by Kim Lawrence
‘Why did you run away?’
‘Could be I react badly to authority.’ He shrugged. ‘I didn’t care to be analysed by a bunch of establishment do-gooders.’
‘They are there to help. A safety-net for kids like you.’
‘I wasn’t like anything; I was myself, Emily. I preferred, and still do, to sort my problems out in my own way. I can’t say I can look back upon that period of my life with affection, but it taught me some important lessons. I learnt to be self-reliant.’
‘You don’t need anyone, then?’ she taunted. ‘You never let anyone near you.’ There was no compromise in Luke. She’d always known that he lived life on his own terms and would never consider making concessions. It made her inordinately angry just to think it
‘You mean when I was welcomed into the warm, loving bosom of your family?’ He made a derisive sound in his throat. ‘How hard do you think they looked for me, Emily?’ he asked harshly, and she couldn’t hold his ironic gaze. ‘Possibly they might have forgiven me for being who I was if I had been sufficiently grateful for all the crumbs they flung in my direction,’ he drawled. ’to their credit, it was all so subtly done—the message that Luke would never amount to anything. The subliminal message was in every glance, every word. They had to provide for me, of course, if only because it fitted in with the bighearted, altruistic image your father has fashioned for himself. A bit like the amounts of money he donates to charities, which just happen to find their way into the Press,’ he said scornfully.
It had never occurred to her to consider Luke a victim before; he was the one who could do everything, always succeeded. She had envied his freedom from the need to conform. He was ultimately himself, never seeking approval from a soul. He must have resented his second-class status, an almost segregated position in the hierarchy of the household. She’d seen him as her brother’s rival, the thorn in her parents’ side, and had never, she realised, looked at things from his side of the fence.
‘I’m sorry.’ She winced: it was woefully inadequate.
‘What for, Emmy? Having a pony, being chauffeurdriven to school and having anything you mentioned wistfully magically materialise?’
‘The spoilt brat syndrome, I know,’ she snapped back angrily. ‘What Daddy loves, you loathe. That’s it, isn’t it? Do I have to suffer some sort of degradation before I am considered for the Lucas Hunt register of acceptable persons? I’d have thought being here with you would be readily classified as suffering and degradation of a severe variety,’ she sneered. ‘But then, it’s supposed to, isn’t it, Luke?’ The impetuous, agitated movement sent the tray crashing to the floor, and unexpectedly and without warning she began to cry, tears seeping silently from her eyes and sliding down her cheeks.
Luke stared at her, his blue eyes ablaze. He shook his head in a negative gesture of denial. ‘You’ve not the faintest idea what you’re talking about,’ he said huskily.
She glared back through the glitter of tears, ignoring the air of suspended violence in him, the clenched jaw and rampant glow in his eyes that should have made her subside. ‘I’m not that stupid, Luke. My dilemma fell into your lap like a gift from the gods, didn’t it?’ she accused. ’the only mistake I made was not realising how irrelevant I, as a person, am to you…how far you’d actually go to wreak some sort of vengeance. You’d actually make love to me, wouldn’t you, to hit back? Although love would be the wrong word, wouldn’t it?’ For a moment her voice was completely suspended by tears. She ignored the low growl that was emitted from his throat, a raw, primal sound that made the hairs on the nape of her neck stand on end.
‘What had you intended doing, Luke? Closing your eyes and composing your poisonous taunts? No greater sacrifice has man…I’m sure your mother would have been proud. Your touch makes my skin crawl,’ she added with defiance. ‘I suggest you think of some other method to achieve the ultimate revenge, because I sure as hell am not going to co-operate!’
His feet crunched the broken china into powder as he strode towards her. His hands closed around her skull as he sat on the edge of the narrow bed. His face was terrifyingly furious as he focused on her, and the power in his hands as his fingers tightened forced her up to her knees.
‘Go on,’ she taunted. ‘Hate me by association. At least that’s honest, instead of pretending…’
‘Pretending what?’ His voice was husky, almost unsteady as his eyes flared at her studied, desperate insolence.
‘Pretending you find me attractive,’ she spat out. ‘I’m not that stupid, you know. It’s about the ultimate humiliation to be a pawn. It makes me feel soiled.’
The blue eyes were reaching melting-point and instinctively she tried to draw back, but his fingers had wrapped themselves into the strands of her hair and the effort made her whimper in pain.
‘You’re a liar,’ he snarled as his pupils dilated, almost obliterating the cerulean colour of the twin points of fire. ’that’s not the way my touch makes you feel…’ His words thudded into her with the same intensity as the drowning sound of her heartbeat pounding in her ears. She closed her eyes on a soundless cry of protest as his mouth sought her trembling lips. The harsh sound of his breathing was loud in her ears, and she heard the swift, ragged moan of his painfully ragged inhalation as she opened her mouth for his invasive tongue. The sound and the touch made her knees crumble. He fell with her to the bed and they lay thigh to thigh, breast to breast…heart to heart.
The hunger, the driving, empty hunger was allconsuming; it had found a corresponding need in the aggressive masculinity of him that was pushing her to fever pitch. Hands in his hair, lips on his skin, she was muttering a series of inarticulate pleas, unaware that her mouth issued the soft noises. The forays of his tongue in her moist mouth were alternately teasing and plundering, while his hands moving over her body made her aware of a vital sensuality, a pleasure in the intense sensations he was evoking with the slightest butterfly touch on a vulnerable area.
‘Soiled, Emily?’ His voice, husky, slurred, was almost unrecognisable. For a moment he examined her flushed, shocked face, his eyes incandescent. A groan was wrenched from his throat as he felt her flinch. He rolled over on to his side and, running unsteady hands through his tousled dark hair, levered himself from the low divan. ‘If you’re going to attack me with the unvarnished truth, infant, make sure it’s just that,’ he said, showing no mercy for her sharp gasp of anguish. ‘If it’s any comfort, I don’t choose to—’ she saw his throat work as his eyes ran with a compulsive need he was obviously fighting over her body, clothed only in the brief nightshirt ‘—respond to you,’ he finished throatily. He bent forward and lifted a hank of her thick hair, letting it slide silkily through his fingers, his expression almost abstracted as he did so.
Emily felt pleasure; nerve-endings craving contact purred into warm life at his touch. The impulse had no consciousness behind it; it was a response to the erotic glow still engulfing her, sheer spontaneity. She took his wrist in both her hands and, turning his fist palm upwards, pressed her lips to the skin.
His head jerked back as though she’d struck him and his breath whistled out with a sibilant hiss. ‘What is this, infant, role reversal?’
Her hands had already fallen away. Miserably aware of how wide she’d opened herself for his retributive attack, she lowered her eyes. ‘I wanted…’ She bit her lip. How to make things worse, she thought; I could write the definitive book.
‘In an hour’s time, maybe two, you’d accuse me of sleeping with you to satisfy my unhealthy desire for revenge.’
She looked up, startled into animation, her sense of self-preservation reawakened by her persecutor, of all people. ‘You can’t deny it would be awfully convenient.’ Had that been his intention all along when he’d tricked her into coming her? ‘How far in advance do you plan your strategy, Luke?’
‘You are so bloody predictable,’ he flung at her, his expression cynically furious. ‘I can almost see the wheels turning.’
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��Predictable!’ she fumed, looping the nightshirt once more over her shoulder, aware that his eyes were repeatedly drawn to the curve of her shoulder. ‘It’s you who are predictable,’ she cried, torn between wanting to respond to the primitive gleam of hunger in his eyes and an instinct not to take anything he said or did at face value. ‘You’ll do whatever it takes to hurt my father.’ The anger died away and a deep sadness replaced it in her upturned face. ‘I don’t think you take prisoners, do you, Luke? Not in the rules of combat.’ She gave a small shrug. I’m irrelevant, she kept telling herself, a tool, a weapon. Don’t be a victim of your own wishful thinking, Emily—hate him. She needed to hate Luke.
‘If that were true, Emily, I’d have taken you when you were sixteen. You looked at me as though you’d die just to have me touch you,’ he recalled, a nerve throbbing in his lean cheek with erratic force. ’think about that and try to recall you have the most expressive eyes I’ve ever seen in my life.’ He spoke in slow, measured tones, and then he was gone.
CHAPTER FIVE
‘MAKING yourself useful?’
Emily didn’t flinch but continued to type, slowly transcribing the tightly packed writing in the notebook. She’d heard Luke’s footsteps as he’d entered the room. She could smell the scent of fresh air, peat and the sea that hung about him.
‘I don’t want to be accused of sponging off your hospitality, do I?’ she drawled sarcastically without looking up. Actually, it helped to have something else to concentrate on, something to divert her thoughts. ‘Or don’t you like anyone to see the embryo?’
‘I’ve no objection to that, just your tone.’
‘We aim to give offence,’ she said cheerfully.
He slammed his hand down over her fingers on the keyboard. ‘I wouldn’t advise it.’
She lifted her face then and stared at him with unflinching scorn. ‘I didn’t ask to come here. If you don’t like my company, take me to the nearest sign of civilisation. I’ve walked a mile in every direction and a sheep is the only sign of life I came across.’
‘Such initiative, infant,’ he said silkily. ‘If you’d bothered to ask, I could have told you Beth is our nearest neighbour and she lives in the friendly neighbourhood castle…five miles as the crow flies and seven by road.’
‘You weren’t here to ask,’ she replied, depressed by this information. She had dressed slowly, putting off the inevitable return match once she came downstairs. It had been an anticlimax when she had discovered she was quite alone in the cottage.
‘You missed me. I’m touched.’
She got up and turned to face him. Even at full stretch she barely topped his shoulder. ‘You can’t keep me prisoner, Luke,’ she challenged him.
‘What you can’t do is wander off around here, Emmy. It’s not Hyde Park. It’s very easy to get lost if you don’t know what you’re doing.’
She made a sound of frustration. ‘Your concern is very touching, but you still haven’t answered my question.’
His blue eyes regarded her steadily. ‘What question? You made a statement, typically incorrect. You’re my • guest, not a prisoner, and you’re here until I choose to take you elsewhere.’
Her eyes sizzled. ’that’s an outrageous thing to say. You won’t take me anywhere? You make me sound like a bag of flour! As for guest, prisoner, it’s all semantics. I’m here against my will; in my book that means you abducted me.’
‘My dearest Emily,’ he said as though her outrage were completely unexpected, ‘if you’re that bothered, telephone home, call out the rescue parties.’
She stared at him. ’telephone…?’
‘You want a dictionary definition or a technical explanation?’
‘You actually have a telephone here?’ she said incredulously. Why hadn’t that occurred to her?
‘In case of emergencies.’
‘Where?’
‘In the bedroom; didn’t you notice?’ he mocked.
She flushed. She had walked through his room with her eyes downcast; the presence of the kingsize bed and the personal clutter had been too painfully evocative of the room’s owner for her to linger. ‘I want to telephone Dad; he’ll be worried.’
‘Feel free.’
She frowned. His reaction was too co-operative to make sense. ‘What are you up to?’
‘I’m trying to lure you into my bedroom and make passionate love to you.’
‘Don’t be stupid.’ The sensation that sizzled along her nerve-endings was appallingly strong. She made an effort to subdue the erotic images that his words had sparked off in her head.
‘True,’ he agreed thoughtfully. Then, meeting the chagrin she couldn’t keep from showing in her eyes, he grinned. ‘I don’t think we’d make it up the stairs, Emmy.’ The tone was clinical, the insolent smoulder in his eyes anything but.
Emily gulped, hating the sensation that was liquid heat seeping through her. She was as helpless as a moth drawn to the warmth and inevitable doom of a glowing flame. ‘You do think a lot of yourself, don’t you?’
‘A less resilient soul would have had his confidence pounded into dust at the tender mercies of the Stapely clan,’ he confirmed.
‘You never tried to fit in,’ she accused.
‘I only make concessions for people who would do the same for me.’
The most constant of friends, but cross him and beware! This wasn’t news to her. ‘Why are you encouraging me to ring Dad, Luke?’ She watched the cold smile curve his lips and wondered how she had been so dense. ‘You want me to do your dirty work for you. If I ring Dad, saying you kidnapped me…’
‘The response would be gratifyingly extreme, I’d say.’
Emily stopped dead. ‘You are so vindictive, so callous…you disgust me!’ She mounted the stairs, wishing she could feel resigned to his coercion. But it hurt…it hurt badly.
The telephone was on the slate-topped wash-stand. She pushed aside the assorted pile of books that almost obscured it from view. Dialling her father’s number, she tried to compose herself. She owed it to him at least to let him know she was alive. She’d been angry with him, and, though in the heat of that anger she might have wished him suffering, she never had been able to sustain any vindictive sentiments. She’d do that but not Luke’s dirty work. The fact that he could manoeuvre her so cold-bloodedly incensed her, made her want to scream at him.
‘Emily, is that you?’ She heard the deep sigh of relief echo down the line. ‘Where the hell are you? Are you with him…?’
She didn’t need to ask who he meant. ‘I’m fine, Dad…I just need time to think.’
‘Alone?’
‘I have seen Luke,’ she said carefully. The language that greeted this statement was colourful. With resignation Emily let the stream of abuse run its course.
‘Come home, Emily…You don’t have to marry Gavin, you don’t have to marry anyone. But come home.’
Emily swallowed. It was as close as she’d ever heard her father come to pleading. ’that’s not possible right now.’ She’d expected to be chastised as if she were some wayward adolescent—that was the usual. She realised he must be really worried. She shook her head, trying to clear emotional fug that made it difficult to think clearly.
She raised her hand with the receiver in it and brushed it across her clammy forehead. A cry of surprise slipped from her lips as the instrument was extracted from her light clasp. She leapt to her feet, but Luke held it out of her reach and fended her off easily with one hand.
After a brief struggle she found he had somehow clamped her to his side, her hands caught between her own body and his. She continued to struggle wildly even though she knew the effort was futile; it was like being held by steel bands.
‘You drew blood, you little cat,’ he observed, his eyes flashing when she eventually subsided.
‘Good,’ she spat, seeing the discoloured marks on his hand. ‘Give it back!’
Luke’s eyes were focused on her lips, which were full, trembling with emotion. With an
apparent effort he angrily tore them away. ‘All in good time,’ he said, his face dangerously lacking expression, completely under iron control once more. ‘Charlie, are you still there?’ he said, lifting his hand from the receiver. He held it a few inches away from his ear, his eyebrows shooting heavenwards. ‘He is,’ he confirmed to Emily, who kicked his shin. He grimaced and spoke into the phone once more. ’static on the line; sorry about that. You really mustn’t worry about Emily. I’ll take very good care of her. I can see you’ve got the wrong impression, Charlie,’ he said after a short pause. ’my intentions are entirely honourable, if that’s what’s worrying you. To be honest, I’ve been thinking for some time I should be settling down.’
Emily gave a whimper of pure disbelief and her body sagged against him. It was just as well that the story of her father’s heart condition had been greatly exaggerated, she thought with bitter irony.
Luke gave a puzzled sigh. ’the great man hung up,’ he announced, returning the receiver to its cradle. ‘Was it something I said?’
Emily slid from his loosened grip. ‘Well, I hope you’re finally satisfied,’ she said, feet apart, her hands resting on the curve of her slender hips. ’the great manipulator at work. I’m impressed.’
‘It was nothing really,’ he said sardonically.
‘I suppose you had it all planned down to the last disgusting syllable.’
‘Only the vague outline. I was winging it,’ he replied with a complacent smile that sent the blood rushing to her head. ‘I must admit I’m modestly pleased with the outcome. I love to hear Charlie gibber; it has a bizarre charm.’
Hot colour suffused her cheeks and rage exploded in the confines of her head. ‘You are the most disgusting, loathsome, despicable, twisted piece of slime!’
