A Heartless Marriage. HELEN BROOKS

expensive aftershave that had always rendered her helpless in his arms. She brought her knees together tightly. She was immune to him now. She was!

      ‘Oh, but there is, kitten.’ The use of the old pet name jarred piercingly into her heart. ‘There always will be.’

      ‘I want to get out.’ Her hands were clenched together now and she ground her teeth silently as a low laugh rippled through the car. ‘Do you hear me, Raoul?’

      ‘No way, my love.’ She steeled herself to look at him and then wished she hadn’t. The profile was so familiar, so devastingly, painfully familiar. She had forgotten just how breathtakingly handsome he was, how enigmatically in control, how altogether electric. It wasn’t fair that one man should have so much going for him. It wasn’t just his looks, compelling though they were; there was a dark magnetism, an inner vitality that accentuated every aspect of the lean hard body and tanned face until the aura in which he moved was all-absorbing. ‘You’re nearly home now.’

      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