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‘Or what?’ he goaded her. ‘You’ll scream? I think not.’
He bent his head, the soft words stirring the tendrils of hair curling across her forehead, and Tara froze, her throat locked and aching.
‘Well, Tara?’
She stared up at him wildly, still unable to believe what was happening. He was like some dark
catalyst, disturbing the even pace of her life, forcing to the surface all the dark, swirling currents she had fought successfully to subdue.
‘James, no!’ Her hoarse moan only invoked a bitter grimace, the dark blue eyes boring into hers as he paused purposefully, before sliding his hands upwards to grip her shoulders and bending his head to brush his lips tauntingly across the quivering softness of hers while she lay against him, totally incapable of offering the resistance her mind was urging upon her.
‘What an excellent actress you are, my dear,’ James murmured against her mouth. ‘If I didn’t know better I’d say you were still that untouched child I…’
‘Destroyed?’ Tara said bitterly, gasping with pain as she tried to draw away, and his fingers dug into her shoulders, wincing as his face darkened, his mouth curving cruelly as he reached for the fragile straps of her nightgown, sneering,
‘Very effective, but a waste of time. I know you, Tara, and I happen to possess an excellent memory. How long was it, by the way, before you married the twins’ father? They’re six, so Sue told me. Scarcely a good augur of your fidelity, I venture to suggest. You couldn’t have married him much more than six months after you’d sworn eternal love for me.’
‘I never loved you,’ Tara lashed out at him, driven by merciless pain to inflict similar wounds to him to those which had just rent her, although logic told her that he was impervious to anything she could possibly say to him. ‘I was a foolish child…’
‘Who turned into a woman in my arms,’ James told her smokily. A muscle clenched suddenly in his jaw as he added with a controlled violence that shocked her, ‘Did you tell him that he wasn’t going to be the first, Tara, and why? Or didn’t he care?’
‘Should he have done?’ Her fear fell from her as anger beat up hotly inside her. ‘Couldn’t he have loved me as a person? But then I suppose that’s something outside your experience,’ she added quietly. ‘You aren’t capable of feeling that sort of emotion, are you, James?’
The look in his eyes frightened her. She took an involuntary step backwards, which was a mistake as it brought her up against the bed. The smile curling James’s mouth possessed a wolfish ferocity that sent fresh fear spiralling through her.
‘Perhaps it’s time I reminded you exactly what kind of emotion I can feel,’ he threatened softly, his hands grasping her waist and then moving slowly up her body until he was cupping her breasts.
Tara hardly dared to breathe. Her heart seemed to be fluttering in her rib cage like a trapped bird. His hands burned through the thin silk, and to her horror she could feel the instinctive swelling of her breasts and knew that James was aware of it as well. His hands left her breasts and as though she were watching a film in slow motion Tara watched him take the fragile neckline of the pale silk and rip it savagely from neck to hem, exposing the pearly outline of her body to his vulpine gaze.
‘James!’ Her husky protest went ignored as his hands slid over her shoulders and down her back, the hard pressure of his thighs burning against her.
His mouth fastened on hers, depriving her of breath, reinforcing his superior strength. This was not the man she had loved, Tara admitted numbly as her swollen lips were forced apart and cruel fingers captured her breast. She moaned deep in her throat, trapped between the bed and James, every feeble effort she made to escape bringing her into more intimate contact with the arrogantly male contours of his body. Her bruised lips were released, but James did not set her free.
‘What’s the matter, Tara?’ he goaded. ‘Afraid that you aren’t as indifferent to me as you’d like to think?’
Tara laughed bitterly. ‘Aren’t I?’ she mocked. ‘Can’t your vanity take the fact that you can’t arouse me?’
‘No?’ Too late Tara realised her mistake. The hands which had held her with bruising ferocity relaxed their grip. ‘We’ll just see about that, shall we?’
A quiver of alarm shivered through her, but Tara was determined not to give in, forcing herself to ignore the sensual seduction in the way James slid his hands over her body, moulding her to him, bending his head…
Compressing her lips, she averted her head, but once again James was too clever for her and the descending mouth touched not on her closed lips but on the sensitive flesh of her neck, moving erotically over the spot where a tiny giveaway pulse had started to hammer rapidly. His mouth moved sensually along her shoulder and Tara felt herself being forced backwards on to the bed. It dipped protestingly beneath their combined weight, sensations she had almost forgotten existed rushing over her as the hard compact male frame covered her nakedness, the brush of the dark hairs covering James’s chest and exposed by the opening of his robe acutely sensitising the tender flesh of her breasts and arousing emotions she had sworn never to give way to again.
‘Oh no, you don’t escape that way,’ James muttered savagely when she turned her head, stiffening her body. His fingers tightened in her hair, jerking her head painfully round and leaving her vulnerable to the possession of his mouth.
She had forgotten it was possible to feel like this, Tara thought dazedly; forgotten how overwhelming and powerful desire could be; how it could sweep aside logic and self-respect and build up into a vortex of need that sucked one down, devouring and possessing. James’s weight pinned her to the bed. A faint flush lay across the high cheekbones, and Tara knew with a sense of shock that he was angrily aroused and making no secret of the fact, no allowances for her innocence and youth, as he had done in the past. This time it almost seemed to give him a savage kind of pleasure to let her feel the hard maleness of his thighs and the desire that flamed hotly in his eyes. His hand cupped her breast, his thumb stroking deliberately against the soft pink nipple. Tara bit back a gasp at her body’s shaming reaction; at the swelling response of her flesh to his caress.
‘You want me, Tara,’ he told her thickly, ‘and God help me, I want you.’
As his lips brushed tantalisingly over the aroused centre of her breast, shudders swept her, a tidal wave of desire building up inside her, obliterating the intervening years. Suddenly she was seventeen again and desperately in love. In mindless reaction her hands locked behind James’s neck, her fingers buried in the thick darkness of his hair, her lips pressing hungry kisses on his skin as she felt his responsive shudder and gloried in the savagely possessive sweep of his hands over her body, willingly yielding up its treasures to his male domination. This time she made no attempt to avoid the heated urgency of his kiss on her body, arching naturally to the thrusting intimacy of his, her hands sliding inside his robe to caress the satin-smooth skin within, reaching for the loosely knotted belt.
Her movements were ruthlessly intercepted, with bruising pressure, contempt lacing James’s triumphant smile as he knelt over her, forcing her to submit to his cynical scrutiny, his measured, ‘Who can’t arouse you, Tara?’ drawl bringing a tinge of colour to her otherwise completely pale skin.
What had possessed her? She could scarcely believe what had happened.
‘Oh, don’t worry, I don’t imagine I’ve performed some miraculous feat,’ James told her. ‘I’ve no doubts at all that almost any sexually experienced male could arouse exactly the same reaction.’ He released her suddenly, grimacing with distaste. ‘I’ve proved my point—but don’t expect me to do the gentlemanly thing and give you the physical satisfaction your amoral little body so obviously desires. I read the papers, Tara,’ he added. ‘Chas Saunders and his sexual athletics get plenty of newspaper coverage.’
Tara could have denied his allegations, but sickness clung to the back of her throat, a heavy tiredness seeping through her. What did it matter what he thought? she asked herself bitterly. If he wanted to think she was one of Chas’s women then let him. She didn’t care what he thought about her—but she did, she was forced to admit half an hour after he had gone, leaving her dry-eyed and aching with misery. It was unfair, she thought bitterly. How could her body have betrayed her so easily? How could she have forgotten so quickly the humilia
