He withdrew. It was so abrupt that she just stood there, leaning against his hard-packed framework staring up at him in blank incomprehension.
‘Yes…’ he hissed down at her in soft-voiced triumph. ‘You might think you hate my touch, cara mia, but you cannot get enough of my kisses. What does that say about what is happening in here?’ he posed, bringing the whole, wild episode back to where it had started by tapping a finger against her brow again.
And just like that the familiarity disappeared and she found herself looking at a complete stranger. A cruelly taunting stranger with eyes still glinting with a residual anger and a mouth that still pulsed from the damning kiss. It was no wonder she shuddered again.
‘Also, no faint,’ he mocked, adding insult to injury by stepping right back from her in a way designed to mockingly prove that she was indeed still conscious.
‘You bastard,’ she breathed.
His lazy shrug conveyed a complete indifference to the title. Then he turned and walked gracefully towards the window. ‘See you in a couple of hours,’ he said to accompany his careless departure. ‘And make sure you take that rest. You look like you need it.’
Samantha simply stared after him, too deeply sunk into a slow-dawning understanding to know or even care what he’d said. He had kissed her in anger. It had been a punishment as well as a demonstration of his power over her.
‘I’m to blame, aren’t I?’
The shaky claim brought his feet to a standstill.
‘I did something so unforgivable that I daren’t let myself remember.’
‘No,’ he denied.
She didn’t believe him. It had to be her fault or why else had he treated her as he had just now?
‘Apportioning blame will not help the issue,’ he added grimly.
‘Then, what will?’
He shook his head. ‘We agreed not to discuss the past until we’d sought professional advice.’
Her short laugh scorned that remark. ‘That’s rich coming from the man who’s just imposed the past on me with about as much ruthlessness as he could muster!’
‘All right!’ he rasped, reeling round to catch her off guard again. She jumped as if frightened. His teeth showed white in angry acknowledgement. ‘That,’ he said, waving a hand at her reaction, ‘is why I kissed you! Why I was angry—why I still am! We were lovers, Samantha!’ And suddenly he was striding towards her again. Hands reaching up. Hands grabbing her shoulders. ‘Hot, greedy, passionate lovers, who never could get enough of each other! So of course it damn well infuriates me when you jump if I so much as come near you! Being near you and not kissing you means I am denying myself—as if it isn’t enough to have one of us doing that! So—’ He bent, kissed her once more, like a terse punctuation. ‘Get used to it. You’re my wife. I like kissing you. Now I’m getting the hell out of here before I decide to convert all of this anger into something else I like doing with you!’
And with that he turned and strode away, leaving her standing there feeling shell-shocked and shaken by the barrage of emotion he had just thrown at her.
The suite’s outer door closed with a controlled slam. She blinked, breathed, and only realised when she did it that she hadn’t drawn breath throughout his last angry speech. Her lips were still burning from the power of his kiss and her body was trembling so badly she began to wonder if now was going to be the moment that she sank into a faint.
It didn’t happen. Instead she managed to take a step forward—and tripped over her walking stick as she did. The trip jarred her knee and, wincing, she let fly with a few choice curses as she rubbed the offending joint and fervently wished she had never set eyes on André Visconte!
‘Ever,’ she tagged on fiercely to that wish.
André was standing in the hotel manager’s office, shooting orders down the telephone as if he was conducting a bloody war.
It was late, and he’d just come away from an interview at the police road accident department which had left him feeling turned inside out. Guilt was devouring him, along with agony and distress and a blinding black fury that was threatening to swallow him whole.
‘Just do it!’ he growled out at Nathan when he dared to argue the point. ‘If Samantha says it has the potential, then at least do her the honour of accepting that she knows what she’s talking about!’
Nathan began to patiently explain that it wasn’t Samantha’s word he was questioning, but the wiseness of André making such a big corporate decision feeling as wound up as he did.
‘Do you think the Tremount has potential?’ André questioned coldly.
‘Yes,’ Nathan replied. ‘But—’
‘Then what the hell is it you’re arguing about? Set up the damn deal and just let me know how much it’s going to cost me.’
‘For Samantha?’ Nathan drawled.
‘Yes!’ he hissed back. ‘It’s for Samantha! And while you’re at it, make sure that friend of hers—Chrissy—is taken care of.’