The Bitter Price Of Love

by Amanda Browning

  Not that she was given long to be grateful, because at that precise moment a knock came on the door and, before she could respond to it, Eliot slipped inside and quickly shut the door. She resented the intrusion, but bit back her first angry words, remembering that he would soon have the right to do more than enter her room. The thought chilled her. She had only ever given one man that right, and it foolishly felt like betrayal to put Eliot in his place.

  Consequently, her words were rather clipped. ‘I was just about to take a shower, Eliot,’ she informed him as she stood up.

  The smile he sent her as he crossed the room was cajoling. ‘I won’t keep you. I only wanted to apologise for being so insensitive just now,’ he soothed, and attempted to take her in his arms, a manoeuvre she sidestepped neatly. Misunderstanding her motives, he swapped cajolery for concern. ‘Are you sure you didn’t hurt yourself?’

  ‘I’m perfectly all right. Nothing that a shower won’t put right, anyway,’ she reassured him, wishing he would just go, because she really didn’t have the patience to deal with him right now.

  Eliot missed the veiled hint. ‘That’s good, sweetheart. Er—you and Sibyl have a chat, did you?’ he continued, seeming to find the contents of the dressing-table fascinating.

  Reba watched him picking things up one by one, and began to feel uneasy. ‘Briefly,’ she admitted, staring at his averted head in mounting concern.

  Eliot dropped a pot of cold cream and slipped his hands into his trouser pockets. ‘What did she have to say?’ he enquired idly, wandering to the window.

  Reba knew the question was anything but idle, and her heart lurched. What was wrong? She swallowed to moisten a dry mouth. ‘Just girl-talk. What did you think she said?’ she challenged softly, eyeing his suddenly tense back.

  Eliot turned with a laugh. ‘Oh, nothing. But Sib can sometimes exaggerate. It isn’t always wise to believe everything she says.’

  ‘I’ll keep that in mind,’ she acknowledged levelly, and once again saw colour rise up his neck.

  As if realising he might have made a tactical error, Eliot dragged a hand through his hair. ‘She should never have been invited here,’ he snapped irritably. ‘She never would have been if I had been consulted!’

  Reba didn’t doubt it for a second. The question was, why? ‘Well, she’s Eleanor’s friend, so I doubt you’ll have to see much of her.’

  With a deep sigh he came and put his arms round her. ‘You’re right, darling. Sensible Reba. No wonder I love you so much,’ he groaned, kissing her with a mounting passion. Even so, it didn’t arouse her as Hunter’s kiss had, and she had to fight the memory to return the embrace. Fortunately Eliot didn’t appear to notice, and smiled at her when he finally released her.

  ‘You’re wonderful. I’d better let you get on and take your shower,’ he declared, but paused as he reached the door. ‘Oh, by the way, you didn’t run into anybody in your travels, did you?’

  She was glad he was too far away to see her cheeks turn pink, or they would have revealed her lie as she shook her head. ‘No. Just a lot of butterflies and birds.’

  Eliot nodded. ‘Good. I’ll see you in a little while, then,’ he promised, and finally left.

  Reba stared blankly at the door. Sibyl had hinted, and Eliot had questioned, but about what? Just what had happened between them to cause all this alarm? And alarm was what she was feeling. Trouble was coming at her from all sides, and she felt less and less able to cope with it. Tiredly she combed her fingers through her hair, wishing she could ease the tension inside her. She had come here with such high hopes, full of determination to make Eliot a good wife. She had always known how hard it was going to be. She couldn’t love him as she did Hunter, but he was deserving of love, and she was going to give him all that she had left. She would make it enough, so that he would never regret asking her to marry him. She had vowed to construct a life for them that would leave no place for regrets, and any she did have would be firmly locked away. She would make herself be happy, content to make Eliot happy too. She was paying a high price, but it would be worth it.

  If only she didn’t feel as if she was sitting on a time-bomb. Any minute it would go off, but she didn’t have a clue as to who would be left standing when the smoke finally cleared.

  It was hot. It was also very late. Reba hadn’t even bothered to attempt to go to bed. It was too hot to sleep. She had come upstairs a long time ago, after the strangest evening. It had been almost surreal, as if, by common consent, they were all playing their own version of charades. Eliot had stayed by her side, but it hadn’t escaped her that he had watched every movement Sibyl made. Conversation over dinner had been stilted, with nobody doing justice to the food, and it had been a relief when, much later, Eleanor had decided to put on some music. Eliot had immediately asked Sibyl to dance but, after a vigorous exchange of words, he had left her in order to partner Reba, remaining with her until, having had enough, she had invented a headache and escaped to her room.

  As she stepped from beneath a cool shower, drying herself and slipping on a delicate confection of silk with strategic lace inserts, Reba had nothing to cheer about. She had Hunter’s threat hovering over her head, and a fiancé who was turning into a stranger before her very eyes. On top of that, she could feel the beginnings of a very real headache. Towelling her hair, she shook it out and left it in a dark halo, knowing the heat would dry it in no time. Switching off the light, she stepped back into the softly lit bedroom and came to an abrupt halt.

  From his comfortable position stretched out on her bed, Hunter let his eyes rove over her, and there was nothing Reba could do to stop her body responding to that blatantly sensual examination. Nor would she raise her arms in an instinctively feminine gesture of protection, even though her nipples had hardened immediately, and now thrust proudly against the inadequate lace covering of her nightdress. She had run once today; she wouldn’t run again, even if there had been somewhere to run to.

  ‘Very nice,’ he murmured huskily, and the fine hairs on her skin shivered to attention.

  Damn him! ‘What are you doing ‘here, Hunter?’ she demanded, very much aware that her voice sounded far too croaky for comfort. He was still in those disreputable jeans, though this time the sleeveless T-shirt was black, and he had trainers on his feet.

  He grinned, taking devilish pleasure from her reaction. ‘Right now, enjoying the view. You always were damn good to look at, Reba, although touching you had a definite edge, remember?’

  How to forget? The memory of his touch was an invisible brand, marking her always as his. She could guess why he was here, and her thumbs began to prick ominously. ‘You know, all I have to do is scream, and the family will come running. What do you think they’ll do when they find you here?’

  To her annoyance, Hunter laughed. ‘Well, tiger-eyes, if you’re looking for Eliot to defend your honour, you’re going to be mightily disappointed. Besides, we both know you aren’t going to scream,’ he added, his voice dropping to a level which strummed at her nerves, undermining them.

  He was so sure of her that it stung her into action for her pride’s sake. Her response was to send him a flashing glance of dislike. ‘Oh, do we?’ she taunted, and had opened her mouth to defy him when he raised his hand and something caught the light, making her pause.

  Slowly Hunter sat up. ‘Carry on, I won’t stop you. We’ll see what dear Cousin El and Aunt Helena have to say when I explain I came to return this,’ he said, holding between thumb and finger what she now easily recognised as her missing ear-ring. ‘Naturally they’ll want to know how I came by it. Of course, if you’ve already confessed to visiting me, you’ve nothing to worry about, have you?’ His eyes held hers, challenging her to deny his unspoken claim that she had said nothing.

  She stared him out as long as she could, but it was only a matter of time before her eyes dropped, and she clasped her hands across her waist. ‘Damn you!’

  ‘So, why don’t you come over here and make yourself c
omfortable while we talk?’ He patted the bed invitingly.

  Reba’s nerves fairly leapt out of her body. Join him on the bed? He had to be kidding! That would be taking recklessness to the point of self-destruction. ‘If you’ve come to return my ear-ring, just leave it and go. We have nothing else to talk about.’

  His brows rose at that, infinitely mocking. ‘You’re forgetting the little matter of your marriage to Eliot.’

  ‘No, I’m not,’ she denied, taking a step closer to emphasise her point. ‘I’ve had time to think, too. You aren’t going to say anything, because, whether I’m a gold-digger or not, Eliot will never believe a word you say!’ she countered triumphantly.

  ‘Are you really prepared to take that chance?’ Hunter challenged quietly, and somehow it was all the more powerful for that softness.

  Reba’s heart lurched. She had missed something. Something vital. She knew it as certainly as she also knew that she didn’t know what it was. Yet she could not back down. ‘I know Eliot!’ she claimed, conveniently forgetting the doubts of the evening.

  Hunter rose from the bed with a cat-like movement, prowling towards her with such deliberation that she had to use all her control not to back away from him. ‘Good,’ he accepted, as he halted no more than a hair’s breadth away from her. ‘Then you’ll know exactly how he’ll react when I tell him something entirely different. You see, I intend to confess to him that you and I were lovers. And he’ll believe me, tiger-eyes, because I’ll tell him about this,’ he declared, and his hand came out to brush across her stomach before coming to rest at the top of her left thigh. ‘A very interesting place to have a mole.’

  Reba gasped and flinched away. ‘You wouldn’t!’ she protested faintly, hurting in a way she had never thought possible at the idea he could do such a thing.

  He watched her unwaveringly until she was ready to scream, then he smiled, teeth flashing whitely in the darkened room. ‘No, you’re right, I won’t. You see, tiger-eyes, I’m not going to tell Eliot anything. You are.’

  She knew she had paled, and icy fingers clutched her heart. ‘What?’

  His amusement vanished. ‘It’s quite simple. You tell him your way, or I’ll tell him mine. You can save face by telling him you’ve changed your mind, but if you leave it up to me, I’ll tell him about us.’

  Meaning she was damned if she didn’t, and damned if she did. Whatever she did, she lost. ‘You can’t be serious! That’s no choice at all!’

  Hunter’s face hardened, closing up, making it impossible to read his expression. ‘Take it or leave it, that’s up to you, but make up your mind to this. You aren’t going to marry Eliot.’

  She couldn’t believe that in a few short weeks they had come to this. ‘How could I ever have loved you?’ She didn’t realise she had spoken the words aloud until Hunter answered them in a voice of honed steel.

  ‘You never loved me, Reba, you just loved what you thought I had. I didn’t find being taken for a ride, however inventive you were, very edifying. You should never have played around with me, tiger-eyes, and you should never have come this close to me again. Everything has to be paid for, one way or another,’ he told her coldly, and she felt the ice of it chill her blood.

  ‘You’re determined to get your pound of flesh, aren’t you?’ she said flatly, seeing her family’s happiness vanishing before her eyes, destroyed by the man who had meant the whole world to her. There couldn’t be a more savage wound.

  Hunter laughed, and it was the most cynical sound she had ever heard. ‘Chin up, sweetheart, there is a plus side.’

  She looked at him in disbelief, and saw in his eyes a look which made her heart miss a beat. ‘Wh-what do you mean?’

  ‘I’ll take you instead.’

  There were a few awful seconds after he had made that bald statement when her heart thudded wildly inside her chest, and she thought she was about to faint, but that release was not allowed her. She stayed conscious, her shocked gaze interlocked with his.

  ‘What did you say?’ The query was automatic, to give her time to recover. She didn’t doubt what she had heard, and he knew it well enough.

  Even so, he obliged her by repeating it for devilish reasons of his own. Hunter’s blue eyes glittered. ‘I said, I’ll take you. You weren’t the only one to hunger last night, tiger-eyes. You’re a hard act to follow. Nobody quite measures up to your passion, and they never will until I’ve sated myself with you. I want you in my bed again, and I’m prepared to pay for the privilege. Not marriage, but I can give you all the money your avaricious soul requires.’

  Was there no end to the hurt he could inflict? With a sound of disgust, she stepped away from him. ‘You can’t seriously think I would agree to become your mistress!’ Her voice broke on the dreadful word, and she swallowed back a wave of sickness.

  ‘Those are my offers, take them or leave them,’ he told her bluntly.

  Ice began to settle about her heart, freezing it off. ‘You never used to be so cruel!’

  His lips curled sardonically. ‘I hadn’t had the pleasure of knowing you then. They say a good woman can do wonders for a man, but it’s nothing to what a bad one can do.’

  Reba caught her breath. ‘I’m not bad!’ she protested in a choked voice, and he grinned.

  ‘No, in certain areas you’re very good. That’s why I don’t understand this hesitation on your part. You always used to enjoy making love with me,’ he taunted, closing the gap between them once more and raising her chin with a forceful finger.

  Her eyes flashed him a look of withering contempt. ‘This wouldn’t be love, only sex!’

  Hunter was unscathed; his gaze slipped away from hers and followed the glide of his finger along her jaw and down her throat. It stopped where his finger rested over the frantically beating pulse, and his mouth took on a sensual curve. ‘Call it what you like, the end result will be the same.’ His eyes lifted to hers again. ‘Or have you forgotten? Perhaps I should give you a timely reminder,’ he said silkily, and his hand moulded her throat, turning her head to meet the descent of his.

  She only had time to mutter a strangled, ‘No!’ before his mouth cut her off and she was plunged pell-mell into a dizzying world of the senses. Her hands came up at once, but the instant they found his chest they turned traitor, fingers spreading out to encompass more of him instead of pushing him away.

  He was so clever. He didn’t use force—he didn’t need to. He only had to touch her and she went up in flames. He was an addiction from which she could never break free. No other man could raise her temperature so that it shot off the scale with only the caress of his lips and tongue. Within seconds she was a trembling mass of ultra-sensitive nerves, craving his touch on every part of her. While his tongue continued its erotic dance with hers, her breasts surged into painful arousal, longing for the touch of his hand, so that in the next instant her hand moved to clutch his wrist, tugging until he finally obeyed and allowed her to pull his hand down and settle it firmly on her breast.

  With a moan of pleasure she felt his fingers close around her turgid flesh, moulding it, teasing it, rubbing his thumb across the aching point until she arched into his touch, shivering at the dark delight. At the same moment his mouth left hers, allowing him to gaze down into her glazed eyes. Finger and thumb found her nipple and squeezed gently. She gasped.

  ‘Is that what you want, tiger-eyes, or this?’ he growled, and his head lowered, mouth enclosing her, suckling avidly at her proud flesh and sending a shaft of pleasure down through her.

  Reba moaned again, helplessly, fighting an inner battle which pitted the knowledge that she shouldn’t be allowing this to happen against her body, which recognised only that she wanted him badly. And there in the background was a small voice saying, You can have him. You can have him again, if only you agree to his offer. A tear struggled to the corner of her eye, for she knew that knowledge debased her feelings for him. It should be love, not sex!

  That gave her just enough strength to pull aw
ay from him and take a few trembling steps to freedom. ‘Leave me alone!’

  He followed her. ‘You don’t mean that.’

  ‘Yes, I do!’ Angrily she turned away, making a futile bid for escape which he subdued by pulling her back against him, his arms holding hers pinned to her sides.

  ‘No, you don’t,’ Hunter laughed huskily in her ear. ‘Your body tells the truth your lips would deny. I only have to touch you like this…’ One hand glided up to her breast, brushing aside the silk to cup her in his palm and tantalise her with a slow circling movement. Her head fell back against his shoulder as she caught her breath. ‘And you’re mine,’ he declared, his lips caressing her neck at every word.

  Reba closed her eyes, unable to deny it. He knew her so well; there was no place for her to hide. ‘Let me go, Hunter,’ she whispered brokenly, acknowledging defeat.

  ‘You still haven’t given me a yes or no.’

  He was pushing her too far! His words were destroying something he didn’t believe existed, and which she would not lay open to his scorn again. A large lump of emotion rose to block her throat, and she answered with difficulty, ‘It’s yes to letting me go, and no to your rotten deal!’

  From the way he went still, he hadn’t been expecting that. The next moment she was released, and turned to face him. His expression was shuttered once more. ‘Publish and be damned, Reba?’

  With trembling fingers she straightened her nightdress. ‘However much I hurt you, I don’t deserve to be treated like this,’ she returned, with all the dignity she could muster.

  One mobile eyebrow lifted as he stepped away from her. ‘Hurt me? Hell, I guess you could say my pride was hurt. I’m not used to being rejected. I don’t think any man is. When you hit a man where he lives, tiger-eyes, you can’t expect to get away with it.’

  ‘Considering how you think of me, I would have thought you’d think you had a lucky escape,’ she countered bitterly.