'Invade my privacy!' Sara gasped, hotly flushed as j she struggled to anchor the fleecy towel round her, but the foot of it had already trailed in the water and the sodden weight of fabric was anything but easy to handle. 'Get out of here!'
'I see you have miraculously rediscovered your tongue.' Supremely at ease, Alex sank down on a corner of the bath, an unhidden smile of amusement curving his expressive mouth. Densely lashed golden eyes engaged on a boldly unapologetic survey of every gleaming wet inch of pale flesh on view. 'What a promising start to the new day…'
'I want you to listen to me.'
'I am a captive audience,' Alex assured her cheerfully.
Sara quivered with rage. If there was one thing she couldn't bear, it was not to be taken seriously. 'You're trying to behave as if yesterday never happened!'
A lean brown hand snaked out and caught her left hand, one long forefinger suggestively brushing the circle of bridal gold she wore. 'Didn't it?'
Deprived of one hand's anchorage, the towel dipped down dangerously low over her breasts and with a strangled hiss of mingled temper and mortification Sara dropped down into the water again. 'Go away!' she roared at him furiously.
'You're changing… You're changing into the woman you've always kept hidden and stifled,' Alex murmured with quiet satisfaction. 'The woman you were born to be. Fiery and passionate, not quiet and submissive. I saw it in Marco's studio first-all that you would conceal and all that I would set free.'
Sara opened her sultry mouth and closed it again, trembling with thwarted fury. 'Don't try to change the subject,' she finally shot back at him.
'Why would I do that? You needed to know the truth. I made no attempt to conceal it,' Alex reminded her. 'The brandy bottle was the one unknown, cara. I suspect that without that handicap you would have suspected the truth the same day. I did not foresee how rapidly events would move… or how swiftly our relationship would develop. I was prepared to wait for you to turn to me.'
'You don't even seem to appreciate the evil of what you've done!' Sara launched at him.
'The evil was Shorter's, cara. Don't make the mistake of laying the original sin at my door,' Alex warned her softly. 'Had he been faithful, I would have been powerless to interfere.'
'You had no right to interfere!'
'I saw my advantage and I used it. What else would you have expected me to do? If I hadn't intervened, you would have suffered a far more public betrayal. I don't believe that your fiance had any intention of replacing you with your cousin… but the lady had other ideas,' Alex imparted with grim dark eyes. 'How much closer to the wedding would you have liked to come?'
Her teeth gritted. 'That's not relevant!'
'You think not? Without my 'evil' intervention, bellamia, the invitations would have been out, the wedding presents arriving. Your cousin has a sense of the dra-matic. I think she would have left it to the eleventh hour You would have been greeted out of the blue by the an-nouncement that they were in love. Would you have pre-ferred that scenario?'
'Shut up, Alex!' Sara blitzed back at him rawly wanting to cover her ears from his devious reasoning 'Shutup!'
Alex dealt her a uniquely cynical appraisal, his handsome mouth twisting. 'No, you would not have fallen over yourself for the opportunity to play the jilted bride, a sad object of pity to all concerned. You are far too proud to willingly subject yourself to such humiliation.'
'Damn you, Alex…I hate you!' Resentment was blazing out of control like a forest fire inside her.
'You married me to save face, cara… If I have to live with that reality, why shouldn't you?' Alex drawled murderously quietly.
'You sneaky, manipulative swine!' Lunging forward without hesitation, Sara closed two angry hands over the hem of his immaculate grey jacket and tipped him backwards into the bath.
There was a burst of startled Italian, a resounding splash, a sudden dismaying weight on her extended lower limbs and then an instant of stark silence. And then Alex laughed. He threw back his handsome dark head and laughed with uninhibited appreciation.
'You asked for that,' Sara bit out mutinously, refusing to share in his amusement. 'Now perhaps you'll remove yourself.'
Alex bent forward and flipped off his shoes and socks. 'I don't think so,' he murmured, straightening his back fithely and shrugging his shoulders out of his jacket, pitching it carelessly aside. 'And what's that supposed to mean?' He jerked his tie loose, then embarked on unbuttoning his shirt. 'I am where I want to be-'
'Let me up,' she instructed feverishly, pinned in place by the weight of his hard length.
Alex angled up his lean flanks to unzip his trousers and Sara took advantage of the movement to snake her legs back, but he was far too quick and agile for her. He flipped over and caught her arms before she could complete her escape and brought his mouth down hard on hers.
In a rage of incredulity, she meant to bite him, scratch him, pummel him with both furiously clenched fists. But at the same second that he fiercely probed her lips apart and delved between them with the stab of his tongue, she ran out of breath and reason and physical coordination. He devoured her with hot, hungry urgency and her hands briefly loosened and then clutched with helpless desperation as he yanked her up against him, crushing her bare breasts to the hard, muscular wall of his chest. She wanted more, so much more that every intoxicating second was only a frustrating preparation for the next. And then he released her.
In a daze she blinked as he sprang out of the bath, peeling off his shirt and dispensing with his sodden trousers and the clinging black briefs in a few impatient movements. He reached down into the water and swept her up as if she were an inanimate and dainty doll.; Breathless confusion overwhelmed her. 'Put me down…put me down, Alex!'
'Getting me wet was a bad move, cara.' Brilliant golden eyes danced over her bemused face. lDio… it made the; odds of you escaping unscathed from this bedroom about ninety-nine to one.'
'If you don't let go of…me!' Her wrathful response ended in a strangled yell as he dropped her down on the welcoming luxuriousness of the bed and she bounced. Alex descended lithely onto the mattress, only to imprison her again, closing both hands over her wildly clawing ones and pressing them flat while at the same time lowering his lean, hard length to keep the rest of her in one place. 'Now…calm down-think,' he urged smoothly.
It struck her that about the very last thing she felt capable of just then was thinking. With every lethally; sexy centimetre of Alex pinned to her damp, quivering I flesh, rational thought was suspended by a sensation closer to pure panic than anything else. Already she could fee/ a sort of lhsMous neat and restive tension threatening her already shattered composure.
'Please-'
“'I wanted you so much,bellamia… how could that ever be a crime?' Alex enquired, subjecting her to the full onslaught of eyes screened to a smouldering sliver of gold beneath inky black lashes. 'For a whole year 1 desired you and you held me at bay with cold, dismissive glances and scornful little smiles. You treated me like my father's wives once treated me-like an unavoidable but greatly to be regretted accident of birth. No man with red blood in his veins would have resisted the challenge.'
'Stop it,' Sara gasped, blocking him out by closing her eyes. She was trying so hard not to listen while at the same time endeavouring to stamp out the burgeoning and quite appalling sexual awareness leaping to life within her every skin cell, making her breath shorten, her heartbeat race and her pulses accelerate. 'You are my wife,' Alex reminded her very softly. 'I don't want to be!' Sara bit out shakily, tiny little quivers assailing her as she angrily fought to stamp out her own hatefully physical reaction to his proximity. 'This is very sudden,' Alex husked. Temper took her again, strengthening her defiance. 'You think that if you chip away at me for long enough you can change the way I think… but you can't! Marco said I'd be safer with him that day and he was right. He told me to go for the two million and he was right about that too! You're just using me!' Sara condemned in sudden, bitter pain. 'And I'd rather be used for money than find myself trapped in a marriage that's a sleazy mockery of everything I believe in. At least the money would have been an honest exchange!'
Without warning, Alex freed her hands and sprang back from her. His strong dark features were harshly set. 'Is that what you really believe, caraV
With a shaking hand, Sara fumbled for the sheet, wanting to cover herself all of a sudden from that look of icy
