Yesterday's Husband. Angela Devine

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СКАЧАТЬ into thinking that Richard felt anything else for her. Wrenching herself out of his hold, she began walking furiously down the beach.

      ‘Well, come on, then,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘What are you waiting for?’

      Her gold evening shoes sank into the sand at every step and Richard had no difficulty at all in overtaking her. She almost hoped that he would ask for an explanation of her abrupt departure, so that she could tell him a few blistering home truths about himself. But he was too shrewd or too indifferent for that. He simply strode along beside her looking as relaxed and nonchalant as if they had come out for no other reason than to enjoy the soft hiss and rush of the waves breaking on the silvery sand, the sweet, potent fragrance of the tropical flowers and the moonlight shimmering over the water. Emma was seething so furiously that she almost missed the turn-off to their bungalow and Richard had to reach out and catch her hand.

      ‘Let go of me!’ she spat.

      ‘Just as you like,’ he replied in a soft, mocking voice. ‘I can wait.’

      When they reached the bungalow she hurried ahead of him, inserting her key into the door with shaking fingers and then rushing up the stairs and into the bathroom. Shutting the door behind her with a vicious slam, she leaned against it, her heart pounding.

      ‘Damn him,’ she muttered under her breath. ‘Damn him, damn him, damn him!’

      Her heavy, dark hair was falling out of its chignon and her make-up was smudged from Richard’s kisses. A strange air of febrile excitement seemed to crackle dangerously about her as if she were a teenager who had just been kissed for the first time. It infuriated her to see herself looking so dishevelled in the mirror when she was used to being confronted by the image of a cool, composed businesswoman. With jerky, impatient movements, she took a pot of face cream out of her sponge bag and deliberately sponged every trace of make-up and of Richard off her face. Then she hauled off her clothes, flung them carelessly on the bathroom floor and stepped into the shower. It gave her a certain spiteful, childish pleasure to linger there. Let Richard wait if he wanted to use the bathroom! She hadn’t invited him here, had she? Maybe he would take the hint and go somewhere else!

      But at last the water began to run cold and she was forced to emerge. She rubbed herself dry and then stood there hesitating. What was she to do now? There had been no sound of a door closing below and she felt fairly certain that Richard was still out there, waiting for her. Her skin crawled with a half-delightful apprehension at the thought. Should she get dressed again? But the mere thought of climbing back into the same clothes made her grimace. Of course she could just wrap herself in a large bath-towel and go out like that. But it seemed like a terribly poor-spirited thing to do, especially when she was bound to have it ripped off her anyway. Well, she’d show Richard that she wasn’t afraid of him! Defiantly she tossed back her long black hair, opened the bathroom door, and stepped out into the bedroom stark naked.

      Richard had turned on the bedside lamps so that the room was bathed in a soft, apricot glow and he had taken off his dinner-jacket and shirt. At the sound of the opening door, he turned round and faced her and she felt an unwelcome pang of admiration at the sight of his lean, hard, muscular physique. The flare of interest in his eyes made her suspect that he was regarding her with a similar admiration. Her cheeks burned but she rested her hands defiantly on her hips.

      ‘Well, is this what you want?’ she demanded contemptuously.

      ‘Yes.’

      Without a trace of embarrassment, he strolled across the room, swept her up in his arms and planted a long, burning kiss on her mouth. Then, staring down at her with glittering blue eyes, he walked across to one of the huge beds and dropped her in the centre of it. Before she could utter more than a single indignant gasp of protest, he knelt astride her, pinioned her wrists on either side of her head and kissed her even more violently than before. Emma wanted to show her complete disdain for him by remaining totally unmoved and at first it was easy. She struggled angrily, turning aside her face from his kisses. But as his mouth travelled down the column of her neck in a series of soft, biting caresses she could not repress a faint moan of pleasure. He raised his head for a moment and she saw a flicker of triumph in his eyes. Then slowly, sensually he drew her nipple into his mouth and caressed it with his tongue. A tingle of pleasure so acute that it was close to pain flared through every nerve-ending in her body and she caught her breath and arched instinctively against him, writhing and shuddering under his touch. His lips released her, only to move further down her body, nibbling over her flesh in a provocative, rhythmic stimulation that drove her wild with longing. Her hands clenched tightly on the sheets and she closed her eyes, whimpering softly. When his mouth touched the most intimate, secret part of her, she started up with a shuddering gasp of protest of incoherent pleasure, but he thrust her back.

      ‘Lie still and enjoy it,’ he urged, his body so closely linked to hers that she could feel the vibration in his throat. She tried to remind herself that she hated him, that she was doing this only under protest, but her body seemed to have taken on a will of its own. And what it wanted it wanted urgently, violently, without any delay.

      ‘Richard… we shouldn’t… it’s insane…’

      ‘Yes, we should. And it isn’t insane. I want this more than I’ve wanted anything in the past eight years and you do too. Don’t you? Don’t you? Admit it, Emma; tell me that you want me. Say it!’

      He had hauled himself up in the bed and was looming above her now, supported on his forearms, with his halfnaked body crushed against her. She could feel the warmth, the heat, the tension in that body, the unmistakable virile hardness of it, and she wanted him! Oh, how she wanted him! Not just to touch her and hold her and kiss her, wonderful as that was, but to plunge deep inside her until they were fused in a total union.

      ‘Say it,’ he rasped again.

      ‘I want you, Richard,’ she breathed.

      ‘That’s all I needed to know,’ he said coldly.

      And, to her astonishment and chagrin, he rose to his feet and stood staring down at her with a strange, ravenous mixture of desire and hatred in his eyes.

      ‘Goodnight, Emma.’

      She lay in shocked disbelief, instinctively drawing up the sheet to cover her nakedness, and watched as he swiftly finished undressing with his back turned to her, pulled on a pair of lightweight cotton pyjamas and climbed into the other bed. Then, without another word, he switched off the light and began breathing deeply and evenly. She didn’t ask him why he was doing this. She already knew. It was an act of cold-hearted, calculating revenge. First the challenge had been to see whether he could excite her to the point where she actually wanted him and then, having demonstrated the humiliating fact that she did, he had twisted the knife by rejecting her. The bastard! The unutterable, manipulative bastard! She wanted to kill him…

      Her heart was still pounding furiously and her body was hot and pulsing with the effects of unsatisfied desire so that it made her more angry than ever when a few minutes later she heard his quiet breathing deepen into the unmistakable rhythm of sleep. How could he lie there and just sleep when Emma herself wanted to cry and rage and throw things? It was inhuman! There must be some way she could get back at him for this, there must, there must! For hours she lay awake, tossing and turning, thumping her pillow and letting out occasional, low gasps of annoyance. But some time after three o’clock she fell asleep with her last conscious thought surging through her head as monotonously as the breaking surf outside. I hate him, I hate him, I hate him…

      Her dreams were confused and anxious, centring not on the humiliating scene she had just endured but on the violent parting quarrel which had separated СКАЧАТЬ