Response. PENNY JORDAN
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Название: Response
Автор: PENNY JORDAN
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Современные любовные романы
isbn: 9781408999042
isbn:
‘Did I hurt you?’ He sounded cold, distant, angry almost, and something inside her tensed as he moved away from her. Had she disappointed him? She must have done after all the women he had known….
‘A little,’ she lied, ‘but it will be better… next time….’ Her eyes pleaded with him for confirmation, for the words of reassurance and love to bring balm to her aching body, but he was standing up, shrugging the broad shoulders she had so recently worshipped with her lips, his expression bored and cynical.
‘No doubt it will,’ he agreed, ‘but not with me, Sienna. You will have to find another lover to teach you pleasure.’
She couldn’t take it in at first. She simply stared at him while the words played over and over in her numbed brain. ‘You mean….’
She tried to formulate her thoughts, but he cut across her husky, whisper and said curtly, ‘What I mean is that I have achieved what I set out to do, and I have taken your viginity just as your brother took my sister’s, but with a little more grace. She was brutally raped!’
‘Raped!’ Sienna struggled valiantly to make sense out of what he was saying, unable to comprehend what was happening; where the man she had believed to be her lover had gone, and who this stranger who had taken his place was. ‘But you said you loved me… you….’
‘So naïve! Didn’t your mother ever warn you that that’s what all men tell you when they want you go to bed with them? You were so easy to deceive,’ he told her cruelly. ‘Almost too easy.’
Sienna stole a glance at his dark, taunting face, her eyes drawn with a compulsion it was impossible for her to master to the cold clear outline of his mouth. Sickness and self-contempt welled up inside her. Dear God, what a fool she had been! He was right, she had made it easy for him, easy to steal her heart and destroy her precious daydreams with his words of love which had been nothing more than cruel lies.
‘Drink this.’ A glass of water was thrust in front of her, the liquid faintly cloudy. ‘You should be thankful that I didn’t take you as your brother did my sister; brutally, despoiling her….’
‘Rob wouldn’t do that—I know he wouldn’t! I think I hate you!’ she added vehemently, her voice low and shaken.
‘Hate me?’ His mouth was wry ‘Not half an hour ago you were telling me how much you loved me, that I and I alone held your heart. Sleep now. In the morning….’
In the morning? Did he honestly expect her to stay here with him after what he had just said to her? Shock had robbed her of the ability to feel real pain, but she knew it was there waiting for her and when it began she wanted to be alone. She loved him, and he had just been using her, callously and completely without regard for her feelings. She had loved in ideal, she told herself fiercely, a dream image of a man who didn’t exist. She must not love him, she must force herself to face the truth.
‘I want to leave now,’ she said curtly. ‘I’ll ring for a taxi.’ She saw the surprise he couldn’t quite conceal and said bitterly, ‘What did you expect? That I would plead with you? Break down and beg you to love me? I’ve already made a fool of myself once tonight!’
‘Sienna.’ Incredibly he dared to touch her, frowning when she froze beneath the touch of his fingers on her arm. ‘You must understand that I meant you no personal harm….’
‘No, I was just the means by which you accomplished your revenge,’ she agreed tightly. ‘What would you have done if Rob hadn’t had a sister? If I hadn’t been a virgin? How would you have played God then?’
She had the satisfaction of seeing his face darken in suppressed anger. ‘I made it my business to find out everything I could about your brother and his family. Had you not existed I would have found another way, but this was the most fitting.’
‘An eye for an eye,’ Sienna agreed curtly. Was she really having this conversation? She felt as though she had strayed into some horrendous nightmare and only the terrible fear that she might break down and cry out her pain and anguish in front of this man—her enemy, enabled her to maintain control of her emotions.
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