by Lynne Graham
Her thoughts swerved back uncomfortably to Max. Hadn’t she loved him as much as she believed, or had her disgust and contempt numbed her emotions? She was angry, bitter and humiliated but not as hurt as she felt she ought to have been. Obviously, their year apart had changed her. She was stronger and less forgiving. His betrayal seemed just like one more hard knock she had to take, and there was an undeniable relief amidst her confusion. She hadn’t hurt him and no longer had to carry the guilt of betraying him.
She went to bed early though she didn’t sleep. For as the evening wore on she became more and more convinced Dane was not going to appear before breakfast time. Surprisingly, she was not indifferent to the idea. In conflict, she certainly was. She couldn’t bear the image of Dane making love to another woman. It was pride, she told herself, the same pride that had responded furiously to Max’s infidelity. When the slam of the front door reverberated through the apartment, her tension increased instead of decreasing.
The lights snapped on, the bed rippling as Dane came down on the edge of it. He brushed her hair gently back off her cheekbone. ‘Well, you could say you didn’t expect me to come back tonight.’
Her lashes swept up. It infuriated her that he had not had a single doubt that she would be lying awake. ‘And why should I say that?’
He took off his jacket and threw it on a nearby unit with the ingrained carelessness of someone used to someone else tidying up after him. ‘Because if I go to bed with someone else while I’m married to you, that’s it, finito,’ he emphasised coldly. ‘And I don’t respect you, you’re goddamned right I don’t respect you for suggesting I do!’
She leant up on one elbow. ‘Are you calling this a marriage?’
He sprang fluidly upright and started to undress. He hadn’t an inhibited bone in his magnificent body. She wondered sickly just how many women had lain watching Dane doing exactly this, and she knew with painful certainty that for most of them it would have been enough to be assured of his desire.
‘Are you?’ she repeated daringly, to take her mind off visual enticements.
He dropped his shirt. ‘Don’t push me tonight, Claire. I’m not in the mood.’ His bronzed profile was remote, unyielding. ‘What do you want me to tell you, that I felt good about being the first?’
She rolled over to avoid his scrutiny. ‘I didn’t realise you’d noticed.’
He swore softly. ‘I noticed when it was too late, and to be honest I didn’t much care at the time.’
‘You sound much more like yourself.’
‘You set me up, Claire. If you get more than you bargained for before this ends, blame yourself. But I was pleased that I was your first lover. I actually enjoyed the fact,’ he admitted with savage candour. ‘I amazed myself. There must by something bred into the male psyche that not even environment can breed out again. Then again, if you hadn’t been so wildly responsive I don’t believe I’d ever have found out, because I wouldn’t have forced you. I imagine that suited you, too.’
‘How?’
‘A consummated marriage can’t be set aside.’
He disappeared into the bathroom. In his absence she boiled. His hostility could not have been greater had she put a cage round him, and she perfectly comprehended the message behind his reference to her virginity. It wouldn’t make him feel suddenly tied to her. Why didn’t he just jet off to one of his other residences and enjoy his freedom as if she didn’t exist?
‘I’ve decided that we’ll fly out to the Caribbean tomorrow.’ As he crossed back to the bed, he delivered her bemused eyes a cool smile. ‘I might as well be there and it can be regarded as a working honeymoon by anyone who’s interested. It would be less odd than holing up here and never going out together.’
‘I didn’t think you cared whether things looked odd or not, and I don’t want …’
‘I didn’t ask if you did,’ Dane interrupted as he slid into bed beside her, long and lean and smoothly muscled. ‘Where were you today?’
Caught unprepared, she reddened. ‘Looking for a job,’ she muttered.
A slanting dark brow elevated as he laughed and reached for her with hands that brooked no argument. ‘My wife doesn’t work. We’re married. The deed is done and I’ll make the best of it for the moment. No, that wasn’t calculated to woo you into fast surrender, was it?’ he taunted mockingly, holding her slightly above him as he stretched sensually back, midnight-blue eyes taking in her dilated pupils and luminously pink cheeks. ‘The truth is I burn for you. That’s why I came home. I didn’t want a substitute and I never planned on taking one, either. Now why don’t you match my honesty for a change?’
His tone had a mesmeric, intimate quality that jerked strings inside her, strings attached to feelings she didn’t understand. Feelings that heightened her inner conflict, for she was helplessly, secretly pleased that he should desire her even if she didn’t want that desire to be carried to its natural conclusion.
His fingers plucked free the tie ribbon on one bare, creamy shoulder and then shifted calmly over to its twin. ‘No … I don’t feel that way!’ she protested.
‘I could make you beg for satisfaction. Shall I do that? Is that what it takes for an honest answer?’ His smile chilled her. ‘And don’t dredge up Max. I’ve no doubt you did have a boyfriend some time in the last few years but if you’d been considering marriage, you wouldn’t still have been a virgin. No one your age enters a commitment that heavy without checking they’re sexually compatible. You see, we are.’ As he gauged in advance her intent to free herself, a vibrantly amused smile swept the chill from his keen gaze. He swung her over so that she lay half-beneath him. ‘And it doesn’t have to be a fight when we’re married,’ he informed her teasingly, hooking his fingers into the lightly shirred lace of her nightdress, and gently baring her breasts.
‘Don’t do this to me … please, Dane.’ The plea was wrenched from her. ‘It’s tearing me apart.’
A shimmer of violet lit his measuring gaze. ‘Then tell me you want me just as badly as I want you,’ he insisted hardly.
‘The truth is that I hate you and I hate myself.’ In silent agony she turned her coppery head away from him.
Featherlight fingers removed her nightdress and smoothed back up over the curve of her hipbone, playing over her ribcage, every breath she drew becoming one of charged anticipation. She couldn’t bear it, she couldn’t bear to be controlled like this by Dane. His head lowered over the pale length of her taut body and the jolt of reaction as his mouth found her arched her body upward, a whimper of sound escaping her.
He carried the caress down over the flat tightness of her belly and her clenched hands unfurled and curled again as his tormentingly expert fingers located the silken triangle of her desire. She thought later that she cried out his name in protest, because this was no gentle, gradual seduction that respected her inexperience. He racked her with hunger and her hands wove over his sweat-dampened skin in tortured circles while he slowly sank deep into her, possessing her degree by degree until her nails dug into his shoulders, her head falling back in ecstasy. Ironically it was wilder and more earth shattering than it had ever been before.
Dane ran a possessive finger across the fullness of her lower lip afterwards, while she still trembled against him. ‘This is what I can give you, and don’t tell me it’s not enough, when I see you like this.’
She rested her cheek against the curve of his shoulder. He knew. Oh God, he knew the power he had over her, and now that he had proved that to his own satisfaction, how long would it be before he lost interest? He anchored an arm round her and the very scent of him was an aphrodisiac for her. She shivered. She wanted to drive those devils out of her but they were there to stay. She had just become another one of Dane Visconti’s women.
It was so insidious, that thraldom, showing its symptoms in a variety of unobtrusive ways when she woke up in an empty bed savaged by an aching sense of loss. Did sex alone forge ties this strong? Dane was dominating her emotions to the e
xclusion of all else. Was that why Max’s betrayal hadn’t broken her up? Her brain was keyed into a surging rush of questions she couldn’t answer. She wasn’t flighty in her emotions. It was a long time since she had laid to rest that harrowing adolescent infatuation, but perhaps some tiny subconscious part of her had still continued to crave him. For even now Dane was here, here beside her, inside her even though the room was empty.
And did she want to stay around for the inevitable conclusion? Did she want to have Dane stroll back from an absence abroad in a few weeks’ time and in that laid back, cool style of his tell her it had been good but that nothing was that good for eternity? It would happen that way. Last night she hadn’t fought him. She had acquiesced. The challenge was gone, and yet she couldn’t refuse to go to the Caribbean with him. After all, she was responsible for the mess they were in. She owed him the right to get them out of it in whatever fashion he saw fit.
But she owed to herself the right of self-respect. And being treated like some sort of glorified sexual toy by Dane was murdering it. Her sole consolation now was that some good had come out of their marriage. Maisie and Sam were secure and happy, in merciful ignorance of how things had turned out for. her. Silent tears inched down her pale cheeks. God, she was so tired, still so desperately tired and she couldn’t remember when she had last felt any different.
The tears refused to stop. No matter how hard she tried, they continued to soak the pillow, misting the room. She barely noticed Thompson’s quiet entry with a tray and the muffled exclamation of concern with which he retreated. And then Dane was there and he was the very last person she wanted to see at her most vulnerable and she just huddled under the duvet, deaf to his questions until even that awareness slipped away.
Dr Caldwell had given her a sedative which made it difficult for her to stay awake, and his calm acceptance of her distress had soothed her.
‘You have been under considerable stress recently, Mrs Visconti,’ he pointed out. ‘You nursed a terminally ill relative for months, I believe, and barely a week ago you were violently assaulted and robbed. The human body has ways of dealing with severe stress. Yours has probably been telling you to slow up for ages, but you’ve been ignoring the warnings. I expect that you’ve been under the impression too that, since weddings are happy occasions, they’re not conducive to stress.’
‘It’s nothing to do with my marriage,’ Claire remained compos mentis enough to swear instantly, although nothing on God’s earth could have forced her to look near Dane where he hovered by the foot of the bed, because he had to be ashamed of her for breaking down as she had.
‘Of course not,’ the doctor agreed smoothly, almost too smoothly. ‘Well, complete rest is the only prescription that you need from me and I’m sure your husband will support me on that.’
Dane returned after the doctor’s exit and stood gazing down at her. ‘I won’t ask you how you feel about a pseudo honeymoon trip,’ he delivered with veiled eyes. ‘But I think you might enjoy it as a holiday.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she mumbled.
Dane dropped down on a level with her. ‘No, I’m the one who’s sorry.’ He moved a long, brown hand towards her clenched one and then stopped, perhaps recalling how she had flinched from him before the doctor’s arrival. ‘The moment I stopped trusting you and you started fighting me, it got destructive. I’ve been around long enough to steer clear of that sort of scene. It doesn’t get better, it gets worse and you’ve already found out that you don’t like what I am.’
She conceived a violent and disorientating urge to wrap her arms round him. He sounded so constrained, so unlike the Dane she knew, and he was citing himself as the sole cause of her distress, which was wrong. Her lips parted. ‘Dane …’
‘No, let me finish.’ His bright blue eyes were opaque, unreadable. ‘I’ve hurt you and it doesn’t matter any more how or why we ended up getting married. I won’t hurt you again,’ he promised levelly.
Her anxieties dulled and fragmented, his meaning vague, she drifted off to sleep then, reassured by his calmness. It was late afternoon when she was roused from sleep to be presented with the handbag the muggers had taken from her. Shaken, she just gaped at it.
‘When I got the call I went over to the station to identify it,’ Dane explained. ‘Someone found it and handed it in. Everything of value’s missing, but I guess you’ll be glad to get all those letters and photos back.’
Still drowsy, she fumbled through the muddy envelopes and the clear plastic photo wallet Dane had helpfully removed from the sealed plastic bag. Max smiled out at her from the wallet, suntanned and happy as he leant on a fence. It was like looking backwards in time and it softened her memory of him, her bitterness easing as she conceded that it had been his very existence that kept her going through Adam’s slow decline. She hoped he would find happiness with Sue. Opposites did attract.
Hadn’t she found that out with Dane? He had called it destructive and she assumed he was correct. There was certainly nothing comforting or secure about the terrible conflict he ignited in her when he touched her. Only then did she register the significance of the returned handbag. Dane was fixedly studying the photos on her lap. ‘Good God, what size is he?’
‘Five-five,’ she imparted and hurriedly swept everything back into the bag. Well, what had she expected? A heartfelt apology? Max’s existence had been confirmed and she wasn’t about to lower herself further by adding the news that Max had replaced her with a rather blowsy blonde.
Dane’s mouth was set into a hard line, his eyes cool as ice-water and just as uninformative. ‘You’ll be getting in touch with him again, I suppose?’
She stilled.
‘How do you think he’ll react?’ Dane continued glibly. ‘Have I wrecked everything?’
A kind of twisted fury writhed in her as she incredulously took in the import of Dane’s noticeably tense enquiries. Shocked, she lowered her lashes. He was letting her know that he hoped it would be possible for her to be reunited with Max. What else could he mean? Her fragile emotional state had shocked Dane into calling a halt to their marriage, she registered. When he had promised not to hurt her again, he’d really been telling her that their marriage was over, and now her handbag had turned up to put a neat conclusion to the mess. All of a sudden, in a twinkling of an eye it was over. No doubt he was now wondering what insanity had driven him to making love to her in the first place.
‘I asked a question,’ he reminded her tautly.
‘He’ll understand,’ she muttered, because it was so clearly what he wanted to hear. Anything to get him off the subject before he probed deeper. It was terribly humiliating to listen to him talk calmly about Max. As if she was a parcel to be passed back. But then bluntness was Dane’s trademark. He’d never had to consider other people’s feelings. Obviously what had happened between them was something he could easily set aside. That it was also a no-holds-barred repudiation of her as a woman would not occur to him. Wasn’t it after all what she had demanded … an end to their ill-starred intimacy?
‘I own a property on Dominica. I plan to turn it into a hotel when I get the time. It’s a very peaceful island and we’ll use it as a base. Of course, I’ll be flying in and out from Jamaica.’ She wanted to scream at that cruelly cool tone, scream until he displayed some genuine emotion, but then he couldn’t really show his relief. Even Dane wasn’t that lacking in understanding.
‘We’ll be out there for weeks,’ he stressed. ‘You need to relax and get all this out of your system.’
Brainwash me then, she nearly said. Everything that had passed between them was etched permanently into her soul. Why was it that when Dane was patently trying to mend fences, he only succeeded in hurting her more? Confused and deeply unhappy, she slept again, copping out in the only way she could from her own conflict.
‘Now you can look!’ He lightly dropped his hands and her eyes were seared by the brilliant sunlight and the spectacular sight of the Trafalgar Falls crashing down on t
o the black rocks far below. ‘See, it was worth the climb.’
‘Yes.’ Her husky answer was abstracted. Occasionally over the past three weeks she had been tempted to pinch herself just to check that she really was here on Dominica with Dane being so attentive and incredibly even-tempered all the time. That dreadful day in London when she had felt her world was folding in round her ears seemed a lifetime ago. Here in this beautiful lush setting, it was impossible not to relax and to be conscious that Dane could be marvellously entertaining company when he wanted to be.
They had been out on many such sightseeing trips together, although Dane spent two or three days a week in Jamaica, days when Claire sat about the old whiteboarded plantation house with Hannah and sunbathed and read. The hollows in her slender frame had already filled out and her skin was a pale, healthy gold. She loved the island and the house, adored the unspoilt glory of the nature that ran rampant on Dominica and attracted more botanists than tourists to its shores.
Dane casually tipped up the brim of her sunhat to gaze down mockingly into her self-absorbed face. ‘Time for a cold drink, I think. There’s a restaurant not far from here.’
It was a downhill walk back to the jeep and at the foot she sniffed the still hot air appreciatively. ‘Wherever you are this island smells like a greenhouse. Everything’s so fresh and alive. Not at all like home.’ A faint edge laced her voice and she was irritated with herself for letting reality creep in. But of course this fabulous holiday had to end.
She supposed—practically speaking—that they were already separated since they no longer shared a bed or even a room. Dane only gave her little pecks in Hannah’s presence. He never touched her otherwise. She had been firmly slotted back into her former role as an honorary kid sister. Dane had had no problem in smoothly making that switch, she reflected with a frown. Their former intimacy might never have existed any place outside her imagination. It hadn’t been so easy for Claire to adapt.