look of sheer amazement on Raoul’s face would have been food for her soul, but just at the moment she couldn’t appreciate that for once she had totally and completely surprised him.
‘You burst into my home, you accuse me of goodness knows what and then you criticise my lifestyle! How dare you? How dare you? You haven’t bothered with me for five years and now you think you can tell me what to do. Get out! Get out!’
‘“Procreational pursuits”?’ He didn’t even seem to have heard the rest of her tirade. ‘“Procreational pursuits”!’ The great peal of unbridled raucous laughter took her completely by surprise. Raoul laughed the way he did everything else, with unrestrained frankness and wholehearted participation, and in spite of the fact that it was eight o’clock on a Sunday morning and the neighbours would be thinking-well, she didn’t dare to imagine what they would be thinking-she found herself infected by his appreciation of the moment. Unfortunately they had always had the same slightly off-beat sense of humour. It had seemed good when they were together but as Mrs Billett next door banged ferociously on the wall and Mr Silver overhead nearly brought the ceiling down with his walking-stick, she tried to restrain the paroxysms of laughter that recurred every time she thought she had control. It was nerves, it had to be.
‘Oh, Leigh.’ Raoul had collapsed on the one and only chair and was looking at her through streaming eyes. ‘Only you could come out with a phrase like that. “Procreational pursuits”!’ His head went back in another burst of laughter. ‘You’re priceless, kitten, you really are.’
Somehow the nickname sobered them both at the same moment and from helpless laughter they changed to expectant stillness within seconds. ‘Leigh?’ Raoul’s voice was a low endearment and she shuddered against it, her hands going out in unconscious protest as she took a step backwards. ‘Let me hold you, show you nothing has really changed.’
‘No, no, Raoul.’ He crossed the room in one movement to stand looking down at her, small and defenceless, in front of his overpoweringly tall bulk, and then with a smothered groan he lifted her right off her feet into his arms.
‘You’ve got paint on your nose and you stink of turpentine,’ he said softly as he traced the outline of her jaw with tiny feather-light kisses, his lips moving to her mouth as she opened it to protest. ‘And you’re so damn beautiful.’ Why that word should be the catalyst to the emotion that was sending hot waves of desire into every nerve-ending she didn’t know. Maybe it was because no one else had ever called her beautiful, maybe it was because the images she had been fighting all night had reared their sensual heads as soon as she had seen his face again. Whatever, she was now fighting herself as much as him and she was suddenly scared to death.
‘Put me down, Raoul! I don’t want this, I don’t want you—’ As he smothered her voice with a piercingly sweet kiss the feel of his hard, warm lips brought a host of memories she was powerless to resist. Raoul, the frighteningly perceptive lover who had been as anxious for her satisfaction as his own, infinitely patient, incredibly tender but capable of such heights of erotic passion that she had frequently felt she would die from the glorious ecstasy he induced.
He had been her first love, her only love, and had constantly delighted in fusing their bodies into rapturous oblivion until she had been quivering and sated in his arms. This was the Raoul she had purposely blocked out of her consciousness for years in her desire to survive, drawing on the mental picture of a cold hard womaniser who had betrayed her in the most callous way possible and with seemingly no shred of remorse.
‘I want you, my darling.’ How they had reached the bed she didn’t know-she hadn’t been aware that he had carried her there as she had continued to struggle against the seductive weakness that was flooding her limbs at his touch-but as he laid her down on the rumpled covers she brought every ounce of will-power she possessed into play. It couldn’t happen again, she couldn’t let him take her over again.
‘Leave me alone, Raoul.’ Her eyes were huge as she stared up at him in the dim light from the curtained window. ‘I can’t—’
‘But you can, kitten! We’re married, Leigh; you’re my wife, remember?’ His voice was teasingly mocking as he stroked a silky lock of brown hair away from her face with a gentle hand, lazily leaning forward to take her lips with his own again.
He was so sure of himself, she thought with a little dart of pain that strengthened her resolve. So sure that he could overcome her resistance as though the last five years had meant nothing! But then, they probably hadn’t to him! Had he even noticed she’d gone? She froze into stillness as he kissed her again, forcing her senses into submission and willing the warm pulsing beat of desire that was making her limbs shake to quieten. He didn’t notice her lack of response at first, and as he continued to trace a path of fire over her face and throat she knew it was only a matter of time before the heat that was bursting into life deep inside became evident again. She clenched her hands tightly by her side. She had to make him stop and this was the only way. She had to find the strength from somewhere.
Her complete lack of movement finally got through to him and he raised himself slowly, leaning on one elbow at her side to look into her wide brown eyes as he raked back the shock of curly black hair from his brow. ‘Don’t tell me I’m losing my touch?’ The dry, sardonic tone whipped a flush of colour into her cheeks and fanned the earlier flame of pain into white-hot agony.
With a bitterness that was directed at herself as well as him she stiffened into stone in an effort to hide the hurt. He really didn’t care! ‘Losing your touch?’ Her voice dripped with contempt. ‘Is that all anything means to you? An opportunity to prove you’re the greatest? That no woman is immune?’ Mercifully anger was replacing the pain now.
If she hadn’t been so angry she would have taken warning at the slow darkening of his face but right at that moment she was incapable of taking notice of anything. ‘You disgust me, Raoul, with your arrogant and all-important male ego. We’re strangers now and you know it! We’re just two people held together by a meaningless piece of paper.’
‘Like hell we are!’ He swung his legs violently over the edge of the bed as he turned from her. ‘Was that why you insisted on a church wedding because all our marriage boiled down to was an expendable bit of paper? I do not believe this, Leigh; I know you better than that. You are my wife, my wife in the eyes of God and man, and I know it and so do you.’ His accent was as brittle as glass.
‘No—’
‘Oh, yes, my little English rose.’ He stood up as she drew herself into a sitting position, locking her hands round her knees after pulling the short smock down to her feet. ‘You are mine and what is mine I keep. You should know this.’ His voice was shaking with rage and cold determination.
‘Raoul, listen to me—’
‘Why should I?’ He spun round now with a dark raging fury in his eyes that made her shrink away in fear. ‘You do not listen to me, do you? You didn’t listen five years ago and still you will not. What is it with you?’
‘What is it with me?’ The sheer arrogance acted like a shot of adrenalin and her small face was convulsed with hot resentment and burning fury. ‘How can you ask me that? You aren’t real! You just aren’t real.’
‘This is nonsense,’ he said coldly, his face hard and his eyes an icy blue. ‘If you cannot talk sense—’
‘Can’t talk sense!’ He had turned into the iceman again but for the life of her she couldn’t match his coolness. He stood gazing at her, powerfully, dangerously handsome with an insolent tilt to the ebony head and his eyes such a startling vivid
