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She didn’t want to look him full in the face, but Cameron could be so mesmerising sometimes that it was impossible to resist him. It was difficult for Alessandra to read his expression, though certainly some of the harshness of earlier had disappeared. Nevertheless, it was still impossible to tell what he was thinking.
Even when he had first told her that he loved her she had found his expression unreadable. Even then. He was the kind of man who always held something back and it both frustrated and fascinated her. He was like an absorbing puzzle that was impossible to solve. It had been one of the things which had attracted her to him in the first place and, conversely, what had always made her the tiniest bit wary of him.
He was heading towards the bedroom and she began to drum angrily on his chest. ‘Put me down!’ she demanded, and punched her fists against the fine silk of his shirt.
‘No.’
‘I’ll shout for the police!’
‘It’s a little late in the day for that, wouldn’t you say?’ he observed, somewhat bitterly.
‘No, it damn well isn’t!’ she retorted hotly.
‘Shout away, then,’ he said calmly, but there was an odd note to his voice. ‘And cry what? Assault?’
She heard the slight shudder of self-disgust which distorted his voice and, being scrupulously fair, she shook her head so that her hair moved against him in a dark, silken cloud. ‘I wouldn’t do that, Cameron,’ she said quietly. ‘Because it would be a lie. That was no assault.’
‘Enticement, then.’ He lowered her onto the bed and leaned over her, his eyes suddenly tender. ‘I’m sorry, darling.’
She forced herself not to melt immediately under the impact of that soft stare, rolled away from him to the edge of the bed, and kicked her high heels off across the bedroom carpet, not caring where they landed. She sat up and began to unclip her black stockings from the silky suspender belt and peel them down over her long legs. ‘It’s all very well saying sorry afterwards!’ she told him crossly. ‘You behaved outrageously!’ She forced herself to give him a baleful glare.
‘I agree,’ he said gravely.
He was trying to look contrite, and there was something so little-boyish about his expression that Alessandra had the greatest difficulty not standing up and flinging her arms around his neck. But something made her continue with her indignation. ‘Is that all you can say?’ she demanded.
He began to unbutton his silk shirt. ‘What do you want me to say?’ He shrugged lightly. ‘I’ve already said I’m sorry.’
‘Oh, and that makes it all right, does it? One word and I’m supposed to forget all about it?’
‘That rather depends on you,’ he told her calmly, his eyes looking more grey than blue in the soft light from the lamp. ‘You can make a big issue out of it if you wish. We could carry on the argument for weeks—if that’s what you really want.’ He finished unbuttoning the shirt to reveal his lightly tanned, muscle-packed chest, and, for the first time since they’d met, Alessandra failed to swoon at the sight of him, she was so mad.
‘Me?’ she spluttered, with indignation. ‘Make a big issue out of it?’
‘Uh-huh.’ Now the trousers had come off, revealing the silken boxer shorts he always wore, which clung to his hard buttocks and always made her realise just how powerfully muscled those long, hair-roughened legs of his were.
She tried, unsuccessfully, to unzip the back of her dress.
‘Here,’ he said smoothly. ‘Let me.’
He always helped her undress and it would have been foolish not to let him, but he slid the zip down with such practised ease that for the first time in her life she almost exploded with rage. ‘I suppose you could unzip a woman’s dress and undo her bra at the same time—even if you were blindfolded!’ she accused hotly.
He stood there and gave her that lazy, mocking smile of his. ‘Is that an invitation?’ he queried softly. ‘Do you want me to try?’
Most men, thought Alessandra resentfully, would have looked ridiculous wearing nothing but a pair of boxer shorts if they still had their socks on. So how come her sexy husband still managed to look good enough to eat?
‘No, I don’t want you to try!’ she raged on. ‘You’ve had more practice at it than almost any man in the world, I should imagine!’
‘Darling—’
‘Don’t you “darling” me!’
His face was suddenly serious. ‘The only practice I’ve had in the last three years—and that has been considerable—has been undressing you, my love.’
Alessandra frowned suspiciously. ‘But you’ve only known me eight months—’
‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘And married for six of them.’
‘B-but...’ she stuttered, the implication of what he’d just told her hitting her with all the force of a sledgehammer. It was something that she had never dared ask him in the brief courtship before their wedding. She had assumed that up until the time he’d met her he had been sleeping with one of the many women who used to leave long and frankly embarrassing messages on his answering machine.
Why, one of them—a famous cover girl—had actually turned up at his office and begged him not to go through with the marriage, within full earshot of his secretary, who had rather indiscreetly told Alessandra about it afterwards. And you didn’t get that kind of devotion from that kind of stunner if you weren’t physically involved with them, surely?
‘But that means that you were... that you didn’t...’ She fumbled around, searching for a delicate way to say it, but failed. ‘For two whole years?’ she yelled eventually.
‘I think what you’re trying to say—’ he began teasingly.
‘Don’t you dare patronise me!’
He shook his dark head. ‘I wouldn’t dream of patronising you. I was putting into words what you seemed reluctant to—merely confirming that I was celibate for two years before I met you.’
She threw him a look as she slithered out of her black silk dress. She hurled the wretched outfit against the wall and quickly wrapped her towelling robe around her. ‘I don’t believe you!’
He shrugged, a humourless kind of smile curving his mouth as he turned to drop his shorts and socks into the washing basket, so that he stood before her proudly and unashamedly naked. ‘That, of course, is your privilege, Alessandra.’
He said it with the finality of someone who was closing a subject they hadn’t particularly wanted opened in the first place, but Alessandra wasn’t giving up that easily.
‘You must admit it is a little implausible,’ she said.
‘Oh? You think that while you spent the first twenty-four years of your life as a virgin, and so were obviously celibate, it’s impossible for a man to be, too?’
Alessandra picked up her hairbrush and dragged it through her thick, shoulder-length hair which was so darkly brown that in some lights, like now, it looked almost black. ‘Some men, perhaps,’ she said deliberately.
‘But not me?’ he guessed correctly.
She nodded, reluctant to drop the subject, still angry at the ease with which he had seduced her after virtually accusing her of infidelity with Andrew! But also because, she realised, Cameron was speaking much more openly than was usual for him. And, because he was a man who was cautious about showing his true feelings, she wanted him to continue. ‘No, not you,’ she agreed with some defiance.
‘Perhaps you’d care to elaborate?’ he suggested silkily.
Alessandra hugged her robe to her chest, her breasts suddenly tingling beneath the thick cloth—and only because the brute had slid his eyes over them in a proprietorial and caressing stare! ‘Just that you are a man with certain—appetites,’ she began delicately, furious when he threw back his dark head and began to laugh.
‘Certain “appetites”?’ he repeated. ‘Goodness me, Alessandra, what a gloriously archaic turn of phrase! Perhaps you should have termed it “carnal desires”—that’s even more expressive, isn’t it?’
‘Well, if you want me to put it crudely—’
‘Oh, I do. I most certainly do.’
‘You like sex, don’t you, Cameron?’ she told him bluntly. ‘Lots and lots and lots of it!’
‘I don’t just like it,’ he said softly. ‘I love it And so do you, sweetheart. You may have been a late starter, Alessandra, but you sure took to it in a big way. I’ve never met a woman who gets as easily turned on as you do.’
‘And I’ve never met a man who would rip his wife’s clothes off and throw her to the floor and make her...make her...’
‘Tremble ecstatically in his arms?’ he put in with sardonic humour, but then he saw her mouth begin to tremble and he was by her side in an instant, enfolding her in the strong, warm circle of his arms as she began to shake with emotion.
‘Sweetheart, sweetheart,’ he pleaded. ‘Don’t get upset. Please. I shouldn’t have done it. You’re right I’m a brute. A selfish, arrogant and unthinking brute. But I love you.’
‘No, you’re not!’ she raged. ‘And I love you too! I just don’t understand why you...why you...’
He sat down on the bed and gently drew her down beside him. ‘I don’t understand myself,’ he told her softly. ‘You bring out something in me that no woman has ever done before and sometimes I’m not sure that I like it very much.’
He sighed as she stared at him with confused eyes. ‘All damned week long I’ve been aching for you. I didn’t want to be away from you. I’d planned my homecoming to the last detail, how it would be.’
‘But you came home early,’ she protested. ‘And didn’t tell me.’
‘I wanted to surprise you.’
‘But I rang the airline, and they confirmed that you were still booked on the later flight.’
‘I didn’t use the ticket.’
‘But then, how—?’
‘I bought myself a plane,’ he said, and then gave a little shrug as though he realised how unbelievable his statement must sound. Like a little boy saying that he’d bought a toy car.
Alessandra stared at him in disbelief. ‘You’ve done what?’
‘It’s a small Lear jet,’ he added, though he might have been speaking in Chinese for all that Alessandra understood. ‘So it’s just as capable of crossing the Atlantic as it is of taking me up to Manchester.’
Her dark eyes were still like saucers. ‘Cameron—why?’
‘Why not?’
‘Because people don’t just go around buying planes.’
‘Some do. I do. We do,’ he corrected. ‘We can afford it.’
‘But—’
He shook his dark head firmly. ‘No buts. It matters to me that I don’t see very much of you. My factory is in Manchester. Your job is in London. You won’t change—’
‘Don’t make it sound as though it’s something as insignificant as me forgetting to put the milk bottles out!’ she objected with a slight frown. ‘Why should I change? My job happens to be very important to me!’
‘Yes, Alessandra, I know. You’ve made that abundantly clear to me.’
‘But of course you, as the man, expect me, as the woman, to just up sticks and move to Manchester, just like that?’
‘It’s not exactly the back of beyond, you know. And we do have advertising agencies up north.’
She shook her head. ‘But none where I’d be given the same kind of variety and responsibility that I have at Holloway’s. Andrew has hinted that the joint managing directorship might be mine next year. I’ve worked hard for my promotion, Cameron.’ She turned wide dark eyes up at him in appeal. ‘Please don’t ask me to throw it all away,’ she finished quietly, not sure of what she would say if he insisted.
‘I’m not.’
‘Because this is the woman you fell in love with,’ she told him, stabbing her finger emphatically against her breastbone, the dark fire from her eyes challenging him to dare to deny it. ‘Me! The career woman. Not someone who would cave in just because of love—’
‘Just?’ He fixed her with a questioning look.
‘I want that promotion,’ she said stubbornly, but her stubbornness was born out of fear. Fear that if she changed too much, that if she allowed Cameron to simply slot her into his life as easily as a peg into a hole, he would no longer love her.
‘And you shall have your promotion if Andrew chooses to give it to you—because I shan’t try to stop you. My only stipulation is that he stops calling you “honey”!’ And he gave her the careless smile which had first so captivated her. ‘Darling, don’t let’s fight. That’s the main reason why I bought the plane. It’s supposed to make our lives easier. This way I won’t have the bother and the wait and the inconvenience of scheduled flights—can come and go as the fancy takes me.’
‘And always expect me to be waiting for you like the good little wife?’ she queried, knowing that she was spoiling his news but some insecure demon inside her spurring her on.
‘That isn’t what I said,’ he replied evenly.
‘But that’s the truth of it, isn’t it?’ she responded. ‘If it isn’t, then what else prompted that ugly little scene when I walked in tonight? Just because I was late coming in, before you were even expected?’
‘Like I said, I’d planned my homecoming to the last detail.’
“The wine?’
‘The wine,’ he agreed. ‘Low lights. There was to be some soft music. Corny—’
‘But effective,’ she interrupted drily. ‘With the scene all set for...’
‘Seduction,’ he supplied, an unholy glint in his eyes. ‘Mmm.’
‘But there was no seduction, was there, Cameron?’ she asked him quietly. Because, now that her senses had calmed down, it appalled her to remember how she’d reacted to him. ‘Just some rather basic sex...’
His eyes narrowed. ‘Please don’t tell me you didn’t enjoy it,’ he put in with brutal softness, ‘when I watched you shuddering and felt you climax beneath me...’
Alessandra met his questioning blue gaze full-on. ‘Oh, yes—I enjoyed it. And, yes, I climaxed. I always do—if that’s the only criterion by which you gauge satisfaction.’ She made to turn away but he put one hand on her shoulder, very gently, and sighed.
‘It isn’t. And, believe me, I certainly hadn’t intended to act like that.’
‘Then why did you?’ she asked in a small voice.
‘Because...’ He shook his head as he put his free hand on her other shoulder and moved her closer to him. ‘Because you do something to me, Alessandra. Don’t you know that? You make me respond in a certain way; or, rather, I can never predict or control how I’m going to respond to you. You perplex me. You excite me. You make me crazy. When I heard Andrew’s message on the answering machine—’
She decided that the time had come to get rid of all this nonsense once and for all. ‘But he’s always called me “honey”—since I first met him.’
‘And I don’t like it. Strictly as a chauvinistic, jealous and possessive husband.’
‘Is that what you are?’ she teased softly, and he smiled.
‘Sometimes, yes. With you, yes.’ She saw a brief but distinct tightening of his mouth. ‘I just don’t like Andrew’s familiarity. Okay?’
‘I don’t happen to like it very much myself,’ admitted Alessandra. ‘I guess I just put up with it.’
‘Then don’t put up with it! Tell him you don’t like it!’ His face darkened. ‘Try asserting yourself with him as you seem to do so successfully with me!’
