‘Mmm. Did you cold-bloodedly decide to do to me what I had done to you?’ he murmured, and, turning onto his elbow, he caught her in the dazzling silver blaze of his eyes. ‘Was that your own particular power-trip, Romy—to have me helpless beneath those exquisitely skilful hands of yours?’
‘There was a bit of that,’ she admitted cautiously, because she had not intended to tell him anything. And yet somehow, when he looked at her like that, she found herself wanting to pour her heart out to him.
‘I see. And did it turn you on? To watch me peak in the middle of the garden in broad daylight, even though you knew that I had misgivings about it all along?’
Romy hid a smile. ‘Then you disguised your misgivings very well.’
He cursed softly beneath his breath. ‘Oh, the misgivings disappeared within seconds,’ he murmured. ‘Couldn’t you tell?’
‘Then they must have been extremely pathetic misgivings in the first place!’ she challenged, delighted when she heard his deep laugh ring out without inhibition.
‘Unimportant ones, certainly,’ he agreed. He shut his eyes and yawned luxuriously, and Romy blushed a deep pink as she allowed her dark eyes to secretly flick over him, realising with a sense of sudden, rather prudish shock that he was completely at ease with his partially clothed state. He didn’t seem at all bothered by the fact that he was lying there with his clothes all in disarray!
But Romy was. Hot and bothered.
She stood up quickly and smoothed her white dress down over her thighs.
‘Running away?’ he quizzed softly, and she saw that his eyes were not closed at all, but that he was surveying her coolly from between lush black lashes. ‘Just when it was beginning to get interesting, too. Shame on you, Romy—we really can’t keep on doing this to one another.’
‘I know,’ she agreed miserably.
Their eyes met in a long, candid stare and Romy realised with a shudder of horror just what sort of dreadful person she had become.
And she knew why, too.
It seemed that all her efforts to change and modify her behaviour had been doomed to failure from the word go—because underneath she was obviously no better than a clone of her shallow and promiscuous mother.
‘There is such a thing as mutual satisfaction, you know,’ he pointed out softly.
‘And there is such a thing as no satisfaction at all!’ Romy declared irrationally. Because she was damned if she was just going to let him lead her upstairs now, like a lamb to the slaughter.
‘So I take it that bed is out of the question?’ he drawled as he began unhurriedly to pull his jeans back up.
Unfortunately, Romy did not manage to avert her eyes in time. Instead she found herself unable to look away from him, her gaze drawn hypnotically to the wicked glint in his eyes as he slowly zipped up his jeans, in the most deliberately provocative way possible.
‘Bed?’ he mouthed at her again, with a lazy smile.
For a moment, Romy could not deny that she was tempted—sorely tempted. And who in their right mind wouldn’t have been, when the sight of Dominic sprawled sexily on the grass would have tempted a saint?
‘Do you usually proposition women quite so blatantly?’ she demanded, her cheeks growing even hotter.
‘No,’ he answered slowly, his eyes never leaving her face. ‘But then I have never met a woman who was so refreshingly at ease with her body. Or mine,’ he added, with a grin.
‘You make the whole thing sound so commonplace and mechanical,’ she complained.
He jumped up to tower darkly over her. ‘Do I?’ he mused. ‘Well, it isn’t. Certainly not with you, anyway. In fact, my experiences with you to date, Romy, have been the most unpredictable and exciting I have ever encountered.’
She forced herself to push away the sudden glow of pleasure which his words had produced, because he had basically just made her sound as though she was Courtesan of the Year—not paid her a delicate compliment. ‘Really?’ she questioned moodily.
‘Really,’ he agreed, with a smile. ‘So don’t let’s spoil it by over-analysing it. Why don’t we just go to bed, and let me give you back some of the pleasure which you have just so beautifully bestowed on me?’
‘Bed?’ she echoed indignantly. ‘Are you some kind of sex-maniac?’
For a second he looked perplexed. But then, to her fury, he simply laughed. ‘You flatter me, Romy,’ he murmured.
‘I didn’t intend to!’ Romy smoothed her dress again with as much dignity as she could muster. ‘I’d better go inside,’ she told him. ‘There are these flowers to arrange and I want to check on the seating plan for dinner.’
The intrusion of domestic detail finally broke into the afterglow of his orgasm. His lethargy disintegrated and Dominic saw the world shift back into cold, grim focus.
‘Romy!’ he said harshly, and something in his voice made her stop and stare at him, a question in her eyes. Tell me about Mark,’ he said suddenly.
Romy looked down and found that her hands were trembling uncontrollably. ‘Mark?’ she questioned shrilly, unable to believe her ears. ‘Mark? Why do you want to talk about Mark? And why now?’
Because he needed to keep reminding himself of how abominably she had behaved towards her late husband, that was why, Dominic told himself grimly. And because he was in grave danger of forgetting why he had lured her here in the first place.
A distinctly hostile light glittered from his silvery grey eyes. ‘Why not? He was once my best friend, after all.’
“‘Once” being the operative word,’ she agreed caustically, and now it was her turn to see him flinch. ‘Because after we were married you disappeared abroad and that was it.’
‘And how could I face him again, knowing what I had done with you?’ he demanded. ‘Knowing that I had betrayed him in the most wounding way it is possible to betray someone? God, I could hardly bear to look at myself in the mirror afterwards—I’m damned sure I couldn’t have faced Mark!’
‘And because of that, because of the guilt you felt, Mark didn’t get to see you before—’
‘Before your perfidy drove him to his death?’ he queried coldly.
‘Mark died of cancer, as well you know,’ she defended herself in a low, shaking voice. ‘You’re surely not going to accuse me of causing that?’
‘But such illnesses can be brought on by stress, can’t they?’ he observed cruelly. ‘And I really can’t think of anything more stressful than living with a woman who strays the way you clearly did. A wife, moreover, whose greatest pleasure in life appears to be having sex in bizarre places!’
Romy hesitated. He was so determined to think badly of her that she doubted he would believe the truth even if she dared tell him. But it was suddenly terribly important to her that she attempted to explain. ‘Dominic,’ she told him quietly, ‘there’s a lot you don’t understand—’
‘The only thing I fail to understand,’ he bit back coldly, as if she had not spoken, ‘is why an intelligent man like Mark neglected to see through your two-facedness. Tell me, Romy, did you go straight to his arms from mine that day? Or did even your conscience get the better of you?’
His grey eyes glittered hectically. ‘Did you rush back and take a shower before you saw him again? Washing every inch of your skin obsessively—afraid that the scent of love was lingering on your body like the most cloying perfume?’ he challenged coolly.
Romy met the challenge in his eyes without wavering, though she reckoned that few women would have been able to withstand that withering