‘You have a house and—what did you say—six hotels in London?’ she remarked. ‘Wouldn’t it be easier to simply occupy one of your own suites than take on the added expense of a house?’
‘Oh, very prudent-thinking.’ He grinned.
The grin sent her stomach flipping again, but the words didn’t, because she was very aware that prudence had been her closest companion during the last tough year.
‘Living in hotels all the time is like living on top of the job,’ he explained. ‘Hotels are fine if we only need to be somewhere for a couple of days. But in the long term we both prefer our own private living space.’
And Samantha didn’t miss the smooth way he was including her into what he was saying.
‘So we have an apartment in New York, where my head office is situated,’ he went on. ‘Another in Paris and one in Milan. And a villa in the Caribbean for when we feel the need to really get right away and crash out on a beach for a while.’
‘Lotus-eaters?’ she likened dryly.
‘When the mood take us,’ he agreed. ‘But, as for the rest of the time, we work hard, travel far, and live out of suitcases.’
‘In luxury penthouse suites, like the one in Exeter,’ she provided.
‘Perks of the job,’ he said.
‘Extravagant perks of the job.’
‘Great lifestyle, though. You love it,’ he added as a lazy tease.
‘Me?’ she turned to stare at him, not sure she liked the sound of the pampered, jet-setting person he was making her out to be.
The car slowed and made an abrupt right turn. Looking ahead of them again, she only had time to register a wide expanse of black wrought-iron railings flanked by a thick green neatly clipped hedge. Then they were coming to a stop in front of a pair of tall wrought-iron gates. Beyond the gates stood a house, a beautiful white rendered house that looked like a small Georgian mansion set in its own private grounds.
The gates began to open automatically. Tyres crunched on gravel as they drove through, then began passing between two beautifully kept lawns with neatly laid borders. He drew them to a stop directly in front of a shallow porch supported by two slender round pillars, either side of which stood two great stone urns, spilling with a shock of flame-red geraniums.
Opening her door, Samantha climbed out, then just stood there staring. In the grey and muggy half-light of a cloud-cast and damp summer evening it all looked very white, very pristine, very elegant, yet…
I don’t like this place, she thought suddenly. And went so icy cold that she shivered.
From the other side of the car, André was grimly observing her response, so he saw the stillness followed by the telling little shiver, knew exactly why it had happened and wondered tautly if she did.
Tension pulled like a vice across his shoulders while he waited for her to say something. He needed her to give him a clue as to what was happening so he could then decide how to respond. The house could be the key to unlock the holocaust. Certainly, there was good reason for it to do so.
But then, he had believed that seeing him for the first time would have done it, but it hadn’t.
Neither had the mention of the Bressingham.
‘You and I actually live here?’ she questioned unsteadily.
The vice gave way. He relaxed his shoulders. ‘Yes,’ he confirmed, amazed that his voice could sound so steady when really he was shaking with relief.
‘I’ll get the luggage later,’ he said and, without looking at her, he walked around the car and beneath the porch with his key at the ready. ‘Are you coming?’ he prompted lightly.
No, Samantha answered silently, not understanding why this house was having such a powerful, muscle-dragging effect on her. But the feeling was too strong for her to ignore it. So she remained where she was, clinging to the open door of the Jaguar, watching him place the key in the door, then send it swinging open.
Her breath caught in her throat and congealed there in a thick, suffocating ball. He too, had gone very still—no movement, no sign of anything. As if, like herself, he was waiting for something monumental to happen. Silence thumped and throbbed in the warm, muggy atmosphere, the complete stillness all aiding and abetting that silence to wrap tight pressure bands around her chest, until a roaring began to build inside her head.
No, she willed herself hazily. I won’t faint away again—I won’t!
Maybe he sensed her silent battle because he turned suddenly to face her. Big, lean and so devastatingly attractive. She felt sick with how strong her feelings were for him. It hurt, it actually hurt like a physical pain, because she just could not bring herself to believe that he felt the same for her.
‘Tell me why you married me,’ she whispered, having to squeeze the words past the ball in her throat.
His face seemed carved from stone. ‘Why does any man marry a beautiful woman?’ he countered levelly.
The ‘beautiful’ did not come into the equation. She didn’t even want to hear it there. It changed the emphasis too much. Made the beauty more important than the woman.
Yet… She dropped her eyes from his and began to frown at the ground in blind confusion, because ‘beauty’ didn’t seem to be her problem here. It was something else that was bothering her, gnawing at her, warning her. But what else? What—what else…?
‘If I could marry you again tomorrow, I would do so.’ A crunch of gravel and she looked up to find him walking towards her, the dark solemnity of his expression a hypnotic balm. ‘If you ran away again I would look for you until the day I die.’
‘But you didn’t search the first time,’ she whispered hoarsely, feeling as if she was trapped on a never-ending treadmill with that single question being the chain that held her there.
He smiled, if you could call it a smile. A twist of derision? Of mockery? Of grim, dark irony?
Then, with a lightning movement of lean, lithe muscle, he suddenly grabbed hold of the Jaguar door and the car bonnet on the other side of her, trapping her with his body, his strength—and with his anger. She gasped. His teeth glinted white between his stretched lips. And his eyes flashed like black diamonds, as hard as hell.
‘It wasn’t me who lost you, mia cara,’ he incised very thinly. ‘It was you that lost yourself.’
Sparks crackled in the air between them. Electric impulses began flashing in her brain. Doors opened, then slammed shut before she could so much as glimpse what was going on behind them. Her heart began to race. Her breasts lifted and fell in a hectic, shallow attempt at breathing.
She opened her mouth, tried to speak, found that she couldn’t because those angry eyes were forcing her to acknowledge what he’d said just now.
He was right—he was right! Her panic-ridden mind began screaming at her. Like some terrible coward she had run away and lost herself rather than face whatever it was she was scared of.
How pathetic, she thought scathingly, looking hard into those ruthless eyes that were making her face her own wretched cowardice. And willed—willed her mind to stop playing stupid games on her so she could solve the conundrum that made this man feel like her very soul mate and her worst enemy at the same time!
‘I love you, don’t I?’ she heard herself say in a cracked little whisper.
The eyes went absolutely black. ‘Yes,’ he confirmed.
‘And I hurt you badly. You implied that to me once.’
He didn’t like that claim, it had the eyes flicking away from her on a flash of irritation before they came back to her face again.
‘For a short while,’ he confirmed very grimly. ‘But if you are now thinking that I brought you here to exact retribution, then don’t,’ he declared. ‘Because I hurt you a whole lot more than you even attempted to hurt me.’
Which implied that their marriage had not been all delight and happiness, she concluded. But then, they’d already settled that point in several ways during the last couple of days.
Both hot-tempered, both passionately volatile, both stubbornly d
etermined to have their own way.
Glancing over his shoulder, she looked at the house again. It no longer filled her with frightened dismay—though she still didn’t understand why it had done in the first place.
‘I still don’t remember,’ she said, looking back at him. ‘But I want to.’
Something stirred on those rock-solid features—a slackening of tension. ‘Good.’ He nodded, and straightened away from her. ‘Then we are beginning to make some progress at last. How is the knee? Can you use it yet?’
Diversion tactics, she noted as she glanced down to find the right knee bent, so her weight was all on the other leg. Instinctive protection, she recognised dully, no matter how big the trauma, she could still protect the wretched knee.
Neither said anything more while she went through her usual exercises to loosen the stiffness out of the joint. Then, as if by tacit agreement, the moment her foot went on the ground she reached for his arm, at the same instant that he offered it to her. Slender fingers looped round cool buff cambric then curled into solid strength. Her senses leapt, then steadied. He waited to make sure that she was ready, then turned them both towards the house.
Home, he’d called it. Her home. Their home. ‘It’s looks a bit big for just two of us,’ she remarked.
‘It’s a— It’s been in the family for a long time.’
Something in the way he hesitated then changed what he had been going to say made her stop and look up at him. But all she saw was the silken curve of dark eyelashes covering his expressive eyes. Beginning to look away from him again, she caught a glimpse of his mouth as it moved, suddenly hardening into the kind of sneer that made her fingernails dig into his arm in puzzled alarm.
The action sent his eyelashes flicking up to reveal his eyes again. Something hot was burning there, something hard and so angry she drew in a sharp breath and tried to step right back.
The burn became a flash, followed by a full explosion. ‘Oh, to hell with this!’ he hissed, and bent and lifted her into his arms.
‘What are you doing?’ she cried out, feeling her heart jump to her throat as hard-packed muscle met with her shock-quivering frame. ‘I’m not an invalid! I don’t need carrying!’
‘You are my wife,’ he gritted back. ‘I don’t need an excuse to do anything with you!’
‘My agreement would be nice!’ she snapped right back as he strode angrily towards the house.
He stopped on the threshold, bent his head and kissed her with such untamed passion it was as if he actually meant to turn her bones to dust.
By the time he lifted his head again he knew he had succeeded. ‘Yes,’ he hissed. ‘You might not know who you are but you will know what you are before this day is through,’ he vowed.
‘What’s the matter with you?’ she cried. ‘Why are you so suddenly angry?’
‘Wife!’ he snarled as if that answered everything. ‘My wife! Ma femme a moi!’ he rasped in French. ‘La mia moglie!’ he declared in a harsh Italian—staking his claim on all fronts like an impassioned new groom who was carrying his virgin bride to her fate.
Only she was no new bride, and nor was she a virgin, as they’d already well and truly substantiated once already today. Nor did whatever his intentions were frighten her in the slightest. If anything, she felt terribly exhilarated.
The door slammed shut behind them, and she gained a vague impression of a classical Georgian interior: pastel silk walls; elegant cornices; oil paintings that must have cost the earth but went by in a blur as he kept on walking down a rectangular hall towards the stairwell.
‘André—’
‘Shut up,’ he cut in, chin jutted and locked in grim determination. ‘Don’t so much as dare say my name until I’ve got you safely horizontal.’
‘Why?’ she asked curiously.
‘Because you usually avoid saying it. In fact, you only say it when you don’t realise you’re saying it. It makes me wild,’ he gritted. ‘Makes me feel as though I only take physical form in the realms of your imagination.’
He began mounting the stairs while Samantha absorbed what he’d said and realised he’d said it perfectly. Touch him and she knew him. Stand apart and he became a shadowy figment she could never quite see in full, physical shape.
‘Sorry,’ she whispered, and touched an apologetic kiss to the rigid line of his jaw a kiss that immediately became something else entirely.
A bite, an open-mouthed, fully fledged, salacious bite, that sank its teeth into warm and living skin on bone and would have drawn blood—only that was not the objective. The objective was to flick a tongue over rasping skin in need of shaving and taste the man—taste him. It was compulsive. A desire that arrived from nowhere and completely took her over.
His shoulders flexed, his skin grew hot, and the air left his throat on a hoarse scrape. ‘Witch,’ he gritted. But he liked it. She could feel the pleasure rippling through him as another door opened and closed. Then he was leaning heavily back against it, and with a jerk he freed his jaw and paid her back by claiming her mouth with a kiss that was hot and deep and so hungry it wanted to devour.
Samantha was quite happy to be devoured. It was that elemental.
Even when he allowed her feet to slide to the floor, that kiss wasn’t broken. This was need, hot and fevered. This was sex at its most animal. He grabbed the edge of her top and raked it up her body and over her head. She lifted her arms up to aid its departure, groaning in anguish when their mouths had to part to allow the top to pass between them.
He removed his own shirt with no help from her; she was too busy touching his hair, touching his face with hungry fingers. And after that she became lost in a world of male textures. Satin-smooth shoulders, springy black chest hair—tight male nipples that she took greedily into her mouth.
His breathing had gone haywire, chest rising and sinking in rapid rhythm with his heartbeat. And where his fingers slid in the most excruciatingly light caresses she became a live conduit to pure sexual pleasure. Her bra sprang free. With a boneless fluidity that defied the fact that she was standing on her own two feet, she stepped back and flicked the bra away, then stood, chin up, eyes like emerald fires, proudly offering him the chance to taste.
On a growl, he came away from the door. ‘You haven’t forgotten this, have you?’ he gritted. ‘You still remember how to seduce me out of my skin!’
She touched that skin. One long and slender arm made another fluid movement and her fingers were resting against a hair-free, satin, taut pectoral.
Hard muscle flexed beneath her fingers. She sent him a provoking smile.
It was a smile that made him lose touch with the last dregs of reason. ‘You’re not of this world,’ he muttered rawly, wrapped his arms around her and lifted her back off her feet.
‘Neither are you,’ she replied. Then, ‘André,’ she murmured tauntingly into his hard, dark, handsome face. ‘Are you real or aren’t you?’
‘You’re about to find out,’ he said, dropping her down onto a high, French-style antique bed; he pushed her to lie back, then with a few grimly economical movements began unfastening his trousers. Her shoes fell off, a set of bare toes came up to rub against the centre of his chest, and his eyes narrowed into glinting slits which threatened retribution as he stood over her and let her torment him while he rid himself of his clothes.
She didn’t know that this was the real Samantha playing her old sensual games, André mused grimly. If she did know she would not be seducing him, but screaming at him like a maniac.
But instinct had taken over. And instinct was instinct, whether or not it had the memories to go along with it. And the real Samantha’s instinct was to tease and to provoke and to play the seductress until she drove her poor victim crazy.
What lack of memory didn’t tell her was that this poor victim had taken her measure a long time ago. Anything she could dish out he could give back tenfold. It was one of the major ingredients that had made their marriage so excitingly volatile. But, a
s with any volatile substance, it was also dangerously unpredictable. And it was just that unpredictability which had finally torn them both to shreds in the end—because neither had been able to trust the other not to behave like this with anyone else.
Mistrust led to suspicion, and suspicion to lies. When he’d first met her she’d had no less than three boyfriends in tow. Three other men knowing her like this? Three other lovers to share the addiction? The very idea had driven him into taking some desperate measures to gain exclusive rights to this beautiful, wanton, glorious woman.
Within the month he had married her, holding the arrogant belief that marriage was all it would take to tame the tiger that lived inside her. What he’d actually discovered was that he had his own tiger, waiting to leap out and roar. Despite discovering Samantha was a virgin, her tiger became an intense sexual appetite. His tiger was jealousy. He’d had to lose her to discover that her seductress act had hidden a vulnerable heart, which had only wanted him to love her but could not quite believe that he did.
Jealousy was love’s natural predator. It was mean and cruel and naturally devious. So he’d fed her desire and had held back that which she had needed most from him—his love. In the end it had killed her—or as good as, when he saw what it had left her with. This… The desire for his body. And a fear so great, of the love resurrecting itself, that she preferred to remember nothing than risk going through that torment again.
So, what did all of that say about him? he finally concluded. Standing here in front of her—bold in his nakedness, with her foot circling exquisitely arousing caresses against his flesh as he prepared to begin feeding those desires again.
‘André?’ she murmured questioningly, because he’d been standing there too long doing nothing but stare at her.
André. Dear God, the name ripped him to pieces with self-contempt, disgust and a sickening dismay.
‘No,’ he uttered thickly, stepping back from the foot then turning his back on her so he didn’t have to watch while she shattered.
The Unforgettable Husband Page 10