Island Of The Dawn. PENNY JORDAN

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      It was true, so true that Chloe sobbed out bitterly, ‘And Marisa—where does she fit into all this? Does she have no say in the matter? About your plans to become a father? Or have you forgotten that she destroyed our first child?’

      This time he did hit her. Shock rather than pain made her reel, her eyes widening. Above her Leon’s face was nearly as pale as her own, the bones standing out sharply.

      ‘You will never say that again,’ he said thickly. ‘Do you understand me? Never! Marisa….’

      He never finished what he was going to say, for the door swung open and a young Greek girl burst impetuously in, her eyes hardening as she saw Chloe.

      ‘What’s she doing here?’ she spat viciously. ‘Leon, you….’

      Her long fingernails were painted dark red to match the glossy lipstick emphasising the sullen pout of a mouth curved with sensual promise.

      Three years ago, when Leon had mentioned to her his half-sister for whom he was responsible, Chloe had visualised a shy, gawky teenager—a girl with whom she could be friends; a girl who might perhaps need her guidance and affection, but Marisa needed nothing from her brother’s wife, unless it was the protection of her presence to deceive the world as Chloe herself had once been deceived. Her hands went to her stomach in unthinking protection long before she remembered that there was now no vulnerable life there for her to protect.

      Marisa’s eyes followed the gesture, narrowing with bitter fury as she rounded on Leon.

      ‘What is she doing here? Why….’

      The arm he had slid round Chloe’s waist felt like a steel hawser. She tried to pull away. She could feel the warmth of his breath against her hair, but she deliberately turned away from it, sickened by the falsity of the tableau. It was plain that Marisa knew nothing about her own presence here on Eos, and Chloe could only surmise that Leon was insisting on the resumption of their marriage to protect the younger girl. Not that Marisa herself cared the slightest about public opinion. She would have lived openly with Leon. She had told Chloe as much. It was Leon who had insisted that they must observe the conventions. Leon who had decided to find himself a quiet, biddable wife, too naïve to see what was happening under her eyes. And she had been that wife. Until Marisa, in a fit of jealousy had opened her eyes to the truth.

      ‘Why? Because it is necessary.’

      When Leon spoke in that tone even Marisa did not dare to argue. Chloe could see the baffled rage in her eyes and wondered if perhaps Leon was subtly punishing the Greek girl. Her suspicions were reinforced when Leon’s free hand cupped her jáw, forcing her head round in a grip that looked casual, but which in actual fact was anything but. Her bones ached from the pressure of his hold. ‘Isn’t it, Chloe?’

      He whispered the question a hair’s breadth from her lips in a gesture deliberately sensual. She tried not to succumb to it, but it was there in her eyes and the sudden tensing of her muscles, betraying her far more effectively than any words, and she knew from the sudden alert gleam in Leon’s eyes that he knew she was aware of him. It seemed to Chloe, her senses heightened by the emotional violence in the air of the room, that he was holding her more closely that he had been doing; that he was deliberately moulding her body to his in a way he hadn’t been doing before, so that she was intimately aware of him. It had been like this the first time they met. Leon had come to a viewing. She had been modelling an evening gown, had looked up and seen him, and it had been as though he had reached out and touched her. In the years they had been apart she had convinced herself that now she was immune to that sort of deliberate sexual arousal, but now, with his fingers tracing her spine, his body making her aware of the fact that physically she still aroused him, Chloe knew that she was still desperately vulnerable.

      She closed her eyes, swallowing painfully, and when she opened them again Leon was watching her like a cat at a mousehole. For a second she thought he was going to kiss her, and moistened her lips instinctively, trembling convulsively as his free hand pushed her hair behind her ears. Was he remembering, as she was, how he had woken her in the mornings of their honeymoon with teasing kisses placed in the soft hollows behind her ears, tracing a path along the vulnerable line of her throat, down to her breasts when, inevitably, her fingers would curl into the thick darkness of his hair, urging him against the flesh he had aroused so thoroughly?

      God, she mustn’t think about that! About how she had felt; how she had ached for his possession. She must remember afterwards, when she had learned about Marisa.

      The slamming of her bedroom door brought her back to earth. Marisa had gone and they were alone. Leon released her coolly, his glance mockingly aware of the response he had drawn from her.

      ‘You are still my wife, Chloe,’ he reminded her. ‘And in Greece a man’s wife is still his possession, to do with as he wishes.’

      ‘And we both know what you wish to do with me,’ Chloe said bitterly. ‘Impregnate me with your child. Why, Leon?’

      He shrugged. ‘All men want sons, do they not? It is a law of nature. I am a rich man and must have heirs of my body to follow after me. You are my wife….’

      ‘Oh, for God’s sake stop saying that! We both know why I’m your wife; why you married me….’

      Before Leon could reply, the same man who had escorted her from the helicopter the previous evening knocked on the door, which Leon had started to open. Leon moved immediately, shielding Chloe with the bulk of his body, as the other man, who was apparently his personal assistant, explained that there was a call from New York.

      ‘Don’t try to leave,’ Leon warned Chloe before he left, ‘because you can’t. Even if you managed to leave this island—which you could only do by swimming — I still have your passport.’

      What on earth the staff must make of the situation she dared not think, Chloe reflected ten minutes later, standing under the needle-sharp spray of the shower in the bathroom which led off her bedroom. Decorated in the same colours as the bedroom, it had a huge round bath, sunk into the floor and surrounded by soft green marble tiles. As Chloe reached for one of the soft silver-grey towels she caught sight of her naked body in the mirror-lined wall. Already faint bruises were beginning to form where Leon had gripped her. Even now she could not believe that she was actually here on Eos, Leon’s prisoner. Her eyes went instinctively to the open bathroom door and the bed beyond it. Leon had talked about them sharing it as matter-of-factly as though they were two strangers contemplating sharing a taxi. A frisson of awareness shivered through her as she remembered how she had felt in his arms. By rights she ought to feel indifference if not outright hatred, but while her mind might reject and be repulsed by Leon’s cynical attitude her body could still be physically aroused by him.

      A woman never forgot her first lover. Chloe shivered as she remembered reading that somewhere. It was true; almost as though Leon’s touch was a secret code to which her body would always respond.

      Dressed in the change of clothes she had expected to be wearing in Athens, Chloe tried to reason with herself. She was not a mindless machine. There was such a thing as free will. Surely her mind was capable of overcoming her body’s weakness? Of course it was. Hadn’t she proved that during these last two years? Abstinence was easy without temptation, a tiny inner voice warned her, but Chloe refused to heed it. The love she had once thought she felt for Leon had died, and the emotions she was now experiencing were merely reaction to his sudden eruption into her life.

      Unbidden, the memory of Leon’s expression when he СКАЧАТЬ