‘You didn’t even recognise it for what it was. You had programmed yourself to tune out all sexual messages and ignore them. But what you did feel unnerved you,’ Alex murmured lazily. ‘And I thought, I want this woman but she is the one woman I cannot have.’
‘Alex...this is a male fantasy running riot.’ Her hurt and mortification that he should pretend to find her attractive were intense. ‘You are trying to justify your quite unjustifiable presence in my bedroom. And shall I tell you why?’
‘If you like.’
Very pale, Sarah breathed, ‘I hurt your ego—’
‘A bomb wouldn’t deflate my ego,’ Alex inserted smoothly.
‘I hurt your ego,’ Sarah repeated tightly, ‘and you want to level the score.’
‘I left scoring behind in my teens, along with not phoning when I said I would and lusting hotly after everything in a skirt between sixteen and thirty.’
‘I imagine you were fairly successful,’ she muttered helplessly.
‘Very...but I did grow out of it and you are my wife...’
Unwarily, Sarah glanced up, registered that he wasn’t wearing a stitch and hurriedly looked away, knowing that that image of Alex naked was imprinted indelibly on her memory for life. But then it had not previously occurred to her that the male physique could be that magnificent...or that disturbing.
‘I’m prepared to offer you an annulment,’ she proffered in a rush, like a woman trying to bargain with an executioner at the last ditch.
‘This is very sudden, isn’t it?’ Alex mocked. ‘No.’
‘I’m offering you your freedom back—’
‘Are you offering me Nicky as well?’
An icy hand clutched at her heartstrings. ‘No!’
‘Stalemate,’ Alex said succinctly.
But, had she agreed to go and leave Nicky behind, he would have agreed to an annulment. Dear God, that was what he really wanted. This was what he had planned from the beginning and, blind idiot that she was, she had walked right into it! It had not occurred to her that Alex’s offensive might be demanding his marital rights. But Alex had somehow guessed what would disturb and distress her most and Alex was prepared to play that card and utterly humiliate her in the hope that sooner or later she would take flight, leaving Nicky in his sole custody.
‘I didn’t know Damon was married!’ she told him afresh.
‘Your performance to that effect was certainly convincing,’ Alex conceded flatly. ‘But it doesn’t change the fact that we’re married.’
‘We don’t have to stay married,’ she protested tautly.
Alex strode into the bathroom without responding. He wasn’t listening to her.
Sarah flopped back against the pillows like a rag doll and crammed a hand against her convulsing mouth and bit back a sob of very real fear. The mere prospect of Alex enforcing sexual intimacy as a weapon appalled her. The thought of him looking at her naked, seeing all her deficiencies, touching her with cold, humiliating hands while doubtless having to fantasise about some other woman just to keep him aroused...it terrified and tortured her.
She listened to the water beating down on the tiles in the shower and cringed. She knew she didn’t have beautiful eyes or sensational legs and she also knew what he didn’t know but would soon find out. What you saw wasn’t what you got. Her sole claim to vanity was a padded bra, just so that she wasn’t too noticeably flat, certainly not to draw further attention to that particular part of her body.
She felt the mattress give with his weight and curled up into a tighter, even more inaccessible ball.
A finger ran down her exposed backbone and she shuddered. ‘When I said that a bomb wouldn’t deflate my ego, I’m beginning to think I was deluding myself,’ Alex remarked without expression.
‘Please...please don’t touch me. I can’t give up Nicky but I’ll do absolutely anything else. I’ll stay out of your way...you’ll never see me...you can have all the women you want!’ she told him wildly.
‘I want you,’ Alex breathed with sudden rawness, hauling her bodily back into the hard heat of his long, powerful length with an easy strength that sent her nervous tension into overdrive.
‘You cheat! You agreed to a marriage in name only!’ Sarah gasped strickenly, furious that she had abandoned her pride to beg him to leave her alone and that that selfsame plea had failed to wring an ounce of compassion from him.
Alex twisted her round and pressed her flat, forcing her into glancing and unwelcome contact with gleaming golden eyes that challenged. ‘When did I agree?’
Trembling, she stared wordlessly up at him, the reality of that omission on his part only now registering with her.