A Heartless Marriage

Even as he spoke he pulled off the main thoroughfare which led to the huge block of flats where she lived and into a narrow, deserted sidestreet that was dark and unlit. ‘Now then.’ As the engine died a sense of danger shivered down her spine. This was Raoul, Raoul her husband, the man who knew her more intimately than any other human being ever would, the man who had almost destroyed her once and had let her go almost casually. The feeling of exhilaration that had had her in its grip since the party died, and pure undiluted fear took its place. Was she strong enough to withstand his devious fascination now? She had never understood him and had no idea why he had sought her out after all this time but she sensed instinctively that it wasn’t an impulsive decision.

She had been right in her initial impression that he had changed. The old Raoul had never had such a hard light of cold purpose in his eyes. He was the same but he was different: older, menacingly determined, altogether more dangerous. She prepared herself for what he was going to say. Whatever it was, she wouldn’t like it, she was suddenly quite sure of that.

‘Leigh.’ As he spoke her name he bent towards her, the fingers of one hand threading into her thick silky hair as the other wrapped round her waist, drawing her into him in the close confines of the car before she had time to resist.

‘Don’t!’ Even as she spoke his mouth took hers and in the first moment of contact she knew, with a frantic silent scream, that the old magic was there. She couldn’t evade him, there was nowhere to go, and, bent over her as he was, his body had trapped her more securely than any chains. The kiss shot through the nerve-endings all over her body in an explosion of sensation, moulding, drawing her, emptying her of everything but him. She tried to fight it, to jerk her head away, but he was too strong for her and then, as the kiss became deeper and he plundered that intimate territory she had never given to anyone else but him, she didn’t want to resist. The dizzy, helpless submission his passion had always induced rose like a phoenix from the ashes, sensual, powerful, accelerating her heartbeat and causing her to strain towards him, revelling in the feel, the smell of him as he fitted her into his body until she could feel every inch of his hard frame.

She couldn’t believe she had been without the touch, the feel of him for five years. Like an addict who thought she had conquered the habit only to find its pull stronger than ever, she shuddered desperately against him, his obvious arousal firing her to new heights of ecstasy.

He seemed gripped by the same sort of madness, murmuring incoherently against the softness of her mouth, his lips moving frantically over her face and throat as his body trembled against hers, a storm of pent-up emotion devouring the long lean body until the tremors that were shaking his limbs reached through to hers.

‘You’re mine, you’re still mine, you’ll always be mine.’ As his voice, urgent and filled with a mad exultation, pierced the spinning whirlwind that had her in its grip, she froze in his arms, a biting wave of humiliation and shame breaking over her head and draining the colour from her face.

‘No!’ As she wrenched her face from his she jerked sideways savagely, hitting her shoulder against the door of the car without even feeling it. It wasn’t going to happen again. She wasn’t going to be swept into his orbit like a mindless robot that could only function when its master pressed the switch. She was autonomous now, she didn’t need him any more, she wouldn’t need him! She had survived without him for five years; it couldn’t all be lost now. She had to fight him.

‘Leigh, listen to me—’

‘No!’ She knew she was almost hysterical but that didn’t matter, all that mattered was convincing him that he had to leave her alone, that she was her own person now, not a plaything to be brought out at convenient moments. ‘Don’t you touch me again, Raoul, not ever again. I mean it, I hate you! I’ll always hate you!’ She was shouting and in the enclosed space the words bounced off the metal with deafening ferocity, and as she struggled to open the door she was aware of him leaning back into his seat, his face hardening into cold mocking lines.

‘A simple “no” would have sufficed,’ he said quietly. ‘You really didn’t have to pretend that you enjoyed what was obviously a grievous ordeal.’ He was laughing at her! In the same instant that the mocking words registered on her bruised mind her hand shot out with savage force to hit him hard across one tanned cheek, the sound deafening.

‘Leigh!’ He punched her name into the space between them as his hands shot up to hold hers, restraining her with just enough force for the mad pounding in her head to ease and the enormity of what she had just done to break into her consciousness. She shut her eyes against the look on his face, leaning back against the soft leather as she felt the strength drain from her body, leaving her quivering and silent. ‘Consider yourself most fortunate,’ he grated through tight-clenched teeth. ‘There is no other woman on this earth who would get away with that twice.’

Twice? As her eyes opened to meet his the memory of their last encounter was there as clearly as if it was yesterday. Marion’s long, golden looselimbed body sprawled on the bed-their bed-her long golden blonde hair spread out across the pillow like a silky veil and the big green eyes bright with triumph as they caught sight of her standing whitefaced in the doorway. Her clothes had been scattered round the bedroom floor as though discarded in a frenzied game of tag, and as Raoul had emerged from the en suite, magnificently and in the circumstances inexcusably naked, she knew with a sick feeling of despair exactly who the beautiful blonde had been playing with.

‘Leigh?’ Raoul had begun to speak, his eyes flying from her drowning eyes to Marion in one lightning glance, but she had blown his words away with the impact of her hand across his mouth. She shut her mind to the scene that had followed. She had dissected it too often as it was.

‘I’ll take you home.’ As her eyes refocused on his face he let go of her hands, placing them into her lap as though she was old and helpless, which was exactly how she felt. She had been almost twenty when she had left him. After eighteen months of heaven on earth she had been plunged into a dark void that was indescribable, and just for a minute, a crazy minute, she had forgotten that tonight. But never again.

She glanced at him as he manoeuvred the powerful car out of the narrow street and into the lights again. This time her head must, must rule her heart! She couldn’t let herself become this man’s plaything again, his little toy. She was a grown woman now, not a child bride; she had shaped and woven her own life into the pattern she required of it and her independence was the most precious thing she owned.

I hate you, Raoul, she said silently as the car purred its way through the traffic, I hate you, I do! So why was it that for the first time in five years she felt alive again?

CHAPTER TWO

‘I’LL see you to your door.’ Leigh’s heart was still

pounding with disgust at her own weakness as they drew up outside the block of flats where she lived, and as his cool expressionless voice cut into her whirling thoughts she stiffened instinctively, her eyes widening in protest.

‘No!’ She lowered her voice a few decibels and tried again. ‘No, Raoul, please don’t.’

‘As you wish.’ He was sitting very still, an intense watchfulness colouring his eyes ice-blue. ‘Goodnight, Leigh.’

‘What? Oh, goodnight.’ This was it, then? After five years? A macabre anticlimax was making her knees weak.

As she climbed out of the car it was gone in an instant, roaring down the street to the blaring of horns and screaming brakes from the other traffic, the sound of its engine soon lost in the general mêlée.

As the lift took her upwards she really felt as though she was going to collapse. Her legs felt like jelly and there was a strange blackness that was most peculiar coming and going in front of her eyes. She suddenly realised she was leaning against the wall of the lift, which was unsavoury at the best of times, and on a Saturday evening, after the revelry and beer-swilling carousal of a Friday night, definitely suspect.

It brought her back to earth abruptly and she even found herself smiling at the irony of leaving Raoul’s fabulously expensive car to step into such a paradoxical little box. She shrugged wearily. Such was life. If only Raoul were as easy to shrug away.

The little flat was cool and welcoming as she opened her front door. One of the advantages of being on the sixth floor was that she could leave the large French doors that took up almost one wall of the tiny lounge open in the summer, letting the cool night air and rich scents from the tiny balcony crammed full with potted plants and sweet-smelling tubs of bright flowers stream into the room. She used this room as a small studio; the light was excellent all year round, and the minute tiled bathroom leading off the small box bedroom and even tinier kitchen kept housework to a minimum.

She owned one comfortable old easy-chair parked at one side of the windows, one bed and a small wardrobe, and that was all the furniture she possessed, having ploughed all her money into the hundreds of pounds’ worth of canvases, paints and brushes that roamed across every inch of available space, cluttering the walls in untidy harmony and filling the flat with the smell of turpentine and paint. And she loved it. She stood for a moment feasting her eyes on her little domain, willing the hard-won peace and quiet contentment back into her heart. But it was no good. She grimaced to herself helplessly. Raoul had destroyed it, at least for tonight. She wouldn’t let it be any longer than that!

She was standing under the shower, letting the cool water annihilate the last flush of humiliation still staining her skin pink, when the telephone called stridently from its hook on the kitchen wall. ‘You can just ring,’ she told it loudly, reaching for the bottle of shampoo and pouring a large amount of the thick creamy mixture into her hair, working up a lather determinedly.

She couldn’t speak to anyone tonight, she just couldn’t. Her head was swimming with a thousand and one images, her mind was aching and she still didn’t know why Raoul had exploded back into her life! The phone rang again as she was towelling herself dry and once more as she lay in bed sipping a hot mug of cocoa and flicking through a magazine article on life drawing by one of her old lecturers at college. It had become a matter of principle not to answer it now, a kind of rebellion against having the frame of her carefully built screen of fragile self-sufficiency broken by Raoul’s easy intrusion.

Sleep was too long in coming and she didn’t have the patience to wait for it, preferring paint and canvas after an hour of tossing and turning and forcing her mind away from paths that it dared not follow. Delectable, forbidden paths where Raoul’s magnificent body was exposed in all its flagrant manhood and her shape was moulded into his in a manner as old as time. The phone was now off the hook; that, at least, she could control! She had another cool shower before she started work at two o’clock. The night was excessively warm, she told herself aggressively—that was absolutely all it was!

At six she fell into bed just as she was, paintsmeared and somewhat grubby, and at eight o’clock she was woken by a furious pounding at her front door that she was sure could be heard on the tenth floor.

She stumbled bleary-eyed to the door, still in her tattered old painting smock, her hair tangled and hanging limply on her shoulders and her eyes cloudy with lack of sleep.

‘And just where the hell have you been?’

‘What?’ Raoul’s face was a picture of injured outrage and for a moment she wondered if she was in the middle of some inexplicable nightmare. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Answer me, damn you!’ He seemed very angry, she reflected weakly as she tried to spark her mind into ignition. ‘I’ve been ringing this number most of the night. First there was no answer and then it was engaged. What are you playing at? Who have you got here?’ His voice was bitingly sharp.

‘Who have I…?’ He brushed past her into the flat, stalking into each tiny room before coming to a halt in front of her stained easel, the paint on the canvas still tacky.

‘You’ve been working all night, haven’t you? You took the phone off the hook because you were working. You stupid girl!’ He glared at her angrily. ‘What about an emergency? What if someone was trying to get you urgently?’

‘Stop shouting at me!’ She had found her tongue along with the burning resentment that was filling her small body from head to foot. ‘And what did that gibe mean, incidentally? “Who have I got here?” You cheeky hound! We aren’t all like you, Raoul. Some of us consider that there are more important things than procreational pursuits!’

‘What?’ In a more conventional situation the look of sheer amazement on Raoul’s face would have been food for her soul, but just at the moment she couldn’t appreciate that for once she had totally and completely surprised him.

‘You burst into my home, you accuse me of goodness knows what and then you criticise my lifestyle! How dare you? How dare you? You haven’t bothered with me for five years and now you think you can tell me what to do. Get out! Get out!’

‘“Procreational pursuits”?’ He didn’t even seem to have heard the rest of her tirade. ‘“Procreational pursuits”!’ The great peal of unbridled raucous laughter took her completely by surprise. Raoul laughed the way he did everything else, with unrestrained frankness and wholehearted participation, and in spite of the fact that it was eight o’clock on a Sunday morning and the neighbours would be thinking-well, she didn’t dare to imagine what they would be thinking-she found herself infected by his appreciation of the moment. Unfortunately they had always had the same slightly off-beat sense of humour. It had seemed good when they were together but as Mrs Billett next door banged ferociously on the wall and Mr Silver overhead nearly brought the ceiling down with his walking-stick, she tried to restrain the paroxysms of laughter that recurred every time she thought she had control. It was nerves, it had to be.

‘Oh, Leigh.’ Raoul had collapsed on the one and only chair and was looking at her through streaming eyes. ‘Only you could come out with a phrase like that. “Procreational pursuits”!’ His head went back in another burst of laughter. ‘You’re priceless, kitten, you really are.’

Somehow the nickname sobered them both at the same moment and from helpless laughter they changed to expectant stillness within seconds. ‘Leigh?’ Raoul’s voice was a low endearment and she shuddered against it, her hands going out in unconscious protest as she took a step backwards. ‘Let me hold you, show you nothing has really changed.’

‘No, no, Raoul.’ He crossed the room in one movement to stand looking down at her, small and defenceless, in front of his overpoweringly tall bulk, and then with a smothered groan he lifted her right off her feet into his arms.

‘You’ve got paint on your nose and you stink of turpentine,’ he said softly as he traced the outline of her jaw with tiny feather-light kisses, his lips moving to her mouth as she opened it to protest. ‘And you’re so damn beautiful.’ Why that word should be the catalyst to the emotion that was sending hot waves of desire into every nerve-ending she didn’t know. Maybe it was because no one else had ever called her beautiful, maybe it was because the images she had been fighting all night had reared their sensual heads as soon as she had seen his face again. Whatever, she was now fighting herself as much as him and she was suddenly scared to death.

‘Put me down, Raoul! I don’t want this, I don’t want you—’ As he smothered her voice with a piercingly sweet kiss the feel of his hard, warm lips brought a host of memories she was powerless to resist. Raoul, the frighteningly perceptive lover who had been as anxious for her satisfaction as his own, infinitely patient, incredibly tender but capable of such heights of erotic passion that she had frequently felt she would die from the glorious ecstasy he induced.

He had been her first love, her only love, and had constantly delighted in fusing their bodies into rapturous oblivion until she had been quivering and sated in his arms. This was the Raoul she had purposely blocked out of her consciousness for years in her desire to survive, drawing on the mental picture of a cold hard womaniser who had betrayed her in the most callous way possible and with seemingly no shred of remorse.

‘I want you, my darling.’ How they had reached the bed she didn’t know-she hadn’t been aware that he had carried her there as she had continued to struggle against the seductive weakness that was flooding her limbs at his touch-but as he laid her down on the rumpled covers she brought every ounce of will-power she possessed into play. It couldn’t happen again, she couldn’t let him take her over again.

‘Leave me alone, Raoul.’ Her eyes were huge as she stared up at him in the dim light from the curtained window. ‘I can’t—’

‘But you can, kitten! We’re married, Leigh; you’re my wife, remember?’ His voice was teasingly mocking as he stroked a silky lock of brown hair away from her face with a gentle hand, lazily leaning forward to take her lips with his own again.

He was so sure of himself, she thought with a little dart of pain that strengthened her resolve. So sure that he could overcome her resistance as though the last five years had meant nothing! But then, they probably hadn’t to him! Had he even noticed she’d gone? She froze into stillness as he kissed her again, forcing her senses into submission and willing the warm pulsing beat of desire that was making her limbs shake to quieten. He didn’t notice her lack of response at first, and as he continued to trace a path of fire over her face and throat she knew it was only a matter of time before the heat that was bursting into life deep inside became evident again. She clenched her hands tightly by her side. She had to make him stop and this was the only way. She had to find the strength from somewhere.

Her complete lack of movement finally got through to him and he raised himself slowly, leaning on one elbow at her side to look into her wide brown eyes as he raked back the shock of curly black hair from his brow. ‘Don’t tell me I’m losing my touch?’ The dry, sardonic tone whipped a flush of colour into her cheeks and fanned the earlier flame of pain into white-hot agony.

With a bitterness that was directed at herself as well as him she stiffened into stone in an effort to hide the hurt. He really didn’t care! ‘Losing your touch?’ Her voice dripped with contempt. ‘Is that all anything means to you? An opportunity to prove you’re the greatest? That no woman is immune?’ Mercifully anger was replacing the pain now.

If she hadn’t been so angry she would have taken warning at the slow darkening of his face but right at that moment she was incapable of taking notice of anything. ‘You disgust me, Raoul, with your arrogant and all-important male ego. We’re strangers now and you know it! We’re just two people held together by a meaningless piece of paper.’

‘Like hell we are!’ He swung his legs violently over the edge of the bed as he turned from her. ‘Was that why you insisted on a church wedding because all our marriage boiled down to was an expendable bit of paper? I do not believe this, Leigh; I know you better than that. You are my wife, my wife in the eyes of God and man, and I know it and so do you.’ His accent was as brittle as glass.

‘No—’

‘Oh, yes, my little English rose.’ He stood up as she drew herself into a sitting position, locking her hands round her knees after pulling the short smock down to her feet. ‘You are mine and what is mine I keep. You should know this.’ His voice was shaking with rage and cold determination.

‘Raoul, listen to me—’

‘Why should I?’ He spun round now with a dark raging fury in his eyes that made her shrink away in fear. ‘You do not listen to me, do you? You didn’t listen five years ago and still you will not. What is it with you?’

‘What is it with me?’ The sheer arrogance acted like a shot of adrenalin and her small face was convulsed with hot resentment and burning fury. ‘How can you ask me that? You aren’t real! You just aren’t real.’

‘This is nonsense,’ he said coldly, his face hard and his eyes an icy blue. ‘If you cannot talk sense—’

‘Can’t talk sense!’ He had turned into the iceman again but for the life of her she couldn’t match his coolness. He stood gazing at her, powerfully, dangerously handsome with an insolent tilt to the ebony head and his eyes such a startling vivid blue that her breath suddenly caught in her throat as she fought for words. He was so handsome. So amazingly, painfully handsome. What had he ever seen in her anyway? ‘I may not be saying what you want to hear but it makes perfect sense, to me at any rate.’ Her voice was trembling and low and she heard it with a little throb of self-disgust. She wouldn’t let him break her, reduce her to tears again.

He swore softly as he took in the huge brown eyes in her chalk-white face, filled with a churning darkness that made him run his hand through his hair wearily, the anger draining from his face as he shook his head gently. ‘You are your own worst enemy, kitten,’ he said softly. ‘We were so good together once and you cannot deny we were happy. You can’t fight what’s between us, Leigh; your body betrays you every time I touch you. You want me to make love to you.’

For a stunned moment she couldn’t believe what she was hearing, couldn’t believe he could have the audacity to actually voice such incredible words in view of what he had done. ‘You betrayed me, Raoul.’ Her voice was flat now and totally devoid of expression. ‘In the worst possible way. In our own bed. You can’t deny that.’

‘I cannot?’ His eyes narrowed slowly and his voice was very tight, his body stiff with emotion. ‘But of course I cannot. It is all cut and dried, is it not? Like that evening five years ago when I wasn’t allowed to speak?’

‘Oh, and I suppose if you’d come back to our home and found me in bed with another man you would have sat down with us in a reasonable manner and asked politely for an explanation?’ She glared at him. ‘There was only one possible interpretation. Admit it!’

‘You weary me.’ His face had hardened further at the note of undisguised disgust in her voice.

‘I weary you?’ She was aware in the far recesses of her mind that she kept repeating his remarks like a dozy parrot, but the haughty insolence was leaving her gasping for words. ‘Well, maybe I do at that. But I’m not stupid and I won’t pretend to be. Marion had been after you for weeks and you knew it. I suppose you only held out for as long as you did because she was your best friend’s wife and they were staying with us. You betrayed him and me and for what? A little—’ She stopped abruptly and took a long deep breath, settling back into the bed and pulling the covers more closely around her. She felt suddenly cold, cold and very tired. ‘Anyway, it’s over, finished; none of it matters any more. Maybe we can be friends one day.’ She missed the lightning flash of pain in his face.

‘I do not want friendship from you,’ he said savagely. ‘I want more, much more than that or nothing at all.’

‘Then it will be nothing,’ she said slowly as she

lifted her eyes to stare straight into the arctic blue of his.

‘You think so?’ His voice was soft now and with a chilling coldness that sent a tiny shiver sparking down her spine. She knew Raoul. He was always at his most dangerous when perfectly in control like now. ‘Tell me, my Leigh, what did you imagine would happen in the future? Did you seriously expect me to remain in the background like an emasculated stallion forever?’ She shivered at the crudity.