by Penny Jordan
Within seconds of the footman leaving the pair of double doors on the opposite side of the room were thrown open and Luc strode in.
And it was Luc. Carrie could sense that it was him, feel that it was him with every pore in her body and with every savage, hurting ache of her heart.
Silently she observed him. Was his face a little thinner? Were the high cheekbones a little more pronounced?
Carrie watched him as he came towards her, her body stiffening as he reached her and took hold of her hands, his head dipping. Resolutely she neither flinched nor moved until the very last minute, so that the kiss intended for her lips merely grazed against her cheek.
She could see the hot smoulder in his eyes as they narrowed questioningly. Did he really need to question her reaction? His arrogance was unbelievable! Didn’t he realise how lucky he was that her pride and her self-control prevented her from turning into the hellcat her pain demanded and clawing that smooth male flesh until it bled as she was bleeding inside?
‘I’m sorry I wasn’t here to greet you when you got back,’ she heard him telling her smokily. ‘I had planned to be, but unfortunately a necessary meeting ran late. I thought tonight that it would be more…intimate if we dined here,’ he continued, releasing her to go over to the wine cooler standing to one side of the round table.
Unrelentingly Carrie watched as he removed a bottle of vintage champagne and deftly opened it, filling two crystal flutes and then picking them both up and coming back to her.
Handing her one, he told her, ‘To us, Carrie, and to—’
He broke off as a discreet knock on the door heralded the arrival of their dinner.
Any kind of personal or intimate conversation was impossible whilst they were dining, with two footmen hovering over them and various courses of food being carried to and from the table. But she wasn’t in any hurry. She could wait and anticipate the pleasure of telling Luc just what she thought of him.
She wasn’t particularly hungry either—scarcely able to eat more than a mouthful of each course.
‘Is something wrong?’ Luc asked her frowningly, when her plates continued to be removed with the food barely touched.
‘Wrong?’ Carrie looked at him in disbelief. ‘Do you really need to ask me that?’ she demanded as the anger fizzed inside her like the bubbles in the champagne she had drunk earlier. ‘You—’
She fought back the savage indictment she was longing to make as the footmen reappeared. She took a cooling gulp of her wine to calm herself down, and then another as she felt the soothing spread of the mellow liquid spilling through her body.
At last the meal was over, and Luc dismissed the footmen.
‘Coffee?’ he asked, indicating the full coffee pot that had been left.
Carrie shook her head, not trusting herself to speak. How dared he do this to her? How dared he put on this cynical show of post-honeymoon intimacy when in reality…
She saw the candle flames flicker as Luc moved, walking not towards her but towards the doors he had come through earlier.
‘Come here,’ he commanded her softly.
Grimly Carrie went to him.
‘Luc—’ she began fiercely, but he didn’t allow her to get any further, wrapping one arm around her and lowering his head so that he could whisper in her ear.
‘Have I told you yet how beautiful you look tonight, Carrie?’
He was kissing the side of her neck with open hunger and Carrie felt herself begin to shudder.
Luc was pushing open the doors behind him with his free hand, and as they opened Carrie could see through them into the bedroom that lay beyond them.
‘You don’t know how often these last ten days I’ve dreamed about doing this,’ Luc groaned as his hand cupped her face and his mouth found hers, taking it in a kiss of fiercely intimate male passion.
Fury exploded inside Carrie as she stood still and unmoving in Luc’s embrace. She could feel his realisation of her lack of response when his hold on her slackened and he released her mouth.
‘What is it?’ he asked, frowning at her.
‘What is it?’ Carrie glared at him. ‘Do you really need to ask me that, Luc? Did you really think I wouldn’t realise the truth?’
She watched as he closed his eyes and then opened them again.
‘Carrie, I couldn’t tell you. I know that Jay has explained everything to you. You must understand—’
‘Must?’ Carrie checked him with chilling contempt. ‘No, Luc, you are the one who must understand—that I will not be used in the way you have tried to use me.’
‘Carrie, I had no choice.’ Luc’s voice was stern now. ‘My duty to my country—’
‘Comes before everything else. Yes, I know that, thank you, Luc, Well, for your information, so far as I am concerned my first and foremost duty is to protect myself!’
‘Carrie, I promise that you weren’t in any danger. I would never expose you to danger.’ His voice had softened, and suddenly he groaned. ‘Oh, Carrie! Carrie! Why are we fighting when all I want to do is take you in my arms and…? When all I want to do is this…’ Luc finished thickly, and, taking her off guard, he picked her up bodily in his arms and, kicking the door closed behind him, carried her over to the huge bed.
Lying on her back, with Luc’s weight pinning her down, it was impossible for Carrie to move, and impossible for her to speak as Luc took possession of her mouth, kissing her with a fierce, deep hunger whilst his fingers tugged impatiently at the bow securing her halter-neck top—just as she had fantasised about him doing when she’d put it on the first night of their honeymoon.
Her anger seared her, but treacherously her body was already aching with white-hot anticipatory pleasure, responding to Luc’s hungry passion as though it was entirely independent of her brain and her emotions.
Whilst her head screamed with silent anger her body moaned with equally silent enjoyment. She could see the dark splay of Luc’s hand against her flesh, feel its heat and feel her own response.
Luc’s lips scorched the flesh exposed by the delicate lace of her bra, his hand pushing the fabric away, his whole body stilling as he revealed the smooth, tanned globe of her breast.
She could feel him looking at her
‘You’ve been sunbathing without a top!’ It was a statement, not a question, and his voice was curt and foreboding. ‘With Jay?’
Carrie stared at him. He actually sounded as though he was jealous!
‘I’ve been on a cruise, Luc,’ she reminded him sharply. ‘A honeymoon cruise…supposedly with my husband.’
‘I am your husband,’ he told her tersely.
‘No,’ Carrie responded coldly. ‘You are the man who married me, Luc. You’re not my husband and you never will be.’
She could see the anger and disbelief darkening his eyes.
‘What on earth are you talking about?’
‘I am talking about the fact that you have deliberately and cold-bloodedly used me, Luc. Did you really think I wouldn’t have the intelligence to put two and two together and come up with four? I’m an economist, remember—facts and figures are my business. It must have really upset your plans when you discovered that you weren’t going to be able to blackmail me into marrying you any longer by threatening to harm Harry!’
She was still lying on the bed underneath him, but she could feel the coolness of air between them as he lifted his head to stare down into her face.
‘Don’t try to deny it, Luc,’ she warned him. ‘Harry told me about Maria needing your permission to withdraw money from her trust fund to buy a farm. Obviously you knew then that it wouldn’t be long before I learned that Harry no longer needed his City job. But then fate stepped in on your side, didn’t it? And your godmother handed you the very thing you needed, didn’t she? What a relief that must have been for you, Luc! All you had to do to make sure I went through with the marriage that had become such an essential part of your plans was to offer me a little bit of fake sympathy and understanding, to
pretend to feel regret and remorse. And how convenient that you happened to be there when I was at my most vulnerable. Little did I know, when I was crying in your arms for the past, and what might have been, that you were deliberately using that vulnerability for your own ends!’
Carrie’s mouth twisted. ‘Blackmail and sex. Two of the most powerful weapons there are. And you have used them both unflinchingly, haven’t you, Luc? But then of course you had to, didn’t you? You have your duty to your country, after all, and that is far more important than anything or anyone else! Well, not to me it isn’t, Luc. And—’
‘This is crazy.’ Luc stopped her savagely. ‘I have no idea why you are feeding your imagination with such implausible scenarios, Carrie. Do you realise how…how offensive and insulting your accusations are? How hurtful?’
‘Hurtful?’ Carrie gave him a contemptuous look. ‘Well, they say that the truth hurts, don’t they, Luc? Did you get what you wanted, by the way? Were your negotiations successful?’
She could see him frowning as he told her tersely, ‘As a matter of fact, yes, they were.’
‘Good. Then that’s all that matters, isn’t it? At least it is to you.’
‘Carrie, will you stop this?’ Luc demanded harshly. ‘I can understand that you might feel upset that I didn’t explain to you what I was doing, but that was for your own sake and because—’
‘No, it wasn’t, Luc. Nothing you have done has been for my sake. You have used me, cynically and…unforgivably. What kind of man are you, Luc? You even took me to bed, treated me as though I was the most desirable woman you had ever met to make sure I wouldn’t leave. What a noble sacrifice, Luc! What a pity you can’t make it public. I’m sure that your country would be impressed to know what you forced yourself to do in the name of duty. How did you manage to do it, by the way? Pretend to yourself that I was your mistress? Well—’
Carrie gave a shocked gasp as Luc gripped her shoulders and told her savagely, ‘That’s enough. For your information no pretence, as you call it, was necessary. I’m a man, Carrie, and you are—’
She could see the anger flash through his eyes, and a kick of responsive emotion burst through her own body.
‘A man who makes love or rather has sex out of duty!’ she goaded him. ‘Oh, yes, I know that.’
‘Do you? Well, then, this won’t come as any surprise to you, will it? After all, as you reminded me earlier, we are married. But I am not yet your husband, Carrie in every sense of the word. An omission which I intend to remedy right now…’
‘No,’ Carrie refused, suddenly realising her danger. But it was too late.
Luc’s muttered ‘Yes!’ was burned against her lips, smothered by the pressure of his tongue-tip forcing apart her lips.
Carrie had thought that all the vulnerability had been drawn out of her by her own pain, but now she realised that she had been wrong. Something fierce and elemental deep within her own flesh leapt into life at Luc’s touch, meeting and matching the savagery of his passion, feeding and sharing it.
The insistence of his mouth, the touch of his hands, the hunger and the anger she could feel within him—Carrie met and matched them all. Here, now, in her arms, Luc was a man and not a prince; like her he was driven by the dark intensity of need; like her he could not control what he was feeling. They were meeting, Carrie recognised fiercely, as equals—and as adversaries.
When she left him, when he was without her, if she wanted anything she wanted him to know what he had lost—what he could have had if he had not deliberately destroyed it. Her love would have been a priceless gift, and he had spurned it. But he could not reject her body, nor his own desire for it. Luc was as helplessly enmeshed in the hunger tormenting him as she was in the aching need he had seeded inside her.
Carrie instinctively knew that each touch, each kiss, would be written into her senses for ever. Her body would never, ever feel like this again, want like this again, or love like this again.
She cried out as Luc entered her and she heard his guttural moan of pleasure as her body closed wantonly around him.
Each thrust of his flesh within her own rocked her senses, taking her deeper and deeper into a world where only the two of them existed, where all that mattered was the final culmination of their shared driving urge. Reality, pride and the future fell away. There was just the here and now. Luc kissed her, a fierce, passionate possession of her mouth that took her breath and with it her sharp cries of pleasure as her body shook with the intensity of her orgasm. The fierce contractions were only just dying when she felt Luc’s own release.
Wrapped tightly in one another’s arms, they felt their heartbeats gradually separate from their shared rhythm and return to their own.
Carrie felt Luc’s hand against her skin, cupping her jaw, turning her face towards him. Relieved of the sharp ache of her own physical need, she fought to control the danger of this special time of sweet sadness, when a woman’s emotions were notoriously at their most vulnerable.
Luc bent his head to her. She could feel the cooling dampness of the sweat on his skin. His lips brushed hers slowly. A mist of tears she couldn’t quite stop hazed her eyes at his gesture of what could be described as tenderness. Faked tenderness, she reminded herself sharply as she made her lips remain cool and unmoving beneath his.
She could feel him looking at her, and when she turned her head towards him she almost winced beneath the probing intensity of his questioning gaze.
‘Using me as a substitute for your mistress doesn’t change a thing, Luc,’ she told him cuttingly, curling her lip at him. ‘First thing tomorrow morning I shall be leaving S’Antander, and this time I won’t ever be coming back!’
Without another word she pushed herself away from him and reached for her discarded clothes.
‘Carrie.’ She could hear the ominous note in his voice but she ignored it, calmly redressing.
A vast protective numbness had thankfully engulfed her so that her movements were steady and mechanical, almost as though they were being actioned by some means of remote control.
‘For a start, I do not have, nor ever have had a mistress, and if—as I think you must be—you are referring to Gina, then for your information she and I were never lovers!’
His disclosure must have shocked her, Carrie realised distantly, but she refused to respond to Luc’s comment. What was the point? Nothing could change the way he had used her, and nothing could change the fact that he would do so again and again if he ever felt the need, in order to do his duty and protect S’Antander. Other people might find that aspect of his personality praiseworthy, and indeed were she one of his subjects she might too, but she was not. She was the woman who loved him, who wanted and needed to know that their love was shared, that their relationship was special, sacrosanct, and, however emotional it might seem, she needed to know that she held first place in his heart just as he did—or rather, had done, she amended quickly—in hers!
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
IT WAS a new day, the sun was shining, the sky was blue, and the castle and its environs looked picturebook-perfect. But none of those things had the power to touch her this morning, Carrie acknowledged as she walked out of the castle and into the square for nearly the last time.
Her cases were packed—minus the designer clothes that Luc had bought her. There was nothing she wanted to take with her from these last few weeks other than the necessary protection from the pain Luc had caused her to guard her through the aching loneliness of the time that lay ahead. By reminding herself of that pain she would be able to ignore any weak, impulsive longing for him and learn to overcome it!
The square was busy with visitors come to exclaim over the castle and its history, and the outdoor tables of the small cafés facing onto it were filled with customers. A group of young men seated at one of the tables briefly caught Carrie’s attention, more because of their silence than anything else.
She was almost halfway across the square when she heard Luc call her name. H
er body stiffened, and for a second she was tempted to ignore him, but somehow she discovered that she was turning round to face him, watching as he stood looking at her from his vantage point on the steps leading up to the main entrance of the castle.
As he started to walk down them a small tremor ran through her. Against her will she was remembering the previous night and the intensity of the passion they had shared. For some people such a passion would more than compensate for whatever else might be lacking in a relationship. Indeed, some people would no doubt consider that she was a fool to turn her back on it. Some people…
‘Carrie!’ Luc called her name again.
She blinked as she heard the warning in Luc’s voice, bemused when she saw him running towards her. In the distance she could hear noises, shouts, protests, screams of fear and shock, and then all the breath was knocked out of her lungs as Luc reached her, knocking her to the floor, where the impact of his body falling on top of her own drove the breath from her and obliterated the brilliance of the sunshine.
All around her she could hear sounds—the sounds of panic. She was aware of screams, people crying, sirens and the rush of feet. She could see feet running towards them, uniformed legs ending in polished boots. Someone was pulling Luc from on top of her, and as they did so she could see the bright red drops of blood splashed on the cream stone.
She could hear someone crying over and over again—‘No—no…no. Please God, no…’ And then she realised that the agonised voice she could hear was her own. Hands were reaching down to help her up, faces were looking into her own with expressions of anxiety, shock and concern.
‘Luc…Luc…Luc…’
She was still sobbing his name as they put her in the ambulance, and just before it drove off she saw the guards marching away the group of young men she had seen earlier.
On the ground where they had lain only moments before was a gun, which one of the guards carefully covered with a cloth before removing it.