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Panting, driven crazy, she abandoned all restraint and began to unpick his buttons, feverishly fumbling with them as if she were drunk. ‘Make love to me,’ she said urgently, lifting her beautiful, flawless face.
Leo’s mouth hovered a millimetre above hers. ‘You are the most desirable woman in the world,’ he husked. ‘Envied by millions, coveted by millions.’ Something dark came into his expression. ‘However, for the time being,’ he whispered into her parted lips, their breath mingling, ‘you can consider yourself exclusively mine.’
She wanted to be exclusively his for hours. Leo prided himself on long, sensual lovemaking sessions. Unconsciously, she gave a luxurious stretch of her body. ‘Yes,’ she moaned. ‘Yes, please, Leo.’
‘I’ve wanted to make love to you since the moment you walked in. I’m more than ready.’ He took her hand and placed it on his groin. She groaned to feel him so hard, to feel the leap of heat against her trembling fingers.
‘Leo,’ she whispered. ‘Make love to me properly. Long and slow. As you used to. Please, darling. Please.’
Desperate to persuade him, she stood on tiptoe and slid her hands to his head, pressing it down and kissing him with all her heart and soul. With a wriggle of her hips, she gyrated on the thigh that was thrust between her legs and moved her breasts across his chest—partly to assuage her own demands and partly to entice him to indulge in hours of pleasure with her.
‘Witch!’ he growled throatily. His hands ran down her body possessively. ‘I don’t know whether to hate you or despise you or—’
‘Love me,’ she whispered, twining her fingers in his hair. ‘Please, Leo. Love me.’
With a muttered groan that came from deep inside him, he bore her down to the polished wood floor as if he could no longer bear to hold back, stretching her arms over her head and covering her with his hard body. She felt his mouth on hers, fierce and uncompromising, angry, perhaps, because he wanted her so badly when he thought that she was worthless as a wife. And at the back of her mind she prayed that their lovemaking would bring them close, that the anger would subside and they could start to unravel the tangled threads of their unstitched marriage.
The onslaught of his mouth, teeth, tongue and hands and her frantic attempts to ease her despair with physical energy alone caused them to tumble and roll across the floor, her back sliding on the slippery wood, and Ginny became swamped in a whirl of sensation—the feel of silkwood and the smell of polish on her naked back, the pressure of Leo’s muscular arms around her and the wonderful sweetness of his mouth, tugging gently at her breast.
Lost in deep passion and an uncontrollable hunger, grabbing, clutching, kissing, they slid into a table. Something crashed to the ftoor—a lamp, an ornament; she wasn’t sure what—but Leo ignored everything, intent on possessing her, sweetly caressing every inch of her body as if to drive away any memory she might have of other men.
Equally driven, she gave up trying to undo his buttons and pulled the edges of his shirt with both hands, burying her face in his chest. She wanted him naked, to feel his body against hers, because only then would she dare to believe that they could shut out the threat from all outsiders and prove to one another that they were still in love.
He was as helpless, as frantic as she. Finally his naked body met hers and she let out a long, loud groan of relief. At last he was inside her, stroking her with a fiercely restrained gentleness. Overjoyed, she forced her eyes to flutter open, her lush mouth smiling with pleasure. Ginny arched her body in demand. ‘Love me.’
Her mouth teased his, urging it to soften into a sensual curve. And because she wanted him to desire her more than ever and to remember this moment for a long, long time she used all the arts she’d ever learnt from him, writhing sinuously, clutching his buttocks and thus increasing his unbearably slow and deliberate thrust.
She wanted to make him desperate for her. To love her—her. With a siren’s lure in her eyes, she slid her tongue out and licked the sweat over the curving arcs of his chest, teasing the nipples till he gave a satisfying groan and she felt his rhythm increase to a pitch where she couldn’t think any more, was only capable now of reacting like an animal, wildly driving her body against his, countering his thrust with equally hard, demanding jerks of her own body, drawing in her pelvis to hold him tighter and devouring him with her mouth as he devoured her, as if they’d starved for months and wanted to fill themselves to satiation.
Ginny flung her arms around Leo violently, bearing him over in a wild and uncontrollable tumble that had them both fighting to hold their bodies linked and to maintain the beautiful, shuddering rhythm, while she emptied all her passion into her body, kissing Leo with a fervour born of desperation and urgency.
He was so strong, so beautiful. They had been so in love and she wanted that back—the wonderful moments they’d shared together, the quiet evenings by the firelight, the walks in the park. A groan broke from her parted lips and she bit into his shoulder to stem her distress that their love had been threatened. He gasped and kissed her so hard that she felt the deep pressure of his teeth on her lips.
And then her body began to sing as it had never sung before, every nerve taut and stretched, all the bitter-sweet pain rising with the crescendo of Leo’s fierce movement, the beautiful satin strength within her offering the wonderful promise of a release from all her distress and tension.
‘Ginny,’ he rasped thickly into her hair. ‘Ginny, Ginny!’
She sobbed, groaned loudly, not caring who heard—oblivious of everything but the sensations crawling through her, the tingling, rippling waves driving all conscious thought away, lifting her into a fevered delight that shuddered for a few seconds on a peak of ecstasy and held there, seemingly for ever, while their bodies remained like tensile steel, taut and rigid, only their pulses and hearts and their blood pounding, and everything focused on the lyrical thrust of their loins and the spinning spirals of pagan pleasure that was driving them slowly insane with exquisitely agonising sensation.
And when she thought she’d die of love Leo let out a deep, shuddering groan. The turmoil that had held her in its thrall slowly subsided, easing with it every muscle in her bods.
Beneath him, crushed by him as he lay for a moment in exhaustion-yet still somehow tense—she felt limp and drained. But her face shone with a radiant joy that came from every inch of her body, her heart, her soul. ‘Oh, Leo!’ she mumbled incoherently, blinded by happy tears.
And then he groaned. Once, twice, as if in despair.
His welcome weight lifted away when she wanted him to stay and to hold her in his arms. Her naked body chilled with the emptiness that was left by his absence. Dazed and confused, she struggled to lift her lids and clear her vision. Her heart missed a beat. Sounds nearby told her that he was dressing.
‘Leo?’ she murmured weakly. Even from there she could hear his harsh breathing, rasping like an angry saw. Panic clutched her heart. No, she thought. They were bonded together for ever now...
‘Yes?’
She whimpered at the curtly spoken word. ‘Didn’t you... wasn’t it... good?’ she asked tentatively.
‘Stunningly good. Highly accomplished and extremely satisfying,’ he husked, the words shooting out painfully. His eyes smouldered at her. ‘What a lot you’ve learnt since we last made love!’
‘Don’t say that!’ Unusually awkward and uncoordinated, she struggled in horror to a sitting position and watched him grimly wrench his trousers up to his waist. ‘Not so, Leo! I—’
‘Don’t try to explain,’ he growled, angrily snapping his shirt around his sweat-licked torso. Every movement tight with anger, he picked up his shoes and began to stalk to the door. Ginny had the impression that he’d turn on her like a wounded animal and savage her if he stayed. ‘Quite a sexual artiste, aren’t you, now someone’s taught you how to be uninhibited?’
‘No one taught me,’ she breathed, her throat dry with fear.
His eyes chilled every inch of her body as his scorn-filled gaze swept over it and dismissed her denial with a snort of disbelief. ‘You expect me to believe that, after your performance just now? Yes, it was “good”. For a moment there you made me forget everything. We were lovers again—but lovers as we’d never been before. And then I realised that some other man—or men—must have been teaching you the art of love.’
‘No!’ she wailed.
‘I wish I could believe you!’ he said fervently. ‘I wanted to be that man, Ginny! I wanted you to unfold that tight rein you kept on yourself. But no, some jerk I don’t even know has shown you how to gain access to your sexual well!’ He drew in a deep, shuddering breath, his face bleak with the same dark hell that he was digging for her. ‘How could you, Ginny?’ he roared. ‘How could you do it? That exhibition told me everything I needed to know. Thanks for the information. Now I’m under no illusions about you.’
Ginny covered her icy, trembling body as well as she could with her hands. ‘Leo—’ she husked.
‘Save it!’ he said curtly over his shoulder. Then he turned, his face as black as thunder. ‘I want honesty in my wife,’ he bit out. ‘Decency. A woman I can respect. Not a painted doll who uses her beauty to get what she wants. You did that with me just now, didn’t you?’
‘I—I wanted you to... care for me, to help me,’ she jerked out.
‘Sure. You let me have you because you wanted something,’ he said, his mouth curling in contempt. ‘Now I do believe the stories about you.’
Dispassionately, he studied her for long, interminable seconds while she fought the tears and her total exhaustion. She had to get up, run to him, love him into realising that everyone had misunderstood her and put her into a mould of their own making, not hers.
‘I am innocent, Leo,’ she said, wondering if she could ever crack that icy regard, the look of hauteur which reminded her forcibly that he was The Honourable Leo Brandon, born and bred with pride.
‘Like hell! I should have seen it coming. I can’t entirely blame you. That’s the kind of world you entered when you were too young to prevent your slow corruption. I know what goes on, Ginny. But we Brandons prefer to protect the honour of our wives, if only to keep the blood line pure. You’re right. Our worlds don’t mix. Pack your things. You’ve got an hour to be out of here. leave nothing behind to remind me of a very bad mistake I made. We’re finished, Ginny. I’m divorcing you.’
A harsh, guttural wail ripped out from deep inside her. But he’d gone, in a storming, door-slamming rush. Ginny slowly lifted her head, tilting it back, and closed her eyes in despair. Her white-blonde hair swept down her naked back and she registered that the tightly secured chignon had been dismantled by Leo’s hands, by his wild lovemaking. She blushed, at a loss to understand quite how a strictly brought-up woman could have abandoned herself so completely to the devils within her.
No wonder he’d been shocked. She was too, merely thinking of what they’d done, red stains working their way up from her slender feet to her mortified face. So she’d ruined her chance to show Leo that they could be lovers again by revealing an untamed and uncontrolled side of herself that he must have hated.
After all, she thought mournfully, everyone adored her Grace Kelly manner. They loved her serenity, her calmness. Leo had said that he liked the fact that she always behaved like a lady. Some lady. But that was what he’d wanted—a woman who’d project an image of breeding. And now she’d ruined that.
Her body quivered with the pleasure that had rippled through it in great roller-coaster waves. Over and over again they’d crashed through her and physically she felt totally sated. Emotionally, however...
Her perfect white teeth snagged her lower lip. It was bruised and swollen and she touched it with her finger, wondering whether Leo had always known what real, uninhibited sex was like and if she’d been a disappointment to him before because she’d never given her whole self. Till it was too late.
But he’d wanted her. Desperately. Beyond all his rigidly imposed self-control. He’d been arazy to have her and he’d hated her for that because he would have preferred to take her with cool ruthlessness and fling her aside.
Perhaps she could build on his desire. A ragged breath shuddered through her and she stood, quickly dressing. It was the only hope she had. Hastily she searched for enough of the scattered hairpins to do her chignon again and had to give up, combing the silken hair with her fingers instead. She paused as Leo’s words came back to her, jolting her with their intensity.
Divorce... Life without Leo. Cold horror iced her body. He was all she had! The only man she’d ever loved. She wouldn’t, mustn’t lose him! Especially now that she’d given her whole self to him, abandoning a lifetime of restraint to show him what he meant to her.
Frantically she ran out of the library and began to search the rooms downstairs, then hitched up her tight skirt and raced up the wide stairs two at a time.
Relief flooded through her when she heard the shower running in their en suite bathroom. Thinking of nothing else but convincing him, she went straight to the cabinet, opened the door and walked inside.
‘Leo! Listen to me!’ she begged, water plastering her hair to her scalp.
‘What the—? You’re fully clothed, Ginny! Get out!’ he said with an irritable frown.
But she held him, her arms wrapped around his waist. And instantly he became aroused. Relief burst into her mind. She had a chance. ‘Don’t turn me away, Leo,’ she said softly, lifting her face to his. ‘I can’t imagine life without you—’
‘You’re already living it without me,’ he muttered, wrenching her arms away and flinging open the shower door.
She stood there, saturated, dazed. Don’t give up hope. Try again, she told herself. Try again. Stripping off her jacket as she spoke, she said, ‘Everything is good except for the problem of my work and Castlestowe.. We can discuss our differences and compromise. Change things—’
‘One thing’s changed. You’ve become a spectacular lay,’ he said crudely. ‘But I don’t want a tramp for a wife or for the mother of my child.’
‘I’m not a tramp,’ she insisted quietly.
‘The stones—’
‘Are only stories. They’re not true,’ she cried desperately, easing off her soaking skirt.
‘I’ve heard the details.’ His eyes flashed. ‘Confirmed by several people—’
“They’re repeating the same lie that someone’s circulated!’ she cried, beginning to fear that her protestations would be in vain. ‘I can’t prove my fidelity, Leo! But surely you must give me the benefit of the doubt?’
The lines around his aristocratic mouth were deep with pain. “How can I when you so brilliantly display a sexual expertise you never had before? When you respond to me with such devastating sensuality that I—? Oh, Ginny!’ He threw his head back in a gesture of helplessness. ‘I stood up for you. I looked everyone straight in the eye at my club when they whispered behind my back. But now I’m sure I’m a cuckold. And I sure as hell won’t stand for that!’ he snapped. ‘I want a divorce. I must remarry. Time is running out—my grandfather is ninety. I would like him to see that I have an heir to the earldom before he dies.’
‘Leo! Is that more important than our marriage?’ she faltered, naked now and grabbing a thick towelling robe and slipping into it.
‘Having a child is an important part of marriage for me,’ he growled. ‘It always has been. That—and having a loyal wife.’
Ginny’s anguished eyes watched him stride to the mahogany linen press. French. Priceless. Louis the something, she remembered, and inherited with a castle full of French furniture after one of the earls had married into the French aristocracy in the eighteenth century. France and Scotland had always been linked in the past. She thought of the castle, sitting on the windswept crag, all turrets and drawbridges, narrow windows and vast, draughty halls, and shivered.
It was an inheritance she didn’t understand and didn’t want to be part of. It had been a mistake for them to marry. She’d been naive to imagine that their marriage could be ordinary. Leo had expectations she couldn’t meet however much she loved him.
‘I love you,’ she said quietly, sadly.
He froze, his arm halted in the action of reaching for a clean shirt. It was a moment before he moved or spoke again. ‘I’m not sure you do,’ he said shortly, slipping his arms into the shirt and not looking at her. ‘Love has little to do with it, anyway. We’re incompatible and that’s that.’ He picked up the cuff-links that she knew had been given to his father by a minor royal and finally met her eyes. As he dressed, she thought mournfully, he looked more and more the perfect gentleman with every impeccable garment he put on.
‘I have a duty to continue the family line,’ he continued. ‘To see the Brandon name die out after nearly a thousand uninterrupted years would be unthinkable. I had hoped to father children by a woman I loved but it seems I’m to be denied that.’
Ginny’s eyes widened. ‘Are you intending to make a marriage of convenience?’ she cried.
His eyes stared sightlessly ahead and he was still for several seconds before he answered. ‘Do I have any option? Love was always a risk for both of us. We didn’t know much about it from our parents, did we? And now all I have left is Castlestowe and a dynastic marriage some time in the future.’
She couldn’t believe her ears. He’d marry, make love to a woman and father children all for the sake of a wretched blood-line... ‘No! I won’t give you up to anyone else!’ she seethed.
‘No?’ He wouldn’t look at her and his face was grim, his mouth working as if he was grinding his teeth. We’ll see about that.’ With a look of sheer determination on his face, he picked up a pair of linen trousers and stalked into his dressing room, locking the door behind him.
Two years and a few months or so later Ginny was secretly divorced.
Leo had convinced her that he had washed his hands of her only eight hours after the incident in the shower.
She’d been tucked up on the big window-seat in a guest bedroom, horrible racking sobs tearing at her body, when she’d heard a racket in their bedroom. Laughter—squeals of it, and Leo’s chuckle. She’d been stunned for a moment, then had stormed in, to find him and Arabella, naked in the huge four-poster bed, romping like eager children. Their bedroom. Their bed. Even now, after two interminable, depressing years, it made her ball her fists in fury.
At the time the shock had driven her out, screaming hysterically, fleeing to the nearest room and locking herself in. And she’d cried rivers of tears till exhaustion had brought sleep where she lay, poignantly, cruelly, on the bed in the nursery where there would be no child of hers now. The irony hadn’t been lost on her in the morning when she’d woken.
In a surprising act of generosity, Leo had agreed to keep their divorce a secret from everyone but his family and Chas for a while. It had meant that she wasn’t hassled by the Press. The lawyers had been paid well to ensure their secrecy and the divorce had been handled in a small market town where the sleepy court reporter had failed to recognise the woman called Virginia Brandon as Ginny McKenzie.
But then she’d been wearing a Paisley headscarf, an old trench coat and enormous spectacles. And Leo had turned up in a checked cap and an anorak. They’d nodded coldly and hadn’t even laughed at one another’s strange attire. Laughter hadn’t been something she’d expected to feature much in her life for a while. Her life had been shattered and the only thing she’d felt was cold—a stillness of her body as if the warm blood in her veins had turned to a trickle of ice. And she’d wondered if she’d ever be warm again.
The divorce had been alarmingly quick and straightforward. The lawyers had assured the judge that neither of them wanted or needed maintenance and that was that. Her marriage was at an end.
Despite closing down her emotions after the divorce, despite working every waking hour so that she could forget Leo and maintain her position in the modelling hierarchy and pay back her debt, she’d still felt raw inside. Every day she’d ached for Leo and wished that they could be together because her heart was breaking in the most painful way—slowly dying from disuse.
But she’d never shown those feelings to anyone. Look where it had got her when she’d flung her heart and soul into loving her husband! Ex-husband, she’d continually corrected herself, gritting her teeth with the pain of a chapter in her life that was now ended.
And how much had the humiliation of being rejected damaged her self-confidence? It had taken her a long time to smooth over the nerves she’d felt when facing the public. Hours of almost maniacal preparation, so that her face had been a perfect mask and every gesture had been rehearsed.
Only then had she been able to bear to confront everyone, knowing that they were whispering, gossiping, wondering about the ‘perfect lady’ who’d turned out to be a tigress in a variety of beds. Head held high, she’d coolly met their eyes with a challenge and they’d always looked away first.
But she’d become lonely, trusting no one but Chas, who rarely left her side and had become father and brother and friend to her. And now she was truly alone because even Chas didn’t quite know what was in her heart: an ache for the man she couldn’t have because they couldn’t live together, their lives having veered away from each other too dramatically ever to meet and link again:
Emerging from Heathrow with Chas and turning the key in her coupé parked in the long-term car park, Ginny suddenly wanted privacy. Divorced, theoretically free but forever a prisoner of Leo’s magnetism, she smiled faintly at Chas.
‘I’d like to drive myself. Just this once. Would you take a taxi?’
And, driving through the streets of London to her flat in Chelsea, she grimly steeled every bone in her body and held back the tears that had threatened from the moment her solicitor had telephoned her while she was in Paris to say that her decree absolute had come through.
Suddenly she had wanted to be home—and alone with her memories. She’d cancelled everything in her diary, saying that she felt ill. It was the first time she’d ducked her obligations.
Her marriage was dead and buried. Might as well face up to that, she thought. Her lip quivered and she bit it for daring to betray her.
‘Oh!’ she mumbled unhappily, driving into the mews and bumping over the cobbles to the far end. ‘I hate him! I hate him!’ And she wished it weren’t a lie.
There came the slam of a taxi door and Chas appeared by her window. ‘Want a shoulder?’ he offered casually.
Ginny shook her head, too upset to speak. She reached out her hand to temper the refusal and withdrew it after Chas’s brief pat. ‘I’m doing a Garbo,’ she said huskily. ‘Come in. But I’d like to be alone. I feel I’ve come to the end of an era. I need to plan the next.’ She managed a smile but it was feeble.
‘Sure. You must be tired. You’ve been going like the clappers. Glad you’re taking a break. I’ll keep everyone at bay.’
Thankful for his tact, Ginny flicked the remote control to open the doors and drove into the garage, leaving all her things in the car to collect later. On entering the flat, she absently picked up the mail on the mat and wandered into the kitchen to make some tea, shrugging off the elegant Ralph Lauren jacket in the soft shade of blue that...
She frowned. That Leo had loved. He would like this, she thought mournfully, indulging in self-pity for a few seconds. The flowing palazzo pants caressed her thighs, hinting at her slenderness, her flat, taut stomach. The sand-coloured camisole drifted elegantly over her breasts to the cinched-in waist. There was no one to appreciate the way she looked now.
She briskly put a stop to this line of thought and got out the tea-things. The healing brew, she thought wryly. When she really needed healing arms around her.
If only she’d been brought up by her real parents! she sighed, curling up in an old comfy chair while the kettle boiled. If so, there might have been a friendly cuddle for her now.
Ginny sighed wistfully. It was so sad that her own mother had been unable to care for her. Her mother had developed a serious phobia about cleanliness which had meant that when Ginny was born her mother had become hysterical at all the mess a baby brought. Or so the McKenzies, her adoptive parents, had told her. They would never reveal her mother’s whereabouts and Ginny was wary of discovering that her mother cared nothing for her.
