Response

by Penny Jordan

  ‘Please let go of me, Alexis,’ she asked huskily.

  ‘Why? Are you perhaps finding you are not as indifferent to me as you have tried to pretend. Are you ready to admit that I was right, that you do still want me? What’s the point in pretending? We both know how responsive you are to me.’

  Another minute and he would be kissing her, Sienna could sense the powerful tension within him to dominate her to his will, and suddenly she realised that she might have found his Achilles heel and the means by which she could get him to send her away.

  ‘You mean you think you know,’ she corrected lightly, willing herself not to betray any signs of tremulousness or uncertainty. ‘Didn’t it ever occur to you that my “responsiveness” might have been faked? I did after all believe you to be my husband, you aren’t the only one with a sense of honour and duty, Alexis. I made love with you because I believed you had a right to demand that kind of commitment from me, because I genuinely believed that we were in love, even though I could no longer remember that emotion. I thought you cared about me and that you would be hurt by any hint of rejection, just as I would have been hurt had the positions been reversed, had I discovered that the husband I believed loved me had lost his memory and with it all memory of our love. I forced myself to be what I thought you had a right to accept, and because you are a very… experienced lover my body responded—more out of relief than desire, I’m sure. I was so terrified that you would guess how empty I felt inside. How guilty…’

  ‘No!’ He uttered the denial, harshly. ‘No, Sienna, it won’t work—you responded to me, you touched me as a woman touches the man she loves and desires above all others.’

  ‘I touched you as I believed you had a right to be touched,’ Sienna corrected lightly. ‘You must remember that the person I was when we made love never really existed, she wasn’t me, Alexis, she could never be me. All of it was only because you were my husband. Because of that and what I felt I owed you I…’

  ‘You what? Forced yourself to submit to me?’

  She could tell even without seeing his face that it was dark with anger, that his eyes were glittering with the force of it, his muscles compacted under the strain of denying it an outlet. A terrible, tearing pain splintered inside her and she wanted to call back the words, to appease his pride, but she could not. For the sake of her own salvation she must not.

  ‘Is that what you’re trying to tell me, Sienna?’ he demanded through gritted teeth, ‘that you forced yourself to ensure this?’ He bent his head, feathering his lips lightly across hers, warming their cold contours. She felt her heart leap and lodge somewhere in her throat as she withstood the sensual caress. He had himself under control now, the anger banked down under a greater need, but Sienna knew it was still there, waiting to burst into life the moment she put a light to it. ‘And this…’ Alexis murmured against her closed lips, ‘did you force yourself to endure this?’ His hand closed over her breast, his thumb rubbing lightly against her nipple, his lips continuing to drift across her face, teasing, tasting, his progress a leisurely one, his body hard against hers, as he moved slightly and pulled her against him, thigh pressed against thigh, his body infusing hers with slow heat, his lips continuing to brush against hers, his tongue stroking their soft outline.

  ‘Ah, Sienna,’ he breathed her name against her mouth, a soft caress. ‘It won’t work, you know. Outwardly you may seem cold, but inside…’

  ‘Inside I’m cold too, Alexis,’ she muttered through clenched teeth. ‘I don’t want you.’

  ‘Keep on telling yourself that,’ he taunted derisively, ‘but it won’t stop this.’ He touched the pulse jumping frantically at the base of her throat, then slid his mouth moistly down to cover it, holding her imprisoned until she could feel the hard hammering of her blood in her veins. ‘Or this…’ his hand slid up under her tee shirt, his fingers light and determined against her breast, finding her peaking nipple unerringly, touching its hard betrayal, ‘… from telling me that you’re a liar. And not just a liar, but a coward too. I never thought that of you before.’

  ‘Words, Alexis,’ she said tiredly, pulling away from him. ‘I’m not carrying your child, by the way, and now I never will. I don’t want you, Alexis, and to impregnate me, you would have to force me.’

  ‘Would I?’ He moved swiftly, lifting her into his arms, striding towards the door that led to their bedroom. ‘Would I, Sienna? I think not. You’re far too hot-blooded for force to be needed. For all your innocence and inexperience you’re the most sensual woman I’ve ever touched. I love watching your face when I make love to you, seeing the pleasure there, feeling your body’s response to mine. Do you honestly expect me to believe that that was born of duty?’

  He had reached their bedroom and pushed open the door, making his way unerringly to the bed in the darkness. ‘Do you realise I cut short my business in Athens to come back to you?’

  ‘Did you? She can’t have been very pleased, but it was all for nothing, Alexis, you might as well go back.’

  ‘She? Is that what you think?’

  She shrugged, as he held her, searching her face in the fitful moonlight. ‘Does it matter what I think? I’m not naïve enough to suppose I’m the only woman in your life, nor to misjudge the potency of your virility. After all, you’ve already proved to me that love has no place in your heart, that the sexual act is something that need not even be motivated by desire.’

  ‘I presume you’re talking about the first time we made love? Oh, you’re wrong there, Sienna. I desired you. You’ll never know how hard it was for me to do what I had to do then, to turn you away from my arms, but I had to think of Sofia. I’m not going to set you free. You can’t remain cold in my arms for ever, I don’t believe you could manage it even for one night… I’ve missed having you in my bed, but you’re not going to leave it again, Sienna. Before tonight’s over, I’m going to hear you making those little sounds of pleasure deep in your throat, your body quivering with desire for me.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Yes,’ he said thickly, dropping her on the bed and coming down quickly alongside her, imprisoning her against the covers with the weight of his thighs.

  She tried to resist him as his hands dealt with the barrier of her clothes, but he had the greater strength and, it seemed, the greater determination. His own shirt had come unbuttoned in the struggle, the scrape of his body hair against her soft skin faintly abrasive as she tried to wriggle free of the pressure of his weight against her, her fingers clawing angrily at his shoulders as she tensed her body against him.

  ‘Scratch all you like,’ Alexis muttered in her ear as he seized her wrists and pinned them together above her head with hard fingers, ‘but before the night is over you will be offering me the salve of your kisses against the wounds you have just inflicted.’

  ‘No!’ Her eyes were hard and bright with anger, her body twisting as she tried to throw off his weight. He shifted slightly, still pinning her wrists, one hard, muscled thigh flung across hers, holding her against the bed, his eyes raking her flushed features and disordered curls before dropping slowly to rest on the pulse thudding visibly in her throat and then moving lower to where her breasts rose and fell with the urgency of her breathing. The rough pressure of his chest against their softness had hardened her nipples into thrusting points, spelling incitement rather than resistance, and Sienna felt humiliation clog her throat as Alexis studied the evidence of their arousal. He bent his head and she tensed, anticipating the arousing tug of his mouth against their hardness, but instead it was the soft curve of her waist he kissed, his mouth moving slowly across her skin. She forced herself to lie unmoving beneath his caress, to concentrate on the ache in her arms and not the warm, quivering sensations she could feel racing through her body where his mouth touched it. His free hand lay across her stomach, and she could feel the nerve endings jumping beneath it, the lazily spiralling circles he was drawing on her skin activating an inner spring that seemed to tighten in painful pleas
ure with each circumference of his flesh against her own. His mouth moved upwards, slowly, tasting her skin, his teeth nibbling it gently. It was a refined form of torture and she was sure that he knew it. Every instinct she possessed cried out for her to respond, to abandon her pride and lock her fingers in his hair, to hold his mouth against the aching burgeoning of her flesh, to move her hips beneath the heavy weight of his, her fingers running over his skin, her mouth tasting his warmth. But she must not; she must lie quiescent, uncaring, staring up at the ceiling, emptying her mind and body of everything but the fact that what she was fighting for wasn’t a simple victory, but her very survival.

  Alexis was still touching her, his lips slowly tracing a circle round her breast; he paused and Sienna opened her eyes. She was holding her breath and she forced herself to glance down over her own body towards him. Her face went white, her tongue touching dry lips. Even in the darkness there was enough light from the moon to show her the rounded outline of her breast, the darker flesh around her nipple pulsating in open hunger, as though straining towards the contact it wanted. ‘You want me.’ He said it flatly, his voice hard, but curiously empty. ‘Say it, Sienna, say it!’

  She shook her head, not able to trust her voice, and witnessed the dark fury that swept down over his face, his eyes glittering hotly between slitted lids as he moved and bent his head slowly towards her breast and then pausing to look into her eyes. Her heart was thudding like a sledgehammer. She tried to tug her wrists free, wanting to defend herself from the look in his eyes, but he refused to release her. His tongue touched the tender aureole of flesh, circled it slowly while she breathed in, her breath held against the agony of need Alexis was building inside her, too terrified to exhale in case she uttered the words he was wanting to hear, a mortal agony possessing her body as it fought against the control of her mind, wept and begged her to give way. Alexis hadn’t moved. His tongue brushed over her nipple, an aching torment of pleasure, beneath which she wanted to moan and writhe with feverish urgency. His tongue was hot and moist against her. He had to stop. She couldn’t endure much more. ‘You want me.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Liar.’ He said it thickly, suddenly releasing her wrists and moving. The moment she felt the hard arousal of his body against her Sienna quivered. She knew that he had felt her instinctive response and bitterness tasted acid in her mouth. She raised her hands to his shoulders to push him away, mentally and physically exhausted by the strain of holding him at bay. She could not endure any more, but the touch of her fingers against his skin seemed to ignore something inside her. The self-control she had witnessed while he tormented her was gone, overwhelmed by a palpable surge of desire which gripped his body, perspiration breaking out on his skin, his hoarse, ‘Damn you, Sienna!’ hot against her ear, his arms tightening imprisoningly around her as his mouth closed over hers in a kiss that plunged her with him down into a dark spiralling cavern of need, which obliterated all her good resolutions and called out to that most primitive, secret part of her. Her hands slid from his shoulders to his nape, where they twined in his hair and then explored the ridged muscles of his throat, feeling them move against her touch, his skin moist, his hunger a physical force she couldn’t withstand. He kissed her eyelids, and the soft spirals of her ears, her throat, and the vulnerable curve of her shoulders, his teeth biting into her skin, his kisses interspersed with muttered words she couldn’t decipher.

  ‘You may not want me, but I want you,’ he told her hoarsely, returning to her lips, pulling sensuously at the lower one, running his tongue along its swollen fullness. ‘No woman has driven me to this madness before. You arouse in me a hunger that nothing can appease.’ He bent his head and found the hard crests of her breasts, running his tongue lightly from one to the other, letting her feel the tension invading his body, moving against her with a rhythmic urgency he seemed unable to control.

  ‘Alexis, please stop this—please stop now. I can’t stand any more!’ The words were out before she could stop them. After all she had said to herself and to him she couldn’t let him take her in anger, in punishment and nor could she give in to the demands of her own body, and touch and caress him as she was longing to do. She knew quite well what force drove him, how very potent was the desire that flared inside him, how hungry she was to share it, to be absorbed and possessed completely by it. She wanted to run her hands over the planes of his body, his broad chest, and narrow hips, the long leanness of his flanks, the firm masculine buttocks. She shuddered and pressed her hands to his chest. ‘Alexis!’

  ‘I can’t. Sienna, I can’t.’ The thick, heated mutter broke through her anger and held her still beneath him. She heard him groan, a low hoarse sound of pain and need, and his body moved against hers, parting her thighs, his hands moving urgently downwards grazing against her breasts. His mouth touched one hard peak and Sienna held her breath, sensing that he was fighting for self-control, but as though the feel of her flesh fed a deep compulsive inner hunger, he tensed and then shuddered explosively, unable to prevent the driving thrust of his body against and inside her. She cried out, not in pain but in surprise that he should lose control, and his mouth took the cry, smothering it in heat, drawing her with him until she was part of the fierce, tumultuous pleasure he could no longer deny.

  She woke up during the night, and knew by the tension in his body that he wasn’t asleep. He seemed to know too that she was awake. She felt him turn over, his back towards her. ‘I’ll have the helicopter come over tomorrow,’ he told her emotionlessly. ‘You’ve won, Sienna. I’m setting you free.’

  Free? Didn’t he know that she would never be free?

  ‘Am I allowed to know why?’ Her voice was surprisingly dry.

  ‘You mean you can’t guess?’ She sensed the derision behind his words. ‘You drove me tonight to a pitch no woman has ever done before. I’ve always prided myself on my self-control, on my ability to reason, to weigh and judge. I can’t trust myself where you’re concerned any longer, Sienna—tonight proved that to me. I told myself I wouldn’t take you until you asked me to. I wanted to prove to you that physically you do want me. Instead all I proved was that I was dangerously vulnerable. I didn’t like the man you made me tonight, but I know now I can’t make you any promises that there won’t be another occasion when you will drive me to taking you as brutally as I once accused your brother of taking my sister. You bring out the worst in me, Sienna. You make me despise myself. If I keep you with me you’ll probably destroy me, and because of that, because I am the man I am, in the interests of self-preservation I would have to find the means of destroying you first. I thought I could make it work between us, but I now know that I can’t.’

  She had found his Achilles heel, but it gave her no satisfaction. She had achieved what she had set out to achieve. Alexis would set her free. She knew it was better this way, that in the long run it would be less painful, but all she could think of was how much she had longed to kiss and caress him, how she had yearned to show her love, to melt in his arms and tell him that nothing else mattered. Now it was too late, and she promised herself that there were going to be no regrets. It was for the best, for both of them.

  CHAPTER NINE

  SIENNA left Athens three days later. Alexis insisted on accompanying her while she waited for her flight, just as he had insisted that she travel first class and accept the allowance he intended to give her, and which privately she had already decided to leave untouched. There was no pleasure in achieving her goal, her heart and body cried out to remain with Alexis, but what was the point? She wanted more, far more than he could ever give her, he had hurt and used her, but even knowing this there was no satisfaction to be found in the knowledge that she had forced him to change his mind and let her go. She hated the self-contempt in his eyes whenever he glanced towards her, and as she waited for her flight to be called, she wondered if he was remembering as she was doing the tortured, strained words he had muttered the night he had told her he was going to let her go.


  ‘I can’t keep you here now,’ he had told her, ‘not and keep my sanity and self-respect as well, because I can’t promise myself that I won’t be driven to taking you again, the way I took you tonight. You drive me beyond the limits of my self-control, Sienna. You were right—I should never have married you.’

  She turned once as she went through the barrier. Alexis stood watching her, hands in the pockets of the dark, expensive suit he was wearing, the fabric stretched as tautly over his muscles as his flesh was stretched across the bones of his face. She knew he was suffering and stamped down hard on her longing to go to him and comfort him. His suffering sprang not from love but from bruised ego. He had thought himself completely in control, and the discovery that he wasn’t lashed his pride in much the same way as her self-betrayal had lashed hers. Both of them were losers because of their coming together. They were better off apart—far better off.

  The flight to London was uneventful. She took a taxi from the airport, telling herself that this would be her last extravagance before she stopped being a rich man’s wife, and reverted to her former life style. Alexis had handed over to her before she left all the personal effects he had kept back from her while she was in hospital. Among them had been her key to Rob’s flat, and she used it now, giving a surprised start when she heard footsteps on the other side of the door.

  ‘Sienna!’ Rob looked pale and tired, his hair rumpled as though he had been running irate fingers through it, a habit he had when annoyed. ‘I’ve just got back and read your letter. What the devil’s been going on?’