I’m your husband, so what the hell is this all about?’ he ground out savagely. ‘What’s got into you all of a sudden?’
And then, before she could answer, he had taken her mouth in one of the scorching kisses he did so well, a kiss which immediately ignited a response deep in the core of her.
It had always been like this; he only had to touch her and she melted for him. She had always been defenceless against his expert sensuality, she thought desperately. But she had to resist him; she had to make him understand how it was.
‘Dammit all, I want you, Marianne.’ His voice was a smothered groan against her mouth, his arousal hot and hard against her softness. ‘I’ve been half out of my mind waiting for you.’
Her fingers fluttered helplessly for a second, but then her hands were at the back of his head as she urged his mouth to a deeper penetration, the sensations only he could produce whirling through her body as his lips ravaged the soft sweetness of her inner mouth.
She was moulded into the hard line of his body, her head thrown back against his muscled arm and her body pliant beneath his dominant frame. He was removing his clothes and hers as he laid her on the warm, thick softness of the bedroom carpet, still covering her face with burning kisses, and then they were naked and she could run her hands over the powerful, hair-roughened chest as he bent over her, his eyes wild and glittering.
He continued to kiss and caress her in spite of the hot urgency of need his body was betraying, and piercing pleasure shot through her as his lips moved down her throat and found the rosy tips of her breasts, the nipples hardening into jutting peaks under the ministration of his tongue.
She was more than ready for him when he entered her, her head turning from side to side in an agony of ecstasy and her hair spread out in a glorious silver cascade of silk that shimmered and rippled with their passion.
He held her close to him once it was over, until their pounding heartbeats quietened and steadied, and then he said, glancing at his watch and with a touch of amusement in his voice ‘We’d better get dressed unless we want our guests to find us in flagrante delicto. And there’s still nothing prepared.’
‘I’ve booked a table at that new Italian place John and Katy raved about last week,’ Marianne said quietly as she sat up in one fluid movement.
She suddenly felt like crying, and she kept her face turned away as she hurried through to the shower, noticing from the wet towels strewn around that Zeke must have showered when he first came home. For the first time since she had met him she was regretting she had made love with him. They needed to talk, everything couldn’t always be made right in bed, she told herself feverishly as she allowed the warm water to wash away the feel of his hands and mouth on her hot skin. He had to understand that she couldn’t carry on as they were for another day. She was losing sight of who she was and it was terrifying.
‘I’ll make up a fresh cocktail shaker while you finish getting ready.’ Zeke’s voice was dark and lazy as he came into the bathroom and talked to her through the glass of the shower cabinet, and for a moment Marianne felt a flood of anger that was all at odds with the image she was going to have to present throughout the evening looming in front of her.
He sounded satisfied, complacent, she told herself tightly—as well he might. He had Liliana drooling over him all day and his wife to satisfy his needs at night—he had it made! She checked the thought in the next moment, recognising it wasn’t completely fair. He hadn’t forced her tonight, she had met him every inch of the way, so she couldn’t very well blame him for her weakness, she admitted miserably. But that was the trouble—she was weak where Zeke was concerned. And it had to change—for both their sakes. She would end up hating him if they carried on like this.
She was aware of the Mortons arriving as she sat drying her hair a few minutes later at the dressing table, but she still took her time in getting ready. Zeke’s barbed observation about her hair had hit hard, for some reason, probably because she was picturing a sleek, beautifully coiffured auburn head in her mind’s eye.
Once her hair was dry she coiled it in a smooth, shining knot on top of her head, before teasing out a few curling tendrils about her face, and then applied her make-up with swift expertise.
The dress she had chosen to wear was a deceptively simple midnight-blue little number, with short sleeves and a high neck, but it fitted her like a glove in all the right places and the colour accentuated her eyes and gave her silver-blonde hair an added lustre. And somehow, for myriad reasons—only a few of which were plain to her—she needed to look her best tonight.
The evening went far better than Marianne had expected on the whole. Gerald Morton she had met before, and thought somewhat arrogant and opinionated, and without realising it she had assumed—erroneously, as it happened—that his wife would be a timid little mouse of a thing. But Wendy Morton was no mouse. She turned out to be a lawyer of some standing, with a manner not unlike Pat’s, and her wicked sense of humour added to a tongue that could be acid on occasion kept the conversation fairly buzzing. Marianne found that she liked the older woman very much, and that Gerald actually improved on further acquaintance; not least because she realised he needed to be assertive and confident to avoid being swamped by his feisty wife.
‘Gerald tells me you and Zeke have only been married a couple of years.’ They had just ordered desserts, and the two men had fallen into the trap of talking business, much to Wendy’s obvious disapproval. ‘Do you intend to make your home permanently in London?’ Wendy asked conversationally. ‘You certainly have a super apartment.’
‘Thank you.’ Marianne hesitated. She could prevaricate or change the subject but everything in her balked at that tonight. ‘I don’t want to stay in the apartment for very much longer,’ she said carefully. ‘It was Zeke’s bachelor pad before we married and I don’t really like it. I’d prefer a house on the outskirts.’
Wendy nodded interestedly. ‘Do you work?’ she asked mildly.
Zeke was still talking to Gerald, but a sixth sense told Marianne he was listening to the women’s conversation, and that more than anything else loosened her tongue. ‘Not at the moment,’ she said evenly, ‘but I intend to look into the possibility of doing a degree course in biology and chemistry with a view to eventually working in a hospital lab.’
‘Really?’ Now Wendy was genuinely interested. ‘My sister did exactly that and she’s never regretted it. She has done a great deal of work with leukaemic children; you must have a chat with her some time.’
‘I’d like that,’ said Marianne eagerly. ‘Thank you.’
They spoke some more, and although Marianne didn’t think Wendy could detect the black waves coming from across the table, she most certainly could.
The desserts were served, and, delicious as Marianne’s poached pears with lemon caramel were, she found she had to force them down. She and Zeke were going to have a row—a great, almighty giant of a row—once they were alone; she just knew it. But she had tried, over and over and over in the last months, to tell him how she felt—about the apartment, going to college, the way he kept her wrapped up in cotton wool and separate from the rest of the world—oh, so many things. And he had brushed her aside or treated her like a child who didn’t know its own mind. Or both.
She couldn’t go on like this any longer, feeling a prisoner in that beautiful, cold, soulless glasshouse Liliana had created for him. And he knew how she felt about the elegant redhead, yet he’d still asked Liliana to take on the project, knowing it would involve them working in each other’s pockets for days on end.
