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‘I wanted to protect Bob,’ Genista said in the same low voice. ‘You were threatening to tell Elaine that we were having an affair, and I couldn’t let you do that.’
‘But you weren’t, were you?’ His fingers suddenly tightened hurtingly in her hair, his expression unreadable as he forced her to look up at him. ‘Were you thinking of him when I made love to you? Wishing I were him?’
‘Does it matter?’ Her voice sounded oddly thick with the tears she was trying to suppress. ‘Does anything matter any longer?’
‘You cared that much about him?’
‘He’s my friend,’ Genista said simply, no longer caring whether he believed her or not.
She didn’t have the right to tell him about Elaine’s operation, and besides, all she really wanted to do was simply to fall asleep and perhaps for a few hours find escape from the tormenting memory of how her body had betrayed her. It was useless trying to persuade herself that she had not experienced pleasure, that Luke had not taken her to the highest peaks of human experience, and she writhed mentally to think about it. She tried to pull away from him and winced slightly, shrinking as she felt the anger burn up inside him. It was all wrong; she was the one who ought to be experiencing resentment; she was the one who had been wronged.
‘You’re angry with me?’
His mouth tightened ominously. ‘Angry?’ He stared incredulously at her. ‘Of course I’m damned well angry! You were a virgin. You don’t know the first thing about making love, and yet you let me…Sheer frustration brought me the closest I’ve ever come to rape. I thought you were playing with me. But that doesn’t make me feel any better.’
‘We could have the marriage annulled.’
‘No!’ The denial was decisive. ‘You’ve already made a laughing stock of me once; I’m not giving you a second chance. And besides, as you said yourself, Bob loves his wife. No, Genista. We’re married and that’s the way we’re going to stay, although God knows not many marriages can have a worse start.’ He was staring into her face as though he was searching for something.
‘Lord knows how I missed it. You’re as innocent as a child, and it’s written all over you. So why the big act at the party?’
‘I didn’t like the way you looked at me.’
‘And how did I look at you?’
‘As though…as though…’
‘As though I were imagining what it would be like to go to bed with you? And for that you put us both through all this?’
There was more to it than that, but Genista was feeling too confused and sleepy to argue. It had been his air of calm arrogance, his confident assurance that she was his for the taking, which had infuriated her.
‘I didn’t want to marry you,’ she said.
‘But you did—for the sake of a man who wasn’t even your lover, but I warn you, Genista, I won’t have any ghost making up an unseen third in my bed. We’re married.’
‘You hurt me!’
The childish cry was born of a desire to punish him for teaching her body to defy her, but she hadn’t been prepared for the way his eyes darkened, his mouth compressing as he released her.
‘It was inevitable,’ he said curtly, ‘and the price you paid for your own stupidity. If you’d told me that you’d never been with a man before…’
‘You would have what?’
‘There are ways and ways, Genista. I thought your experience matched my own, and I wanted you so badly that I wasn’t in the mood for the kind of loveplay that would have made things easier for you.’
H
er cheeks burned at his frankness and she was glad of the darkness to hide her blushes.
‘Go to sleep,’ Luke told her brusquely. ‘We’ll talk in the morning.’
To her amazement she slept quite well, although it was still early when she awoke. The unfamiliar weight of Luke’s arm across her body puzzled her at first, until the events of the previous evening came rushing back with shattering clarity. Her body felt strange, lethargic and oddly boneless, almost as though it no longer belonged exclusively to her.
Luke was lying next to her, the dark beginnings of a beard shadowing his jaw. In sleep he looked younger, a faint flush lying along his cheekbones, thick, dark lashes fanning the delicate skin beneath his eyes. Genista suppressed an alien urge to lean across and touch him, subduing the need to know more about this man with whom she had experienced nature’s most initimate bond. He stirred in his sleep and she froze in horror as the sheet slipped from his shoulders revealing the scratches along his back. Vividly she remembered digging her nails into his firm flesh as waves of ecstasy swept her, and she dragged her eyes away from the sight of his torn skin, shuddering with revulsion to think that she had acted so primitively.
His arm lay just below her breasts, reminding her of the intimacy with which he had touched her—and how much she had wanted him to touch her, his hands and lips exploring every inch of her satin flesh.
Unable to bear her thoughts any longer, she pushed aside the bedclothes and slithered away from his constraining arm. Gathering up clean underclothes, she headed for the bathroom, ignoring the bath in favour of the benefits of a brisk shower. Her shower gel was in her case, and she tiptoed stealthily back into the bedroom, not wanting to wake Luke. Vague thoughts of leaving the hotel before he awoke crossed her mind. She had no fears now that he would say anything to Elaine—how could he? He knew quite well that she and Bob had never been intimate, but she could not make a move until she had cleansed her body from the memories of last night.
