake his sleeping wife, calling her name and damning the old fool of an apothecary who had told him that two tablespoons of laudanum in half a cup of brandy would do the trick nicely. Briskly, Hawke slapped her pale cheeks and lifted her to her feet, only to feel her legs crumple uselessly a moment later. Again and again he lifted her, trying to force her to stand and walk.
"Wake up, damn it!"
he ordered, trying to penetrate her drugged sleep. "I'll not lose you now, Isobel!" Her eyelids flickered open for a moment, but immediately closed. The duke cursed long and fluently then, for he had the terrible premonition that if he did not catch her and hold her soon, she would slip away from him forever.
In his desperation, Hawke recalled a young housemaid who had slid into just the same lethargy after being dosed with too much laudanum. He frowned, remembering his mother's crisp orders to fetch a tub filled with cold water.
A second later he was at the door, bellowing orders as he tossed a blanket atop his wife's pale body. "A tub, Captain Scott, and fill it full with seawater!" The startled seaman's face appeared at the top of the stairs. "Hurry, man! Have Jeffers bring coffee, too, black as he can make it!"
The captain knew an order when he heard one, and something in the duke's flinty eyes made him bite back the question he'd been about to ask. "Aye, Your Grace!"
Minutes later a brass hip bath was wedged into the cabin's narrow length, freezing seawater still sloshing against its rim. On the chest nearby stood a steaming tankard of coffee. With a curt nod, Hawkesworth dismissed the captain, who studiously avoided looking at the motionless figure on the bed.
As soon as the door closed, Hawke lifted his wife's limp form and plunged her into the freezing water. Still she did not move, and he grew close to despair.
His eyes closed, Hawke dropped his head against her reddish-gold curls and found himself praying awkwardly, something he had not done since his youth.
Outside he heard the dry whisper of the wind and the cries of circling gulls as the Sylphe pitched at her mooring. He smelled her faint scent of jasmine, cursing himself and the bitter fate that had driven him to such extreme measures. His shoulders sagged, and his hands tightened around her back.
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