‘I don’t know why you’re so anxious to cultivate Vera Benson,’ Dominic said harshly at last, ‘but if it’s Ian you’re after, you’re wasting your time. He’s devoted to Vera…far too much to be taken in by someone like you.’
Somehow Kate managed to contain her outrage long enough to say icily, ‘I am not cultivating Vera, as you put it, but I do have my living to earn, and…’
‘You expect me to believe that?’ His mouth curled unpleasantly as
he looked towards the gardens beyond the drawing-room’s french windows. ‘I doubt if what you earn brings in enough to keep so much as a gardener for this place!’
Once again Kate was amazed at her own self-control. It was almost as though she were standing outside herself in some way, more of an onlooker than a participant in what was going on.
‘You’re quite right,’ she told him coolly. ‘Which is why I’m putting the house up for sale. My father left me a small cottage a few miles away, and I intend to move into that. Not that it’s any business of yours.’ She gave him an icy smile and with regal disdain added, ‘Now, if you would kindly leave—’
‘My, my, how cool and controlled you’ve become!’ Dominic’s voice was light, tinged with mocking amusement, his expression deceptively relaxed, but Kate was not deceived. She had seen his eyes before he veiled them with the thickness of his lashes to hide the rage burning darkly there.
Against her will she experienced a tremor of fear, a nameless apprehension that touched some deeply feminine part of her.
‘But you weren’t so cool or indifferent eight years ago, were you, Kate? When you pleaded with me to make love to you…’
Her control snapping, Kate launched herself at him slapping his face so hard that her palm stung, shocking her out of her momentary madness to the disquieting realisation that what she had done in some way had pleased him. She could see it in the savage glitter of triumph in his eyes, and once more fear iced along her spine.
She wanted to turn and run; to hide herself away from him, and she wished she had given in to that impulse when suddenly he reached for her, lifting her off her feet, despite her height, carrying her through the door and up the stairs, in spite of her frenzied attempts to break free of him.
His fingers bit painfully into her skin as he used his foot to push open the door to the guest room.
Rage and something else, alien and disconcerting, glittered in his eyes as he dropped her on the bed so carelessly that momentarily she was too winded and shocked to do more than simply glare up at him, her body strangely weak.
Her weakness only lasted a second though before she was struggling to sit up, her sharp cry of fury muffled by the fierce pressure of Dominic’s mouth against her own, the weight of his body pressing her back against the mattress, his fingers locking like manacles round her slender wrists.
When he had kissed her before he had shocked and disillusioned her, hurt her badly, physically as well as mentally, and although she could sense that same savagery pent up inside him now, it was not fear, but a shocking, racing excitement that flooded through her body, holding her immobile beneath the bruising heat of his kiss.
Under her thin T-shirt and equally thin bra she could feel her breasts responding to the hardness of the muscled chest pressed against them, her nipples tingling, aching with an intensity she had never known as a naïve bride, but which she easily recognised now as the onset of overwhelming desire.
She could not want him…not this man… It was…it was sick, she told herself, hating what he was doing to her senses, hating the way she ached to fling off her clothes and his to have the male heat of his skin caressing her own.
‘Kate…’ Her name sounded unfamiliar to her as she caught the inarticulate mutter he made against her mouth, her throat aching in response to the raw need dammed up behind that single yearning sound.
She was going mad, she told herself bitterly as his mouth returned to hers, more delicately this time, probing, tasting, exploring… Dominic hated and despised her, she knew that.
So why was he kissing her? Why…?
‘Why are you doing this?’ She didn’t recognise the husky words as coming from her own throat until Dominic raised his head to look at her. She saw his mouth thin as he laughed bitterly, and knew she had been mad to think his feelings towards her might somehow have changed.
‘Why?’
He lifted his head to look down into her face and as she stared into his eyes Kate felt her heart contract painfully. Numbly she recognised that she had been a fool to think she could ignore this man or remain indifferent to him. He might not possess all the virtues with which she had invested him eight years ago, but he did possess something that drew her to him; something that made her ache and long to recklessly deny the question she had just asked; to blot out her knowledge of the truth and the burning self-disgust she could see quite plainly in his eyes and to think only instead of the desire that leaped tumultuously between them, but it was already too late…as he repeated with raw incredulity, ‘Why? Oh, come on, Kate, you aren’t that naïve! Far from it. I wanted you eight years ago, and I want you now.’
It was the last thing she had expected to hear and momentarily she was stunned by it, the protest rising to her lips, her instinctive denial silenced as he continued harshly,
‘I don’t make love to other men’s wives, Kate, no matter how tempted I am…and God knows I was.’
She saw the expression in his eyes and shrank from the pain of it, knowing now why his dislike and contempt of her was so intense. He might want her, but he resented that wanting, Kate could see that clearly.
‘For eight long years you’ve haunted me, Kate. You’ll never know how many nights I’ve lain alone in my bed cursing myself for being a fool to turn down what you offered.’ His mouth twisted in the way she was beginning to recognise. ‘At least I was an honourable fool, and I’ve no illusions about how quickly you found someone less…scrupulous…to take the place I refused.’
‘You want me?’ Her thoughts were a seething mass of contradictions, but the trite words were all she could think of to say.
‘Yes, much to my disgust. I shouldn’t be telling you this, should I? No doubt it gives you a great deal of amusement to know how much I desire you, totally against my will…’
‘If you’ve wanted me so much then why wait so long?’ she asked quietly, watching him. ‘Ricky’s been dead for over six years now.’