heard!’ Chrissie proclaimed furiously.
‘You need me to prove it?’ Jaul launched back at her, dark eyes blazing threat.
‘You couldn’t prove it because it isn’t true!’ Chrissie argued. ‘I’ve moved on way past you...’
‘In what way?’ Jaul demanded.
Her temper was jumping up and down inside her like a screaming child because she had suffered so much because of him and that he should show up again and start laying down the law about his wants, his needs was too much for her to bear.
‘I’ve been with other men,’ she lied with deliberation, knowing how possessive he was, how jealous, how all-consuming his passion could be...and knowing just how to hurt.
‘I expected that,’ Jaul framed in a harsh undertone. ‘You didn’t need to spell it out—’
But Chrissie had watched him pale below his vibrant skin and it made her feel like a total bitch, especially when she was lying, but it seemed so important to her right then to drive a wedge between them, to prove that she was completely free of him and what they had once shared. ‘So, you see, I don’t want you the way I once did.’
Burning bright golden eyes trailed over her from the crown of her head right down to her curling toes and she felt her body react the way it always did around Jaul. Her breasts swelled in a bra that suddenly felt too tight, her nipples pinching taut while lower down she felt hot and moist.
‘And you are one hundred per cent certain of that, are you?’ Jaul seethed as he stalked closer. ‘So certain you won’t even give me a chance?’
Chrissie snatched in a ragged breath. The atmosphere was smouldering like a combustible substance and the tension was suffocating because she recognised that Jaul was on the edge of his hot temper, which when lost was considerably more dangerous than her own. ‘Yes, I’m certain,’ she told him stubbornly.
‘You’re a liar,’ Jaul told her harshly. ‘You’re lying to me—you’re even lying to yourself! We’ve been down this route before—’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about—’
‘Oh, yes, you do, habibti,’ Jaul contradicted. ‘I’m talking about the months you made me wait for you—’
‘I didn’t ask you to wait—’
‘You turned your back on the attraction between us. You refused to acknowledge it.’
‘Well, I didn’t think you were my kind of person and...oh, yes, didn’t I turn out to be right about that?’ Chrissie boxed back without hesitation.
‘Stop it,’ Jaul grated, locking both arms round her to haul her up against him.
‘No, you get your hands off me...right now!’ Chrissie snapped back angrily. ‘We’re getting a divorce and you’re not allowed to touch me!’
‘You’re still my wife.’
‘But you don’t get to touch!’ she warned a split second before his beautiful mouth, warm and wet and rawly sexual, came crashing down on hers in an electrifying collision. His tongue pressed in deep.
For a split second she imagined she saw a shower of sparks because the taste of Jaul’s mouth on hers was as wildly exhilarating as hitching a ride on a rocket ship. Her legs went numb and her body hummed like an engine cranking up after a long time switched off, pulses like static tightening her nipples and warming her pelvis. It happened that fast, that her reaction was so strong it almost blew her away. Her hands slid up his arms, holding him to her, every skin cell in her body alight in a blaze.
She had told herself that it wouldn’t be like that if she touched him again. She had told herself that the response she recalled was the result of infatuation, exaggerated by an imagination reluctant to let go of the sparkly romance that had turned into car-crash viewing. But she had lied, not knowingly, but out of ignorance and wishful hopes because the discovery that Jaul could still deliver a kiss that could set her on fire was downright terrifying.
Struggling to catch her breath, she looked up at him, into eyes dark and glittery as a starry night, and for a split second of madness she wanted to drown there and turn time back in its tracks. Instead, she rested her cheek against a broad shoulder, breathing in the musky, clean scent of him like a hopeless addict. He smelled so good, he smelled so right that it frightened her. She quivered, insanely aware of every line of his long, lean body against hers and the terrible wanting rising inside her like a drug haze she couldn’t possibly fight and win against. ‘Jaul?’
Long brown fingers cupped her cheekbones. ‘Give me your mouth again,’ he husked.
No, that wasn’t going to solve anything and she knew it, but still she tilted her head back like a programmed doll and he kissed her again, longer and deeper, harder and stronger and her senses went spinning off into a fantasy land of rediscovery. It had been so long, far too long since she had even had a kiss and what could be said about a kiss? she scorned inwardly. A kiss was no big deal even with an estranged husband and he was so good at kissing, so wickedly erotic he should have been bottled and sold like precious oil. He lifted her up against him with that easy strength of his that had once thrilled her to the marrow. He hitched her legs round his waist, nuzzled his mouth against her throat where she was, oh, so sensitive, oh, so responsive, and suddenly her whole body was vibrating like a tuning fork, greedily reaching for every sensation and drinking it in.
Her eyes were tightly closed as if what she didn’t see didn’t have to be accounted for. This wasn’t her doing this and letting Jaul carry her upstairs. This wasn’t what she wanted but, oh, dear heaven, how much she wanted him! That mad, frenzied wanting was throbbing and pounding through her as unstoppable as a runaway train. She buried her face in his shoulder in despair at her own weakness.
‘I can’t do this...I can’t,’ she whispered feverishly.
In an awkward movement, Jaul nudged her head up and found her mouth again, briefly, devastatingly. ‘Yes, you can, because in your heart you know I will never hurt you again.’
‘It’s not that simple—’
‘It is as simple as you will allow it to be,’ he growled, his breath fanning her cheek.
But nothing was ever that simple with Jaul, her brain reminded her. Sometimes he was too clever, too devious for her, while she was a straight-down-the-line open and honest person. He pushed a door open and then he kissed her again and carnal heat engulfed her in an irresistible tide, washing away every thought.
She was lying on something soft and yielding and above her Jaul was virtually ripping off his T-shirt, smooth brown pectoral muscles rippling down washboard abs before her eyes. And seeing that beautiful body again was too much temptation all at once because her hands rose of their own volition and smoothed up over that torso from the vee rising out of the loosened waistband of his jeans to the narrow waist and up over the lethal strength etched into the sleek lines of his hard, muscular chest. The heat of him burned her palms and a clutch of longing pulled in her belly. Desire was like an old familiar stranger, controlling her, silencing her, heightening the craving to a dangerous level. She couldn’t have him, she shouldn’t have him, but the hunger was intolerable and more than she could withstand.
He came
