He wouldn’t let her. ‘Don’t start, Marnie.’ He sighed out wearily. ‘I have not come here to seduce you, if that is what you are thinking.’
‘Then why are you here?’ she demanded, glaring coldly at him as he reluctantly opened his eyes.
‘I still couldn’t sleep. So I decided the next best option was to join you here. As a therapy, it is working,’ he yawned, his eyes closing sleepily. ‘I am almost dead to the world already.’
‘But—Guy!’ she cried, managing to get an arm free and flinging it out to grab hold of his shoulder. It felt like satin beneath her touch, warm and tightly muscled. ‘Guy!’ she snapped, giving him a shake.
But he was already asleep! She couldn’t believe it! Could not believe his utter gall in just calmly climbing into bed with her. She sighed angrily, gave the satin shoulder a mulish slap and sighed again, letting her head fall back on to the pillow because, fast asleep or not, he was still holding on to her, giving her no room to escape.
‘If you’re kidding me with this stupid game, I’ll kill you, Guy Frabosa!’ she muttered, watching his relaxed face for any hint that he was just feigning sleep.
His breathing was light and even, his mouth parted slightly and relaxed, eyes closed so the silken brush of his long dark lashes lay in a perfect arch across his high cheekbones.
She studied him closely for long, suspicious minutes, his face bare inches away from her own, waiting for the slightest hint that he was only waiting for her to relax before he pounced. But he hardly moved, his body completely relaxed beneath the soft warm duvet, and as the minutes ticked by her own body became used to having his wound so intimately around it, legs tangled, the comforting feel of his arms folded so possessively around her, her breasts brushing lightly against his chest as she breathed.
The only man ever to hold her like this, she thought sadly. Guy. The man she loved to hate and hated to love.
‘Why do you still do this to me?’ she whispered to his sleeping face. ‘Why does this feel so right?’
She sighed softly, her eyes full of a kind of tender tragedy as she closed the few small inches between them and gently kissed him on the mouth. He did not respond; was too deeply asleep to have even noticed.
Sighing again, she relaxed back on to the pillows, her expression open and vulnerable as she continued to watch him sleep in her arms until slowly her own eyes began to droop, her body growing heavy until it relaxed tiredly into his.
Then she too slept.
The morning wasn’t so easy to accept when she awoke to find herself still curled cosily into his warm body. She opened her eyes to find his brown ones watching her lazily.
‘This is nice.’ Guy obviously felt no qualms about voicing what she was guiltily thinking. ‘I did consider waking the Sleeping Beauty with a kiss,’ he teased her wryly. ‘But I am afraid I feared the reprisals.’
She droped her gaze from his, then wished she hadn’t when her gaze fell on to her hand, still lovingly curled around his satin shoulder. Carefully, she removed it, then let it hover, not knowing quite what to do with it now, since the only other places she could rest it involved the warm flesh of the man lying beside her.
‘Here.’ Reaching out, he took the hand in his own, his fingers closing around hers as he brought them up to his mouth to brush a light kiss against them then folded them beneath the duvet into the narrow gap between their bodies. ‘Do you know how peacefully you sleep?’ he murmured questioningly. ‘You barely move, barely breathe—I used to lie watching you for hours, you know,’ he confessed, ‘envying you that blissful peace.’
‘You’re too over-active-minded to sleep with any hope of peace,’ she threw back drily, smiling, despite her discomfort with the situation.
‘Over-active other parts of me as well, if I recall,’ he teased.
Marnie blushed and quickly changed the subject. ‘You have more of these,’ she noted, freeing her captured hand so she could comb a finger through the silvered hairs at his temple.
‘My father was completely grey by his fiftieth birthday,’ he informed her, sounding gruffly defensive suddenly.
Marnie glanced into his guarded eyes. ‘It wasn’t a criticism,’ she told him quietly, realising where the defensiveness had come from. ‘I like the silver. I always did. It makes you look so distinguished. I like Roberto’s hair, too,’ she added quickly to defuse any hint of intimacy he might have read into the remark. ‘It makes him look distinguished.’
Guy just smiled, moving his gaze to her own hair, lying like a rippling red-gold stream out across the pillow behind her. Reaching over her, he picked up a silken tendril and brought it to his face, his eyelids lowering as he inhaled the rose-scented smell of it in a way which made her stomach curl. Guy could always make the simplest gesture seem so exquisitely sensual.
The heavy lids lifted again, catching her expression. ‘I…’ she floundered, not sure what she wanted to say, not sure if there was anything she could say to stop what was actually beginning to happen between them.
His own eyes darkened, his hand moving to her shoulder, and slowly, giving her more than enough time to realise what he intended to do, he gently pushed her on to her back, then came to lean over her.
‘Say no, if you want to,’ he murmured huskily, then brought his mouth down warmly on to hers.
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE night’s stubble on Guy’s chin rasped lightly against Marnie’s more sensitive flesh. Their warm bodies gravitated instinctively towards one another; her limbs parted to accommodate him, and Guy obliged by covering her completely, sending a thrill of pleasure rushing through her as she languidly accepted his weight.
The kiss went on and on, neither deepening nor receding. No tangled tongues, no desperate surge of passion to force her to make the unwanted decision as to whether she let them continue further down the road to ultimate union.
It was as though they were content to just recapture a poignant moment from the past when they could exchange kisses like this, warm, tender, giving kisses that did not necessarily need to tumble into the heated fire of sensuality to give satisfaction.
Marnie lifted her hands to his throat, then slid them to his nape, her fingers burying themselves in the jet-dark mass of his hair.
Guy let out a short, breathy sigh, and tangled his own hands in her hair, cupping her head, lifting her closer to him, his body beginning to move slightly, just the merest hint of a thrusting rhythm that made her stomach clench and begin to churn.
She wasn’t sure whose mouth parted first, or whose tongue went in sensual search of the other, but suddenly their mouths were straining, the kiss becoming heated, their breathing agitated enough to make them both move restlessly against each other. She felt the hardened thrust of his arousal, gasped and arched as it moved pleasurably against her.
‘Guy,’ she whispered feverishly.
‘Ssh,’ he said, sliding his moist mouth across her cheek to begin sucking seductively at her earlobe, while his hand slid between their bodies, finger sliding buttons free, parting her top so he could bring his chest back down upon her naked skin.
He sighed tremulously as she responded to the new delight of flesh against flesh, and brought his mouth back to hers, warm and seductive, his hands moving on further down until they were gently kneading her soft flesh as his hips thrust insistently against her own.
Moisture began to spring out all over his skin, musky-scented and so familiar to her that she groaned in pleasure as it assailed her nostrils. Her fingertips dug in as they ran from muscle-packed shoulders down the full length of his long back until they reached his waist, where they slid sideways, making him shudder, his muscles jerking in spasm as she searched out his acutely sensitive groin, cupping the rigid bones in his hips with her palms while her fingers moved incitingly.
And, as if her joining in the sensual foreplay he had begun was like giving leave for him to do his worst to her, Guy gasped something and slid his hand inside her pyjama bottoms so he could push them
out of his way.
Marnie felt something buried deep inside her crack, and like a dam with its seams burst open wide all her long-suppressed passions came flooding through, sending her arching towards that knowing hand, and on a husky groan she bit sensually down into his lower lip, making him start, jerk away from her to gaze hotly down into her flushed face. The mayhem going on inside her must have shown in the passionate glitter in her eyes, because Guy muttered something beneath his breath, and tried shakily to calm her.
‘I hate what you do to me!’ she choked out wretchedly.
‘No, you don’t,’ he denied, stroking a shaking hand across her flaming hair in an odd gesture of sympathy. ‘You only wish you did, my darling,’ he murmured, and brought his mouth back on to her before she could say another bitter word, burning her with a kiss that banished every other feeling from her but the hungry need to touch and feel.
His caresses grew urgent, more intimate, giving her no opportunity to return to the sanity she had let go of, his mouth sliding down her body to nip, lick and kiss her into a frenzy of desire. Her breathing was out of control, rasping hectically from her lips as he took one of her thrusting breasts into his mouth and sucked hard, until the pain of it became a terrible pleasure.
‘You want me,’ he said hoarsely, knowing her body better than she even did herself.
‘Yes,’ she answered, not even sorry to admit it any more.
‘How much?’ He ran his tongue across the recently abused tip of her breast, its newly heightened sensitivity making her cry out in pleasure.
She didn’t answer. Her teeth clenched tightly against her searing breath to stop the words he wanted to hear escaping through.
His hot breath burned her where it brushed, his body, slick with sweat, moving with a slow eroticism against her, arousing her with the sensual experience of a man who knew his own power.
Barely able to breathe as that slow, desperate build-up of feeling began to grow within the centre of her, she could feel herself beginning to float, her limbs tightening, her mind losing itself in the dizzy mists of sexual ecstasy.
‘How much?’ he demanded again.
Heart, body and soul. He wanted to hear her repeat the husky little love chant he had forced from her every time they made love before. But—
She shook her head. ‘No,’ she refused again, sane enough to know she could not give him more than she was already giving him. Desperate enough to sob at her own strength to refuse him this one simple but oh, so telling little phrase. ‘Never again,’ she whispered wretchedly. ‘Never again, Guy, never again.’
‘The heated throb of your body says you want me,’ he muttered. ‘It pulses with a need to feel me filling you inside! Your soul cries out for reunion with mine—I can hear it, even now while you lie here beneath me trying to deny its right to belong! I can hear it, Marnie, calling out to mine! And your heart.’ He covered her left breast where her heart pumped heavily against his resting hand. ‘What does this wildly pulsating heartbeat tell me?’
‘It tells you nothing—nothing!’ she cried, finding enough strength to push him away from her and rolling dizzily off the bed to stand. ‘I wonder sometimes if you’re some kind of throwback from the Dark Ages,’ she muttered, hugging her trembling body because she had a terrible feeling it was going to shatter if she didn’t. ‘How dare you expect more from me than you’re capable of giving yourself?’
He was lying where she had left him, on his back in all his arrogant nakedness, his expression grimly closed. ‘I gave you everything of myself the day we married,’ he stated coolly.
Marnie let out a deriding sound, dragging the flaps of her top around her aching breasts and trying to pretend that she didn’t give a damn that he had managed to bring her tumbling back to her senses before the whole thing had spun way out of control. ‘And Anthea?’ she threw at him bitterly. ‘What was she supposed to be—a moment’s loss of sanity?’
He nodded. ‘You could call her that,’ he agreed. ‘But, as I said to you only the other day, Anthea is a part of the past and is no longer up for discussion. It is over—’
‘Gone, forgotten, I know,’ she finished for him. ‘Well,’ she snapped, ‘so are the promises from the past. If you want my full commitment to you a second time, then you will have to earn it a second time.’ Jerkily she moved across the room to the adjoining bathroom door. ‘Now get off my bed, and out of my room,’ she told him as she tugged open the door. ‘The right to enter either is not yours quite yet!’
Slamming the bathroom door shut behind her and locking it, Marnie then leaned back against the solid safety of the wood and closed her eyes.
She hated him! Hated! she told herself fiercely.
But a lump formed in her aching throat, put there by the guilty knowledge that, even while she did hate, she wanted him with a hunger that was growing stronger with each hour she spent in his company. And if he hadn’t pushed his luck too far just now, then she would be still lying beneath him, glorying in the pleasure only Guy could give her.
*
Emerging half an hour later, Marnie made directly for the sitting-room with the intention of using the telephone extension in there. But she was brought up short for a moment when she found Guy lounging on one of the soft-cushioned sofas reading his daily newspaper.
He didn’t look up, and, lifting her chin in outright defiance at the sudden hungry jolt her senses gave her, she marched over to the phone and picked it up.
‘What are you doing?’ Guy enquired lazily.
‘Ringing Jamie,’ she told him, holding the receiver to her ear. ‘I want to know how Clare is, and if—’
‘They’re not there,’ he said coolly, flipping over a newspaper sheet.
‘Not there?’ Alarm skittered down her spine. ‘Why?’ she gasped. ‘Is it Clare? Is she—?’
‘Of course not!’ he sighed. ‘So stop letting that wild imagination of yours run away with you. Clare is fine.’
‘Then why are you so certain they won’t be at the garage?’ she demanded. ‘It’s Saturday. Jamie is open on a Saturday. He—’
‘They are not your concern any more,’ Guy inserted levelly. ‘Leave them to get on with their own lives.’
‘Not my concern? Of course they’re my concern!’ she snapped. ‘They’re my family!’
‘I am the only family you need concern yourself about from now on.’
‘No way!’ Marnie shook her bright head. ‘I’ve willingly given up everything else for you, Guy. I will not give up my family as well!’
‘Willingly?’ he quizzed, lifting his dark head from his newspaper to mock her with a look.
‘Willingly or unwillingly,’ she snapped. ‘What difference does it make? I’ve done it. But Jamie and Clare are all I have left, and I won’t let you take them away from me, too!’
‘You have me,’ he pointed out.
But I don’t want you! she wanted to tell him, but held the words back, snapping her lips shut over her clenched teeth as she turned her attention back to the telephone again. No answer; she let it ring and ring, then, in the end, placed the receiver slowly back on its rest and turned to look at Guy.
‘What have you done with them, Guy?’ she demanded huskily.
‘Done?’ He glanced at her with amusement spiking his eyes, then away again. ‘That is charming,’ he scoffed. ‘Are you suspecting me of some dastardly crime, Marnie?’ he mocked. ‘Like spiriting them away to some wretched place and doing them in?’
‘Don’t be stupid!’ she snapped. Then, doubtfully, ‘What have you done with them?’
He sighed, his eyes flicking impatiently over the newspaper sheets as if he was intending not to answer. Then he said flatly, ‘They are not at the garage because they are at Oaklands. Your brother is working for me again. He and Clare moved into the Lodge House by the West Gate yesterday.’
‘Jamie—working back at Oaklands?’ Her voice mirrored her shocked disbelief. Her brother had always vowed never to work for anyone but himself
again. ‘But why? How—?’
‘Why?’ Guy drawled sardonically. ‘Because he is not fit to run his own business. And how? By doing as he was told and transporting himself, his charming wife, his impressive collection of tools—and my MG Magnette—down to Oaklands the day after he talked you into taking the rap for his own sins.’
‘My God.’ Stunned at how quickly he had turned all their lives inside out, she sank weakly into a nearby chair. ‘You mean—you took them over, lock, stock and barrel, just like that?’
‘Just like that,’ he agreed. ‘Let’s call it—protecting my investment,’ he smiled. ‘With your brother and his wife solely reliant on my goodwill to keep food on their plates and a roof over their heads, I should have no problem keeping my feisty wife in order.’
But her mind was too busy working overtime even to care about his provoking sarcasm. There was more to all of this than Guy was actually telling her—or her brother if she was reading her prickling instincts correctly. ‘And the garage?’ she questioned narrowly. ‘What is to become of that?’
‘That now belongs to me,’ he said. ‘And it goes up for sale first thing Monday morning.’
‘How much?’ she then demanded grimly. ‘How much exactly does my brother owe you?’
He ignored the question, seemingly engrossed in an article he was reading. Blue eyes beginning to burn, Marnie got up and stepped over to flick at the wretched newspaper he was so interested in with her hand. ‘How much?’ she demanded.
Guy took his time bringing his head up to look at her, and when he did there was more than just a mild warning in his eyes. ‘None of your damned business,’ he enunciated slowly. ‘If I was stupid enough to let him tap me for money, then that is my affair, not yours.’
‘But—’
‘Drop it, Marnie!’ he ground out suddenly, thrusting the newspaper aside and surging to his feet. ‘Just drop it before I get really angry, which I could very easily do, the way I feel right now. So be warned!’
‘No,’ she refused, taking hold of his arm as he went to stride away. ‘Guy, please tell me just how deeply we are in your debt.’
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