veins the blood seemed to pulse infinitely slowly, shockingly heavy. Her breath too seemed frozen, leaving her with her mouth slightly open, unable to inhale, unable to think.
All she was aware of was the feel of Zarek’s skin under her fingers, the heat and the softness of it, with the power of muscle and bone beneath the supple flesh. It was as if sparks had flown from his skin to hers, holding her melded to him, unable to move.
And the burn along her nerves reminded her only too painfully of how it had once been between them. The way that she had never been able to resist his touch, his kiss. The way that her body was yearning for it, reaching towards him even now.
‘Zarek…’
His name was just a whisper across lips that were suddenly parched and dry, her tongue seeming to tangle on the sound so that she had to swallow hard to ease the discomfort in her throat. ‘Zarek…’
‘No…’ Zarek said, his eyes still closed against her, his voice rough and seeming slightly ragged at the edges. ‘Don’t…’
‘Don’t what?’
But then he opened his eyes and looked down into her face and she knew exactly what he meant. What exactly he did not want her to do.
He didn’t want her to touch him. He was rejecting without words the feel of her hand on his, the connection of skin on skin. He didn’t have to say a word; it was there in his face, in his eyes.
And that was when she realised just what a terrible mistake she had made. Impulse and concern had made her break through the barriers that she had felt between them. The barriers that she had erected in her mind in self-defence because of the need to protect herself from the shock of his sudden arrival, the memory of all that had been between them before he had left.
‘So your wife is not allowed to touch you?’
‘My wife…Were you ever truly my wife?’
His eyes burned into hers as he raised his other hand to fasten around her fingers, clasping them tightly under the warmth and roughness of his palm. And as he pulled at it, bringing it down and away from his face, the force of his hold made her wince as her fingers were squeezed together.
But a moment later the slight discomfort was forgotten as shock ricocheted through her thoughts, making her head spin.
‘You!’
She spat the word at him as she fought for control, struggled with the need to lash out with the hand that was free or launch herself straight at him, pounding her fist on his chest.
‘It was you!’
She had seen the long white line of the scar before but then it had gleamed in the cold burn of the moonlight, the only visible part of a face that had been hidden by a cap, the fall of long dark hair, a heavy beard. The last time she had seen that scar it had been on the face of the man she had believed was a fisherman.
‘You were spying on me!’
The memories of the previous night, the recollection of Jason’s arms around her, and the thought of those dark burning eyes watching her put a new tension into her voice.
‘Spying?’ Dark cynicism rang in Zarek’s voice. ‘That word implies that you have something to hide.’
‘As opposed to you who was hiding from me.’
She shouldn’t be doing this, Penny told herself. She shouldn’t be taking the conversation down this route. What she should be doing was asking Zarek where he had been, what had happened to him. She should want to find out—she did want to find out—just how he had come by that dreadful scar and what had happened to him. But she couldn’t make her mouth actually form the questions. Her tongue seemed to have frozen and her throat wouldn’t work on those words. Instead she heard the provocative and aggressive words come out as a challenge.
The thought that he had come home earlier but had not let her know that he was alive burned in her heart. That he had hidden from her, watched her, waiting—for what?—for her to betray herself in some way, was like a knife twisting in the wound. She had once been convinced that when she knew that he was alive and well she would be so happy, and had even allowed herself to think they might just have a chance to start all over again.
And now this…
Did she need further proof that, whatever else had happened while he was away, nothing had changed his mind about their marriage? He still regarded her with suspicion, as someone who was not to be trusted. Not as the woman he had loved and missed. But then of course she had known that that was the case from the start.
‘Don’t you think that I had the right to find out just what had been happening while I was away?’
‘You didn’t want to see me? Ask me.’
Another of those darkly blazing looks told her that he didn’t need to ask. That in his mind she was already tried and condemned without a chance of appeal.
‘“I want to get away from here, start living again,”’ he quoted cynically, leaving her in no doubt that he had heard every word of her talk with Jason. ‘“I’m tired of treading water.”’
‘You really shouldn’t listen in to other people’s conversations,’ she flashed back, knowing with a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach just how he would have interpreted it. ‘Don’t you know that it’s a fact that eavesdroppers never hear good of themselves?’
‘I’m sure that most never actually overhear their wife planning to have them declared dead.’
‘You were dead! At least—I—we thought you were.’
‘And that was how it suited you.’
His grip on her tightened as he spoke, crushing her fingers. But it was not the biting pressure that shocked her, rather the rush of wild electricity up her arm, tracking a burning pathway along her nerves that frightened her with its instant and shocking reaction. How could he still affect her in this way when deep inside she knew the truth about the coldness of his heart?
‘I don’t want this,’ she managed, tensing her muscles against his hold, pulling herself away from him as far as she could while he still kept her hand prisoner.
She had to get away, to find some space and quiet in which to collect her thoughts and decide how to go forward.
‘Let me go!’
If he reacted against her, if he held her tighter, pulled her close, then she did not know what she would do. The swirl of ambiguous feelings inside her head was like a tornado, throwing her off balance and leaving her unable to think.
‘I said let me go!’
The speed with which he released her added to the sense of shock, making her sway and stumble, almost fall. But it was fear that he would come for her again that had her reeling away, grabbing out at a nearby chair for support.
‘Don’t come near me! I don’t want you near me!’
Oh, you liar, you liar, her conscience reproached her bitterly. You weak, cowardly liar. She wanted nothing so much as his arms around her, his body
