And Annie lost the ability to breathe.
Her eyes were fixed unblinkingly on that daunting juncture between muscle-taut thighs where the shadowing of crisp black chest hair arrowed to a thick cluster around his potent sex.
He obviously felt no qualms about standing stark naked in front of Annie Lacey. As far as he was concerned, she had seen it all before—many times. But to her this was one of the most critical occasions of her life. And she could neither move, breathe nor speak as, dry-mouthed, she stared at him, horrified by the slow, rumbling burn beginning to erupt deep down inside her.
Desire—for a man who held her in such contempt. And a fascination so strong that she couldn’t even make herself look the other way! Her eyes flickered, then shifted to graze over wide shoulders and bulging biceps where the deeply tanned skin shone like lovingly oiled leather.
His chest was wide and firm, covered by the thick mass of black curling hair—hair that angled down over a stomach so tight that she felt she could throw a punch at it and not make it give so much as a fraction. Then those hips—those narrow, tight hips so arrogantly cradling the essence of the man himself, a man endowed with such power that she could almost feel its—
‘Santa María…’
The softly uttered words barely impinged on her concentration. She was too lost in what was happening to him, too busy watching in paralysed awe as his body stirred, hardened, grew into full masculine arousal.
He let go of the towel and began walking slowly towards her. Annie took in a short, shaky breath and moistened her dry lips with her tongue. She couldn’t move, was unable to do anything other than watch him fill with desire, and feel her own senses fill with the same.
‘Sin,’ he muttered tightly as his eyes glittered over her. ‘You are sin, Angelica Lacey. Pure sin.’
Coming to a stop in front of her, his hand lifted, stroking across her shoulder on its way to capture the edge of her towel. She was trembling when it fell away—not shivering now, but most definitely trembling. There was a subtle difference, and it all had to do with the sensations she was experiencing inside.
His hand was on her waist, gripping, tugging—arrogant in his maleness as he lifted her up against him. She arched on an indrawn gasp as his manhood slid proudly between her trembling thighs. For a moment they stayed like that, their eyes locked, burning, darkened by feeling. Then he captured her parted mouth, widened it and plunged hungrily in.
And she surrendered—surrendered to the storm that had been building steadily from the moment their eyes had clashed across a crowded room…
* * *
Nothing—nothing in her vast and cynical if second-hand knowledge about the act of love had prepared her for what had actually taken place there in the growing darkness of that night.
Nothing. And she lay very still beside the man who had just propelled her into true womanhood, not daring to move while she came to terms with the wreck it had left of her emotions—her senses! Her very soul.
César was lying beside her, stretched out on his stomach, his arms curved tensely around his dark head. His body was damp, layered with a fine film of perspiration. His shoulders, his hips, his slim, tight buttocks were trembling as he struggled to come to terms with what had just taken place.
He was shocked.
Dear God, she was shocked! But both for different reasons. She was shocked by the sheer, brutal reality of the act. His shock came from discovering that the woman he had just taken with such devastating power and sensuality was not the woman he had believed her to be.
And why should he have suspected? she asked herself bitterly. She was the notorious Annie Lacey, for goodness’ sake. Used—more than used to experiencing what they had just done!
She had not even attempted to tell him the truth.
And would he have believed the truth if she had attempted to tell him?
Of course not. Who would? She was Annie Lacey. A product of her own making. She had set out to build a lie around herself and had succeeded so successfully that no one ever thought of questioning that lie.
But he could have been—kinder, she thought on a sudden well of anguish. No matter who or what he’d believed her to be, he still could have been kinder—couldn’t he?
Tears lay like a film across her eyes, blurring her vision as the moon filtered through the darkness of the room. She hurt. She hurt in so many places that she did not know which one hurt the most—her body, still wearing the power of his physical imprint, her brain, grinding against her skull in stunned revelation, her senses, still quivering, flailing around in the morass of the aftermath, not quite knowing what had happened to them, and too shattered by it all even to attempt to regroup.
Then a hand reached out to touch her, and everything—mind, body, shattered senses—leapt upwards and together in a wild dovetailing of panic, sending her rolling from the bed to land, swaying, on her feet—feet that were already stumbling away, running from what she knew was bound to come next.
The post-mortem. No! Please! Just let me be!
Bathroom. A bathroom door had a lock on it, and she needed to put herself behind lock and key before he—
‘Angelica…’
No! Bright balls of panic propelled themselves against the back of her eyes, and in one swift movement she leapt like a gazelle into the bathroom, closing and locking the door behind her before sliding heavily down its smooth, panelled white surface onto the cold, hard ceramic-tiled floor.
Her knees came up, her arms wrapping tensely around them, then her head was lowering, the silken tangle of her hair falling like a curtain all around her as she sat huddled, shivering. Exposed.
Exposed for exactly what she was.
A fraud.
For the last four years of her life she had been a complete fraud. She, the shrewd and cynical Annie Lacey, who had believed that she was playing a great game with other people’s perception of her, now realised that she had only been deceiving herself. In her way, she’d believed that she was punishing them all for making her be that way when in actual fact she had been punishing herself—punishing herself for a whole range of things, Alvarez being only a small part in all of that, she now realised.
He had been the conductor, but not the whole orchestra.
‘Oh, God.’ The words came choking from a throat closed tight on tears of self-knowledge.
You hate yourself, Annie, she told herself wretchedly—not all those other people who only responded to what you gave them to respond to. You built Annie Lacey because you truly believe that persona the only one you’re fit for.
Woman as whore. She shuddered nauseously. The fact that you never actually did whore around is incidental. It is what you believed yourself to be.
And now you are, she added starkly—the whore of a man who despises everything about you, even the fact that he could not stop himself from devouring the body he despised so much.
‘Sin’. He had called her ‘sin’.
‘Angelica.’ A tap at the door behind her accompanied the gruff reverberation of her name. ‘Angelica, open the door.’
No. God, no, she thought, and stumbled to her feet, blue eyes so dark with emotion that they seemed black in her paste-white face. Sheer instinct sent her towards the glass door which housed the shower cubicle. She stepped in and switched on the jet, not caring that the water hissed down icy cold on top of her, then almost immediately stinging-hot.
The need to wash away the whole experience kept her locked beneath the shower, lost to everything but a grinding knowledge of utter self-disgust.
If he knocked or called her name again, she didn’t hear him. And she stayed like that for long, long minutes, face lowered, water streaming onto her head until her long hair split and hung in two slick golden pelts from her nape.
Then, slowly, a sense of feeling began to creep back into her numbed flesh, the hot sting of water pulsing down on her urging her back to life, and she lifted her head, found a bar of soap and began methodically washing her
self. Toes, feet, legs. Her thighs where his thrusting body had left marks on her fine, delicate skin.
She washed her hips and her buttocks—sore where the height of his passion had sent his fingers digging in. The smell of him and the feel of him still lingered languorously in the hot, steamy air.
Her belly felt tight and tender inside, her breasts alien parts of her that, when she smoothed soap over the taut, swollen mounds, brought a sharp gasp of reaction from her tight throat as her fingers brushed nipples still erect and raw from his hot, hungry kisses.
He had left his mark here in other ways too—in reddened blotches where his lips had nipped and sucked. Her throat had the same—several tender places where she knew she would bruise later on. It was the way of her skin—pale, delicate, it bruised at the slightest knock.
Her arms seemed to be the only part of her that had escaped the marks of his possession—except for her wrists, she noted as she stared at them, ringed pink where he had gripped them together over her head. Oh, not in a demand for submission, she grimly allowed, but in rough, angry passion. He’d wanted to stretch her out to her fullest so that he could taste every inch of her skin with his tongue, kneeling over her with his dark face fierce with desire.
A ripple fluttered over her skin—in memory of the pleasure he had given. Her mouth, full and throbbing, was still wearing his kisses even though she had washed her lips as well.
Sighing, she turned her face up to the spray then stood there with her eyes closed, trying not to think of it any more.
Then her nails curled tensely into her palms as unwillingly she remembered what she had done to him, how the wild explosion of passion inside her had sent her fingers raking across his sleekly groomed head, searching for, finding and clutching at the slim tail of hair, then tugging—using it to pull him closer so that she could lose herself in his hot, marauding mouth.
Then later…She shuddered, remembering how those same fingers had scraped the ribbon right away, his hair falling like midnight silk around her as her fingers had moved on again, curling into tense claws to score down the full length of his long, muscular back as he’d entered her…Her impassioned cry of pain echoed now in the hollow place her mind had become.
Well, there was one thing, she mocked herself grimly when eventually she made herself move again, she had gone from virgin to experienced lover in one fell swoop, because there had been nothing that he hadn’t shown her in that wildly hectic romp on the bed, nothing he had not been prepared to do to heighten their pleasure.
No gentle introduction for the virgin. No holds barred.
That point between her thighs quivered in response, and jerkily she pushed herself out of the shower before it all took too frightening a grip on her again.
Another huge white bath sheet hung folded on the rail. Picking it up, she wrapped it fully around herself then found another towel which she wrapped turban-style round her head.
It took a teeth-clenching gathering together of all hear courage to make her unlock the door and step back into the bedroom.
CHAPTER SIX
CÉSAR WAS still there, standing by the open window on the other side of the bed, gazing out at a moonlit sea. He was dressed again, in a fresh white shirt and a pair of casual trousers. His hair had been severely contained once again.
Like the man, she decided hollowly—back under control.
Someone had removed the wet clothes, and the bed had been tidied. Not that it mattered. Nothing mattered.
Ignoring him, she moved over to a big, apricot-coloured easy chair and, snatching up the scatter cushion lying on it, sat down, curling herself into it, hugging the cushion to her breasts.
‘Why?’ he demanded quietly—nothing else. It really was not necessary to add anything else.
‘People see what they want to see,’ she answered flatly. She could have said more but didn’t. She didn’t want to talk at all. She just wanted to sit here and wallow in the aftermath of a holocaust.
He moved, turning his tense body a little so that he could look at her. The movement made her glance warily at him, her huge blue eyes that had lost all their self-protecting veils clashing with a tight, grim face emptied of most of its beautiful colour. He was holding his lips in a straight, tight line, as if the teeth behind them were fiercely clenched, his chiselled jaw set under the pressure.
His eyes were dark and sombre, the truth overlaying his earlier contempt with remorse.
No. She looked down and away again as compassion for him began to swell inside her. But she was too full with her own dark thoughts just now to deal with his.
And anyway, even though she was aware that maybe half of the blame for what had taken place between them had to lie at her own feet—or those of the Annie Lacey she had so carefully deceived everyone with—she could not forgive him his soulless seduction.
Would not forgive him.
He had got her here to this island under false pretences. He had insulted and threatened her, then coolly blackmailed her before offering the final indignity of ruthlessly seducing her.
If he’d wanted his revenge, he had it. She only hoped that he was satisfied with his results.
Oh, God help me, she thought on a sudden well of absolute despair, and began to sob softly, brokenly into the protection of the cushion.
‘Hell.’ The thickened curse came from very close by. He was squatting down in front of her. ‘I’m sorry,’ he murmured deeply. ‘What else can I say? I swear to you, I never meant to hurt you like this.’
No? He had set out to hurt her from the very moment they’d met. If it hadn’t been this way then it would have been another. He’d seen only the persona, which made the rest of what had happened such a sick joke because, in the end, even he hadn’t been able to keep his hands off Annie Lacey, the super-tramp.
And the angry way he’d lost control of himself had told her just how much he’d despised himself for it.
‘Leave me alone,’ she whispered. ‘I just w-want to be left alone.’
He sighed, the heavy sound disturbing the air around her naked shoulders and she shivered.
‘You’re cold,’ he said, with a kind of rough gentleness that made her want to weep all the more. ‘Let me help you into bed, then I will—’
‘No!’ His hand had come out to touch her; she reared away from him like a terrified animal. Her tear-washed face came out of the cushion, and in sheer self-preservation Annie Lacey surged furiously back to life. ‘You’ve had what you wanted from me—now get out of here. Get out!’
Eyes as dark as the ocean beyond the window held onto stormy blue. He didn’t flinch from the contempt she seared at him, did not respond to it. And for a moment out of time they stayed like that, he squatting there while she leaned accusingly towards him.
The damner being damned.
But even as she huddled there, flaying him with her eyes, she felt the lazy beginnings of other emotions start to flutter into corrupting life. Her pulse began to race, her aching breasts to stir, her senses pumping soft, sensual messages to the muscles around her sex.
His fault! He had done this to her—awoken demons she had believed so thoroughly shut away! And she hated him for that too, because it showed that no matter how degrading the revelation that had taken place in this room, she’d liked it, and wanted more.
Oh, God. ‘Get out of here, you bastard,’ she whispered thickly, and lowered her face again—though her senses were on full alert. Bastard he might be, but a proud one. And she was sure that he would not take kindly to having the word spat into his face.
Yet—he did take it; with only another heavy sigh he took it and drew himself grimly to his feet. ‘At least get yourself into bed, Angelica,’ he advised quietly. ‘Or you will catch a chill sitting there like that. I will send Margarita up with some food.’ He was walking towards the door. ‘Perhaps by tomorrow you will be ready to talk. I will see you then.’
Annie waited until she heard the quiet click as the door closed behind him before
she began crying all over again.
* * *
She was sitting on a rock, gazing emptily out to sea, when the skittering displacement of a pebble somewhere behind her warned her that she was no longer alone.
It was still quite early. Having surprisingly slept the sleep of the dead the night before, she had awoken just as dawn had been turning the sky from navy to blue. And on a restless urge to stop the events of the previous night from tumbling back into her head she’d got up, dressed in a simple pair of white shorts and a white T-shirt, then left her room via the French windows.
Glancing up, she saw César coming towards her. Barefoot, he moved easily across the light, pebbly ground, the solid gold bracelet of his watch glinting in the early morning light. Behind him his white-painted house stood in the shadow of a new day. Behind it stood the hill, with its thicket of trees reaching up towards a pure blue sky.
A beautiful place. Somewhere between Eden and paradise, she found herself thinking fancifully.
If César was the serpent Annie wasn’t sure what that made her.
He was dressed in a light cambric shirt and a pair of thin white cotton beach trousers rolled up a little at the ankles. His hair was contained, his face wearing the sheen of a man who had just indulged in a close shave, and he looked devastatingly attractive.
A man who stood out on his own as special.
No. Firmly she squashed what was trying to take place inside her, and looked away again. She did not want to feel anything right now.
And she did not want to see the knowledge that she knew would be written in his shrewd emerald eyes if she let her own eyes clash with them.
He came to drop down beside her. No smile, no greeting—no tension in him. He simply drew up his knees, spread them slightly, rested his deeply tanned forearms on top, and said, ‘Right. It is time for explanations, Angelica. I want to know what made you into the absolute fraud you are.’
Just like that. She smiled to herself. Guilt and remorse done with the night before, he now demanded enlightenment.
The Morning After Page 8