Flight Of Fantasy

by Parv, Valerie

  She shuddered at the memory of her abandoned behaviour. He had come to her in anger, determined to prove he was the only man capable of satisfying her. She hated him for it, but she was also very much afraid that he was right.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  THE last thing Eden expected from Slade next morning was an apology.

  ‘I never intended to take you in anger,’ he said, provoking a wide-eyed reaction. She wasn’t sure she wanted him to apologise. It was easier to maintain her rage when he acted like an autocratic beast.

  She held herself stiffly, trying to keep a wide swath of the bed between them. Even now, if he touched her again, she wasn’t sure she would have the will to resist. ‘It wasn’t entirely one-sided,’ she admitted. Above the pristine sheet, his shoulders were raked with red marks where her nails had found purchase. Dear lord, she had never believed herself capable of such behaviour.

  The corners of his mouth tilted upwards. ‘I’m well aware that you were a willing participant. In fact, I can seldom remember such enthusiasm.’

  She didn’t doubt that she wasn’t the first woman to share his bed. Nor, probably, would she be the last. His reputation was too well-known. Yet she took no pleasure in his appreciation. There were some talents she wished fervently that she had not demonstrated to him. ‘Can we please not talk about it?’ she implored, her face hot as she turned away from him.

  His hand skimmed her shoulder and down over the creamy mound of her breast. It was the first time she had slept without nightwear in her life, and her skin felt unbearably sensitive. At least, she hoped that was why her skin tingled at his touch. ‘Talking wasn’t exactly what I had in mind,’ he murmured.

  She laced her voice with what she hoped was off-putting sarcasm. ‘Mornings too, Slade? How will I ever get anything done?’

  He gave a throaty laugh. ‘Perhaps this will become your main preoccupation. I could think of worse ways to spend our married life.’

  She took a deep breath to calm her racing heart. His hand played across her breast near her heart, so he must register the effect he was having on her. Another moment and she would melt into his embrace, as lost as she had been last night. Then, at least, she had had the excuse of provoking him beyond endurance.

  Knowing about his father, she shouldn’t have mentioned another man, even in jest.

  Willing her legs to co-operate, she ducked away from his hand and sat up on the side of the bed. ‘I’ll have the bathroom first if you don’t mind.’

  ‘We could share it.’

  ‘No!’ Her fierce denial was a dead giveaway but before he could react she bounded across the room and into the en-suite bathroom, where she bolted the door with shaking fingers. His laughter taunted her as the lock scraped home.

  At least she was alone for the moment. Trembling with reaction, she managed to work out the complicated tap mechanism and run herself a bath, adding crystals she found in the bathroom cabinet. Moments later, she stretched out in the tub, the carpet of foam closing around her.

  Slade might be used to this kind of thing but she certainly wasn’t. She ached all over, but he wanted to continue where they left off! More dismaying was the way that the idea set her own senses afire.

  Unwillingly, her mind filled with an image of Slade’s magnificent body stretched full-length on the vast bed, with only a corner of sheet draped across him. It would be so easy to go back and join him, she thought in disgust. What had he done to her?

  Despite her threats, she couldn’t accuse him of rape. He had offered her the chance to stop and, heaven help her, she had allowed him to continue. She was as much to blame for what happened as he was. All because of a stupid remark about meeting another man, which had driven Slade over the edge.

  ‘Is there room in there for two?’

  Her eyes flew open to find him standing beside the bath. Not even a corner of sheet disguised his male beauty and she blushed furiously. ‘I thought I locked the door.’

  He pointed to a door which she had assumed led to a cupboard of some kind. ‘It’s a two-way bathroom.’

  Her thoughts were already too errant for her own good. ‘You can’t come in here,’ she denied.

  His leg was astride the tub, the foam rising up his firm flanks. ‘I’m already in.’

  The next thing she knew, he was in the water, bracing himself with a leg on either side of her. Palming a cake of soap, he began to massage the lather into her throat and breasts.

  The moment his soap-slick hands touched her skin, her chest tightened, restricting her breathing. ‘Don’t, please.’

  ‘Very well, is this better?’ Deliberately misunderstanding, he moved his soapy hands down her sides, continuing the tantalising motion along her stomach and thighs.

  Her body felt leaden, as if his massaging movements had sapped her will. Her head dropped back and her lashes drooped. At the same time, anger warred with pleasure in her mind. What right had he to commandeer her emotions like this? She wasn’t a puppet, to be manipulated by the strings he held.

  Her head snapped up. ‘This wasn’t what I agreed to,’ she said, as angry with herself as with him this time. ‘Have you no scruples?’

  His heavy-lidded gaze ignited responsive fires deep within her, but she resisted them. ‘What’s a scruple?’ he asked languidly.

  ‘I might have known the term would be foreign to you. Scruples are those peculiar moral restrictions we put on our behaviour so we don’t offend other people.’

  He gave a dry laugh. ‘A moment ago, you didn’t look in the least offended.’

  She gathered her wits and pushed his hand away. ‘Well, I was. I agreed to marry you to be a mother to Katie, not to be your...your sex slave.’

  ‘Slave,’ he murmured, rolling the word around on his tongue as if it was a favourite food. ‘While we’re discussing definitions—another’s property, a chattel, a helpless victim. I doubt if any of those describes you, Eden. Of course, you did have your price.’

  ‘What price?’ she asked uneasily.

  ‘My money, my success, a fast track to the things you want from life.’

  Her horrified glare raked him. ‘Are you suggesting I would sleep with you for those? That would make me no more than a...a...’

  ‘A wife, Eden,’ he said quietly as her mind stalled on a different word. ‘Everything I have became yours when we exchanged marriage vows.’

  She covered her face with her hands. ‘I hate you for suggesting...what you just did.’

  ‘I didn’t suggest anything. I simply pointed out the facts,’ he said coldly. ‘You may be confusing hate with something else, my dear wife. Something so close to it that the two are often mistaken for each other.’

  ‘You’re wrong,’ she said with a shake of her head. She refused to admit that he could know her better than she knew herself. He was the one who was confusing real love with the physical act.

  ‘Time will tell,’ he drawled silkily. ‘We have until “death us do part”, I believe.’

  ‘Must you remind me?’

  His fingers gripped the sides of the tub as he levered himself out. ‘Apparently I must. You seem to forget that a marriage involves more than the sharing of property.’

  Watching him towel himself dry, she swallowed hard. Her intended sarcasm softened into supplication. ‘Sex on demand, Slade?’

  His eyes gleamed dangerously as he slung a fresh towel over his shoulder. ‘Precisely. But this time you’ll be doing the demanding, my precious wife.’

  ‘Slade, stop this. Put me down.’ Ignoring her shrieks and struggles, he lifted her out of the bath and carried her, dripping, to the next-door bedroom. Her hair was a damp halo around her head and she shivered with coolness and reaction.

  Pinning her to the bed with one hand, he began to towel her dry with the other. Her attempts to push him away were pointless. When she snatched the towel, he picked up another and draped it over her stomach, making circular movements which had nothing to do with drying her off.

  A furna
ce began to build inside her, the flames leaping higher and higher with every slow movement. ‘Oh, God, please stop,’ she entreated, her eyes large as she met his purposeful look.

  The towel slid between her legs and he parted them gently to continue drying her. The fire travelled lower, raging deep within her. Without warning, he bent over and claimed her mouth, which was open to protest against his treatment. ‘Sweet, so very sweet,’ he murmured. ‘We must take a bath together more often.’

  Twisting her head to one side, she kicked out with her legs, meeting empty air. ‘Never,’ she vowed. ‘I’ll have double locks put on all the bathroom doors as soon as we get home.’

  His lips traced the outline of her jaw. ‘I’ll break them down.’

  ‘You can’t do this to me.’

  ‘No, Eden?’ He feathered her brow with tiny kisses which sent shivers of sensation coursing through her. ‘You should have thought of this when you agreed to marry me.’

  The towel wound around her felt hot and constricting, the textured fabric teasing her sensitised skin. ‘I didn’t think it would be like this.’

  Stretching out beside her, he flicked the towel aside and grazed his palm across her stomach, smiling at her indrawn breath. ‘Lovely, lovely lady. I didn’t think it would be like this, either. I sensed the passion in your soul, but I had no idea of its depths.’

  ‘You bastard,’ she snarled, trying to grab his hand, anything to stop the exquisite torture of his caresses. She was mortified that he knew precisely the effect he was having. He caught her hand and pressed it to his own body, satisfaction lighting his smoky gaze as he saw her eyes widen. Instinctively, she tried to pull away, but he held her fast until the tactile message of his need for her telegraphed itself to her mind.

  ‘Now you know what you do to me,’ he rasped. What she did to him? Dear lord, what about what he was doing to her? She was on fire, every nerve in her body alert with a desire so powerful that it threatened to dissolve her very being. ‘Please, Slade,’ she implored, her eyes huge. ‘Please?’

  Raising himself on one elbow beside her, he began to stroke her, sliding his hand lower and lower. ‘Please what?’

  ‘Make love to me.’ Her voice was barely audible.

  ‘With pleasure,’ he growled, moving over her purposefully. ‘And I promise, it will be with pleasure, my dear wife.’

  How well he had kept his promise. Two weeks later when they returned to Tasmania with Katie, Eden’s skin still burned when she remembered her uninhibited responses. It was as if her body had acted independently of her mind. No amount of reminding herself that their marriage was a sham, entered into for mutual convenience, made any difference to his effect on her. It was primitive, mindless, and all-consuming.

  In the end, they hardly left the house except to find a new restaurant and assuage a different kind of hunger. If she hadn’t insisted on buying gifts for Katie, Ellen and Marian, they would never even have visited Montford at all.

  At the famous herb garden they purchased pot pourri for Ellen and herbal cosmetics for Marian. Eden gave a cry of delight over a hand-carved hair ornament which would look lovely in Katie’s long hair. Slade looked from the ornament to a range of wooden animals. ‘What about these?’

  ‘Aren’t they a little young for Katie?’

  ‘Perhaps.’ He replaced the toys on the shelf.

  She touched his arm. ‘I’m sorry, Slade.’

  ‘For what?’

  She gestured towards the toys. ‘I know you’d like a son to give these things to. Perhaps you made a mistake in marrying me.’

  He turned his back on the toy shelf. ‘It’s hardly fair to blame you for something you can’t help.’

  His understanding did little to alleviate her feelings of inadequacy. She was surprised to find that she cared about not giving him children. Was the gulf between them narrowing after all?

  They had been back at Slade’s home in Hobart for less than a week before she was reminded that they were as far apart in their thinking as ever.

  ‘Where are you off to today?’ he asked with an annoying hint of indulgence in his tone. He could hardly fail to note that she had come to breakfast dressed in a businesslike linen suit and bow-tied blouse.

  Surprise coloured her answer. ‘Why, work, of course. I’ve used up all my holidays.’

  Over the coffee he was pouring for her, Slade lifted a sardonic eyebrow. ‘It’s out of the question, I’m afraid.’

  The cup rattled in her hand and she set it down. ‘I beg your pardon?’

  He calmly buttered a piece of toast as if the woman opposite him weren’t about to explode with fury. ‘I believe I made myself clear. As my wife, you cannot continue in your old job.’

  Her eyes blazed but she took deep, calming breaths. ‘Because you say so? It’s positively Victorian.’

  ‘Perhaps, but use your head, Eden. How would the other staff react to having the boss’s wife breathing down their necks? They’d be convinced you were reporting back to me.’

  ‘But I wouldn’t do such a thing.’ All the same, doubts registered in her mind. She hadn’t considered it from that angle. ‘I’m sure I can make them understand.’

  He made a dismissive gesture. ‘You’re the one refusing to understand. The question simply isn’t open. You have enough to do here, taking care of Katie and the house.’

  ‘And awaiting your pleasure, you forgot to mention that,’ she threw at him, disappointment making her reckless. ‘Are you afraid work will make me too tired to do my marital duty afterwards?’

  Her anger left him unmoved. ‘You do your duty with commendable enthusiasm, my dear. I could be forgiven for thinking you enjoy it.’

  ‘You flatter yourself.’ It was humiliating to realise how thoroughly she had betrayed herself on their honeymoon. ‘You practically blackmail me into posing as your wife, then give me little option but to make it real for Katie’s sake. How can you possibly think I enjoy being left with so little choice?’

  He trapped her wrist between long fingers, tracing the pulse-point which betrayed her consternation. ‘I think you protest too much. You’re forgetting how well I know you now. Besides——’ he gestured around the lavishly appointed breakfast-room which looked out on to a patio and pool area ‘—you lost nothing in the transaction.’

  ‘Nothing but my self-respect,’ she retorted, pained that he still thought his wealth had influenced her decision.

  Leaning back, he steepled his fingers in front of him. ‘Is this job so important to you?’

  It was important that she retain some measure of independence against the time when he didn’t need her any more. ‘Yes, it is,’ she said.

  ‘Very well. You can drive to the office with me.’

  Elated that she had won a victory, however small, she kept her expression neutral. Inwardly, she was bubbling with excitement. ‘Thank you.’

  His hooded gaze roved over her. ‘I trust you’ll still thank me at the end of the day.’

  Determined to prove him wrong, she sailed into the office she shared with the other researcher, Denise Garner. Denise looked startled, but bent back to her work after a quick glance at Eden.

  ‘Aren’t you going to ask how my holiday went?’ Eden queried, sorting through the pile of papers which had accrued during her absence.

  Denise gave her a hard look. ‘We all heard how the holiday went, Mrs Benedict.’

  Stung, Eden bit back the retort which sprang to her lips. ‘It’s still Eden, Denise. I thought we were friends.’

  ‘A friend wouldn’t keep her romance quiet right up till the wedding day.’ She gave a bitter smile. ‘What an idiot I must have seemed, sounding off about the boss to you when all along you were planning to marry him.’

  Eden’s heart sank. Without explaining the circumstances, she could hardly correct Denise’s impression that she and Slade had been courting secretly for some time. ‘It isn’t the way it seems,’ was the best she could do.

  The atmosphere was strained for
the rest of the morning. At lunchtime, Denise went out without offering to bring anything back for Eden. Normally, they took it in turns to buy lunch which they ate at their desks. While she was wondering what to do, Eden’s phone rang.

  ‘Join me in the boardroom. I’ve ordered lunch for two.’

  Was he deliberately driving a wedge between her and the other staff? ‘I can’t, it wouldn’t be right.’

  An impatient sigh hissed into her ear. ‘Damn it, Eden. Do you know how hard it is to sit here in my ivory tower, knowing you’re a floor below? I must have invented a dozen pretexts to come down, then cancelled them all. The least you can do is have lunch with me.’

  Her throat dried, making speech difficult. ‘Why would you want to see me?’

  ‘After the week we spent in the Blackall Ranges, you need to ask?’

  Her fingers whitened on the receiver. Was this why he hadn’t wanted her to come back to the office? The chemistry between them radiated down the line. Damn him, why did he have to call now? ‘I can’t,’ she said in a strangled voice and slammed the receiver down.

  Barely five minutes later her office door rocked back on its hinges, rattling the windows. Slade came in with a tray balanced across one arm. ‘I’ve brought lunch.’

  Over his shoulder, she caught the curious glances of the other staff. ‘You shouldn’t have. I’m not hungry anyway.’

  His eyes gleamed as he set the tray down. ‘But I am.’ It wasn’t for the sandwiches, she soon discovered as he took her in his arms, kicking the door shut behind him.

  Everything dissolved into the dizzying warmth of his embrace. ‘This isn’t right,’ she insisted, struggling to surface against the currents of arousal buffeting her.

  He flicked small kisses against her eyelids and down her nose. ‘It feels fine to me, after restraining myself all morning.’

  Ignoring the traitorous stirrings in her own body, she twisted her head to one side. ‘Is this all you can think about?’

  ‘With you, yes. And I suspect—correction, I know—you feel exactly the same way, my dear wife.’

  Balling her fists, she beat at his broad shoulders, the blows totally ineffective but serving to release some of her tension. ‘Your ego won’t let you think otherwise, will it?’ she demanded furiously. ‘Well, you’re wrong. I hate what you do to me.’