what had they had? Blazing passion, true—a burning physical desire that had blinded her to everything else. But nothing more. There had been nothing between them but sex. At least on Zarek’s part.
And was she going to let him just walk back into her life—and into her bed again—without so much as an argument? When Zarek had left for the Troy she had known that she had never meant her wild and hurting threats that she would not wait for him. She’d told herself that if she stayed, then when he returned she had to stand up to him. That there had to be more to make this marriage work, her love alone wasn’t enough to sustain it, and something was going to have to change.
Two years was a much, much longer wait than the few days she had been expecting, but her resolve needed to still be so much the same. More so if she was to be able to survive as Zarek’s wife ever again.
Nothing would change if she gave in at the first kiss, the first caress.
‘Zarek…’ She tried to speak but it seemed that all strength had drained from her voice and nothing audible came out.
‘Gineka mou…’
Zarek had no such trouble and as he pressed his mouth against her breast again his words were perfectly audible. As was the darkly possessive note in them.
Gineka mou…My wife.
He was staking his claim on her once more, using sex to do so. That was how he’d won her, how he’d held her blind and deceived for the first six months of their marriage. But then she’d learned the truth…
‘No!’
This time she had no trouble in making herself heard. The cry of rejection was loud and clear, echoing round the empty house. In the same moment she tried to push at Zarek, push him away from her. Free herself from his possessive and dangerously enticing hold. His hands still caressed, his mouth pursed to press another kiss against her breast and she could feel the hot, moist touch of his tongue against her skin. Another moment and she would be lost again. Already she could feel the tidal waves of dark desire sweeping over her, threatening to drown out the frantic voice of sanity and self-preservation.
‘I said no!’
With urgent, desperate hands, she pushed at him but he was too big, his powerful body too heavy for her attempts to move him. So throwing caution to the wind she resorted to desperate measures. Reaching out, she grabbed a handful of his black hair—two—twisted her fingers in it, refusing to let herself think about the silky slide of it in her grip, and tugged. Hard.
‘Gamoto!’
She didn’t have to know much Greek to understand that Zarek’s violent explosion of sound was definitely a swear word. She only had to see the way his head came up, his eyes flaring sharply.
‘What the…?’
‘I said no!’
Surprise gave her an advantage she hadn’t expected and with a frantic wriggle, another push, she was free of his confining weight, out of the bed and thudding onto the floor. Panic carried her halfway across the room, almost falling as she struggled to keep her balance and get as far away from him as possible so that he couldn’t reach out and grab her, use his superior strength to hold her, keep her prisoner.
‘What the hell…?’
If Zarek’s eyes had been sparking irritation before, now they were positively incandescent. They burned with fury, turning a look on her that she felt really should have shrivelled her into a pile of dust where she stood, silhouetted against the window, the moonlight lighting her from behind.
‘You…’
Zarek stopped abruptly, clearly fighting to bring himself under control. With an effort he drew in a long harsh breath between his gritted teeth and raked an angry hand through his hair, sweeping it back from his forehead so that the harsh white line of the cruel scar showed up so much more clearly in stark relief.
‘What the hell is this?’ he demanded again, his words falling ragged and raw into the shocked stillness of the night. ‘What sort of game—?’
‘No game!’ Penny put in frantically, suddenly terribly afraid that he might still consider this some risky sort of foreplay, designed to heighten anticipation, increase appetite, and decide to go along with what he thought she wanted.
She had had a narrow enough escape as it was, barely managing to escape before the dark seas of need had closed over her head completely, drowning her for ever. If he touched her again she didn’t know if she had the strength to resist him.
‘No game at all! I’m deadly serious…’
The look he flung at her almost totally destroyed what little was left of her self-control, but, heaving in a desperate breath, she forced herself to face him with as much strength and defiance as she could muster.
‘This has gone far enough—too far. I don’t want it. I don’t want you.’
‘Liar!’
It was low and deadly and this time his eyes burned molten with rejection of every word she’d said.
‘You little liar. You wanted me every bit as much as I wanted you. You said so—’
‘I was wrong…’
‘And your body said so too. It’s still telling the same story.’
A wild, contemptuous gesture in her direction emphasised the angry words.
‘You can’t deny—’
‘Oh, but I can—I will!’
Her voice was pitched too high, too shrill. It sounded too despairing, too desperate to protect herself. Which was hardly surprising when she could barely bring her whirling senses back under any degree of control. Her pulse was still pounding in her veins, sounding like thunder in her head.
‘You would?’
Cynical disbelief rang rough in Zarek’s voice, making her shiver because she knew that she couldn’t refute. He knew that she was lying and so did she.
‘You’d deny this…’
Before she could even realise that he had moved he was at her side in three long strides. Hard hands clamped around her naked shoulders, bruising fingers digging into the skin as he swung her round in front of him. This way she faced the big full-length mirror set into the wardrobe on the opposite side of the room.
‘You’d deny this?’ Zarek repeated savagely. ‘Look at yourself!’
Penny closed her eyes tight. she didn’t want to look—didn’t need to look. She knew what he meant; knew what she would see. But a rough shake of her shoulders forced her to open them again. When she did so the first thing she saw was Zarek’s dark eyes looking over her shoulder, meeting hers in the glass. That was bad enough but the burn of something dangerous in that glittering stare made her drop her gaze and face her reflection squarely, wincing in embarrassment as she did so.
It was worse than she had expected.
