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That proud dark head bent slightly, as if he would kiss her, his smile twisting, growing grim as she jerked her head away. She couldn’t hold back a wince of pain as the unwary movement wrenched at the golden strands of hair he still held.
‘…to start it up again. If we let it loose it may burn us up, but if we try to keep it in check we’ll go mad. So why don’t we take advantage of something that could be so spectacular, my lovely wife? Why not admit that we both want this? That we’re both hungry, both crazy…’
‘Won’t—won’t that delay your divorce from me?’ Lily managed to croak, clutching at the one straw she could think of, the one thing that might persuade him to release her from this sensual torment. If he didn’t set her free then she was lost. There was no way she could fight the overwhelming force of her need for him any longer.
To her horrified consternation her question had nothing like the effect she had anticipated. Instead, Ronan’s smile grew wider and his eyes darkened perceptibly, taking on the shadowy tones of a rain-laden sky.
‘Who says I even want a divorce? The brief taste I had of married life simply whetted my appetite for more. I’d like to take things further—so much further.’
Briefly Lily closed her eyes against the husky enchantment his words wove around her beleaguered senses. But she opened them again in a rush when she discovered that her self-imposed blindness only added to the highly charged sensations she was experiencing.
Being unable to see enhanced her awareness of Ronan’s physical presence, infinitely heightening her sensitivity to the slightest touch. She heard even the faint sound of his breathing with a new clarity, the sound of his heartbeat assailing her ears like thunder. And inhaling the clean scent of his body brought her a degree of pleasure that was almost a pain.
‘You’d just be using me for your own selfish ends!’
He didn’t deny it. He didn’t even look the slightest bit abashed at her sharp accusation. On the contrary, his expression was fiendishly amused, pure devil-cat-who-got-the-cream as he nodded a hatefully smiling agreement.
‘And you me,’ he returned imperturbably. ‘It’s true, isn’t it?’ The question cut across her attempt to voice a heated protest. ‘You claimed you didn’t love me any more.’
I lied! A desolate voice cried in the darkness of Lily’s mind. Dear God, I lied! I still love you and I always will. I never stopped loving you—I can’t! It would be like dying!
‘So your love died, but you can’t claim that passion went with it,’ Ronan continued inexorably, his stunning features stamped with ruthless determination. ‘You can’t say that you don’t want me any more because that would be a lie, and we both know it. It’s written in your face, in your eyes. You can’t deny the way your body responds to me, the hunger that you feel, the way…’
Those long fingers rested against the pulse point at the base of her neck, just under the delicate lace of her collar, and Ronan’s cruelly beautiful mouth curled in dark triumph at what he felt there.
‘The way your heart flutters like a wild bird when I touch you. But you say you don’t love me, so for you it would be no more or less than what you’ve just accused me of wanting. It would be passion without feeling, physical pleasure without emotion…’
He had released her hair now, those strong, sure hands moving to tip her head upwards, lifting her mouth towards his as his head came down with deadly intent.
‘But, oh, my lovely Lily…’ It was a thickened whisper against her lips. ‘What passion…what enchantment…what burning heat of pleasure. And what ecstasy would come from it.’
He punctuated each whispered phrase with a kiss, unbearably brief, heartbreakingly gentle. Kisses that tore at her heart with their lying promises of love, of feelings he could never possess. And in his dark eyes smouldered a burning need, a hunger that matched the one that had reduced her to a mutely trembling wreck in his bruising grasp.
‘And if I don’t object to being used as a sex object in this way, then why should you complain? We’re both adults, both equals in desire…’
She was lost. Lily’s moan of surrender admitted as much, a moan she couldn’t have held back if she tried. But she didn’t try. She was beyond being able to control herself, beyond struggling against feelings that had all the force of a tidal wave breaking over her head as she went down for the third time.
She could do nothing but give herself up to the practised caress of his lips, the confident, knowing touch of those strong but stunningly gentle hands. She could only murmur her delight as long, warm fingers cupped the weight of her breasts, the heat of his palms burning through to the sensitive skin beneath the silk.
In a haze of delight she felt herself lifted off her feet and half walked, half carried through into the lounge. There he lowered her onto the green velvet cushions of the settee, his long, lean body easing down beside her and pulling her close to him.
‘This is how it should be between us, how it’s always been. How it can be again if you don’t fight it. You know it’s what you want, my Lily, you remember how it was that night. So don’t struggle, don’t think, just lie back and enjoy it.’
Remember! The word slashed through the golden waves that were drowning her thoughts with the force of a cruel blade, shattering the foolish sensual delusion that had held her captive.
Remember! In the dark, echoing chasms that her mind had become she could hear Ronan’s voice saying that word before, in a very different way.
On their wedding night, his voice rough with dark satisfaction as he branded her with the mark of his sexual possession, he had told her never to forget. ‘Remember!’ he had said. ‘Remember this…!’
And how could she have forgotten? How could she have let the way he had behaved then be wiped from her mind, driven away under the force of the sensual assault he had subjected her to? How could she forget the appalling disillusionment that had struck at her at the end of that deluded night, the dreadful reality that had intruded into her foolish dreams of happiness, shattering them once and for all?
‘No!’
In an agony of despair she wrenched her mouth away from the sinful temptation of Ronan’s kisses, her hands pushing frantically and ineffectually at the hard wall of his chest in a vain attempt to distance herself from him.
‘Enjoy it!’ The words were torn from an aching throat. ‘Enjoy it! Oh, yes, you can make me take pleasure from what you’re doing physically; we both know that! But we also both know that with nothing else there, no sort of feeling in our hearts, it would be nothing more than just scratching an itch—an act of bestial lust, lower than the level of animals, because we are capable of so much more.’
Her breath seemed to sear into lungs that were suddenly agonisingly raw with tension, each breath she took a painful effort. But she was aware of the fact that Ronan had frozen at her side, ceasing the unrelenting assault on her senses.
‘Of course you can work on my body. I couldn’t deny that if I tried…’
The conflict between her emotional need to stop him and the wanton urging of her body to let things continue made her voice shake with tension. Every one of her hypersensitive nerves was beginning to scream in protest at the abrupt denial of the pleasure they had been feeling, the fulfilment they had been yearning towards, so that she ached all over, as if her skin was a mass of bruises.
‘You can kiss me, arouse me, bring me to a point where I can no longer think, where my physical needs override the emotional ones. Where I’m no longer a human being, but just a hungry, crazy…’ deliberately she echoed his own words, lacing them with acid ‘…heap of nerves and hormones. Oh, yes, you can make me enjoy this!’
She heard Ronan’s breath hiss in between clenched teeth, but she didn’t dare to look up into the dark face that was only inches away from her own for fear of what she might see there.
‘But be very sure of one thing, Ronan, if this is the way you plan to go. Know that the more I enjoy mating with you, the more I will detest you afterwards. If you use me as a sex object, and by doing so make me use you for the same purpose, then I will hate you till the day I die for reducing me to something so low!’
Her impassioned words died away into a silence so profound, so heavy with danger that she could almost feel it closing around her, filling her lungs, threatening to choke off her breathing. But then at last Ronan stirred, raking rough hands through his hair, the gesture breaking the unnerving tension that had held him so unnaturally still.
‘It might almost be worth it,’ he muttered roughly.
The words made Lily tense fearfully, wide, shocked golden eyes going to his face and finding it closed and shuttered against her. But as their eyes locked and clashed his mood changed again, and he swore in a darkly eloquent stream under his breath.
‘Damn you to hell, Lily!’ he flung at her as he jack-knifed off the settee and away from her in a violent movement that took him halfway across the room. ‘You really know how to go for the jugular! You didn’t need to make me feel like the lowest form of life that has just crawled out of the primeval slime—a simple no would have sufficed.’
