He held her tightly, hurting and enchanting her. 'Dearest… oh, my dearest…' Their mouths clung endlessly. When their lips drew reluctantly apart he sighed and stroked her cheek with a trembling hand.
'It served me right to go through that, though. I'd wanted you for years and I knew it, but I knew you had strong views about sex, and I guessed you weren't the sort of girl to go into a casual affair, so I tried to put you out of my mind. I wasn't prepared to take the way I felt about you seriously. I tried once or twice to date you, and when you refused I just shrugged my shoulders and told myself to forget it. It never really dawned on me how badly I wanted you until you said you were getting engaged to Robin. Oh, I heard, although I pretended at the time to be thinking about my trip to Stockholm. I managed to cover up the shock you'd given me, but all the time I was there I couldn't get the thought out of my head. I kept seeing you in bed with Robin.' He grimaced. 'It drove me wild. I flew back with the set intention of putting a spanner in the works. I meant to force you to be aware of me that day I came back.'
'I remember,' she said drily. 'You kissed me quite deliberately and I suppose I knew it was planned.'
He groaned. 'It was despicable — I knew that at the time. I had no intention of marrying you then, Deb. I just knew I couldn't live with the idea of you and Robin getting married.' He curved a hand around her face, his eyes passionate.
Deborah looked at him with loving amusement. 'You were behaving with typical selfishness, Alex…'
'I was fooling myself,' he said wryly. 'It had come home to me that if you married Robin you'd sleep with him, and the pictures that conjured up were like hot nails driven into my skull. All those months when you'd been dating Robin I'd sensed that there was no passion between the two of you. I couldn't stop watching you for signs of it, and you were as cool as two old friends. I suppose I'd always despised Robin, anyway. I knew I would have done everything in my power to get you into my bed, and it was obvious he was far too chivalrous for that, so I'd let things drift on… until you said you were marrying him. That shook me to my foundations. I admitted to myself that I had to stop the marriage. I had to get you somehow.'
'So you invented the trip to Nice,' she said, watching his face with tenderness.
'Ricky Winter was a godsent gift,' he said wryly. 'I used him to get you out of England. I had no fixed plan in my head, except somehow to stop that damned engagement.'
'But you thought that if you turned on the heat you might manage to persuade me to give in to you,' she said drily.
'I was a swine,' he admitted apologetically.
'You very nearly succeeded,' she admitted, sighing. 'I'd fought a difficult battle against how I felt about you for years, and when you did turn on the heat I lost my head in minutes. I suppose I'd always known that if you got me into your arms I'd never have the strength to fight my way out of them again…'
His arms tightened and he groaned. 'Deb, I have to be honest. I didn't know I loved you even while we were at the cottage. I knew I wanted you badly, badly enough to offer to marry you when I failed to seduce you. I thought you were holding out for a wedding ring, that that was the price you set on coming to bed with me, and I felt very resentful when I said I'd marry you.' -…
'I knew that,' she said, remembering her own hurt with a sigh. 'Had you told me that night that you loved me I would have slept with you, though, Alex.'
He groaned again. 'I nearly blew a blood vessel when you refused me, you know. I thought you must have egged me on to make a fool of myself so that you could have the amusement of knowing I'd been that crazy to get you…'
'I realise that,' she said, wincing at the memory of his savage hatred as he stalked out of the room.
'I had visions of the joke going around London, of my friends smiling behind their hands at the thought of my proposing marriage and still failing to get you into bed… you were right when you said I'd been fooled by my own image. My machismo got badly punctured that night. God, I was angry with you! I had used every trick in the book, and you'd beaten me hands down. I told myself I hated you.'
'You told me that, too,' she smiled, tongue in cheek.
'I meant it, too,' he said roughly. 'When we got stuck at the cottage I told myself I couldn't care less about you, but I had this secret feeling of relief because I thought I'd prevented your engagement after all. I thought Robin must suspect I'd slept with you, and I knew that any man's pride would be stung by your absence on such a thin excuse. I sniped at you because I wanted to get reactions from you. Every time you came near me I was confused… I wanted to hurt you, to touch you… I couldn't make sense of my own feelings any more. I'd never felt anything like it in my life. But I couldn't recognise it as love, because I just didn't believe in it, so I thought it was an intense sexual need which your refusal had frustrated to the point of real pain.'
She stroked his hard cheek with one hand, watching his eyes flare with confused emotion. Alex looked at her, his bones tensing beneath her fingers.
'That day in the garden,' he said huskily, 'I wanted you so badly I was shaking…'
'I know,' she said tenderly. 'I felt the same. At that moment nothing mattered but to give myself to you, even though I knew you didn't love me the way I loved you.'
He made a low sound and kissed her, his mouth fiercely demanding. 'Oh, God, that was when I began to think you might love me,' he said thickly. 'Until then I'd just thought you wanted me but wanted me to go through the motions of being in love to satisfy your sense of morality. I knew I affected you. I could feel it when I touched you. But you held me off and I thought it was for Robin's sake at first, then I told myself it was just a hypocritical desire to be virtuous. Then you looked at me so lovingly when you submitted that I felt my heart shake.'
'Oh, darling,' she muttered, pressing against him.
He kissed the top of her head. 'That was when it occurred to me that I wouldn't mind being married to you…'
She gave a soft little laugh at his tone. 'Oh, you really can be a patronising devil, Alex!'
He smiled, acknowledging the truth. 'It was my usual selfishness, I know. I started to tell myself that it was the only way I'd ever get you, that it would be fun anyway… and it would put a stop for ever to the chance of any other man having you…'
Her eyes filled with wry laughter. 'Oh, Alex!'
'Darling, I was kidding myself,' he said, grimacing. 'I was wildly looking for excuses for doing what I knew I wanted badly to do by then. When Robin insulted you it gave me the chance to say I was going to marry you. I couldn't bring myself to propose to you again and have you turn me down, but I knew damned well it was because by then I had to know you were mine.'
She turned bonelessly in his arms, her face radiant. 'Oh, Alex, I love you!'
He held her so tightly she could scarcely breathe and it was a pain which was sheer delight. 'Even knowing as I did that I wanted to marry you badly I couldn't bring myself to admit that I was in love. It wasn't until I walked into your flat and saw Robin that the truth burst on me. I had refused to believe in my feelings for you except as a desirable woman. I had to believe in the agony I felt then. I don't know how to describe how I felt. I couldn't move or speak because of pain. It wasn't just sexual jealousy. It was because I thought you must prefer him to me after all or you would never have gone to bed with him. I knew you too well to think you would have done it casually. I thought Robin had wanted you to prove you were still innocent, and you'd done it because you loved him…'
She flushed, then looked at him incredulously. 'Yet you still forced me to marry you?' Her tone was disbelieving.
Alex flushed darkly. 'I told you I was a swine. I was so jealous, so bitter, I wanted to kill both of you. If I'd been a nicer man I might have walked out of your flat and walked under a bus. The way I felt it was what I would have done. But I didn't. I was so unused to love I stayed, and I forced you to marry me, not because I couldn't let you go… but because I was still such a selfish, egotistical swine that
I was prepared to ruin your life to stop another man having you.'
She looked at him wryly. 'That's quite an admission from you, Alex.'
'You've made me face a lot of facts about myself, Deb. I don't like what I've seen, but I know they're all true. I was surprised you didn't put up a harder fight against me, but I was still cynical about women, so I thought you must realise what a much better match I am than Robin. I was convinced you loved him, and I was very bitter. When we came to bed tonight I fully intended to possess you even if you fought like hell.'
'That was obvious,' she said, remembering with a shudder.
'I was like a madman,' he said in anguish. 'I kept thinking about you in Robin's arms, and that you had resisted me all along but let him have you… and I wanted to hurt you as savagely as you'd hurt me. I never want to feel that sort of jealousy again.' He sighed, a long hard sigh. 'When you started to cry I seemed to come out of a trance of bitter madness. I realised I couldn't hurt you like that. I felt sick. I thought you wanted Robin and I almost cried myself.'
'Don't look like that, Alex,' she begged, wrung by the pain in his lean face.
His lips moved over her face, pressing hotly against her temples, eyes, cheeks. 'You don't know how I felt as I faced the thought that I'd have to let you go back to him. I told myself I'd have to get the marriage annulled and let Robin have you after all, and that was the moment I hit rock bottom. You cried in my arms, and I lay there, unable to fight the way I felt any more, enduring hell…'
'Don't!' she whispered, moved by his words.
'When you swore he had never touched you I couldn't let myself believe it at first. It was like being shown a glimpse of heaven after one has fallen into damnation. I'd always believed sex was all that could attract a man to a woman, but when you looked at me so tenderly and I began to hope you loved me instead of Robin, it had nothing to do with sex. It was a totally new feeling. I've always been pretty arrogant in my affairs with women. At that moment I could have gone on my knees to you.' His hands framed her face and he looked at her with deep, passionate adoration. 'You said you were jealous of the other women I've known, darling. You needn't be. Every emotion I've ever felt was a pale shadow of what you've made me go through. None of them ever drove me insane with desire, as you have, or made me suffer agonies or feel totally humble, as you have. There will never be anyone else. I swear to you. After you refused me at Nice there was one point when I told myself I'd bring you to your knees… instead you brought me to mine, and I knew everything else in life but you was meaningless to me.'
'I reached that point when I almost surrendered to you in my room at Nice,' she said, sighing. 'I knew very well I was sexually aware of you, but I knew all about the other women who had felt your compelling charm…' Her blue eyes mocked him. 'I wasn't joining any queues. I hated the way you made me feel, until you made me admit I wanted you, out on that raft.'
His silvery eyes narrowed teasingly.
'You've no idea what that did to my blood pressure. It shot sky-high, Deb. You were like a different woman. I was astonished and delighted by the way you took fire…'
She blushed. 'You vain, egotistical devil… you and your damned silver medallion! I could feel it against me as you made me face the way I wanted you…'
Mocking amusement filled his face. 'Ah, Sammy,' he said softly.
The old jealousy pierced her and she looked at him in pain.
Alex laughed, eyes warm. 'Darling, Sammy and I were never lovers. It was all a publicity stunt. Sammy's a nice girl. She knew it was a game and she was no more interested in me than I was in her.'
Deborah's eyes widened. She saw from his face that he told the truth.
'Half the time my so-called affairs were sheer moonshine. I thought you realised that. It was a convenient way of getting free publicity, but I'm not the sexual athlete the gossip columnists see me as, darling. Oh, once or twice, it was more concrete. I'm not saying there were no women, but the sexy image was useful to me, that was all.'
'Your mother said that,' she muttered.
'You said it, too,' he reminded her. 'You told me I was beginning to believe my own publicity. I hated to admit it, but you were right. Even when you snapped the chain of Sammy's medallion, and I wondered if you were jealous of the women I'd known, I was such a conceited idiot that I was pleased at the thought. It showed you were by no means as indifferent as you wanted me to believe…'
'I wasn't indifferent, damn you,' she said, stung by the brightness of his eyes. 'Once I admitted to myself I wanted you I knew I loved you. I'd never wanted a man like that before. The nagging ache you made me feel was new to me. Unlike you I'd never felt the urge for sex without love…'
'God help you if you ever do,' he said, his voice thick, his hands hard as they held her. 'I think I'd kill you!'
She looked at him through her lashes, seeing cruelty in his face with a leap of the senses. 'I never will,' she promised softly. 'I wanted to give you my body only because you already had my heart.' The hands grew possessive, caressing her body with trembling gentleness. 'You could have taken me in the garden,' she said, shakily. 'I was at your mercy, Alex, even though I knew you didn't love me.'
'Why did you refuse to marry me that first time?' he asked, staring at her.
'Because I knew you didn't love me, and I couldn't have borne it,' she admitted. 'It hurt to say no, but I wanted your love, not just your lovemaking.'
'I knew that tonight when you cried and I realised I couldn't take you knowing you didn't love me,' he said sombrely. 'I knew then that sex without love was as bitter as gall.'
Deborah moaned. 'But love makes you so weak. When you made love to me in the garden I had lost the strength to refuse you. I knew I was going to let you, even though it would scar me for life, because I loved you so desperately.'
'Darling,' he muttered, the hard, experienced hands shaking as he held her. 'Oh, darling, I nearly died of frustration when my mother arrived… but tonight made up for everything. I thought I knew everything there was to know about sex, but tonight you gave me the most intense pleasure I've ever had in my life…' 'I love you,' she said, her voice quivering with happiness. 'Alex, I love you.'
He gave a long groan of hard, hoarse pleasure. 'Deb… oh, God, Deb, I want you…'
Deborah began to laugh at the familiar phrase from which she had shrunk so many times, but her laughter died as Alex rolled her towards him and passionately silenced her.
Duel of Desire Page 17