Keira ran her tongue over her still tingling lips. ‘I see…’
He sent her one of his inscrutable looks. ‘We will have to perform from time to time,’ he said. ‘I would not want you to misinterpret anything in such physical exchanges.’
She swallowed back her pain. ‘I understand…’
‘Good,’ he said, his eyes dipping to her mouth briefly before returning to hers. ‘As long as we both know how things stand.’
‘I understand you hate me,’ Keira said. ‘You’ve made it pretty clear.’
A hard glitter came into his eyes as they clashed with hers. ‘Do I not have the right to hate you, Keira?’ he asked. ‘You destroyed our marriage by sleeping with another man.’
Keira closed her eyes tight, unable to look at the fury in his black-brown gaze.
His hands gripped her upper arms. ‘Look at me, damn you!’
Her eyes sprang open, tears burning as she encountered the bitterness reflected in his gaze. ‘I’m s-sorry…’ she whispered brokenly. ‘I’m so sorry…’
He dropped his hands and let out a muttered curse. ‘I suppose you are going to spin me that worn-out excuse that you had too much to drink and did not know what you were doing,’ he said.
‘I wasn’t drinking…’ she said, unable to meet the burning accusation in his eyes. ‘Or at least no more than half a glass…but it’s true that I don’t really remember much about that night…apart from the argument we had and…and going to Garth’s place…’
‘Where you opened your legs for him like the filthy little slut you are,’ he ground out savagely, his black brows meeting over his eyes.
Keira felt her shame scorch her from head to foot. If she hadn’t woken up naked in Garth’s bed the next morning, she would never have believed herself capable of such reckless behaviour. But, even worse, she hadn’t just betrayed her husband, but the one friend who had stood by her for most of her childhood.
‘Did he make you sob with ecstasy, Keira?’ he asked. ‘Did he make you beg for release the way you begged for it with me? Did he?’
She put her hands over her ears. ‘Don’t. Please. I can’t bear it!’
He pulled her hands down, his fingers biting into her wrists. ‘Did you put him in your mouth like you did to me? Did you—’
Keira felt herself begin to sway on her feet, her face draining of colour as the room began to spin uncontrollably. She tried to focus on his embittered words but they faded away as if he were speaking to her through a very long and fog-filled tunnel. She tried to get her voice to work but her throat felt as if someone had lodged something hard halfway down. She felt her body begin to slump against his, her extremities tingling as if every drop of her blood had completely drained out of her.
‘Keira?’
She opened her eyes at the gruff urgency of his tone but had to close them again as the black abyss inexorably beckoned…
CHAPTER THREE
KEIRA woke to find herself lying in Patrizio’s bed, the covers lightly over her, the bedside lamp casting an incandescent glow over the room.
‘How are you feeling?’ he asked from the chair beside the bed.
She turned her head on the pillow and met his dark concerned gaze. ‘I…I’m fine…I think…’
‘You fainted,’ he said somewhat unnecessarily.
‘Yes…’
‘Has that happened before?’ he asked.
‘A couple of times…’ she answered, putting a hand up to brush her hair out of her face. ‘I had the flu a few weeks ago…I haven’t fully recovered.’
‘When did you last eat?’
‘I don’t remember…last night, I think.’
He swore and got to his feet. ‘How long has this being going on?’ he asked.
‘I don’t see why you should be concerned,’ she said with a glittering look. ‘You hate me, remember? Why should you care whether I eat or not?’
‘I am concerned, as anyone would be, when the person one is speaking with suddenly drops in a dead faint before them,’ he responded. ‘It is disconcerting, to say the least.’
‘Then maybe you shouldn’t speak to them so aggressively,’ she countered.
He frowned down at her. ‘I suppose this is how you handle difficult conversations now, is it?’ he asked. ‘When things get a bit hot to handle, you block it out by bringing on a fainting episode.’
Keira jerked upright in the bed, her eyes flashing at him in fury. ‘I did not bring on anything! I told you, I’ve been sick recently. I haven’t felt well for a month, if you must know.’
There was a taut little silence.
‘Are you pregnant?’ he asked.
She stared at him in shock. ‘What sort of question is that?’ she asked. ‘Of course I’m not pregnant.’
‘I would have thought it was a reasonable one to ask,’ he said. ‘You are a young sexually active woman.’
‘I am not sexually active. I haven’t had sex since…’ she paused as she bit her lip ‘…since that night…’
His expression communicated his disbelief. ‘You positively ooze sex, Keira. As soon as you walked into my office, I could feel it coming off you like an invisible force.’
She moistened her mouth as his dark gaze slid over her in indolent appraisal. Her breasts tightened and her stomach hollowed and clenched simultaneously.
‘You are a very sensual woman, Keira,’ he continued. ‘There are few men who could resist what you have to offer.’
‘I’m not offering anything.’
His lip curled. ‘I bet if I got into that bed beside you I could have you underneath me screaming out in ecstasy within minutes. You just cannot help yourself. You are built for pleasure, cara. I am getting hard just thinking about it.’
Keira couldn’t stop her eyes going to his pelvis. A tremor of desire rumbled through her belly and her heart began to step up its pace.
He came to sit on the edge of her bed, right next to her thighs, one of his hands capturing hers and laying it against his throbbing heat. ‘Can you feel what you do to me, Keira?’
She could and it terrified her. Her fingers itched to explore and the barrier of his clothes became a torment. She wanted to feel that satin-covered steel against her fingertips. She wanted to taste that sexy combination of salt and musk on his skin, to feel his explosive release in every intimate place.
‘B-but you hate me,’ she said, trying to pull her hand away without success.
‘Yes, but it does not interfere with my desire for you; in fact, I believe it might even enhance it.’
‘That’s barbaric,’ she said, giving her hand another vicious tug. ‘Besides, I thought you said you didn’t intend to share your body with me. You told me you no longer felt any attraction towards me.’
He brought her hand up to his mouth, his tongue tasting each of her fingertips in turn, his smouldering dark gaze locked with hers. ‘Let us say I am considering the fors and againsts,’ he said.
‘What you need to be considering is my consent,’ she put in archly.
His mouth tilted in a mocking smile. ‘You have already given me your consent,’ he said. ‘We are still legally married, remember?’
‘We’re officially separated.’
‘Not any more.’
‘This isn’t a real reconciliation,’ she said, panic beating like a drum in her chest. ‘You told me it wasn’t.’
‘In the eyes of the law, it is. We have resumed cohabiting as man and wife.’
‘I don’t want to be your wife, either for real or pretend,’ she said with stiff force. ‘I don’t want to live with a man who hates me with every breath he takes. I can think of nothing worse.’
‘I do not know why you are so upset. You were the one to destroy our marriage.’
‘I didn’t do it alone!’ she cried.
‘No, indeed you did not,’ he said coolly, although his dark gaze burned with anger. ‘You did it with Garth Merrick.’
‘I didn’t mean that,’ she said, blowing out a
breath of frustration. ‘I meant I wouldn’t have even gone to Garth in the first place if I hadn’t thought you were having an affair.’
‘Oh, yes,’ he said with another mocking curl of his lip. ‘My alleged affair.’
Keira felt perilously close to tears. She hated being reminded of her stupidity back then. She had been insanely jealous but too proud to admit to it, and instead had allowed a vindictive woman to systematically poison her against the man she loved with all her heart.
At the time their barely twelve-month-old marriage had been going through a particularly rocky patch, which with hindsight she realised was entirely normal. Two strong-willed people living together were sure to send sparks flying at times, especially when he had been busy with a big housing deal interstate, and she was snowed under with her studies. And with her propensity to fly off the handle so easily, not to mention her deep-seated insecurity stemming from her childhood, it had been a ripe field for the seeds of suspicion to be sown.
Rita Favore had deliberately fed her suspicions, leaving suggestive messages on the land line answering service and even producing photographs which had later been proven to be digitally adjusted to make them appear more intimate than they really were. Keira had been so devastated, seeing her husband in such a compromising embrace, she hadn’t stopped to think of an alternative explanation.
Patrizio had been in Sydney on business when she’d called him and accused him of being unfaithful. He had denied it vehemently but she hadn’t believed him. She had hung up on him and taken the phone off the hook and switched her mobile off for several hours.
When he’d returned that evening she had already packed her things and was waiting for him in the lounge.
‘You are surely not serious about this, cara?’ he asked as soon as she told him she was leaving. ‘I hardly know the woman. She works for me—yes, but only as a part-time assistant.’
Keira sent him a livid blue glare. ‘Assisting you part-time with what?’ She shoved the photos at him. ‘With enhancing your sex life?’
His frown increased as he leafed through each of the incriminating photographs. He tossed them to the nearest surface and faced her, his expression incredulous. ‘Keira, this is ridiculous. This is obviously some sort of attempt to discredit me, but I can assure you I have never slept with that woman.’
‘She left several messages for you. Why don’t you listen to them?’
He brushed past her to pick up the phone and, punching in the message retrieval code, frowned as he listened.
Keira put her hands on her hips. ‘Well?’ she said. ‘Are you still going to blatantly deny it?’
He put the phone down with unnecessary force, his eyes almost black with anger. ‘How can you think me capable of betraying you with such a woman?’ he asked. ‘She is so very obviously making trouble. I have never touched her. I would not dream of doing so.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
His eyes went to her suitcases, his expression wry. ‘Obviously not.’
‘I want a divorce,’ she said, putting up her chin in defiance. ‘I don’t want to be married to you any more.’
His dark eyes took on a steely glint. ‘Is that so?’
‘Yes. I should never have married you in the first place.’
‘Why is that, I wonder?’ he asked, stepping closer.
Keira tried to step backwards but came up against the door, the sensation of being cornered triggering a primal response to escape. ‘Because I’m in love with someone else,’ she said.
Her words dropped like a bomb into the silence, splintering it into a million fragments of fury as Patrizio’s eyes narrowed into black slits.
‘What did you say?’ he asked in a low deep growl.
Her chin went even higher. ‘You heard me. I’m in love with someone else.’
‘Who is it?’ he asked. ‘Or am I allowed to guess?’
She held his laser-like gaze with glittering rebellion. ‘I don’t have to tell you anything if I don’t want to.’
His mouth tightened into a thin white line. ‘How long have you been in love with him?’
Keira had dug herself in so deeply she decided she might as well go for broke. ‘I have loved him all my life,’ she said. ‘I’m going to him now.’
Something seemed to snap in him at her words. He pulled her towards him, his mouth slamming down on hers, his arms like steel bands around her. The sheer animal intensity of it caught her off guard. Instead of pushing him away, she got swept away in the rough urgency of it. She kissed him back with blazing passionate heat, her teeth biting at him. She wanted him, needed him. He spun her around, her hands flat against the door, her skirt hitched up around her waist, the tiny barrier of her lacy knickers shoved to one side as he drove into her slick moistness with fast-paced deep thrusts that had her whimpering in pleasure within seconds.
She was still trying to get her breathing back in order when he withdrew from her. She slowly turned around, hot colour coursing through her at her own wanton weakness.
‘That should give you something to remember me by,’ he said in a flinty tone as he re-zipped his trousers.
And, with one last raking look, he left her standing there with the scent of her shame lingering in the air.
CHAPTER FOUR
KEIRA was jerked back to the present when Patrizio got up from the bed. She watched as he paced the room, his hand going through the black silk of his hair, leaving it ruffled and disordered and devastatingly sexy.
‘My alleged affair,’ he repeated, his tone full of derision. ‘I thought you of all people had more sense than to be fooled by someone using computer Photoshop techniques that even a child could use.’
Keira felt herself cringing in shame. She had been so stupid, so blind with jealousy, she hadn’t taken the time to think things through rationally. ‘I’m sorry…’ she said, biting her lip until she could taste blood. ‘I wouldn’t have fallen for it if it hadn’t been for the messages as well. She rang the whole time you were away. I couldn’t help thinking the worst…’
He turned around to glare at her. ‘How could you do it to us, Keira?’ he asked. ‘I loved you so much. I would have given my life for you.’
Tears sprang from her eyes, her chest feeling far too tight to breathe. The knife of guilt twisting even further.
‘You were away so much,’ she said in a desperate attempt to justify her unjustifiable actions. ‘I couldn’t help being suspicious.’
‘You were suspicious because you were looking for a way out,’ he said. ‘You were in love with Merrick all the time.’
‘No!’ She got to her feet unsteadily. ‘I was lying when I said that to you. I didn’t love him…or at least not in that way.’
‘But you still slept with him.’
She had to look away. ‘Yes…’
‘We could have sorted it out,’ he said, his voice hoarse with held-back emotion. ‘Within twenty-four hours we could have sorted it out.’
She gulped back a sob and nodded. ‘I know…’
She heard him release a ragged sigh. ‘I cannot forgive you for what you did, Keira,’ he said. ‘I have tried to, but I just cannot do it.’
‘I understand…’ Keira bowed her head in shame. Pain racked her being; every joint seemed to ache with it.
‘You were intent on paying me back for an affair I did not have,’ he went on. ‘You did not stop to think of the consequences, you just went right ahead and ripped my heart out of my chest.’
‘I only did it the once,’ she said in her defence. ‘And, if it’s any comfort to you, I don’t even remember a lot of that night.’
He gave her a scathing look. ‘What sort of twisted mind do you have that you think that would somehow make it less offensive?’ he asked. ‘For God’s sake, Keira, you gave your body to another man. Do you really expect me to forgive and forget? I cannot do it. Every time I look at you I think of that creep’s hands on you and his body inside yours.’
‘He’s not a cree
p…’ she said with a tiny spark of defiance in her gaze.
The ensuing silence stretched and stretched to snapping point, every single beat of it like a hammer blow to her heart as his dark eyes bored like twin drills into the tender flesh of her soul.
She closed her eyes. This was too much. She couldn’t cope with this avalanche of feeling.
‘I loved you, Keira,’ he said, the slight break in his voice making guilt assail her all over again. ‘You killed that love.’
‘I know…I don’t blame you…what I did was unforgivable. I can’t even forgive myself…’
Patrizio moved to the other side of the room and stared sightlessly out of the window. He had prepared himself for her defiance, not her despair. She looked pale and vulnerable, as if her world had collapsed around her. It reawakened every protective instinct he had felt for her from the first moment he had met her. Her beguiling mix of wild child and sensual woman had been a devastatingly attractive package. He had broken all his rules and married her within weeks of meeting her. But it didn’t matter what desire still leapt between them now—the reminder of how she had given herself to someone else would stay with him for ever.
He had never been able to remove the vision of her lying naked in Garth Merrick’s bed. The morning after their heated argument, he had felt a little ashamed of how he had reacted to her request for a divorce, realising with hindsight that it was probably just a knee-jerk response. When he’d cooled down at bit he conceded she had been justifiably upset. The photos were very well done, and given the context of Keira’s deep-seated insecurity, which he knew stemmed from her difficult relationship with her father, it would be all too easy for her to think she had been betrayed. He wanted to find her and apologise for not taking her concerns more seriously, but instead of finding her taking shelter with her friend, she had done the very last thing he had expected her to do.
It still made nausea rise like a thick hot tide in his stomach when he thought of the gloating pride on Merrick’s face as he’d greeted him at the door of his flat…
Innocent Wife, Baby of Shame Page 3
