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He was waiting. Giving her a choice, she realised in that split moment of breathless silence. Go or stay.
Something urged her to pull free from this reckless path she seemed to have carved out for herself. But she knew she had relinquished all choice downstairs in the bar.
She wasn’t aware of actually walking to his door, or of his using a card-key to open it. She was only aware, as his arms came round her again, that she had invited this, and that she couldn’t prevent what was going to happen any more than she could stop the boilers breaking over the reef beyond the coral-crushed beaches of the South Shore.
Their mouths melded, hot and hungrily—even before he had slammed the door behind them—in desperate imitation of the act that was to follow.
It was an act that Alex knew he couldn’t have denied himself even if he had wanted to.
He was using her—heaven help him! Using her to rid himself of the demons that were plaguing him. In the same way, he strongly suspected, that she was using him.
But for all that he couldn’t get enough of her. Of her sweet moist mouth, her perfume, the earth-shattering promise of her body. He couldn’t get enough of her, and to relieve himself of the deep ache of wanting he lifted her up, so that he could feel her luscious legs as well as her arms around him, his mouth plundering hers as he moved urgently through with her into his bedroom.
I can’t get enough of him! Sanchia thought, burning for him, inhaling the scent of his aftershave as though it was vital oxygen, excited by his strength, unbearably aroused by the grazing texture of that impeccable suit against the soft flesh of her inner thighs.
His suite was in darkness, though French doors stood open to the scents and sounds that filled the bedroom from a private roof garden, and the whistling of frogs and lizards in the softly illuminated foliage was a sensuous song that heightened the eroticism of the warm Bermudian night.
The big bed yielded beneath them as they toppled down onto it together.
I want you! she thought, glorying in his actions as he pushed back the flimsy barrier that separated her from him and claimed her full, responsive breasts as his own.
She gave a small strangled cry, her breath shuddering through her from the ecstasy of those marauding hands, the sudden heat of his mouth on one swollen tip bringing her straining towards him in a wild frenzy of need.
Oh, please…! She didn’t want to wait, couldn’t wait. She wanted him now!
Alex groaned from the heat of desire that was throbbing through his body. He had never felt so out of control in his life. He was far too hot—too hard, he realised, mentally flaying himself for getting himself into this situation, wondering how, if he let things run their natural course, he was ever going to last. He couldn’t even protect her—or himself. Gone were the days when he’d gone out equipped with a young stag’s hope of getting lucky. He was thirty-six years old. A leading barrister, for goodness’ sake! With responsibilities, common sense… Except that it seemed to have deserted him in his need for this girl.
He knew he should love her as she should be loved. With care and consideration, after a quiet, romantic evening, with all the skill and mastery of a long-perfected technique. Not like this, like some callow youth…
He hesitated for the briefest moment, dragged back from the edge of a precipice from which there could be no return. But then she arched her back and her writhing hips collided sensuously with his, shaking his very foundations from beneath him, and in that moment he knew he was finished.
He was doing this, Sanchia thought, as though he was seeking respite from something. She guessed that he wasn’t usually so rough or possessive as he caught her wrists above her head and ground his lower body against hers in hard domination, but whatever unknown entity was driving him, she didn’t want to know or care. He was dark and dangerous, and she needed the excitement he offered to obliterate her savage misery.
He made little work of dispensing with her white lacy string, his hands hard and uncompromising, but when his fingers slid into her softness, checking her readiness to receive him, they were unexpectedly gentle.
She whimpered her need, her body contracting around his fingers in a way that made Alex groan with frustration. He heard her moan softly in protest as he withdrew them, clenching his teeth in throbbing anticipation as he moved, adjusting his position before plunging into her, hard and deep.
She uttered a deeply choked sound that was lost beneath the chorus of the night creatures in the luxuriant foliage, and started to climax immediately, each deepening thrust of his body bringing her bucking and sobbing beneath him through the agonising ecstasy of his own release.
When Sanchia started to think again, she couldn’t believe what she had allowed to happen.
Why had she done it? she berated herself mercilessly. She had never been so stupidly reckless in her life!
She groaned a protest under his pinioning weight, so that he moved away from her immediately.
She couldn’t look at him as she readjusted her dress over her virtual nakedness, then groped for her errant string on the crumpled bedspread.
‘Are you looking for this?’ He was on his feet on the other side of the bed, amazingly in control again. Not as she felt. Shocked by her actions. Cheapened by them. Ashamed.
She grabbed the scrap of lace from his tanned hand, unable to meet his eyes.
Dear heaven! He hadn’t even undressed! Such had been their urgency for each other. Grief and betrayal had driven her into his arms, she realised bitterly, but it had been a purely animal coupling, nothing more.
Now pangs of self-disgust, and one Martini too many after days of too little food, had her rolling off the bed and stumbling instinctively towards his bathroom, where she was physically sick.
What type of man took a woman without any preliminaries, she wondered, groping for a towel. Just out of pure need to sate his lust? But she knew she had been a willing participant, and she had shrugged off his attempt at those preliminaries, craving only the oblivion from her screaming emotions that she knew she would find in his arms. So what type of woman did that make her?
‘Are you all right?’
Her eyes hurt from the light he had snapped on.
She didn’t look at him, grateful for the hair that fell forward, hiding the mess of her make-up and her blotchy face as she wiped her mouth on a towel that smelled too keenly of his aftershave lotion. ‘Fine.’ It came out flat and muffled.
‘I hadn’t realised you’d had that much to drink. I thought you were in total control of what you were doing. I’d never have brought you up here if I had.’
He was blaming himself. That deep note of remorse in his voice told her all too chillingly that he didn’t normally give in to his animal urges with such basic disregard. And now he regretted it.
‘Don’t feel too bad about it.’ Unable to unload what had driven her to behave in a way that was grossly out of character with this total stranger—because he was still a stranger, for all the intimacy they had just shared—she didn’t even bother to explain that she hadn’t been drinking to excess, that she wasn’t proud—any more than he was—of what she had allowed to happen. He must think her a promiscuous, half-inebriated fool, and the quicker she got away from him, the better.
Matter-of-factly, he said, ‘It shouldn’t have happened like that.’
‘No.’
‘I should have put you in a cab and sent you home.’
She looked at him squarely at last, her stomach turning over even now from the impact of his devastating looks, that mouth that had kissed her senseless, his dominating, hard-edged masculinity.
‘Yes.’ What had she imagined? she wondered, feeling the pangs of a wounded injustice that seemed to anaesthetise all her other emotions. That a man like him would have wanted her in any other way than for her body?
‘I’ll get you some coffee,’ he said.
When he came back a few minutes later to check up on how she was, the bedroom was deserted. So was the bathroom, and the light that was still on illuminated his way as he strode purposefully back into the sitting room.
The door to the suite was ajar, he noticed, and quickly stepped out into the quiet corridor. The lift was in use, the illuminated buttons indicating its occupation, its movement on a lower level of the hotel.
It could be her, he realised, knowing he stood a cat in hell’s chance of catching her. Brow furrowing, his attention slid automatically to the Emergency Exit door at the end of the corridor, just past his own.
Something other than his five basic senses drew him towards it. The night-scented air greeted him with a rush of humid warmth as he pushed it open, bringing with it the continuous whistling of lizards and the restless surge of the sea.
He saw her then, some way off in the distance—a shadowy figure, illuminated by the beach lamps, sandals hanging from her fingers, racing away over the soft pink sand.
She had been so keen to get away from him she hadn’t waited for the lift. She had used the fire escape instead.
Inside, Alex felt numb. He knew he’d never catch her. She’d be lost to him even if he sprang after her now, jumped the steps below him two by two.
She had come to his bed and then left, unable, he felt sure, to face him. To face anyone, he suspected now. Which could be another explanation for her not using the lift.
But she could be carrying his child…
The thought jolted him like a whiplash and he cursed himself for his irresponsibility, for letting his raging hormones rule him instead of his head. It wasn’t a foregone conclusion that she was taking the Pill.
He wanted to yell after her. To stop her in her tracks. To drag her back—at least until he knew one way or the other. But a group of guests had wandered out onto the restaurant terrace way below. He could hear the muted strains of their conversation, their oblivious laughter, and as he watched the girl being swallowed up by the shadows of the Bermudian night he realised for the first time, and with another, much more shocking jolt, that he didn’t even know her name.
CHAPTER TWO
THE jury were being sworn in.
When her turn came Sanchia knew she would have to stand up, and a small dart of panic shot through her.
It wasn’t enough that the courtroom, with its high arched windows and dark paneling, was oppressive. Or that she could sense the eyes of the awesome-looking defence barrister who was standing nearest the jury box boring into her in a way that was making her feel decidedly self-conscious. No, it was the unsettling feeling on top of all that that she had done something similar before; there was some weird déjà vu in sitting here among the sculpted halls and corridors of this majestic building that was sending spears of pain across her temples, making her palms hot and clammy.
Perhaps she should have claimed exemption when she had been summoned here today. But, having been selected at random under English law, she had wanted to do her duty like any up-standing citizen, believing that she was well enough, keen to start functioning normally again. Putting her few photographic jobs on hold to take two weeks’ compulsory jury service was just another stepping stone towards that normality—another small opportunity to pick up the tenuous threads of her life.
The court official thrust the book towards her as she got shakily to her feet. On top was a card containing the words she had to say.
‘Just a moment, m’lud.’ The deep commanding voice of the defence barrister threatened to rock her off balance as it brought the swearing-in process to an abrupt halt. The panelled walls seemed to throb in the silence that followed. The official made a silencing gesture to Sanchia, who could only stand and stare at the man who had halted the proceedings.
Although it was the judge he was addressing, those grey eyes hadn’t lifted from hers. Sharp, penetrating eyes that would miss nothing, and which marked a calculating intelligence and a keen mind.
In the dark robes of his profession he had a formidable presence, from his commanding height, olive skin and sleek black hair—visible beneath the compulsory wig—to the black winged brows above those intelligent eyes and the dark shading of his jaw, which only served to strengthen an already flagrant masculinity.
‘I’m afraid I have to challenge this juror.’
All eyes were turned towards Sanchia. Hers, though, were still trapped by the power of the man who seemed to dominate the court.
With a crushing sense of foreboding she was struck by the ominous notion that somewhere in another lifetime she had been tried and judged and sentenced by this man. Perspiration beaded her forehead, made her neck feel sticky beneath the neat French pleat and the collar of her pale green jacket, and her head started to throb.
‘I would ask that this juror be removed.’
On his deep-voiced instruction, that was more a command than a request, Sanchia thought her legs were going to buckle under her.
Her face pale against the dark twist of her hair, Sanchia’s eyes questioned his in bewildered challenge. But he didn’t relent—just stood there staring at her, as though he had seen some sort of ghost. And as the court official ushered her away she felt that grey gaze following her until she had left the court, and it was then that her legs finally gave out.
Alex was immensely relieved that he had managed to get a brief but immediate adjournment. All he had wanted to do after he had seen Sanchia walk into that court—heard her name called out so that he had been forced to challenge it and have her removed—was race after her, stop her from leaving the building no matter what it took.
He needed answers to so many questions. Like where had she gone when she had run out on him that day? And what had she been doing for the past two years? Where was she living? And why, when she had first seen him in that courtroom, had she not spoken up and excused herself, as the law required any juror sitting on a case to do if they recognised someone directly involved with it. She had glanced towards him several times, been fully aware that he was there. Perhaps, he speculated, his thoughts whirring round his cool, normally ordered brain, she had been too embarrassed to say anything. Had hoped, through some small miracle, that she’d get away with it. He gritted his teeth against the familiar kick in his loins just from remembering the way she had fixed him with those cool, seductively slanting amber eyes.
Perhaps she had been planning just to sit there and enjoy watching him fazed, he thought, his jaw clenching at the gut-wrenching possibility. She had to know that her presence would have rocked the ground on which he stood. And yet, he thought, puzzled, as his robe billowed behind him in his swift, determined passage to the room where he had instructed one of the ushers to detain her, from that almost intimidated look in those beautiful eyes when he had challenged her earlier he could have sworn she had been as startled to see him as he had been when she had first walked in.
Sitting on the low sofa where someone had settled her down with a glass of water, Sanchia glanced up as the door to the private room swung open to admit the tall figure of the barrister who had challenged her.
Alex Sabre. She couldn’t remember who it was who had told her his name.
‘Hello, Sanchia.’ Her throat went dry as she saw that he had closed the door behind him, watched his purposeful, measured stride across the floor. ‘I really didn’t think you’d still be here,’ he said, and then, in a tone that was softly menacing, ‘After all, you were quick enough to ditch me last time, weren’t you?’
He was standing in front of her now, looking down on her from his commanding height.
‘I’m sorry?’ Sanchia shook her head as though that would somehow clear the fog that seemed to be clouding her senses. In the confines of the quiet room the sheer presence of this man was mind-blowing ‘Do—do I know you?’ she asked tentatively, frowning. Surely he could only have got her name from being in court?
‘Know me?’ Some private emotion chased across his hard, handsome face, deepening the groove between those very masculine brows as his eyes scanned her face with the thoroughness of a laser. But then he laughed. A short, sharp sound, devoid of any humour. ‘Oh, that’s very good! Is the loss of memory permanent? Or was it something you dreamed up when you realised I was the defending advocate? Because, believe me, it was as much a surprise for me in that court just now as it was for you.’
‘Surprise?’ She couldn’t understand what he was talking about.
‘Or perhaps that was the intention?’ he suggested, cutting across her mind-spinning confusion. ‘One final little advantage stroke before you finally agreed to face up to facts.’
‘Facts? What facts?’ she demanded, still shaking her head.
‘You know very well what I mean. Why did you take off the way you did that day? Without a word, without even the courtesy of an explanation! Where did you go? Why were you so determined never to be found?’
‘I’m sorry…’ she said again, out of confusion rather than apology. She put her hand to her forehead, felt the dull ache that throbbed between her temples.
‘I just never dreamt it was so abhorrent to you that you’d actually run away.’
‘Run away?’ From what? Her mind battled in vain for an answer, and through what seemed like a thickening haze came up with nothing except the stirrings of an inexplicable unease. ‘Are you sure you haven’t made a mistake?’ she said shakily.
‘A mistake?’ He laughed again, even more harshly than before. ‘Oh, I made a mistake all right! For goodness’ sake, Sanchia! Credit me with some intelligence. How long are you going to keep this up?’
‘Keep what up?’ she challenged, wondering if it was his daunting anger or something else—something nagging at her memory—that was making her feel vulnerable and afraid. ‘The fact that I don’t know what you’re talking about—don’t even know who you are?’
‘For pity’s sake!’ He slapped his forehead with his hand, his head turning sharply so that his profile was exposed to her in all its hard austerity. What did the girl think she was playing at?
Sanchia’s head hurt from the effort of trying to remember, her thoughts leaping ahead, making connections, blind assumptions. He was a barrister. She had never mixed with barristers, had she? Why would she have had any dealings with one? Unless…
‘Was I a witness, or something? Is that why I ran away?’
‘A witness?’ Something flared in the penetrating grey eyes as he turned back to glare at her with stark incredulity. His teeth were clenched, as though he was doing his level best to hold on to what remained of a frighteningly rigid control. ‘No, my dear girl, you weren’t a witness. And I don’t think I need tell you what I do with those who imagine they can fob me off with lies and generally make an idiot out of me—even with such a first-class performance as you’re giving now.’
He would tear them apart.
Though she didn’t know him, she knew that much, and she shivered, remembering what she had overheard someone saying about him earlier.
Coming from a family involved in investment and property, he had inherited a fortune on his father’s death—which he was well on the way to doubling. Even without the vast professional fees he could command, he didn’t need to work. But perhaps he just liked wielding power over people, Sanchia thought distractedly, because apparently he was known in court circles as being triple ‘R’-rated. Rich, ruthless and respected. So ruthless that anyone who came up against him who wasn’t telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, didn’t stand a chance.
Now the dangerous softness with which he had spoken sent a violent shudder through her, making her temples pulse with a throbbing pressure. Something stirred in the recesses of her consciousness, a heavy drawn curtain whose dark folds refused to part, no matter how frantically she searched for daylight, for freedom, for clarity.
‘I’m not giving any performance!’ An eternal frustration brought her own anger welling up inside of her. ‘I’ve already told you! I don’t know what you’re talking about—or who you are! You say you know me, but I can’t remember you! I had an accident and lost my memory. I can’t remember you—or anything about you! I can’t remember a thing!’
She dropped her head into her hands, groaning as a wave of nausea washed over her. Through the fog of her consciousness she battled to find the truth, the effort making her head feel as though it were splitting in two.
‘Sanchia?’ He had dropped down on his haunches in front of her. Through the screen of her fingers she could see the pinstriped trousers pulling over his bunched thighs, saw how his robe pooled on the floor behind him like a dark cloak.
‘My God…’ His tone was strung with disbelief and his face was etched with incredulity as he caught her hands, drawing them down in the determined strength of his. ‘If I thought for one moment that you were serious…’
‘Of course I’m serious!’ she breathed, meeting his eyes on the level. They were cold and glittering and clear. But the intimacy of those hard hands clasping hers caused a sudden quickening of her blood, so that finding herself the focus of such a man made her pull back as though from a tremendous shock. ‘Why would I want to lie?’
From the furrow that appeared between his eyes they had registered that disconcerted little action. As they would register everything…
‘Do you want to tell me about it?’
