Play Our Song Again (Lynsey Stevens Romance Book 13)

by Lynsey Stevens

  ‘Justin—’ she began, but he cut in on her.

  ‘Well, it’s the truth. We were at cross purposes right from the start. The only time we ever agreed was in bed.’ His eyes raked her flushed face. ‘When we had to move back to Sydney you wanted to be in Brisbane. When we moved into my flat you wanted a neat little house with a garden. Oh, not forgetting the nine-to-five husband.’

  And children. The words screamed inside her head and a pain twisted deep inside her, opening the old wounds with callous ease and seemingly cold-blooded simplicity. To want children—was that wrong? Her fin­gers turned white where she convulsively clutched the arms of her chair as, pale-faced, she watched him stride across to lean menacingly over her.

  ‘Well, Alex? Isn’t that the truth? You didn’t want a husband, you wanted a robot you could manipulate.’

  She gathered her faltering control. ‘Get out, Justin! I don’t have to listen to this. It’s all old news.’

  He gave a short mirthless laugh.

  ‘We said it all six years ago and nothing’s changed.’ Alex tried to meet his gaze without flinching. ‘We’re still not treading the same path.’

  ‘I don’t recall us trying to discover an alternative road, one we could both follow,’ he said clippedly. ‘You wouldn’t even consider attempting to discuss it, to talk out our differences like civilised adults.’ He straightened up, running a hand through his dark hair, his eyes still on her face, focusing now on the agitated tremble of her full lips. ‘But then we never took much time to talk, did we?’ he said softly, suggestively.

  Her eyes met his and she read that same expression in their light depths that she had years before. It was a very thin film covering the flame burning there and she caught her breath helplessly. Once she used to live for that sign of wanting and she was aware of the answering need in herself. If Justin had touched her in that moment she would not have denied him.

  Dragging her gaze from his, she fought to remain indifferent to him. Nothing had changed. Here they were trying to talk, but to talk was the last thing they both wanted. An hysterical laugh bubbled inside her. Actions spoke louder than words, didn’t they?

  ‘We’ve been through all this before,’ she repeated slowly and distinctly, clutching at what little control she had left, thrusting it between them like a barrier.

  ‘And when we did talk it was at each other, not to each other. It’s not the same thing,’ he said flatly, his eyes still fixed on her.

  ‘One thing’s the same, Justin. It all had to be your way,’ she retorted bitterly, ‘and that’s how you want it now.’

  ‘Ah, yes, I’m the wrongdoer and you’re the wronged. I’m always the one who just doesn’t understand.’ His voice was quiet with cold anger. ‘You never missed the chance to accuse me of not caring about your precious feelings. Well, I did care, more than you knew. More than you wanted to know.’

  ‘Justin!’

  ‘Don’t you think I suffered seeing you lying there in that hospital bed, so…’ He cut her off before she could continue, leaning over her chair again. ‘Oh, believe me, Alex, I suffered. I suffered knowing I was the one responsible for it, knowing I put you there, that I was the one who got you pregnant.’ He swung away to the other side of the room, as though he didn’t trust himself to be near her. ‘I flaming well suffered,’ he said with feeling.

  ‘I didn’t say you didn’t. But you never wanted our child, Justin, you can’t deny that,’ she said quietly, get­ting stiffly to her feet, facing him across the living-room where he stood, feet apart, hands thrust angrily into his pockets.

  ‘No, I’m not denying it. But you hardly gave me time to get used to the idea.’ He rubbed his jaw tiredly with one hand. ‘Look, Alex. I wanted a family eventually, but I needed to have you to myself for a while before we had a child.’ He watched her face set coldly and made an exclamation of exasperation. ‘Face it, Alex. Ninety per cent of men would have felt the way I did. Even that admirer of yours in your group, the one with the sorrowful spaniel eyes. He’d feel the same way in the same situation,’ he said cruelly.

  ‘Then maybe I should try the situation on him,’ she heard herself saying insinuatively, ‘if only to prove to you that you’re wrong on that score.’

  Justin’s eyes narrowed and his chin rose, and Alex felt the rekindling of her fear.

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, let’s leave Paul out of this. He’s a very nice person and a good friend and doesn’t deserve to be brought into this kind of discus­sion.’

  He had taken a couple of strides across the floor and was now standing barely a foot away from her, his anger reaching out to touch her, bridging the space with its intensity, and she could feel the throb of the pulse at the base of her throat.

  ‘He’s a very nice person and a good friend,’ he mimicked, his lip curling. ‘Wooing you with books of love poetry.’

  Alex glanced across at her bookshelves and her mouth tightened. ‘More prying, Justin? You have been busy!’

  ‘He’s more than obvious, Alex. Puppy dog eyes and love sonnets!’ He gave a soft, derisive exclamation. ‘It’s written all over him that he’d like to be more than friends with you,’ he continued as though. she hadn’t spoken. ‘Ordinarily I’d say, if he isn’t already!’ he added cruelly, his eyes lashing her coldly. ‘But his type just stand around looking hopeful.’

  ‘Paul is a good friend, Justin. And you’re still judging everyone by yourself,’ Alex was stung to retort.

  ‘Oh, I am, am I? Well then, it won’t matter if I react true to form. I’d hate to disappoint a lady.’

  His hands snaked out and pulled her roughly against the hard length of his body.

  Chapter 4

  His lips took possession of hers in a bruising assault, forcing back her head until she thought her spine would snap. Never before had Justin treated her so cruelly, so callously, and her fingers pushed ineffectually against the solid wall of his chest. Tears flooded her eyes and she moaned a soft protest.

  The sound apparently penetrated the surge of angry frustration that drove him and he relaxed a little of the pressure his fingers were exerting on her arms, although he didn’t let her go. His lips ceased their insensitive punishing and began a gentler, more potent demanding, his hands sliding around her, luxuriating in the softness of her body moulded in the velour cat suit. His fingers now sensuously probed her backbone, following it down until his hands settled on her hips, compelling her impossibly closer to the complementary contours of himself.

  Alex knew she was drowning. She was being pulled under to whirl in the vortex of the mutual desire that flared and raged between them. Justin’s lips moved to tease her earlobe, sending shivers of sensual feeling through her entire body. His hand slid upwards to her hair, twining its silvery softness about his fingers. Alex’s own fingers clutched at his shirt front, slipping beneath his now open shirt, touching the remembered smoothness of his chest with its mat of fine dark hair, feeling the tempestuous thudding of his heart.

  She knew she should push him away before she became incapable of doing so, and as his lips slid down her jaw line to seek her lips again she turned her face away and held herself as far apart from him as his en­veloping arms would allow.

  ‘Justin, please! Don’t…’ she gasped, as his lips con­tinued their competent caressing of the smooth cream­iness of her neck.

  ‘You don’t mean that,’ he said with conviction, his voice thick with his own awakened passion. ‘I feel it here.’ He put his lips to the telltale racing pulse at the base of her throat.

  Alex struggled futilely. ‘Justin! This won’t solve a thing,’ she said huskily, swallowing the moan of pleasure his lips were drawing from within her.

  ‘I think it will. In fact, I know it will.’ He caught hold of the zipper in the front of her cat suit and drew it downwards, his hand moving over the silky smooth skin of her midriff. ‘It will solve six ye
ars of wanting, of needing, of dreaming about this moment,’ he said thickly, ‘and you’ve been dreaming about it, too. I can see it in your eyes. You want it as much as I do.’ His chin lifted arrogantly.

  She tried to remove his hand, draw her cat suit together, but he simply held her firmly with one arm clasped around her while his other hand moved upwards to cover the fullness of one lace-covered breast.

  ‘No,’ she said thickl, her fight to subdue the surge of arousal making her voice low and ragged, and she tried to shake her head as his lips descended again.

  ‘Yes.’ His kiss demanded her response and Alex was no match for his mastery. She felt herself responding, could do nothing to halt that response as he expertly overcame her last meagre defences. Time became nothing and Alex simply allowed him to carry her along on the tide of their mutual need.

  Raising his head, he kissed her chin, her nose, her eyelids, the expression in his eyes one of drugged arousal. Alex’s mind had ceased fighting, had given in to the dictates of her heart and body. Her hands moved feverishly over the dampened bareness of his shoulders and back.

  Somehow Justin had shed his shirt and it lay in a crumpled heap on the floor. That he was as physically aroused as she was Alex was left in no doubt and he crushed her to him in almost desperation.

  Lifting her effortlessly into his arms, he carried her through to the bedroom, setting her down on the soft­ness of the large bed. Her suitcase and clothes were swept to the floor and his hard body followed hers and they clung together in feverish abandon. There was one moment when Alex’s mind would have reasserted itself, but that moment passed as her traitorous body surged to match him in his sensuous demands.

  It had always been this way for them. A look. A touch. Their hands. Their lips. They moved to the same beat, sang a melody in perfect harmony, rising to a crescendo that touched every part of Alex’s body and left her face damp with wondrous tears.

  Afterwards it seemed to Alex that she had been slumbering emo­tionally for the past six years and it only needed his touch to unleash the engulfing tide that swept over her, leaving her spent and lifeless, hanging in a comfortable and cosy limbo from which she had no desire to surface. She was just a little fearful that if she did break out it, if she allowed herself to think rationally again, then she would have to make excuses for herself, explain to herself why her surrender had been so complete, so easily won, and why Justin had this disturbing, so exquisite power over her.

  Somehow it was easier to seek the blissful oblivion of sleep, and if she was aware that a firm arm held her tightly to the relaxed hardness of his body then she put that from her mind as well. Would it hurt anyone if she simply enjoyed the closeness, the oneness, for just that little bit longer? No, it could hurt no one but herself.

  The morning sun was just about peeping over the rooftop of the house across the street when Alex began to struggle through the filmy curtain of sleep. She stretched languorously and then was still. Her body was pinned to the bed at the waist and her arm encountered a warm body close beside her, his soft even breathing play­ing tantalisingly over her bare shoulder.

  Total recall came with screaming suddenness and close on its heels was abject horror at her own weakness. A shudder passed over her and she pressed her eyes tightly closed, knowing the shame of loss of her self-respect. Dear God, she thought, make it all a dream, a nightmare. Let me open my eyes to the normality of just another day.

  But the weight of Justin’s arm heavily relaxed in sleep was far too tangible to belong to any flight of fancy. Her eyes darted helplessly about the room, searching for some means of escape, but to do that she would have to move his encircling arm, and surely he would awaken. Just what she planned to do if she did get out without waking him she didn’t know, perhaps dress quickly and drive away. If only she had finished her packing then she could have been away to the Coast.

  She reached out with a tentative hand and slowly began to lift his tanned arm, releasing it immediately when he moved agitatedly. He muttered in his sleep, his arm tightening about her convulsively.

  Alex’s eyes flew to his face, taking in the untidy thickness of his dark hair falling over his forehead, the dark curve of his lashes on his cheeks, the soft sensual­ness of his now relaxed lips, taking years off his age, giving him an almost boyish attractiveness. A lump gathered in her throat and she swallowed painfully. If only they had made a success of their marriage, been able to overcome their differences. Her eyes moved over his face again. And their child, their son—would he have looked just like Justin, with dark hair and a firm chin and those incredible light blue eyes?

  As she watched, her body pain-filled, his dark lashes fluttered and she was looking straight into his eyes, crystal clear and as burningly bright as sun kissed blue water over white sand. His return to consciousness was faster than Alex’s had been and his lashes fell almost immediately to shield the look in those eyes as his face seemed to settle in an expressionless mask.

  But just for those mere seconds a fire burned in their depths that totally disconcerted her. It had been so fleeting she wondered if she had imagined it. But if she hadn’t, if it meant…? No! She couldn’t let herself think that way. If she was mistaken… It had taken her so long to recover and it had been too pain-filled for her to contemplate going through it again.

  His lips curved in an easy smile and touched the bare shoulder by his chin.

  Alex’s heart leapt as his caress caused an involuntary response and she flinched away from him with self-dis­gust.

  The slight flicker of blue eyes was the only sign he gave of noticing her reaction. ‘You’re looking very de­lectable this morning, Mrs de Wilde,’ he said softly, his arm still confining her to his side. ‘You have the dis­tinctive look of a woman who’s been made love to, and very satisfactorily at that.’ His eyes moved over her tangled fair hair and slightly swollen lips down to the swell of rounded breasts just above his encircling arm.

  Alex closed her eyes as she felt herself colour and tried to pull away from him. ‘You’re disgusting,’ she said huskily, hating herself as much as him.

  Justin raised one dark brow, his smile lopsidedly cynical. ‘Disgusting? Oh, I see.’ His own voice was ominously low. ‘That wasn’t what you said last night. Last night you were—’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about last night, Justin,’ she broke in, her hands moving agitatedly, pushing against the rock-hardness of him. ‘Please let me get up.’

  He moved slightly so that his leg now imprisoned her and his hand was thus free to glide lightly over the smoothness of her flat stomach to encircle one firm breast.

  ‘You’re too tense, Alex,’ he said mockingly, ‘and that’s bad for your health and wellbeing. All the shrinks say so. You should relax.’ His lips teased one tautening nipple. ‘And I know the most enjoyable way to complete relaxation.’

  Alex felt the stirrings of capitulation flood to the sur­face. ‘No! Justin, let me go. I don’t want you to touch me again.’ Her voice rose sharply. ‘Just get out! I never want to see you again. You revolt me!’

  His eyes locked with hers once more, a grey coldness replacing the burning warmth of arousal. ‘For God’s sake, Alex, grow up! You weren’t in any damn hurry to fend me off last night,’ he bit out harshly. ‘What’s with you anyway? Still trying for your pound of flesh? Or perhaps you’re still hankering after that robot you can switch on and off when the mood takes you?’

  ‘I didn’t ask you to come back. And I didn’t want you to touch me.’ Alex tried again to push his hands away.

  ‘Like hell you didn’t,’ he growled. ‘Then how exactly would you describe all that reciprocated passion you displayed last night? Play-acting? I think not. At least be honest with yourself. You wanted me to make love to you just as much as I wanted to make love to you. Deny that if you can?’ His eyes flashed angrily.

  Alex drew her breath sharply, shameful recollections f
lashing before her eyes like staccato stills on a movie screen, and she cringed inwardly. He was right, of course. It was the truth. She had wanted him. Desperately wanted him.

  And with this thought came the fear that he would discover that she had never ceased to love him, not for a moment, during the six years of their separation. If he even suspected, then he would expect to pick up her life where he had left off, and she couldn’t allow that. They could begin again, and it could end again. They would come together perfectly in the intimacy of their mutual desire and then, in the cold light of day, become strangers, antagonists. She wasn’t strong enough to take any more of that particular pain, any more uncertainty. The decision was hers right now.

  ‘I was tired last night. I…’ She took a steadying breath, putting as much conviction as she could muster into her voice. ‘I don’t deny I was physically aroused,’ she heard herself saying so matter-of-factly, ‘and I’ve never repudiated that you were, that you are an attractive man. And, of course, you always knew how to arouse me. You’re really quite an expert lover, Justin. But then I’m sure you’ve been told that before on numerous oc­casions.’

  She almost lost the courage to continue as his jaw tensed, his nostrils appearing to flare, and her heart leapt into her mouth. ‘We’ve been apart six years. That’s a long time. And as I said, I was tired. Perhaps any reasonably attractive man would have done. Or maybe I wanted to see whether you’d lost any of the,’ she paused slightly, ‘expertise I re­membered.’

  It took all of Alex’s remaining self-control to meet his gaze without flinching. She could scarcely believe such things could have come out of her mouth, and her eyes were the first to fall.

  Justin’s expletive was not pretty, and his hands tight­ened their hold painfully. ‘Well, have I?’ he bit out coldly, his face pale.