Island Of The Dawn. PENNY JORDAN

tone even Marisa did not dare to argue. Chloe could see the baffled rage in her eyes and wondered if perhaps Leon was subtly punishing the Greek girl. Her suspicions were reinforced when Leon’s free hand cupped her jáw, forcing her head round in a grip that looked casual, but which in actual fact was anything but. Her bones ached from the pressure of his hold. ‘Isn’t it, Chloe?’

      He whispered the question a hair’s breadth from her lips in a gesture deliberately sensual. She tried not to succumb to it, but it was there in her eyes and the sudden tensing of her muscles, betraying her far more effectively than any words, and she knew from the sudden alert gleam in Leon’s eyes that he knew she was aware of him. It seemed to Chloe, her senses heightened by the emotional violence in the air of the room, that he was holding her more closely that he had been doing; that he was deliberately moulding her body to his in a way he hadn’t been doing before, so that she was intimately aware of him. It had been like this the first time they met. Leon had come to a viewing. She had been modelling an evening gown, had looked up and seen him, and it had been as though he had reached out and touched her. In the years they had been apart she had convinced herself that now she was immune to that sort of deliberate sexual arousal, but now, with his fingers tracing her spine, his body making her aware of the fact that physically she still aroused him, Chloe knew that she was still desperately vulnerable.

      She closed her eyes, swallowing painfully, and when she opened them again Leon was watching her like a cat at a mousehole. For a second she thought he was going to kiss her, and moistened her lips instinctively, trembling convulsively as his free hand pushed her hair behind her ears. Was he remembering, as she was, how he had woken her in the mornings of their honeymoon with teasing kisses placed in the soft hollows behind her ears, tracing a path along the vulnerable line of her throat, down to her breasts when, inevitably, her fingers would curl into the thick darkness of his hair, urging him against the flesh he had aroused so thoroughly?

      God, she mustn’t think about that! About how she had felt; how she had ached for his possession. She must remember afterwards, when she had learned about Marisa.

      The slamming of her bedroom door brought her back to earth. Marisa had gone and they were alone. Leon released her coolly, his glance mockingly aware of the response he had drawn from her.

      ‘You are still my wife, Chloe,’ he reminded her. ‘And in Greece a man’s wife is still his possession, to do with as he wishes.’

      ‘And we both know what you wish to do with me,’ Chloe said bitterly. ‘Impregnate me with your child. Why, Leon?’

      He shrugged. ‘All men want sons, do they not? It is a law of nature. I am a rich man and must have heirs of my body to follow after me. You are my wife….’

      ‘Oh, for God’s sake stop saying that! We both know why I’m your wife; why you married me….’

      Before Leon could reply, the same man who had escorted her from the helicopter the previous evening knocked on the door, which Leon had started to open. Leon moved immediately, shielding Chloe with the bulk of his body, as the other man, who was apparently his personal assistant, explained that there was a call from New York.

      ‘Don’t try to leave,’ Leon warned Chloe before he left, ‘because you can’t. Even if you managed to leave this island—which you could only do by swimming — I still have your passport.’

      What on earth the staff must make of the situation she dared not think, Chloe reflected ten minutes later, standing under the needle-sharp spray of the shower in the bathroom which led off her bedroom. Decorated in the same colours as the bedroom, it had a huge round bath, sunk into the floor and surrounded by soft green marble tiles. As Chloe reached for one of the soft silver-grey towels she caught sight of her naked body in the mirror-lined wall. Already faint bruises were beginning to form where Leon had gripped her. Even now she could not believe that she was actually here on Eos, Leon’s prisoner. Her eyes went instinctively to the open bathroom door and the bed beyond it. Leon had talked about them sharing it as matter-of-factly as though they were two strangers contemplating sharing a taxi. A frisson of awareness shivered through her as she remembered how she had felt in his arms. By rights she ought to feel indifference if not outright hatred, but while her mind might reject and be repulsed by Leon’s cynical attitude her body could still be physically aroused by him.

      A woman never forgot her first lover. Chloe shivered as she remembered reading that somewhere. It was true; almost as though Leon’s touch was a secret code to which her body would always respond.

      Dressed in the change of clothes she had expected to be wearing in Athens, Chloe tried to reason with herself. She was not a mindless machine. There was such a thing as free will. Surely her mind was capable of overcoming her body’s weakness? Of course it was. Hadn’t she proved that during these last two years? Abstinence was easy without temptation, a tiny inner voice warned her, but Chloe refused to heed it. The love she had once thought she felt for Leon had died, and the emotions she was now experiencing were merely reaction to his sudden eruption into her life.

      Unbidden, the memory of Leon’s expression when he told her that he wanted from her the child she had previously denied him surfaced, and she shivered despite the heat. How could Leon have accused her of that? Her mouth twisted. Perhaps it was just another example of his warped way of thinking. A man who was capable of seducing his young half-sister and then marrying someone else purely to provide a cover for their affair was surely capable of anything. And yet Chloe could have sworn that for a moment there had been actual pain in his voice when he spoke of the child she was to have borne; the child Marisa had destroyed in a fit of jealous rage, but then Leon had always refused to believe that Marisa had been responsible for her fall. During the early months of their marriage—before she learned the truth—Chloe had never been able to understand how a man as intelligent as Leon could so readily accept Marisa’s lies; and there had been many of them. Not important on the surface perhaps, but hurtful and barbed, intentionally aimed at putting Chloe in a bad light. But then of course she had not realised that Marisa viewed her not in the light of an older sister-in-law but with all the intense jealousy of a rival for the attentions of the man she loved. And of course Marisa had the advantage of having a double claim on Leon—as his half-sister and as his mistress.

      Chloe pulled a wry face. Mistress! How old-fashioned it sounded; how full of connotations no longer considered important by sophisticates. But some shibboleths still held as strong a sway on people’s emotions as they had always done, and incest was one of the few remaining taboos. By Greek standards Leon had committed the unforgivable sin. In Greek eyes there was no greater responsibility than that owed by a man to his sisters. By rights Marisa should have been married long before now. She was, after all, twenty-two. But then Marisa would never marry. She had told Chloe that herself, the day she had told her so much, including the fact that she and Leon were lovers and had been for several years.

      ‘Chloe!’

      She hadn’t heard Leon enter the room. In addition to completing his telephone call he had changed his clothes and was now wearing jeans and a thin cotton shirt which clung to the powerful muscles of his shoulders. Pain as sharp as a splinter of ice entering her heart lanced through Chloe. So had he dressed during those all too brief weeks of their honeymoon when she had still believed that she was the one who he loved; when her own fears had been that she, with her innocence and sheltered upbringing, would prove to be an unworthy companion of so sophisticated and experienced a man.

      She remembered how, when she had tried to put her doubts into words, Leon had silenced her with drugging kisses. Her innocence only endeared her to him all the more, he had told her in the husky voice that never failed to thrill her. All that she needed to learn she would learn from him. As Marisa had learned!

      ‘What do you want, Leon?’ The words sounded sharply shrill—defensive, and Chloe regretted them instantly. Anger flared smokily in Leon’s eyes and she knew that she had annoyed him. Even in those early days she had recognised that Leon was a man of strong will. When she had remonstrated with him, saying that they had hardly known one another long enough to talk about marriage, he had simply crushed her objections beneath the warmth of his lips, overriding her fears by arousing her emotions to such a pitch that she