Bond of Hatred(37)
'I think you wanted to catch yourself a multimillionaire and now you want to hang on to him,' Alex said with lethal contempt. "There has to be some reason why the real bitch routine never got off the ground!'
'How... how could you touch me feeling like that?' she demanded, shocked to the core by the condemnation.
'You're my wife and you'll lie down for me whenever I want,' Alex told her with devastating simplicity. "That is my right. But outside that bedroom door you don't have any rights that I don't give you. You forced yourself on me. You have no grounds for complaint. As for your laughable assurance that you had it within your power to offer me my freedom back...I haven't lost my freedom. I will do whatever the hell I like whenever I like and there is nothing that you can do to stop me!'
She sat like a small statue in the vast bed, pride demanding that she should not reveal how shattered she was. But every word still found its target like a thrown knife piercing her flesh. 'I don't want to stop you,' she managed tightly, knowing that after what he had just told her there was no way she would ever share a bed with him again.
'No? You mean you weren't planning to get possessive bit by bit?' Alex prompted with derisive disbelief. 'Start asking me where I was going, when I was coming home, where I had been and throwing tantrums? I watched my father go through that with Vivien and no woman is ever going to manipulate me like that!'So that had been why he'd planned to marry Elise. Evidently Elise would not have attached strings, would not have demanded fidelity, would not have sunk to asking awkward questions.
Sarah was in absolute turmoil because Alex had changed the terms of their marriage as she had understood them, plunging them into an intimacy she had been unprepared to handle. And now he was absolutely denying that that development should curtail his own freedom or in any way alter his lifestyle or their relationship. What relationship? she thought sickly, appalled by her own stupidity.
Alex strolled to the foot of the bed. 'And by the way, you are wasting your time with the maternal routine and Nicky,' he asserted drily. 'I'm not impressed. Why don't you just do what I expected you to do?'
Paper-pale, she whispered, 'And what was that?'
'Shop till you drop.'
Sarah bowed her head, feeling she deserved that. Dear God, how could she have abandoned every principle and spent his money even before she married him? Even Gina, not known for her scruples concerning money, had been shocked. That horrible contract and, yes, why didn't she finally admit it? After all even Alex had seen right through her.
She had wanted so badly to look her best. She had wanted so badly not to see distaste or derision in his eyes. But she had not been aware of that pitiful subconscious motivation until now and she had not been trying to attract him... had never imagined that that could be within her power.
'I shouldn't have used your money before we were married,' she mumbled with the innate honesty that was so much a part of her character.
"That pittance? I expect you to buy maybe half one dress for that amount! And why do you think you were given those cards? I was praying you would go shopping and do something with yourself.'
Somehow that made it even more humiliating. In all her life, Sarah had never felt so agonisingly, rawly vulnerable. She couldn't look at him. Her own tightly linked hands were blurring under her vision, hot, painful tears gathering in her eyes. All of a sudden she wished she were a real bitch. Maybe she could have coped better with Alex.
Alex plucked one of the flowers from the canopy above the bed and cast it on the bedspread. 'I'll be one hell of a lot easier to live with when you stop pretending to be something you're not...'
The instant the door shut on him, the dam burst. She thrust her face violently into a pillow, terrified that he might hear the shuddering sobs tearing for an exit from her shivering body. She was just so angry with herself! She was just so appalled by the extent of her own weakness!
Almost twenty-five years old and she had behaved like a sex-starved adolescent when he'd touched her. All he had had to do was tell her that he wanted her and she had been so damned grateful and flattered, she had let him make love to her! A sixteen-year-old girl, very lacking in confidence, still existed inside her—a sixteen-year-old girl who had once been very badly hurt. And that teenager still inside her had ensured that tonight she was even more badly hurt. She had told herself that she was happy to live alone, that she didn't need any man to make her life more meaningful, and she had begun to believe that, denying her own loneliness, denying that she had sexual feelings and needs like other women. She had felt safe that way. She hadn't had to open herself up to the risk of being hurt again. She had convinced herself that she was single by choice, not single because no man who ever attracted her asked her out... but that was closer to reality. Alex was gorgeous but she had blocked that awareness with the ease of long practice. It had not occurred to her that he could find her attractive and instinctively she had refused to admit or recognise that his devastating good looks and powerful physical presence were affecting her. But Alex had read her like an open book. Alex had known that she was his for the asking before he'd even laid a finger on her. Alex was highly sexed and very experienced, easily able to pick up on and interpret a woman's response to him... even if that same woman was too naive to know that she was putting out that response.#p#分页标题#e#