Bond of Hatred(46)
Crimson-cheeked, Sarah snapped, 'Shut up!'Alex smiled with lethal amusement, all temper banished by lust, she assumed, and his superior position. 'And the wonder of finding a woman of your age so innocent and shy had a charm and an appeal I never thought to experience. Why were you still a virgin?'
'I stayed away from macho pigs like you!'
'Maybe on some level you knew I was in your future,' Alex drawled with unashamed conceit.
'If I'd known,' Sarah practically shrieked at him, 'I'd have come into your office with a shotgun!'
'And I find that even more attractive,' Alex delivered with mocking amusement. 'All of my adult life, your sex have gone to extraordinary lengths to please me. I've been chased, flattered and encouraged by every woman I ever wanted since I was fifteen.'
'You conceited toad!' Sarah launched at him.
'Then you came along and for the very first time I was challenged and, believe me, I was very challenged keeping my hands off you until our wedding night. I didn't want you to bolt. That's why I didn't come near you during the weeks before our marriage.'
Sarah was in such a rage, she was almost incoherent. 'You conniving, cunning, sneaky-----!'
Alex laughed softly, spontaneously, and pressed a warning forefinger to the fullness of her lower lip, silencing her. 'I lay in my bed at night thinking about what it would be like to have you under me and it surpassed my every expectation. That fiery spirit which makes you so damned mouthy, that stubborn streak a mile wide which makes you persist even when you haven't a hope in hell of winning... when that translates into passion, you're every fantasy I've ever had in my bed!'
His satisfaction was obvious. Her small hands balled into fists. 'Alex, get off me!' she shouted.
Alex slid down the zip on his trousers with a flourish and grinned at her, suddenly startlingly younger in his raw amusement than she had ever seen him. The phonestarted ringing. Alex bent back and lifted the receiver without releasing her limbs from his weight.
'No more calls,' he said and dropped it back again.
'I want you to let me go,' Sarah framed, putting every atom of authority she could muster into the demand.
'So it took me a couple of weeks to settle down into the idea of being married,' Alex murmured huskily, a bare brown shoulder shifting in an infinitesimal shrug, dark golden eyes resting on her hungrily, 'a couple of weeks to come to terms with the fact that I had a wife who makes the perfect mistress... a little mental adjustment and here I am. Why sulk?'
Sarah was speechless. It was like trying to argue with a maze that kept on increasing in complexity, losing her at every turn. 'Here I am', he said with such staggering self-assurance, as if she could not fail to be grateful to win such a prize.
'After all, you fought back like an Amazon warrior,' Alex told her thickly, his dark head lowering inch by inch. 'You ignored me, you ignored it all and the more you ignored what I was doing, the more I seethed... I discovered that the one thing I cannot stand is to be ignored.'
She didn't know what he was talking about. He appeared to be suggesting that her avoidance of him had been part of some sly, manipulative female plot to attract him and his unquenchable ego took to that idea like a duck to water. On the brink of acidly disabusing him of that notion, her parted lips met on a shocking collision course with his.
Alex groaned against her mouth and possessed it again with renewed vigour and a force of hunger that ran a scorching blaze of heat right down to her toes and back up again. She fought the effect, concentrating her mind on the picture of herself pregnant and miserable while Alex strayed to be chased, flattered and encouraged by other women.Tearing her swollen lips from his single-minded onslaught, she gasped, 'I don't want to get pregnant.'
'No chance,' Alex muttered in thickened agreement. 'Not for at least a year. It might curb this...'
He teased her mouth with his tongue, mimicking a far more intimate penetration, and she quivered, every limb boneless, every nerve-ending begging for more, and, feeling that, she wanted to scream. If she had had the capabihty to lie there like a waxen dummy, unresponsive to his seduction, Alex would have left her alone. And she wanted Alex to leave her alone, didn't she... ?
One hand was in his silky hair, the other curved round his warm shoulder, rejoicing in the silky smoothness of his skin.. .and she didn't know how either had got there. Her body appeared to be totally detached from her brain. It had broken out all on its own. And she wanted to touch him, she realised in dizzy shock, wanted so badly to be in his arms that the thought of not being there, of actually tearing herself free, physically hurt.
Rolling over, Alex shed the remainder of his clothing in a couple of fluid movements. Dark golden eyes drew her. 'Come here,' he urged softly and opened his arms.