When he had finished speaking there was silence. Claire had expected to dislike him, but instead she felt moved to a reluctant pity. She glanced into Raoul’s face, shocked by the bitter contempt she saw there.
‘I might feel more charitable about your denial of my mother, and of myself, if it were not for the fact that you have lived off us both for so many years.’
‘No, you hate me because I couldn’t love you as a man should love his son,’ his father said calmly. ‘I cannot lie to you, Raoul, nor put right an old wrong. From the moment of your birth you were your mother’s son, a child of her heritage. I confess I was surprised when I read that Ahmed had compelled you into this marriage for the sake of the child you had conceived. Knowing you as I do, I thought you would rather have cut off your right arm than deny yourself to your own child, especially a son, but then perhaps there is more of me in you than you wish to admit.’
Raoul’s face was bone-white with fury, his eyes glittering almost black in the mask of bone and skin, and Claire reacted instinctively, speaking almost without thinking as she sought to defuse the situation.
‘Raoul didn’t know about… about the baby,’ she interceded huskily. ‘We quarrelled and I didn’t tell him…’
‘But somehow Ahmed found out, and now you are married? She is very loyal to you, this wife of yours, Raoul, more loyal than your mother ever was to me. She couldn’t wait to run home to her family to complain that I didn’t love her as she believed I ought, even though I had told her what our marriage would be.’
‘Lucien…’ The brunette pouted, bored with a conversation which excluded her, and Claire shrank from the contempt in Raoul’s eyes as they moved from his father to the pouting girl at his side.
‘You insult the memory of my mother to speak her name in the company of such a… putain as this, and if you were not my father…’
‘You would what? Have me stoned to death? There is little of the Frenchman in you, is there, my son? Take care that fierce pride of yours does not blind you to what you really want from life. You are very like your mother. Had she listened properly to what I told her, our life together could have been a comfortable one…’
‘With both of you living on her wealth?’
‘We made a bargain, she and I. Which is the greater dishonour I wonder? To renege on one’s word or to live off one’s wife?’ With a sudden switch of mood that startled her, Raoul’s father turned to Claire and said courteously, ‘When you have finished dining perhaps you will allow me to dance with you, always supposing, of course, that my son permits?’
‘I…’
‘We are newly-married, mon père. Tonight Claire will be in no one’s arms but mine.’
Raoul’s fingers on her arm urged her forward before his father could add anything further, and although he seemed to be completely in control of himself, Claire was painfully aware of the biting grip he had on her arm and knew that in the morning her skin would bare bruises from his touch.
The altercation with his father had taken away what little appetite she had had, and she shivered as she tried to study the menu, stunned when Raoul took it away from her.
‘I am not hungry and neither, I suspect, are you,’ he said abruptly, ‘we will dance and perhaps our appetites will return.’ He made no other reference to his father, and Claire was reluctant to bring the subject up. Neither did she particularly want to dance with him, but she sensed that to refuse him would be like a torch applied to dry tinder, igniting the temper she could sense he was struggling to control.
He was an excellent dancer, but she was too acutely conscious of the proximity of his body to hers to relax completely. The top of her head barely reached his shoulder and she was strongly aware of the warm, musky scent of his body, of the tautly controlled anger he was banking down. He bent his head and she had a momentary glimpse of something approaching deep pain in his eyes, before he banished it. Her heart ached with a tender pity and an insane desire to comfort him.
Was she completely mad? It would be like trying to comfort a wounded cheetah, and she would be mauled agonisingly in the process. His experiences with his parents had left him emotionally scarred and defensive, so much so that she doubted that any human being could get really close to him, and those foolish enough to try would receive the full force of his raging anger.
Across the room Claire’s eyes instinctively searched for Lucien D’Albro. Did he realise how severely his rejection had damaged his son?
‘What’s the matter? Wishing you were with my father?’ The bitter savagery of his taunt caught Claire completely unawares. ‘I know you were speaking about him,’ Raoul continued before she could speak. ‘He has the reputation for being a first-rate lover.’
‘Unlike you,’ Claire retorted scathingly, hating the way he was looking at her, with a cynicism that bordered on complete contempt. ‘Making love with you would be like… like being mauled by a… a wild animal,’ she flung at him without bothering to weigh her words, realising her danger only when his lips parted in a feral smile that froze the blood in her veins.
‘I think we will finish this conversation in the privacy of our suite.’ It was impossible for her to resist the pressure of his fingers curling round her arm as he practically dragged her bodily from the floor. Pride and pride alone kept her from crying out in protest as he propelled her into the foyer and towards the lifts.
By the time they got upstairs he would have got his temper back under control, he was furiously angry with her now but it wouldn’t last. He didn’t even desire her, Claire comforted herself as the lift bore them upwards and he retained his savage hold on her. In a thick silence he pushed her into their sitting-room. All the protests and objections she had prepared mentally died on her lips as he dragged her through the sitting-room and into his own bedroom, locking the door behind them. It was only when he pocketed the key that she realised the extent of her danger and how far she had underestimated his mood. Black, terrifying rage simmered in the depths of his eyes as he released her arm, and laughed mirthlessly as she fled to the locked door.
‘Oh no, you won’t escape that easily,’ he taunted her. ‘Downstairs you sympathised with my father, didn’t you?’
‘I always try to see both sides of a story,’ Claire palliated.
She had hoped to soothe him, but fear raced through her as he smiled coldly, his voice chilling her skin as he said softly, ‘Oh good, then you’ll understand why I want you to fully appreciate my mother’s. Tonight it seemed to me that you were distinctly unsympathetic towards her—a young girl, the wife of a man who neither loved nor respected her. By tomorrow you should be much closer to appreciating her position.’
He took off his jacket and started to unfasten the buttons of his shirt with a slow purposefulness that mesmerised her. ‘Of course, she was an innocent virgin, while you are a woman of the world, but then by all accounts my father is a far more considerate and appreciative lover than I. What was it you said… it would be like making love with a wild animal? I shall try not to disappoint you.’
This couldn’t be happening to her, Claire thought wildly, closing her eyes to blot out the terrifying image of Raoul slowly and deliberately removing his shirt, his eyes pinpoints of black ice in the taut sleekness of his face. Her ringers tugged ineffectually at the locked door, panic stirring deep inside her, threatening to overwhelm her, in a primitive and helpless bid for flight. She wouldn’t add to the futility of what was happening by running from him like a terrified animal trying to escape the talons of its captor. She would try to retain the remnants of her self-control, to…
A small sob escaped her as she felt ungentle hands on her shoulders, quickly turning her, seeking the fastening of her gown and sliding it from her shoulders. As Raoul turned her to face him, she crossed her hands over her exposed breasts instinctively, her eyes opening wide as she heard Raoul’s acid exclamation, overriding her small cries of protest as he pried her protective fingers away from her body, forcing her hands down to her sides as her gown slid in a silken heap to the floor and his gaze roamed boldly over her naked curves. No man had ever seen her like this, nor studied her so intimately, and a deep flush of shame seared her skin.
In the lamplit room, Raoul’s skin gleamed soft bronze, a tangle of dark hairs revealed by his open shirt. His flesh so dark in contrast to hers transfixed her gaze, her mouth suddenly so dry that she had to touch her tongue to her lips to moisten their contours. Dark eyes followed the intimate gesture, the fingers which had been clamping her arm to her side moving slowly over her body, stroking the curve of her hip which the brevity of her silk briefs did nothing to conceal. Tremors of reaction coursed through her body, the silken intimacy of Raoul’s fingers against it triggering off strange waves of sensation. The soft pink areolae of her nipples seemed to swell and harden, and cool brown fingers were leaving the curve of her waist to investigate the rosy peaks.
‘How very responsive you are, an enticement any man would find hard to ignore.’ Without her being aware of it, Raoul had moved closer to her. His tongue brushed the soft outline of her lips, her eyes widening in astonishment as her body registered its response to his light touch. His tongue moved over her mouth again and Claire found her lips parting, wanting against her will a deeper contact. Her near nudity was forgotten as Raoul’s mouth moved lightly against her own, teasing and tormenting until without being aware of it she was moving closer to him, like a moth attracted to the flame; realising too late, when she was helpless, held fast in his arms, his mouth plundering the innocence of hers with a bruising pressure that shocked and frightened her, what she had done.