Deceived...
The
anger drove him on and it left no room for sympathy. “So. I have paid off
your debts and you are safe. You have told me why you jilted me and now-” He
paused. In the firelight she looked fragile and apprehensive. He wondered
how on earth she could look like that when she was the most brass-faced
creature on earth.
“And now,” he said,
deliberately, “I do believe it is our wedding night.”
Isabella had her hand
against his chest, warding him off. “I cannot give myself to a man who does
not care for me, does not trust me and I dare say does not even like me very
much.”
Marcus laughed. There was a
wildness inside him and it demanded recompense. He wanted to slake his
anger and his bitterness in her body. He wondered how she thought that any
man could look on her and not feel the same desire.
“You underestimate my
feelings for you, my love,” he said. “I admire you and I want you.”
Isabella’s clear blue eyes
challenged him to examine those truths he wanted to ignore. “Yet you despise
me,” she said.
Marcus’s gaze did not
falter. “A part of me does, perhaps. We need not regard it.” He touched a
finger to her lips. If he did not have her soon he thought he would burn up
with the wanting.
“I need you very much,” he
continued, the rough undertone edging his voice. “You are not indifferent to
me, either. Look me in the eye and tell me that you do not want me.”
Isabella was biting her lip.
She did not look up. “I want to be indifferent to you,” she said.
“Ah.” Marcus leaned forward
and touched his lips lightly to the curve of her neck. “That is a vastly
different matter, as even you will allow.”
He felt a shudder run
through her but then she moved from beneath his touch and deliberately put a
distance between them. “You cannot have me,” she said. She turned her
shoulder. “Go! Go and find a harlot to satisfy your lust!”
There was a moment’s
stillness. Marcus did not move. He put one hand on her arm and felt the
conflict in her. She was wound as tight as a spindle.
“You do not mean that,” he
said softly.
Isabella’s shoulders
slumped.
“I do not mean it,” she
admitted. “But you must go, Stockhaven. I told you the truth and you have
chosen not to believe me. I cannot give myself, married or not, to a man who
has no respect for me.”
Marcus’s expression was
implacable.
“You can and you will. It is
the bargain you made, my love.”
“No,” Isabella said. “I will
not give myself to you when you think so little of me.” She threw out a hand
in desperate appeal. “You knew me before, Marcus! Was your own judgement of
me so faulty then that you can believe this of me now?”
Marcus gritted his teeth.
The ghosts of his love for her twisted and tormented him. “I was young,” he
said harshly. “Perhaps I was misled in my feelings for you.”
“You loved me,” Isabella
said, ashen now. “Are you saying it was all based upon a lie?”
Her eyes were blazing.
Before he could reply she added:
“Why must you make yourself
believe the very worst of me?”
It was not a question that
Marcus wanted to answer. Not now, possibly not ever. At the moment he could
not think beyond the shocking need to have her in his bed. He did not want
to confront his demons or to acknowledge that there was a chink in his
defences. Perhaps India had lied to him. Perhaps she had been jealous of his
love for Isabella. And he, out of his guilt and remorse, had tried to blame
Isabella for everything rather than admit the pain.
Isabella’s eyes were a deep,
dark blue, smudged with desire, her cheeks were pink with arousal and when
he touched her, her skin felt heated beneath his fingertips.
“You cannot deny me.” He was
aching to take her, afraid that he would lose all control if she refused
him. “I was your first lover. You know that you want me too.”
“You will regret this.” She
said it not as a threat but a simple statement of fact. “This feels all
wrong. It is all wrong when there is so much unresolved between us.”
Marcus understood what she
meant and he tried to close his mind against the knowledge. Why make
matters complicated when they could be simple? They could forget the past,
the accusations and the recriminations, in the heat of the present.
Afterwards… but he did not want to think about afterwards. Not until he had
taken her and ravished her and reclaimed her, and laid all their ghosts to
rest.
He caught her to him and
kissed her with all the pent up passion and torment that plagued him. She
did not resist but she did not respond either. A tremor shook him; he
gentled the kiss, courting a response rather than demanding it. Somehow he
had to make this right. She had to want him as much as he wanted her. He
felt her lips tremble beneath his before they parted to his searching tongue
and then her whole body went soft in his arms and the sweetness of her
yielding broke something within him...
