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'Long before we were married?' she cut in incredulously. 'You take me for a child, a complete idiot!' Her temper ran out of control and her voice shook. 'Maybe, if I was crazy enough about you, I could forget your cosy-cosy arrangement with my uncle; maybe live with the fact that you never loved me as I loved you. But as for the rest. . .' The words came out harsh with pent-up emotion. 'To have a woman tell me that my husband is a "three-times-a-night man" and more! This same husband who cannot bear to spend a night in the same bed as me. You make me sick. . .'
Zoe shook her head; she tried to go on, but her voice seemed to have dried up. Her heart pounded in her chest and she felt physically sick. But what did it matter? What more was there to say? Except that she was leaving him, and that much must be self-evident to Justin. But to her amazement he threw back his head and laughed out loud.
'You are jealous, sexually jealous, you silly girl. You have no need to be. Janet was obviously just trying to upset you and you fell for it.'
She couldn't believe the man; he was a lawyer, supposedly intelligent, and he actually thought it was a huge joke, even to the extent that there was smug satisfaction in his grinning countenance. A red haze blurred her vision and she struck out at his face with a wildly swinging hand. 'Well, fall for this, buster!' she yelled. 'I'm leaving you. You're the lawyer. . . Fix the divorce. . .'
Suddenly his hand tightened around her shoulders. 'This has gone far enough,' he muttered savagely. 'If you won't listen to reason, I'll have to convince you another way.' His other hand captured her chin and forced her head up and his mouth swooped on hers, prising her lips apart, savaging her soft mouth.
With her bent back over his arm, his hand sliding from her chin to tangle in her long hair, he held her fast as he ground his mouth over hers with ruthless passion. She lashed out at him with her fists and tried to drag her head away, a low moan escaping her at the pain he was inflicting.
Justin laughed, a harsh, guttural sound in the silence of the room. 'And I thought I was being considerate.' His tone was ironic, but the blazing fury in his eyes as he stared at her belied his cool voice.
'Considerate? Don't make me laugh,' she yelled hysterically, and struggled to escape, her arms flailing wildly, but he was far too quick and, catching her arms at the wrist, with a swivel of his hard body she was pinned back against the bed, her hands forced above her head in one of his.
She cried out, but his mouth swallowed the sound, his teeth biting into her lips while his other hand tore the towel from her body. She felt his long fingers close around her breast and shuddered.
His dark head lifte
d as he stared down at the pale skin laid bare to his hot eyes. His strong fingers moved slowly, squeezing the soft flesh; his thumb brushed the hardening tip, and his eyes flicked to her face.
'No, no.' She tremblingly shook her head and tried to fight him, her body bucking against him. She would not let him do this to her—never again, she vowed, even as her traitorous flesh cried out for his familiar touch.
'Yes, my love,' he drawled sardonically in a strangely thickened voice. 'You say you're leaving. You implied I never wanted you. Our lovemaking was less than perfect for you.' He straddled her thighs, his long, near-naked body poised over her. 'I intend to prove you wrong.'
And his head came down to take the place of his fingers at her breast.
'No. I don't want you.' She thought bitterly of Janet even as her heart thudded in her breast. 'Try Janet. I'm sure. . .' She ended on a groan, hurting with the intolerable pressure of trying to resist him when a slow- burning fire was licking through her body.
He flashed a glance at her wildly shaking head and she arched again, trying to throw him off, but only succeeded in prolonging the agony as her breasts brushed against the hard wall of his chest. He drew a harsh breath, forcing her head back to the bed with the pressure of his mouth, and when he finally freed her swollen lips she was shaking all over.
'Anyone can have Janet, but only I have you,' he snarled close to her ear. 'And that's the way it's going to stay.'
'No, no, no. . .' she breathed raggedly.
'Yes, yes, yes,' he mocked harshly as his body shifted to crush her deeply in the bed.
There was no doubt that Justin wanted her. Zoe, twisting and struggling beneath him, trying to dislodge the hardening weight of his body, recognised that fact even before he responded by thrusting one of his legs between hers. But she also knew that whatever his reasons, it wasn't love.
Her wide, angry eyes clashed with his, and what she saw in the black depths was a wild, savage, almost desperate hunger, and it shook her to the core. Gone was the controlled Justin she knew. . .
'I won't let you go. I can't,' he groaned, his mouth claiming hers once more as his hand trailed down across her breasts to the soft mound at her thighs.
Frantically she tried to struggle free, but the mental bonds were as strong if not stronger than the physical. She moaned as Justin buried his head at her throat, trailing moist kisses down to her breast while his hand parted her legs. She could feel the rigid, masculine length of him poised near the juncture of her thighs and she gasped as his long fingers slid between her silken, feminine folds. She was lost. . .
'Justin. . .'
His fingers moved intimately against her and she melted, liquid and hot, but he made no move to take possession. Instead he lifted his head from her breast, and stared down into her passion-flushed face.
'You can't win, Zoe, so stop fighting.' He groaned. His head lowering, he kissed her long and deeply.
'Fighting'? She clung to him, the nails of one hand biting into his shoulder, while those of the other scraped over his flat belly, tearing at his shorts. 'Who's fighting. . .?' She moaned as Justin shrugged out of his shorts and fell back on her, slipping between her parted thighs. She could no more control her body's reaction to him than fly to the moon.
'You want me. . .' he growled, and she could not deny it as he sheathed himself deeply inside her, covering her cry of excitement with his mouth.
Zoe glanced at the sleeping man beside her. His black hair was wet with sweat and plastered against his skull; his strong-featured face looked years younger in repose, the thick black lashes brushing his cheeks, masking the usually piercing, intelligent eyes.
She stirred restlessly in the bed, her body aching in places and muscles she doubted she had ever used before, or ever would again. . . The early morning sun shone through the windows, flooding the room with the palest of primrose light.
