Brilliant golden eyes rested on her with all the extraordinary force of his fierce temperament. ‘I’m amazed you have the nerve to ask me that. You lied to me, and you know how I feel about lies.’
Fear cut Billie as deep as a knife wound and a kind of panic raced like a wrecking ball through her more usually calm thoughts, creating mental havoc. Her blood ran cold, her skin turned clammy. ‘L-lies?’ she queried, playing desperately for time.
‘That certainly wasn’t the very first time you had sex. You weren’t a virgin before I married you, yet you were determined to make me believe that you were. What is that other than a lie?’
He was disappointed, she assumed, realising just what a pit she had dug for herself to fall into. How could she tell him the truth without telling him the whole truth? The few hours of grace she had believed she still had had suddenly vanished, depriving her of any control over the situation.
‘Of course it would be downright hypocrisy for a guy of my experience to expect or demand a virgin bride in this day and age,’ Alexei drawled in glancing continuance. ‘I may have made a false assumption but you lied by omission. Lying by staying silent when you should have contradicted me is still a lie.’
‘I didn’t know how to tell you,’ Billie framed uncertainly. ‘When you made that assumption I felt trapped by it—’
‘No, don’t make the mistake of trying to lay your dishonesty at my door,’ Alexei cautioned her, his lean handsome face hardening into grim lines at her response. ‘I also want to know who your first lover was: Damon Marios, your spineless first love?’
The instant he flung that arrogant demand and that name at her she froze, wondering whether she really had to trail out all her secrets there and then, if there was no escape, no other way of deflecting him. And then she marvelled at her own reluctance to speak, her terror of breaking free of the cosy bridal bubble of happy-ever-afters and fantasy. ‘You’re not going to believe me when I do tell you who it was.’
As he stared at her from below the dense dark screen of his luxuriant lashes Alexei’s handsome mouth took on a sardonic quirk. ‘Try me. At least you have the wit not to persist in the lie.’
Billie no longer felt comfortable in the bed. She was no more comfortable under his intent scrutiny when she slid out naked from below the sheet to move a few steps away and reach for the light silk robe draped in readiness for her use over a chair. Enveloped within its concealing folds, the sash tightened round her waist with unsteady hands, she felt curiously more in control again.
‘How did you know? How did you guess?’ she suddenly pressed, unable to resist asking that question.
‘You told me. You betrayed yourself by the expression in your eyes, your face, your very responses. You looked and acted guilty.’
‘Because that’s how I feel and it’s really not fair because not all of this is my fault,’ Billie reasoned with a defensive edge of defiance. ‘You can’t be so judgemental about lies. Not everything is that black and white.’
‘Spare me the moral philosophy speech,’ Alexei derided. ‘You may be my wife but one thing hasn’t changed: I still expect a straight answer to a direct question.’
‘You asked me who my first lover was but, quite honestly, you have no right to ask me that question!’ Billie dared, flashing that answer back to him in retribution.
Alexei dealt her an arrested appraisal, her insubordination clearly coming as an unwelcome surprise to him.
Billie was trembling. ‘I mean, how do you even dare to ask me that question?’
His golden gaze was splinteringly hard and unyielding. ‘I dare because you’re my wife and nothing in your life should be hidden from me.’
Billie tried and failed to swallow at that bold, startlingly idealistic expectation. A tiny pulse at the base of her throat was flickering wildly. The tip of her tongue snaked out to moisten the taut dryness of her full lower lip. ‘You were my first lover…but you don’t remember the time we spent together—’
His ebony brows drew together. ‘What the hell kind of nonsensical claim is that?’ Alexei demanded, his raw impatience unhidden.
‘It may sound like nonsense to you at this moment, but it’s still the truth. On the night of your parents’ funeral, when everyone else had gone home, you had been drinking and you went to bed with me,’ Billie recounted, her agitated fingers knotting into the too long sleeves of her robe and tugging in a restive motion at the cuffs.
‘Any moment now you’ll be telling me that you were abducted by aliens! Are you crazy?’ Alexei jibed, tossing back the bedding and springing from the bed, a tall, powerful figure all the more daunting unclad. ‘Or are you drunk? That’s the only explanation I can come up with!’
‘We made love in the guest suite where I was staying at the time. We had no contraception. You were heading back to your own room for condoms when you tripped and fell down the steps by the swimming pool. When you came round, you didn’t remember that you’d been with me…’ Billie’s taut voice quivered with tension as he came to a halt, wheeled round and stared at her with frowning questioning force: she had finally won his full attention. ‘You thought you’d been in the swimming pool because your hair was damp but you’d only been in the shower…’
Dark eyes blazing wrathful gold, he studied her, his lean, strong visage clenched into forbidding lines. ‘No, Billie,’ he cut in icily. ‘You’re very ingenious but I won’t fall for a story like that. You tell me that we slept together on the one night of my life that I can’t fully recall and you expect me to believe you? How stupid do you think I am?’
In a growing state of confusion, Billie gazed back at him. She had known it would be a challenge to make him believe her, but it had not crossed her mind that he might suspect her of fitting fictional facts to an actual event to provide back-up for what he deemed to be lies. ‘But we really were together that night.’
‘So, according to you, unlike every other woman I have ever met, you gave me your body and expected nothing in return—not even an acknowledgement from me?’ Alexei slashed back at her with incredulous scorn. ‘At least come up with lies that make some sense!’
Anger licked like a hungry flame out of her bone-deep anxiety. She felt as if she were fighting for her life and certainly for the love of it. Not so very long ago they had enjoyed an instant of perfect harmony out on deck and she had been so happy. ‘When have I ever lied to you?’ she queried emotively.
‘What about those weeks before our wedding when you were playing the innocent little virgin charade? You need to fine-tune those principles I mistakenly thought you had. It’s not the lie you allowed to stand, it’s the fact that you were dishonest that disgusts me.’
Every word Alexei spoke flailing her like a whip, Billie had lost colour. Her body, so lately hot and damp from the vigour of his lovemaking, suddenly felt cold and shivery. Her green eyes dominated her heart-shaped face but the anger that had awakened inside her was already climbing higher and growing stronger in her defence. How dared he say that she disgusted him after all she had gone through on his behalf? She had stood by in silence while he romanced Calisto and slept with her. She had endured her pregnancy and the birth of his child without his support. How dared he judge her?
‘Don’t you dare tell me that I disgust you!’
Hard-as-granite
