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Her short bark of laughter was half disbelief, half mocking. ‘Certainly not a man like you!’
His blue eyes blazed for a second before adopting an expression of cold contempt. ‘Then why keep going to bed with me?’
She shrugged. ‘Perhaps I’m a masochist.’
‘A hedonist, perhaps, not a masochist. You enjoy pleasure, Ebony, not pain. And you can’t deny I give you pleasure.’
‘I wouldn’t dream of denying it.’
When she moved to brush past him on the way to the bathroom, his hand shot out to enclose her upper arm in a vice-like grip. ‘You can’t go from me to Stevenson,’ he rasped.
She locked eyes with him, aware of nothing but the emotional quaver in his voice. Could that be love talking? she puzzled briefly before dismissing such a stupid notion. No. Not love. Possessiveness. Jealousy. Male ego. But not love. Alan’s heart already belonged elsewhere. If he had a heart, that was. She was beginning to doubt it.
‘I have to talk to him,’ she admitted, then added, ‘I have to tell him personally that I’m not going to marry him.’
There was no way she could have mistaken the relief in Alan’s eyes. But that didn’t prove anything, except he wasn’t ready yet to give up his private supply of free sex. Free in every way. Emotionally, financially and physically. What man would want to give up such a cushy arrangement?
When he went to draw her back into his arms, she yanked out of his grasp and took a step backwards. ‘No,’ she said coldly. ‘I have to shower and dress. Then I’m leaving.’
‘What happened to breakfast?’
‘I’m not having any. If you want some, get it yourself.’
His smile was sardonic. ‘So kind of you.’
‘Oh, but I’m not kind, Alan. There again, you don’t want me for my kindness, do you?’
‘Hardly.’
‘Then don’t complain. You’ve got your way. I’m not marrying Gary. What more do you want from me?’
‘Not a thing,’ he bit out.
‘Then if you’ll excuse me?’
He watched her sweep into the bathroom, black anger in his heart. What more did he want of her? He wanted her to grovel at his feet, to beg him to visit her more often, to suffer from the same type of blind, obsessive need that was even now sending the blood pounding through his veins, making his flesh expand into a tight, painful instrument of torture.
Only an instinct that seducing Ebony this morning might rebound on him in some way made him put that solution to his frustration aside. All he could do was wait for her to leave and then he would plunge his pained body beneath the coldest of showers till he could comfortably face the day ahead.
Meanwhile he would dive back under the bedcovers and pass the time contemplating the many and varied ways he could exact vengeance on this creature who had been tying him in knots for years.
Yes, years!
Four, to be exact. He couldn’t count the first three. She’d spent most of them in boarding-school. And while at fifteen she’d been a budding beauty, her shy, almost introverted nature at that time had protected her from male admiration, his own included.
Not that he would have dreamt of seeing Pierre’s daughter in that light, especially at such a tender age. No, he was not guilty of that, thank God. Still, he remembered having enjoyed her company when he’d taken her on the occasional outing back then, finding her opinions surprisingly mature and her gestures of gratitude towards him quite touching. He actually still kept a pair of gold cuff-links she’d given him for his twenty-eighth birthday, after saving the money herself from delivering pamphlets during the school holidays.
Where had that sweet child gone to? he wondered. When had she turned from virgin to vamp?
A type of guilt twisted his heart. Surely it couldn’t have been his fault, could it? That night, in the library…She’d caught him unawares, kissing him like that. For a few seconds he’d completely lost control. Hell, he could still recall how it had felt as her soft, breathless mouth had flowered eagerly open to accept the thrust of his tongue, as well as the way her heart had beat madly against his.
For a split-second, he’d wanted to forget his conscience and just drown in her delicious young body. He’d been tempted to take it for his pleasure and his pleasure alone, knowing he could seduce her virginal flesh quite easily, knowing he could mould and form her, body and soul, to his wants and needs.
She wouldn’t have stopped him. He knew it. So in the end he had had to stop himself. He’d thought himself so right, so noble, so…good. He’d been made her guardian, for God’s sake, not her corrupter. Not even her teenage declaration of undying love had swayed his determination to put aside such a wicked temptation. Not then, nor during the subsequent years as she’d gone from child to woman, from a shy and somewhat awkward teenager to a sophisticated and successful model, had he wavered in his resolve.
The crunch had come, predictably enough, at her twenty-first birthday party. He should have known seeing her on that occasion would be his undoing. It had been three years before, on her eighteenth birthday, that his lust had first raised its ugly head. Till then, he’d only ever seen Ebony in either her school uniform or shapeless jeans and tops. Teenage girls never seemed to wear anything else.
But that fateful night, his mother had bought her a white lace dress that might have been virginal on the peg. On eighteen-year-old Ebony, complete with make-up and high heels, it looked so seductive that it was criminal. When Alan had spotted her coming down the stairs, his heart had stopped beating. Not so the rest of his body. It had leapt with a desire so fierce and so instant that he’d been thunderstruck.
He’d stared at Ebony and she had stared right back, those deep black eyes of hers showing not a hint of understanding of what was happening to him. Had she understood? Was that why she’d been so shocked that evening in the library a few months later when he’d knocked her back, scorned her offer of love?
Maybe. Maybe not.
Ebony’s thoughts and motives were a mystery to him. She was a mystery. Sometimes he wondered if those three years of sacrifice had all been a wicked waste. Maybe at eighteen she’d already started on her sexual journey; maybe she hadn’t been a virgin at all.
She certainly hadn’t been a virgin three years later. And how!
There was no peace for his flesh as he recalled what Ebony had done to him the night of her twenty-first birthday. No peace at all.
She’d been a bit tipsy, of course, and the guests had left. But that was no excuse for stripping off all her clothes and blatantly going swimming in the pool in the nude in full view of him. She’d claimed afterwards she hadn’t known he was there, but he didn’t believe her. She’d been watching out for him all night, baiting him, tempting him.
Besides, there’d been no resistance whatsoever when she’d climbed out of the water and he’d come forward to draw her dripping nakedness against him, nor when he’d claimed her supposedly startled mouth in a hungry kiss. She’d been more than willing to let him touch her all over, to take her right there by the pool, to carry her back to his room where he’d worked his will upon her body all night.
Naturally, he had heard the rumours about her, but rumours about models were rife and not always true. For some inexplicable reason, he’d been reluctant to believe she could be as promiscuous as people said she was. He had found out that night that she was all that and more. Never had he known a woman so wild and wanton and willing. She was sex mad, he decided. Totally sex mad. Just like her father.
His first thought the next morning had been that he had to keep what had happened from his mother, as he’d kept from her the rumours about Ebony’s private life. His mother thought Ebony a sweet, old-fashioned girl and he didn’t want to destroy that illusion, or the close relationship the two women enjoyed.
Maybe he had explained it badly to the naked girl in his arms. He hadn’t meant to hurt her, though he suspected he had. But what was to be gained by dressing up reality with false words of love? It wasn’t as though she were an innocent, whose sensitive feelings had to be treated with kid gloves.
They lusted after each other. That was the plain and unvarnished truth. In a way, it was fortuitous that Ebony was of such a highly sexed nature, since not many women would have endured the kind of unrestrained lovemaking he’d insisted upon in an effort to rid himself of his own insatiable need. With a bit of luck, he might not need any repeat performance.
Or so he had deluded himself at the time.
Alan made a scoffing sound just as Ebony came out of the bathroom, made-up but not dressed. She was breathtakingly nude, the exquisiteness of her beauty stabbing at his heart. And elsewhere.
God, but Mother Nature had been cruel, sending a creature like her to torment him. Or was it the devil himself who had fashioned that incredible face and body? Yes, that sounded right. Who but Satan would be wicked enough to combine all those assets, to give one woman everything that a man could possibly want? Long, silken black hair that screamed out to be stroked; exotic, thickly lashed ebony eyes that flashed fire and promised pleasure at the same time; a full-lipped smouldering mouth which would tempt a saint. And that was only her face.
Her body was another dimension, another hell to be endured. High, pointy breasts with large pink areolae and long, sensitive nipples, a delightfully tiny waist, deliciously curvaceous hips and long, long legs that wound their shapely way down to dainty ankles and feet.
Then there was her skin…
What man wouldn’t want to run his hands over her skin, the pale magnolia-like skin whose texture was like cool velvet, till it was heated by desire. Then it would glow. It was glowing now. But not with passion. With the heat of the shower. Her eyes were cold as they raked over him.
‘You still here?’ she said scathingly.
He gnashed his teeth as she went about dressing in front of him, first drawing on a silk black teddy, then sliding into a black woollen jumpsuit.
Black was Ebony’s trademark. She wore nothing else, modelled nothing else. So was her lack of smiling, her full lips looking far better fashioned into a sullen, sulky or seductive pout.
Alan would have thought that such restrictions would have been disastrous to her career, but, surprisingly, it had all worked in her favour, creating an individual and highly sensual image that kept her and her agency busy.
‘I have to go, Alan,’ she said briskly, popping on black pumps before picking up a black holdall and heading for the bedroom door. Only then did she stop for an indifferent look at him over her shoulder. ‘Lock up when you leave, will you? And wash up any mess you make.’
One day, Alan thought as he lay there, fuming. One day he was going to wipe that cool composure from that beautiful face of hers. One day he was going to make her cry. And what would he do? Walk away. That was what he’d do.
Oh, sure, sure, came a dark, cynical voice.
Flinging back the sheet, Alan leapt from the bed and marched into the bathroom where he snapped on the cold water jets. Bracing himself, he stepped under the freezing cold spray, telling himself it was penance for his sins.
He must have had a lot of sins on his soul, for he had to stay in the shower for a long, long time.
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_076eea6a-521c-59aa-be6f-3b0ec4380769)
EBONY slumped into the back seat of the taxi, strain telling on her face. The façade she always put on in a vain attempt to punish Alan was beginning to take its toll. How long before she actually became that person for real? Brittle and cynical and cruel.
It was the cruel part that bothered her the most.
There was no doubt about it. She had to get out from under the crippling effects of this appalling affair before she self-destructed.
Sighing, Ebony closed her eyes, her head tipping back against the seat. It wasn’t far from her flat in Randwick to the Ramada Hotel, but at eight-thirty in the morning she was in for at least half an hour’s run into the city. Might as well try to rest.
Rest was not on the agenda for her troubled soul that morning, however. She was too full of regrets and bitter recriminations, the main one being why she had allowed Alan to become her lover in the first place. There’d been no seduction, no courtship, no nothing. All he’d done was look at her a few times on the night of her twenty-first birthday party.
But that was all it had taken to start her heart beating madly for him, not to mention make her grasp at straws where his feelings were concerned, especially when once or twice she had surprised him staring at her with desire in his eyes. Had he too not forgotten that kiss in the library three years before? she’d begun wondering. Could he have been lying that night, saying he didn’t really want her when all along he had?
It would be the sort of gallant thing Alan might do, she’d reasoned, considering his over-active sense of responsibility towards those under his care. He was very protective of all the females in his family, including his mother and that wayward sister of his. Maybe he’d believed that, at eighteen, Ebony was too young for him, far too young to embark on the kind of relationship he might want and need; certainly far too young for marriage.
That possibility had tormented her for the rest of the party, sparking a resolve to confront Alan later that night. She’d long given up any hope of getting the man out of her system, so, if there was a chance that some twisted scruple was keeping them apart, then she’d aimed to try to unravel it. Who knew? Maybe her turning twenty-one had already heralded a change in his attitude towards her. Maybe he was now beginning to think of her as a grown woman, an adult, not the child who’d come into his home as a young and innocent fifteen-year-old.
This train of thought had excited her. Why hadn’t she reasoned this all out before? Of course that was it! His sexual response three years ago had made him feel guilty. But there was no longer any need for guilt. Couldn’t he see that? She couldn’t wait to talk to him alone, to tell him that time had not changed what she felt for him, but that time had changed the status quo between them. He was no longer her guardian in any way. He was simply a man, as she was a woman.
But when she had turned round from seeing the last guest leave shortly after one-thirty, it had been to find Alan saying an abrupt goodnight and striding off to bed. Frustrated at having her wishes thwarted, Ebony had wandered around the house for ages, helping clean up, afterwards sitting alone in the kitchen, finishing off one of the half-empty bottles of champagne, thinking it might help her sleep.
No such luck. It had fizzed through her veins, sparking further restlessness. Having swallowed the last drop of wine, she had walked out on to the back patio and down the steps to the next terrace where she had stood and stared, first out across the darkened harbour waters, then down at the heated pool.
A swim will tire me out, she’d decided, make me sleep…
Positive she was alone, Ebony had slipped the tiny straps of her black crêpe party dress off her shoulders, shimmying till it had slid down over her hips and pooled on to the pebble-effect concrete. Stepping out of the circle, she had kicked off her shoes then peeled off her panties and tights.
The night air might have felt cool on her naked flesh, if her blood hadn’t been so heated by the wine. She had balanced for a few moments on the edge of the pool before flicking her long sweep of hair back over her shoulders and diving into the water.
If she had known for a second that Alan had been sitting in the shadows of the pool-house, she would never have dreamt of being so provocative as to go skinny-dipping in front of him. She certainly wouldn’t have floated up and down the pool on her back, idly splashing water over her breasts and stomach.
She’d really believed herself alone when she had climbed out of the water, and stood there, wringing her hair dry. Her shock when he had materialised out of the darkness had been very real. But he hadn’t allowed her any opportunity to speak, or explain. He had simply swept her hard against him, uncaring if his clothes were ruined, uncaring of anything but his ruthless intention to reduce her to a trembling mass of unconditional surrender.
It hadn’t been difficult. She’d been half aroused already from the way he’d looked at her earlier in the night. That, combined with her long-suppressed love just dying for expression, had made her a ready victim for his lust.
The trouble was she hadn’t interpreted his actions as lust at the time. She’d mistakenly believed that he had finally realised his own love for her, had at last given in to an extremely powerful and very natural need to make love to her.
Ebony groaned silently at the memory of her very rapid capitulation.
How could she have been so naïve not to have seen there was nothing loving in the way he had kissed her and touched her? His hands had been quite rough on her flesh, demanding no quarter. But by the time he’d pulled her over down on top of him on one of the deck-chairs, she’d been beside herself with passion and emotion. Alan loved her and desired her and needed her. There had been no question of not doing what he had clearly so desperately wanted.
Even now she could still recall the animal cry of satisfaction he had emitted when his body had finally fused with hers. Never mind that he hadn’t waited to undress properly, or that someone could have come down from the house and caught them in the act. She had been making love to the man she loved and who loved her.
It was not till the morning after that she was forced to review her way of looking at their first coupling, then all their subsequent couplings during that long and tempestuous night. Not till Alan had made his appalling suggestion in his bed at dawn had Ebony seen that what she’d thought of as love on his part had been only lust, and that his ‘making love’ to her had been no more than ‘having sex’.
She had hoped to become Alan’s wife. Instead he’d offered her the role of his secret mistress. She hadn’t been at all happy about it, but he’d secured her continued co-operation by turning up at her flat when least expected, then seducing her with a finesse that was as intoxicating as it was merciless.
For fourteen months, she’d endured his spasmodic visits, dying a little each time he came and left, hating herself for her weakness, yet unable to stop. More than once, she’d vowed to cut him dead, to send him away, unsatisfied. Whether he had sensed this or not, she couldn’t be sure. But whenever she’d reached that point, he wouldn’t come near her for weeks. Then he’d turn up out of the blue and, without saying a word, take her into his arms and start kissing her before she could utter a word of protest.
Those were the worst times—and the best—their lovemaking on the edge of violence, but so passionate and intense that she would despair afterwards of ever being able to give him up.
Could she now? Would she have the courage to take that step and walk away? No, fly away.
‘Lady! We’re here,’ the taxi driver growled.
Ebony snapped to attention. Already the concierge at the Ramada was opening the car door for her. Checking the fare on the meter, she handed the driver a twenty-dollar note, told him to keep the change, then alighted with her usual style. Old habits died hard, and she was a model first, cool and composed and sophisticated. The shattered woman inside would remain hidden from everyone, even Gary. She was not about to tell him all the grim details of her relationship with Alan, only enough to make her plan feasible.
‘Bob says you didn’t come home last night.’
Alan took a sip of the black coffee his secretary had just brought in. ‘Really, Mother,’ he sighed into the phone, ‘I’m not a child who has to answer for his actions. So I stayed out all night? So what? It’s not the first time.’
‘I realise that. That’s what’s bothering me. You’re working too hard, Alan. Only yesterday you said how tired you were. Yet I’ll guarantee you went from those awards to the office again. Or was it the factory this time?’
‘Neither.’
‘Neither? Then where, in heaven’s name, did you get to?’
‘Need I spell it out for you? I spent the night with a woman.’ Something inside Alan twisted as he said that last word, yet he could not deny that Ebony would be a woman in everyone else’s eyes. Though maybe not his mother’s. God, but she’d be appalled if she knew whom he’d spent the night with.
‘Oh,’ was all she said, ever the tactful parent.
‘No more questions?’ Alan mocked.
‘Would you tell me if I asked?’
‘No.’
‘So I won’t. But I feel sorry for whoever she is.’
Alan bristled. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘It means I hope she isn’t in love with you, because you and I both know you’re not in love with her. Or are you?’
Alan was startled, then annoyed. Ebony, in love with him? That was a laugh. As for himself…to even think about what he felt for her in terms of love was preposterous. Love was what his mother and father had shared, what Adrianna felt for Bryce McLean. Maybe even what Vicki felt for that excuse for a man she was living with. Love was not this black torture that wrung his soul every time he thought of Ebony, especially when he thought of what she might be getting up to when he wasn’t around.
Had she lied to him about Stevenson this morning? he began worrying. Was she, at this very moment, in bed with her ex-lover? If she was, and he found out, he wasn’t sure what he’d do, but it wouldn’t be pleasant.
