Revenge

by Natalie Fox

'I don't know what you mean.' Her voice was scarcely above a whisper but she did know what he meant—exactly.

  'From what I hear of your love-life I could almost believe you, but from what I see of you I'd dispute your naïveté. A woman with your looks can't be suffering from a lack of hormones; perhaps they just need nourishing.'

  His free hand came up under her hair to the back of her neck and grasped her so that she couldn't twist free. He lowered his dark head and his lips took hers, passionately, thoroughly. This kiss was all about strategy, Alexia's reasoning flash-fired. He was trying to manoeuvre her to where he wanted her, in the hope that she would fall for him and he'd get what he wanted on a whimper and a grateful sigh. He hadn't a hope!

  She didn't struggle away from him, though. She suffered his kiss with barbed wire round her heart.

  He drew away from her at last and smiled thinly. 'So there is truth in all those rumours I've heard about you. Hard-hearted Alexia who's not capable of an unguarded emotion in her sexless, dreary life. Who drew off your blood supply, darling, a starving vampire?'

  Her wrist was free, she was free, but her heart pulsed painfully. She wouldn't stay in his presence a minute longer to be insulted. She was still in control, only just. Another stabbing remark like that and she could crumble before him. Hardhearted she might appear outside, but, inside, insults like that hurt. If she had a sexless, dreary life it was his fault.

  'You bastard,' she breathed softly, the very calmness of her voice giving the insult deeper intensity. She turned away from him, shakily, and went to the door and he didn't stop her.

  She stood at the top of the steps outside the mansion and took a deep ragged breath of clean, sweet, rain-washed air. It was still raining, incessantly, in for the night and beyond. She could walk down the drive to the lane and then to the main road. She would get soaked, catch a cold which would probably develop into terminal pneumonia! It didn't matter. Anything was better than staying with him to be hurt and stabbed at constantly.

  Ineffectually she raised the collar of her jacket, and, lowering her head, she shouldered her way out into the rain. It lashed her face till it stung, soaked her long sable-brown hair till it hung in rats' tails around her face and neck. Her suit soon moulded wet and clinging to every part of her body it was in contact with, but still she went on. A hundred yards and her shoes were rubbing blisters at her heels, but she would suffer it to get away.

  With a sob Alexia stumbled from the gravel of the driveway to the grass. Her heels sunk into the spongy earth and in pain and frustration she kicked off her shoes, picked them up and started to run in her stockinged feet. She ran and ran till her lungs were bursting and her calves and ankles ached painfully, then she heard the noises, soft pounding, panting. At first she thought it was herself and then raw fear crashed through her strained senses. She slithered to a stop at the moment the floodlights came on, harsh bright lights from the high walls that surrounded his property. She hadn't realised just how far she had come. The gates loomed eerily before her, closed. Her heart pumped furiously with exertion and dismay.

  And then she knew what the pounding and the panting was. Fearfully she swung round and backed against the massive iron gates, gripping the cold hard metal to tense herself for the attack.

  Dobermanns were flying towards her. God, she was terrified of dogs... she opened her mouth and screamed.

  A high-pitched whistle shrilled above her own fearful cry and then no other sound but whimpering and the soft sigh of rain falling all around her. Alexia opened her eyes and blinked the rain from her lashes. Harry Masters stood ten feet away from her, legs apart, a shotgun tucked under his armpit, the four Dobermanns slavering subserviently at his feet.

  'I should have let them tear you apart, you crazy woman,' he grated harshly.

  'I wish you had, you rat!' she cried, raising her voice hysterically and gripping the iron gate behind her to steady herself. 'I'd sooner let those dogs tear me apart than you! I'd rather die than spend a night with you in that place!'

  Slowly he came towards her, rain streaking down his face. His evening suit clung to him as hers was clinging to her. He stood inches from her, watching the rain and tears coursing down her face and dripping from her chin. Her jacket gaped open and her soaking camisole top beneath was moulded to her breasts like another skin.

  'Silly girl,' he drawled lazily. She opened her mouth to protest but nothing happened. Fire scorched the back of her throat as his free hand came up and grazed across her wet breasts. The fine wet fabric of her camisole and her wispy bra beneath were no barrier to the burning intensity of his caress.

  Paralysed with fear, she squeezed shut her eyes and bit her bottom lip painfully. 'Don't do that to me,' she pleaded.

  'Why, because you like it?'

  Her deep chestnut eyes blinked open. Somehow her trembling hand came up and clasped over his wrist to restrain him. 'I hate it, so just don't do it,' she seethed through tight lips.

  She saw him smile, a smile of satisfaction because he just didn't believe what she had uttered. He closed in on her, his warm mouth brushing her ear. 'The impenetrable Alexia has a heart after all,' he whispered in her ear, keeping up the teasing pressure on her breast. Her fingers dug into his flesh but made no impression. 'What have you done, Alexia?' he teased. 'Running away from me like that. Now I'll have to get you back to the house and out of those wet clothes --'

  'No!' she rasped, terrified of the need he had roused so alarmingly from deep inside her, a need she had thought no man would ever raise from its self-imposed prison. She didn't understand what was happening. She had every reason to loathe this man and yet one caress...

  'Oh, yes, Alexia. I'm going to strip every last garment from that delicious body of yours and then...' He paused, drawing on her earlobe. 'And then, Alexia Townsend, you're going to find out just how deeply aroused I get when a woman such as you crosses me. You want to do business? Time enough for that. Tonight is to put you in your place, Miss Frigidity, between my sheets, and I don't mean in the guest suite.'

  With that he removed his hand from her breast and swung her away from the gates. Immediately the dogs leapt to their feet and came instantly to their master's heel.

  Alexia knew defeat when she was faced with it. She was no heroine against four vicious Dobermanns and a wild man. She shivered uncontrollably as Harry Masters took her by the upper arm and pushed her ahead of him. Blindly she went ahead towards the house, blinking tears and rain from her eyes, her feet squelching in the soggy grass.

  For the first time in a long, long while she didn't know what to do. She was out of control of her life and the man she had hated for so long and hated even more now held her nerves on a tight leash. He had kissed her, touched her so damned intimately but he wouldn't, he just wouldn't get what he had threatened her with. Of that she was certain because she knew the revenge that powered him and it had nothing to do with feelings of an emotional nature. This was his punishment for her holding out on him for so long. He had unnerved her, momentarily, but somehow she would find the strength that had ploughed her through these last painful years... somehow she would fight back.

  CHAPTER TWO

  'If you lay one finger on me I'll scream blue murder,' Alexia told Harry defiantly as he thrust her into the hallway. Wet and dishevelled, she stood like a half-drowned rat, dripping over the polished wood flooring.

  'Scream away, darling—no one will hear you.'

  'The staff --'

  'I dismissed the caterers earlier and my personal staff live in their own quarters in the grounds so there's only you and me in the house. I like my privacy, especially when I'm entertaining a beautiful woman.'

  'This is torture, not entertainment!' she blazed.

  'That remains to be seen,' he drawled suggestively as he raked the rain from his hair. 'Now, you can stand there shivering and dripping while I put the dogs and this shotgun away, or you can go upstairs and start without me. The choice is yours.'

  'I have no choice,' sh
e husked bitterly. 'Either way you'll do exactly as you please.'

  'I don't force my way on to women, Alexia. They are willing when I make love to them, and pretty thoroughly too, as you'll find out. Now be a sweetie and trot upstairs and make yourself presentable.'

  'Don't you dare speak to me in that patronising fashion, as if I were your latest tart! Just you remember who I am and what I've got that you so badly want.'

  He gave her a cynical smile. 'Now that I've met you my needs are getting more demanding. In spite of and probably because of your recalcitrance I find I want more than just your factory. You really are slow on the uptake, Alexia. Did you think that by giving me the run-around all this time you'd get me to finally give up?' He shook his dark head and Alexia glared at him. 'It fires me, any challenge does. I thrive on it. Harry Masters gets what he wants. Three years, thirty years. I'll get Stroben Engineering.' He raised a finger and pointed at her. 'You, darling, I can get in three minutes.' He turned to the door and wrenched it open and the dogs on the porch yelped at his appearance. He suddenly turned back to her. 'Upstairs, left, the green suite.' The door crashed shut behind him.

  Alexia stared at the back of the door. She was trembling from head to toe, inside and out. He didn't mean a word. He was trying to make her suffer for those damned calls she had refused to return, the damned correspondence she had relegated to the shredding machine of Stroben.

  She looked up at the curving stairway. Left, the green suite. She prayed it had a lock on the door. Slowly and wearily she took to the stairs. She had no hope of getting home tonight. Maybe in the morning he would have calmed down enough for her to reason with him.

  She smiled as she found the green suite. A big, beautiful key in the lock. She stepped inside and twisted it, drawing it from the lock and tossing it on the green silk coverlet of the bed. She was evening the score. He could pound on that door all night and he'd never get in. She doubted he'd break it down. His desire for her wasn't so deep that he would break up his own home. No, he'd made threats, and that was as far as his revenge would take him. He wouldn't resort to violence to take her and he'd have to because she would never give herself willingly. But his whole attitude had fired a deeper revenge in Alexia. She hated him for the distasteful way he treated her, mocking her supposed frigidity. She wasn't frigid, it had been forced upon her. She had lost Rex.,.

  Staring down at the wide bed, she shivered suddenly, her thoughts switching to Harry Masters's redhead. She'd seen nothing more of her after the study episode. She wondered who she was, how deeply she slotted into his life...

  'I need a bath,' she murmured impatiently to herself and crossed the room. She'd wasted enough brain-cell time on him and he wasn't worth it. She ran a deep bath and eased out of her wet clothes. She was soaked through to her black silk briefs and she peeled them from her skin and looked round for somewhere to hang them.

  A cry broke from her lips as she turned towards the door to see Harry Masters leaning on the doorpost. The en suite bathroom wasn't particularly large but nevertheless she had to suffer the indignity of having to move a few paces to grab for a dark green towel from the heated rail.

  'How did you get in?' she gasped, clutching the towel to her nakedness, her bra and briefs slipping from her grasp as she did so.

  He moved forward and deftly caught them in one hand.

  'Pity,' he drawled as he took up his position leaning in the doorway again, weighing her underwear in one hand as if measuring its worth. 'I'd looked forward to removing these myself.'

  'Don't be so damned crude!'

  'To undress a beautiful body like yours is crude, is it? You really don't have any sensuality in you, do you? I would describe it as pure hedonistic pleasure, for both parties,' he added silkily.

  The thought flamed Alexia's cheeks. The thought of him even touching her again was one she couldn't help spinning confusedly in her mind. She could imagine the sensation. Silk and fire, heat and desire. For a second she closed her eyes in disbelief. This couldn't be happening, she just couldn't be feeling weak and dizzy at the thought of him touching her again.

  She opened her eyes. 'I repeat, how did you get in?'

  'Through the door—'

  'Don't be so damned facetious! You know what I mean. I locked the door.'

  'Of course you did, but you must have known I'd have another key. What silly games you play, Alexia. You're making it so easy for me that I wonder if you're doing it on purpose.'

  Alexia frowned angrily. 'And what do you mean by that?'

  'You're here, aren't you? In my suite waiting for me.'

  'Your suite?'

  He smiled wickedly. 'Don't tell me you didn't check it out before you made yourself at home?' He reached out and flicked open a mahogany mirror-fronted cabinet.

  Appalled, Alexia noted its contents in the second before he slammed it shut. Very male paraphernalia. The very masculine bathroom in cool green and dark wood should have told her. Dear God, now he thought she was a willing participant in his scheme to seduce her.

  'I didn't know this was yours,' she blurted hotly. 'And if I had I would have been out of here as fast as my legs could carry me.'

  'And why aren't you out of here as fast as those lovely legs will carry you?'

  His eyes flicked down to the long length of leg that showed beyond the satin binding of the towel. To lower the towel to cover them would expose her breasts; Alexia didn't move.

  'I did try, but some thug with Mafia pretentions took a shotgun and four dogs to me,' she told him baldly.

  'The gun was for your own protection, Alexia. The dogs are trained to attack intruders. I would have used it on them if they hadn't responded to my halt command, not you.'

  She held his eyes uncertainly. 'Nevertheless you stopped me from getting through the gates to my freedom.'

  'The gates are alarmed. In the unlikely event of your forcing them open, or managing to scale to the top, you would have had half the Surrey constabulary down on your pretty little neck.'

  She smiled smugly. 'So now I know. I just might go for it again. I wonder how the police would react when I tell them you're keeping me a prisoner here?'

  'But I'm not, I'm making things a bit awkward for you, but a prisoner you are not.'

  'Don't be so stupid! What else do you call taking my car keys from me, chasing me down the drive with your wild dogs, threatening to keep me here against my will?'

  'Now surely an enterprising young lady such as yourself could have thought of several ways out of here. You could have asked any of my guests to give you a lift, you could have swallowed that insufferable pride of yours and hitched a lift in the caterers' van or maybe even called for a humble taxi. You had ample opportunity to do any one of those things, Alexia, but you didn't because you didn't want to.'

  'Damn you! I never thought!' she cried furiously, her skin tone darkening dangerously with embarrassment. 'I never thought to do any of those things because I've never been in such a ludicrous position before. You... you shocked me... caught me unawares! You threatened me, intimidated me...'

  'Tempted you, excited you…'

  'No!' she screamed, eyes wide with rage, wanting to cover her ears to shut off his horrendous suggestions but terrified to lose her grasp on the towel.

  'Yes, Alexia,' he breathed softly, almost gently, 'I tempted you, excited you, and that's why you are still here.'

  She stared bleakly at him. It wasn't true, it just wasn't but there was no way she could make him think otherwise. Damn him standing there, his evening suit ruined, already puckering as it was drying. His hair was a mess, wet, and, like hers, rat-tailed and limp on his forehead. He had little sophistication now and she had stripped that from him and suddenly a thought charged through—he was so determined to get what he wanted from her that he had allowed himself this indignity. He • wanted Stroben Engineering so badly that he'd do anything to get it, even seduce her. He wasn't the man she had thought he was and she definitely wasn't the woman he thought her.
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  'You disgust me,' she breathed. 'Will you allow me to take my bath or are you going to make another crude suggestion like wanting to join me?'

  To her surprise he didn't make an obvious comment to that.

  'So you are staying, and willingly too.'

  'I didn't say that. I'd like a bath before I leave, I'm cold and muddy and it's all your fault. The least you can do is allow me to clean myself up. Thank you for the taxi suggestion, and, before you forbid me to use the phone, I don't need it. I have one of my own.'

  He smiled. 'Your car phone? One up to you, Alexia, I'd overlooked that. I could dash down to your car and confiscate that too but I won't.' Suddenly he bent and scooped up her wet suit from the bathroom stool. 'I'd much rather enjoy the spectacle of you trotting down the drive and climbing into the back of a taxi, stark naked!' With that he left her to it, taking her underwear and the rest of her clothes with him.

  Beaten, she inwardly fumed and reluctantly lowered herself into the bath. She wanted to cry but tears wouldn't come, fury blocked them. How dared he? How bloody dated he?

  She scoured her skin till it was almost raw, a feverish attempt to psychologically get him out from under her skin. No man had ever enraged and inflamed her so. He was arrogant, disgustingly suggestive and perfectly hateful!

  Later, Alexia dried herself, sat on the stool and held her head in her hands. Had she been wrong in refusing to discuss his take-over of her company before? Her father had held Harry Masters off till the strain had finally killed him and when she had taken over after his death she had held him off for a further three years.

  She didn't want to sell, but she was struggling against bigger rivals and had been for the last year. It wasn't a failing on her part, just the inevitable that was happening to similar privately run companies that were under-financed.

  And Harry Masters had her cornered. He was right, times had changed, there were no other takers and she needed him.

  She stood up. What now? There was a dark green bathrobe hanging on the back of the door and she took it down and slipped it on. Her nerves tensed. It was his, she could smell him on the thick pile fabric, a mixture of cologne and soap and just maleness. She suffocated the tremor it brought to her flesh but didn't cast the robe aside. She needed it, it was all she had to wear. She was glad it was dark green; it wouldn't look so bad, it could even pass as a coat.