by Penny Jordan
He shook his head, his mouth compressing. ‘What I want, and what I intend for this child—our child—is that it is born if not out of mutual love then at least out of mutual pleasure.’
His words shocked her, almost thrilled her in some atavistic and explosively dangerous way.
Recklessly Imogen flung back her head and demanded, ‘And how is that going to happen when there is no way I could ever want you?’
She could almost hear the seconds ticking by as Dracco looked at her. What could he see…what was he looking for? Her tongue snaked out and touched her suddenly dry lips. Dracco’s diamond-hard gaze fastened on her small betraying gesture, seizing on it even more fiercely than his hands had grasped her only minutes earlier. Imogen could almost feel the physical effect of his gaze on her; on her mouth; her body; her senses!
‘There is nothing you could ever do that could make me want you, Dracco. Do you hear me?’ The excited fury in her own reiteration frightened her but she refused to allow herself to acknowledge either her fear or her folly.
‘Are you challenging me, Imogen?’ Dracco asked her softly. ‘Because if you want me to prove you wrong I can promise you that I am more than willing to do so. Very much more than willing,’ he emphasised with meaningful deliberation.
Imogen’s heightened senses relayed to her every aspect of what was happening: the scent of the dust in the air, the limpid warmth of the sun streaming in through the window, which in no way could match the white heat of the fury she could see burning in Dracco’s eyes. She shivered, but not with cold, as feelings she had thought long dead sprang to life inside her.
‘No!’ she whispered painfully beneath her breath. No! It was over. Dead, done… She did not love Dracco any more and she wasn’t going to allow herself to do so ever again.
Drawing a shaky breath, she met the look he was giving her.
‘You couldn’t,’ she denied, making herself believe it.
‘No? Watch me!’ Dracco breathed. ‘Just watch me, Imogen. And when you’re lying in my bed, my arms, beneath my body, crying out for my possession, wanting me, I shall remind you of this moment.’
CHAPTER THREE
IMOGEN turned away from the window of her childhood bedroom and glanced at her watch.
Seven-thirty; soon she would have to go downstairs and join Dracco, who had warned her that unless she was ready to go out for dinner with him by eight o’clock he would personally ‘escort’ her downstairs.
‘Why are you doing this?’ she had demanded in furious frustration.
‘Why are you?’ he had countered with a coolness that had made her grind her teeth in impotent rage.
‘You know why I’m doing it. I don’t have any choice.’
‘Of course you do,’ he had returned promptly. ‘You could choose to simply walk away if you wished to do so.’
‘The shelter needs money—you know that,’ Imogen had argued bitterly.
That was true, and what was also true was that she didn’t think she could live with herself if she didn’t do everything she could to help. Perhaps a part of her determination to do so had its roots in the fact that she felt guilty because she had withheld her financial help for so long, she acknowledged. But it had taken her a long time to stop being afraid of the power the past had over her; to stop being afraid of the love she had had for Dracco. Now she had overcome that fear!
But to allow Dracco to consummate their marriage; to have his child! Unwillingly Imogen’s gaze was drawn back to her bedroom window. Did she really have the resolve, the courage to do that?
It had been from this window that she had watched so many times for her father to come home. She had knelt on the window seat, her elbows on the sill propping up her head as she strained her ears and her eyes for the familiar sound and sight of her father’s car. The moment she could hear it she had dashed downstairs, ready to fling herself into his arms just as soon as she could.
Even during the dark days of her mother’s final illness her father had never failed to give her the loving reassurance of his time and attention.
And then had come the darker days of his marriage to Lisa, when it had so often been Dracco she had turned to for comfort. Dracco she had waited impatiently to see arriving at the house from the sanctuary of her bedroom.
Her father had loved this house. He had once told her that to him it epitomised everything that a family home should be.
‘One day you will bring your children here to see me, Imo,’ he had often told her as she grew up.
He had been looking forward to becoming a grandfather.
The scene in front of Imogen’s eyes began to blur.
A child. A child that was both a part of him and of herself and Dracco. Her father would have loved that so much, cherished that child so much.
A child. Dracco’s child. How often had she sat at this very window and fantasised about that happening; about Dracco loving her; about that love resulting in the birth of their baby?
Dracco loving her! Angrily Imogen shook away her threatening emotional tears. Dracco did not love her. He simply wanted to share a blood tie with her father. He had told her so.
And yet as she turned away from the bedroom window she could still see so vividly in her mind’s eye the three of them walking together up the drive, Dracco, herself and, between them, the dark-haired green-eyed boy-child who shared his father’s strong bone-structure and his grandfather’s loving smile.
‘I must be mad,’ Imogen whispered reprovingly to herself as she snatched up her jacket and her bag and headed for her bedroom door.
There was no way she could ever willingly do what Dracco was forcing on her. And surely no way either that she could ever deny that fierce tug of maternal love she had felt so very sharply for the child her own treacherous imagination had conjured up.
When she opened her door she saw Dracco advancing along the landing towards her.
Unlike her, he had changed his clothes, removing the city suit he had been wearing and putting on in its place a more casual pair of cotton chinos and a short-sleeved shirt.
England must have been having a good summer, Imogen acknowledged absently as her gaze slid helplessly along the length of Dracco’s bare bronzed arms. There had always been something about his arms that fascinated her, something that had sent a shower of excited girlish sensuality shivering over her skin. In those days, just the thought of Dracco’s arms closing round her, holding her in the tender and protective embrace which had been all her innocent mind had then been able to conjure up, had been enough to set off that hot, aching, melting feeling in the pit of her stomach.
Later, as she grew older, it hadn’t been so much Dracco’s arms holding her she had fantasised about as his hands, touching her, caressing her, stroking and arousing her willing flesh with the kind of intimate and wildly dangerous touch that even in the privacy of her own bed had made her face burn with hot, guilty, excited desire.
He had, Imogen guessed, not only changed his clothes but showered as well, which made her feel uncomfortably aware of the fact that she was still wearing the clothes she had flown into Heathrow in. She had refused to allow herself to change out of a stubborn determination to show him just how unimportant either his opinion of her or his company was. Right now, however, it wasn’t a sense of satisfaction in her own stubbornness she was experiencing but rather a very unwanted feeling of gritty discomfort, and general grubbiness, which caused her to reach up defensively to rake her fingers through her tangled curls.
‘Too busy to have time to get changed? Never mind, I’m sure Luigi will understand,’ Dracco commented.
‘You’ve told Luigi that you…we’re…’
‘I’ve told him that you’re going to be my dinner guest, yes,’ Dracco confirmed. ‘I just hope you still like pear and almond tart and honey ice cream.’
Ignoring his dry reference to her teenage love of her favourite local Italian restaurant’s pudding, Imogen demanded wildly, ‘What else have you told him?’
>
Dracco gave a small shrug. ‘Nothing,’ he denied.
As she absorbed his response Imogen struggled to understand why instead of feeling relief that Dracco hadn’t made any kind of public statement about their marriage what she actually felt was a kind of anger.
‘But you are going to have to say something?’ she persisted. ‘We can’t just suddenly start living together as a married couple.’
Dracco gave another dismissive shrug. ‘As to that, I shall tell people what they will want to hear.’
‘Which is?’ Imogen challenged him.
‘Which is that there has been a rapprochement between us, a mutual agreement with the benefit of hindsight and maturity that we wish to give our marriage a second chance.’
‘A second chance?’ Imogen couldn’t help querying, and then wished that she had not when she saw the look Dracco was giving her.
‘Most of them will assume, no doubt, that we were lovers before our marriage, and somehow I doubt that you will want people to know that you are still a virgin.’
Imogen could feel her face reddening.
‘Don’t flatter yourself that my virginity has anything to do with you!’ She threw the words recklessly at him, unaware of just how they might be interpreted or what they might reveal. ‘The fact that I haven’t…that I’m… Well, that’s my business and has nothing to do with anyone else.’
Dracco was already heading for the stairs and automatically Imogen walked with him.
‘Just a minute,’ he demanded as they reached the hallway.
Warily, Imogen waited as he reached into his pocket and withdrew a small box.
‘You’re going to need this,’ he told her coolly. ‘I notice that you aren’t wearing the original. This one doesn’t have the benefit of a clerical blessing, and I had to guess at the size. You’re more slender than you were…’
Without giving her the opportunity to take the box from him, he flipped open the lid, revealing a gold wedding band so similar to the first one he had given her that Imogen had to suppress a superstitious feeling that it was the same ring.
And with it was something she had desperately wished she had not had to leave behind when she had run away—the engagement ring she had not been wearing on the day of her marriage that Dracco had had made for her. It incorporated in an elegant modern setting the three diamonds that had originally been in her mother’s engagement ring. Those stones meant so much to her that now as she stared at it, tears stung Imogen’s eyes.
‘My ring,’ she whispered.
‘It might be a little bit too big now,’ Dracco warned her as she reached for it. He forestalled her and took hold of her hand.
Imogen could feel herself starting to tremble. Against her will she went back in time; she was in church, waiting for Dracco to place his ring on her finger.
Now, as he slid the cold metal over her knuckle, she could remember exactly how she had felt, how much she had wanted to believe that their marriage was more to him than simply a business arrangement.
He was right—the engagement ring was slightly loose, she reflected shakily as he placed it on her finger. Suddenly she was finding it extraordinarily difficult to breathe properly. Her chest felt tightly constricted, her heart was hammering ferociously against her ribs. As though it was happening in slow motion, she was aware of Dracco watching her, waiting, and then lifting her hand towards his mouth.
‘No.’
Imogen pulled frantically away from him as the denial was torn from her tense throat. In church he had kissed her hand, the warmth of his lips brushing her cold fingers, making her tremble violently, her whole body ablaze with the intensity of her longing for him as her lover. Yet despite that feeling she had not been able to stop herself from asking him the question that had destroyed her foolish illusions. What would have happened if she had said nothing? But no, she must not even think of asking herself that. Would she really have wanted to live in ignorance of the truth? No, of course she wouldn’t!
Unable to bring herself to look at Dracco, she hurried towards the front door. The warm evening sun dazzled her for a moment as they walked outside. She could smell the scent of the roses from the rose bed close to the front door. They had been her mother’s favourite flowers and for a moment a wave of nostalgia and pain pierced her. This house held so many memories, so much of her past. The thought of her own child growing up here was unbearably poignant.
Locked into her thoughts, she stood stiffly, staring unseeingly into the distance. The future, with all the hideous complications and emotional pain it now threatened, lay darkly ahead of her. Marriage in these modern times was not necessarily for life, but a child, the bond between parent and child, mother and child, that most certainly was. For her, at least.
‘If you’re having second thoughts, I shouldn’t,’ she heard Dracco telling her caustically.
Imogen frowned as the sound of Dracco’s voice pierced the bubble surrounding her. For a moment it had almost seemed as though Dracco was actually afraid that she might change her mind. He must want this child very badly. Was that the reason he and Lisa had not married, because he had not wanted his child to be her child? Imogen didn’t like herself very much for the sharp thrill of pleasure the thought gave her.
‘Ah, but you have not changed at all; you are even more beautiful, even more bella, than ever!’ Luigi was telling Imogen in a voice vibrant with emotion as he showed them to their table.
‘If she has not changed then how can she be more bella, Luigi? Dracco was demanding drily.
‘Then she was a beautiful girl,’ Luigi responded with aplomb. ‘Now…’ His dark eyes glowed with appreciation and approval as he surveyed Imogen in the kind of way that only an Italian male could get away with. ‘Now she is a beautiful woman! And what a woman! Mamma mia! Ah, but you are one lucky man, my friend, to have such a beautiful wife.’
So Luigi had remembered that they were married!
‘Well, it is just as well that one of us can remember what she looked like after one of your lessons in how to eat spaghetti.’ Dracco grinned, the dryness of his voice so at odds with the genuine amusement in his eyes that Imogen found somehow she was unable to drag her own gaze away from his face. A face that suddenly, dangerously, looked so much like the face she remembered from her teens, his eyes warm and teasing, his mouth curved into that sizzlingly sexy smile that had made her toes curl up in delight. Luigi’s had always been her favourite restaurant, a place she had associated with the happy times in her life.
‘I have saved you a special table.’ Luigi was beaming as he led them through the busy restaurant to the table that had always been her father’s favourite.
A huge lump rose in Imogen’s throat. Impulsively she threw her arms around Luigi’s rotund frame and gave him a swift hug.
Luigi was hugging her back enthusiastically, then he let her go with unexpected suddenness, stepping back from her whilst apologising to Dracco.
Frowning, Imogen looked from Dracco’s now set face to Luigi’s apologetic one, unable to fathom out quite what was happening.
‘I was forgetting for a moment that you are no longer a little girl but a married woman,’ Luigi told her, but it was Dracco he was looking at as he spoke.
As they sat down and Luigi hurried off to get them menus Dracco told her quietly, ‘I would prefer it if you didn’t flirt with other men.’
‘Flirt.’ Imogen repeated in disbelief. ‘I wasn’t flirting. I was just…’ She stopped. Why was she bothering to defend herself? She had done nothing wrong. All she had done was to hug Luigi, and for Dracco to accuse her of flirting was totally ridiculous!
‘You may still be a virgin, Imo,’ Dracco told her, leaning across the table so that no one else could hear what he was saying, ‘but that does not make you totally naïve. You’re a married woman…my wife.’
‘I can’t believe I’m hearing this,’ Imogen cut in stormily. ‘I was just hugging Luigi, that’s all. It was nothing at all.’
‘It m
ay be nothing to you,’ Dracco stopped her grimly. ‘But it’s a hell of a lot more than I’ve ever had from you.’
‘You’re different,’ Imogen returned smartly, and then wished she hadn’t as she saw his expression. Her stomach writhed nervously.
‘Yes. I am different,’ Dracco agreed. ’I’m your husband.’ He broke off as a young waiter brought them their menus, waiting until he had gone before telling her coldly, ‘Before tomorrow night I expect you to move your things into the master bedroom.’
Imogen wondered if he knew just what effect his words had had on her, how shocked and, yes, terrified they had made her. In an effort to conceal those feelings she picked up her menu and, hiding behind it, told him flippantly, ‘So much for the threatened seduction.’
When there was no immediate response she carefully lowered her menu, reflecting gleefully that she had at least scored one hit against that impenetrable, tough armour that had both repelled and attracted her for as long as she had known him. But then she saw his face, and the hand holding her menu shook betrayingly.
‘Oh, that wasn’t a threat, Imo. It was a promise. A promise that I shall do such things to you and for you as to make you scream my name with longing in the darkness of the night; make you ache with your need for my possession; make you—’
‘No!’
The denial was strangled in Imogen’s throat as the young waiter suddenly appeared and nervously asked if they were ready to order. She knew that her face was burning scarlet with colour, her thoughts a wild, chaotic stampede of disbelief and fury.
How could Dracco say such things to her one minute and the next be calmly discussing with their waiter what exactly the ‘specials’ were, and whether or not they had a particular wine he wanted?
‘You will like this wine, Imo,’ he told her calmly once they were alone. ‘Your father introduced me to it. It was produced in the same year as you. And, like you…’ he continued, his voice dropping to a slow, sensual rasp that licked against Imogen’s raw nerve endings in the same way her tormented, traitorous imagination was telling her that his tongue might rasp against the intimate sensitivity of her skin. ‘But no!’ he told her softly. ‘I shall not tell you now what characteristics it shares with you!’