Her face drained of colour, the uncaring arrogance of his words hurting her in a way Guy would never know. ‘God, how I hate you!’ she whispered, teeth clenched and chattering in the bloodless tension in her face.
‘And what a passionate hatred it is,’ he derided. ‘For if I touched you now, Marnie, while you hate so spectacularly, you would go up in flames, and you know it!’ With a condemning flick of his black gaze he glanced down her quivering body, missing nothing, not the hectic heave of her breasts or the damning evidence of her nipples pushing hard and tight against the fine white silk covering of his shirt. ‘Your body yearns for mine,’ he accused condemningly. ‘That is why you fight so hard against your own desires, Marnie: because you want me. Want me so badly that it was a relief to you when your brother gave you the opportunity to place yourself at my mercy!’
‘That’s a lie!’ she rasped. ‘I despise the very thought of you so much as touching me!’
‘Is that so?’ he murmured silkily, lifting his hand towards her in a way that had her shrinking shakily back from him.
‘No decent woman would ever want you, Guy,’ she threw at him contemptuously. ‘Not one who has seen with her own eyes how freely you put yourself about!’
‘You only saw what you think you saw!’ he snapped, angry suddenly because the argument had taken a turn he had much rather it hadn’t. ‘But that period in our lives is no longer up for discussion,’ he then stated grimly. ‘I have tried too many times to make you listen while I explained it all to you; now I find I no longe
r want to. What has gone before today, Marnie, is now dead and gone, and must now be forgotten, because what follows in its wake will begin with a new set of rules which will leave no room for further dissension, on either side.’
Dead, gone, forgotten. Those three words echoed hollowly in her mind, bringing her swooping down from anger into weariness far more successfully than any attempt at subjugation on Guy’s part.
‘Let me continue working,’ she requested. If he would just concede this one point to her, then perhaps, she hoped, she could manage to put the rest aside as he wanted her to do. ‘The only thing I’ll ask of you, Guy!’ she pleaded when she saw the uncompromising set of his jaw. ‘The rest I—promise to abide by, so long as I can at least have my work!’
‘No compromises this time. I’m sorry.’ He sounded it too, his tone rough but firm. ‘But your work got in the way of us ever having a chance of making a success of our marriage the first time around. This time it has to be different.’
‘And your other women?’ she demanded. ‘Do they stop also?’
‘Do you want them to?’ he enquired smoothly.
God. She closed her eyes, swallowing on the bank of bitterness lying like acid in her throat. ‘Do what you want,’ she sighed, turning towards the door. ‘I find I don’t give a damn!’
‘Then why all this fuss?’ he demanded. ‘For someone who professes not to care at all, Marnie, you are giving a remarkable show of caring—perhaps too much?’
There was enough truth in that final taunt to sting her into spinning back to face him. ‘I will always despise you for forcing me into accepting you back like this! Is that what you want?’ she asked. ‘A woman—a wife who will resent every moment she has to spend in your arms? Is the price you’re going to pay for having me back in your life really worth the satisfaction you think you’ll feel at managing it?’
‘I know it will be,’ he said, taking the single stride which brought his body hard up against her own. She took a jerky step back, and found her back pressed hard against the solid wood of the door.
‘Let go of me,’ she muttered, trying to push his hands away. ‘Your touch makes my skin crawl!’
Guy smiled. ‘Crawl with what, I wonder?’ he murmured, placing his hands on her waist and crushing the fine silk fabric of his shirt against her naked flesh.
She began to tremble, tremble so badly that she could barely breathe. ‘No,’ she groaned as he began to lower his mouth to hers.
‘No?’ he taunted. ‘Are you very sure of that?’
His mouth landed, splitting her sanity into a million atoms of pure sensation. He began slowly drawing the silk up her body, drawing her deeper and deeper into the kiss as he slowly—agonisingly almost—exposed the bottom half of her body then pressed the thrusting heat of his own against her. Her senses responded instantly, making her squirm in an effort to combat the flood of sensual delight that ran through her.
She felt drenched in her own desire; her mouth opened, parting to allow him to deepen the kiss. His hands reached the undercurve of her breasts, the silk bunched up beneath them, and on a smooth sensual movement he slid his fingers beneath to cup and lift her before knowingly brushing his thumbs across the waiting points of her nipples.
She moaned, moving instinctively against him, her hands dragging tensely up the sides of his lean body to clutch at the bunched muscles of his shoulderblades. ‘Stop it,’ she gasped.
He ignored her. Her fingers clenched, then gripped hard, digging into the taut flesh beneath them as she fought the rage of feeling she was suffering inside. ‘Why don’t you just stop trying to fight me, Marnie?’ Guy murmured seductively. ‘You know you want to.’
‘No—’
‘Yes!’ he insisted, and parted her lips with the sensual force of his own. It was a kiss like no other. Hungry, passionate, charged with an angry urgency that sent her senses spinning out of control. Hazily, she tried to stop herself responding. But it was too late; their tongues met in a wild tangling that set them both breathing harshly.
His hands moved, but before she had a chance to groan out in protest at losing their electric caress to her breasts they were sliding sensually down her body to cup possessively at her buttocks, and it was only as he thrust his lower body towards her that she realised he had untied his robe, and she stopped breathing altogether as he pushed the throbbing fullness of his manhood between her trembling thighs.
‘God in heaven,’ he breathed, dragging his mouth from hers so he could bury it in her throat.
Her face was pushed against the thick mat of crisp dark hair on his chest. She tried to pull herself together, sucking in deep gulps of air, but the thundering sound of his heartbeat against her parted mouth seemed to overwhelm everything. They were almost one. Their bodies melded so closely together that she felt drunk and dizzy with the pleasure of it. His fingers were tense and restless, kneading her tender flesh while her own had somehow found their way over his shoulders and were clinging to the muscled tautness of his neck.
He moved against her, just once, shuddered violently and stopped, his breathing so harsh that she realised just how close he was to losing complete control.