“You’re not looking at the film.” Sabin began to leisurely unbutton her blouse. “You should be very proud of it. It’s one of your finest performances. The tape featuring the ruby necklace has a certain pagan charm, but the ermine coat truly looks magnificent on you. Ben said you were crazy to have it.”
“No, you’re mistaken. I never liked it,” she said dully. “But Ben wanted to see me in it.”
“For God’s sake, don’t lie to me. If you like pretty things, I’ll buy them for you but don’t pretend to be something you’re not. I can’t handle that right now.”
“When did Ben send you this?” Her words were slurred.
“It was the first one. Two months after you were married.” He parted her blouse and looked down at her. “You’re not fighting me. Are you going to be honest with me at last?”
“I always try to be honest.” She should be fighting him she realized in a dim corner of her mind. He was a stranger and yet not a stranger. He was a man who knew her body intimately and her mind not at all. She was beginning to tremble. “I can’t seem to think. Ben … I have to know about Ben. The tapes.”
“Forget about Ben. You belong to me now. You should always have been mine.” His lips were on her throat. “Ben cheated us both.”
His voice was so intense that it swept through her, battering down the frail resistance she was trying to erect against him.
You belong to me.
You should always have been mine.
The words had been said with unequivocal belief.
“No, I loved Ben,” she whispered.
“For the Lord’s sake, he sold you.” Sabin reached out and unfastened her bra, pulling it and her blouse off simultaneously. “He made you sell yourself.” He looked down at her breasts in the flickering light of the screen, and she could feel the shudder that went through him. “Funny, I can barely see you in the darkness, and all I have to do is glance at the screen to see every detail of your body. But this is you.” He bent his head, hovering his lips over one hard nipple. “The other’s a dream, isn’t it?”
Yes, it was all a dream.
She snatched at the concept eagerly. None of this was real, only an erotic dream with nightmarish overtones. Sabin Wyatt couldn’t have formed an obsession for her when he didn’t even know her. Ben wouldn’t have betrayed her like this. She could accept both thoughts, if she could convince herself none of it was real.
His lips touched her nipple, and her breath drew in sharply. Heat flowed through her in a tingling, electric stream. It was as if all the force of Sabin’s magnetism had centered and exploded at that first touch.
“Sweet.” His voice was low, husky as his lips pulled gently on the taut nipple. “You like this?”
“Yes.” Her breasts were lifting and falling with the rapidity of her breathing. If it was a dream, it didn’t matter whether she fought or not, and she was too tired to fight Sabin. He was too strong, too certain, in this world she wasn’t sure of at all. His lips were igniting fires that spread throughout her body. She unconsciously arched up to meet him.
His big hands were cupping, squeezing, releasing as his mouth took.
She moaned low in her throat, and he lifted his head to look down at her. His nostrils flared as he smiled with savage pleasure. “You like me?” He unbuttoned his shirt and pulled her close, rubbing her against the thick, wiry thatch of hair covering his chest. “Tell me how you like it,” he muttered. “Tell me how to please you. I want to hear you cry out like that again.”
She was on fire, the tips of her breasts burning, a heavy throbbing between her thighs. Why was she letting him do this? In some remote corner of her mind she knew there was something strange about her total surrender to him. It wasn’t like her to … The thought faded away as the sensual haze Sabin was weaving intensified, and she became conscious only of him and what he was doing to her. Yet there was something she should know. “The tapes …”
He stiffened and then his lips twisted in a bitter smile. “It turns you on to talk about the tapes? Okay.” His fingers moved slowly down to the naked hollow of her spine. “Shall I tell you how I felt when I got them? The letter came first, you know, asking for thirty thousand dollars. Ben said you liked expensive things and he was desperate to keep you happy.” He bent her back over his arm, his teeth biting gently around her left nipple. “I sent him the money. Lord only knows why. Then the first tape came. Ben said you were very grateful and wanted to show me how the coat suited you.”
He began to unfasten the snap on her silk slacks. “I expected home movies. That’s not what I got, and the message at the end was the pièce de résistance. I didn’t sleep that night.” He pulled off her slacks and panties and threw them aside. He looked down at her, his gaze moving over her until it settled on the curls that surrounded her womanhood. She felt a heaviness, a tingling hot-ness where his gaze was resting. “This is what I thought about all night. You lying before me, like this. Damn you. I wanted you so much I thought I’d die. And I wanted to strangle Ben.”
“Ben wouldn’t—”
“Put me through hell? Oh, I’ve no doubt he enjoyed it very much. He had something I wanted and couldn’t have unless he deigned to give it to me.” He fell to his knees on the floor beside the chaise lounge and rubbed his cheek on her belly, his teeth nibbling at the soft rounded flesh. “He called me three days after I received the tape and told me you had no objection to belonging to me for a short period, if we could come to an agreement. He said he was a practical, modern man and you liked pretty things. If I sent him sizeable amounts of cash periodically, he’d send you to me for six months.”
Mallory could feel the faint stubble on his cheeks on her bare stomach, and a hot shiver went through her. She could barely hear his words through the haze of heat surrounding her, and she didn’t understand them anyway. What he was saying wasn’t making sense. No one could be as base and as manipulative as he claimed Ben had been. She would have known, wouldn’t she?
“I sent the money, and every few weeks I’d get a tape. A teaser to keep the money coming.” He was standing, stripping off his shirt. “I wasn’t stupid. I knew what you two were doing to me, but I kept paying anyway. Two hundred thousand dollars. Did you laugh about that with Ben?”
“No.”
“I don’t know whether to believe you or not.” He shrugged. “It doesn’t matter anyway.”
He was nude now and moved to stand over her. She was suddenly acutely conscious of her own nudity, her slenderness and vulnerability, the feel of warm pliant leather cushioning her body. The flickering light played on the brawny muscles of his shoulders, his flat stomach, the dark thatches of hair on his chest and encircling his manhood. He was a figure from mythology, she thought, Vulcan or perhaps Zeus.
“I knew Ben wouldn’t give you to me for six months.” He parted her legs and knelt between them. “He knew me too well.” He began to rub the curls surrounding her womanhood, slowly, sensuously, occasionally pressing hard with the ball of his hand. “He knew I’d never let you go back to him.”
No, Zeus would never give up something he wanted. But he wasn’t Zeus, she remembered hazily, this was Sabin. Not that it made any difference. Power and lightning bolts …
“Well, did it turn you on to know what you did to me?” His hand moved down. “Let’s see, shall we?” He gently inserted a finger within her. She inhaled sharply, and he looked up and smiled. “Ah yes, you want me and you’re ready. What a lovely welcome.” Another finger joined the first, and he began to slowly move back and forth. “And tight. I can feel you clinging to me …”
His smile faded as he moved forward. “I can’t wait any longer,” he said thickly. “Tell me you want it. Tell me you want to give me what you owe me.”
The words were easy to say when her body was convulsing with pleasure with every stroke. “I want … you.”
“Tell me you owe this to me.”
She frowned in puzzlement. “I don’t think …” She stopped. His
face above her own was intense, willing her to say the words. Perhaps, if this was a dream, she did owe him something.
Then, as if to corroborate the thought, she heard her own soft voice issuing from the television screen. “Six months. Any way you like it, Sabin.” The tape ended and began to automatically rewind, leaving the screen a crackling blue void.
But she had never said those words, so that proved none of this was real, didn’t it? The dream-Sabin seemed to think what he demanded was true, so why not please him?
“I owe it to you,” she whispered.
“You’re damn right you do.” The words were rough but his mouth on her own was gentle. “Mallory, love, give to me …”
He plunged deep!
Her scream was smothered beneath his lips.
He raised his head. “What the hell …”
Her nails dug into his shoulders. He was heavy, hot, huge within her. If nothing else was real in this world, Sabin most certainly was.
But he was too still. She needed more.
She tried to move, to take.
“Be still.” His voice was harsh. “Don’t move. I have to think. Dear Lord, how can I think.”
She moved again, instinctively tightening around him.
He was lost.
He groaned deep in his throat and began to thrust. Plunge. His breath came so hoarsely, it was like a sob.
His hands moved around to cup her bottom, and he lifted her, moved her, took her. It was as if he were possessed and in turn had to possess her.
“Sabin” Mallory could see his face in the blue-lit darkness, and what she saw there both frightened and entranced her. He was absorbing her again, pulling her into himself, making her entirely his own. She felt a sudden flurry of panic. “No.”
“It’s too late.” The words were grated between his teeth, each one hard with pain. “You … belong to me. It has to happen.”
Her teeth bit into her lower lip as the tension rose to unbearable heights. It had to break.
But it didn’t.
She arched up against him. “Sabin, make it—”
She cried out as the tension exploded in searing brilliance.
“That’s right, love,” Sabin’s voice was low, exultant. “Now, just a little more.” Several fierce thrusts and then he suddenly froze, throwing back his head, his strong throat arching as a shudder tore through him. He collapsed against her, his big body shaking.
After a moment he looked down at her, his breath coming in gasps. “My God, it tore me apart. I thought I—” He broke off, his expression clouding with concern. “Are you all right?”
“I don’t know.” She wasn’t sure of anything. Sabin still held her, enthralled both physically and emotionally, but tendrils of painful reason were beginning to flow. The television flickered blankly above them, casting its blue light over the shadowy room. She gazed at it in dumb fascination as Sabin’s words returned to haunt her.
He moved off her and stood up. “We have to talk.” He picked up his navy blue shirt and draped it around her, thrusting her arms through the sleeves. The shirt smelled of soap and spice, she noticed vaguely. He buttoned the top button, got up again and moved across the room to turn on the desk lamp. He turned to look at her, his expression grim. “We need to get a few things straight. One thing in partic—” He broke off as he saw her face. “What’s wrong? Stop staring at that damn screen and look at me.”
She couldn’t look at him. She couldn’t look at anything but the flickering blue light. Sabin Wyatt was sitting there naked beside her. She had let him make love to her in the most intimate way possible between a man and woman. No, not love. It had been lust. She felt the muscles of her stomach twist in rejection at the thought. “It was all true, wasn’t it?” she whispered. “About Ben, the tapes. All of it. It was … real.”
“Of course, it’s true.” He shut off the television set. “Mallory, I don’t know what the hell’s happening.”
The blankness of the screen released her. She dragged her gaze away and struggled to sit up. “I have to … I can’t stay here.” Waves of darkness began to wash over her as she stood up and stumbled toward the door. “Real … Mistake. I can’t stay …”
“Mallory!”
Why couldn’t she make her legs work properly? She felt as if she were wading through mud.
She reached for the knob of the door but it wasn’t there.
Nothing was there.
Only blackness.
Sabin looked tired.
At first, Mallory thought she must be mistaken. Since the moment she had first seen him, she had been conscious of his overwhelming vitality dominating everything and everyone around him. Yet now deep grooves lined either side of his mouth, and he was staring at the headboard with a blind weariness that was unmistakable. “You’re tired. You … should go to … bed.”
His gaze shifted quickly to her face, and he tensed. “That’s a weird thing for you to say. The least I expected was ‘Go to hell, Sabin.’”
“Give me time. I just woke up. I’ll get there.”
“I don’t give a damn if you flay me alive. I’m just glad you’re finally awake. You scared the hell out of me.”
“Did I?” She sat up in bed and lifted her fingers to rub her temple. “Lord, I have a headache.”
“You’re lucky you don’t have more than that.” Sabin picked up the brown pill vial from the bedside table. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to mix pills and booze?”
“I didn’t mean to do it. I didn’t think … It was only a few swallows.”
“Enough to do the damage.” Sabin put the vial back on the table. “Your Dr. Blairen was mad as hell.”
Her gaze flew to his face. “You called him?”
“What did you expect me to do? I carried you back here and found the pills. For all I knew, you might be in a coma.”
“You shouldn’t have bothered him.” She moistened her lips with her tongue. “I was just tired.”
“Exhaustion, anemia, severe nervous tension,” Sabin enumerated. “In short, within a hair’s breadth of a nervous breakdown.”
“I’ll have to have a talk with the good doctor.” She made a face. “There’s such a thing as patient confidentiality. Besides, the man worries too much. I’m fine.”
“Are you?” Sabin’s gaze raked her face. “Is that why you look as delicate as a willow leaf? Is that why you slept for twenty-four hours?”
“That long?” She glanced away from him. “Jet lag.” Her slim fingers clenched the sheet nervously. “And a few other shocks to my system.”
“I had a few shocks too.” He paused. “For instance, your virginity. What the hell—”
“I’d rather not talk about that right now,” she interrupted quickly. “I think I’m hungry.”
His gaze narrowed on her face. “We’re going to talk soon, Mallory.” He stood up and moved toward the door. “But right now you do need food more than I need answers. I’ll send Nilar in with a tray.” He paused at the door to look back at her, and for the first time a smile that held no bitterness softened his harsh features. “I’m glad as hell you’ve come back to me. Don’t you ever do that again.”
Then, before she could reply, he was gone.
The room appeared to lose color and vitality, yet Mallory welcomed that loss. She had to think, and she couldn’t do it with him sitting there looking at her. Now the tension gripping her eased a little. In her weakened state she was better off without any confrontations with Sabin Wyatt. His effect on her was as unsettling now as it had been in the library when—
She blocked the thought, but it was too late to halt the tingle of heat and anger at the memory of what Sabin had done to her. She could accept the anger as her right, but she mustn’t remember her response.
So what was the next move? Did she go to Sabin and rant and rave as he obviously expected? She didn’t have the strength to set off the fireworks she would like to light under him, and she had never found anger as successful as reason
when confronting anyone of intelligence. No, it was better to submerge the anger and maintain control of the situation.
Control? Her lips twisted as she lay back down on the pillows. She hadn’t done too well at maintaining control since she had walked in the front door at Kandrahan. Okay, face it, she told herself. She had made a mistake, but it was no great tragedy. What had happened had been a combination of cause and effect that would never occur again. Shock, exhaustion, pills, the liquor, and Sabin’s sexual charisma at full power.
But she was fully herself now and should be able to handle both Sabin and the situation.
THREE
MALLORY FINISHED THE meal Nilar brought her, slept, ate once more, and went back to sleep. It was three o’clock in the afternoon when she awoke again and, for the first time in weeks, she felt fully rested, even energetic.
Two hours later she had showered, shampooed and dried her hair, put on a trim dark blue dress, and set out to find Sabin. She found him sitting at the big mahogany desk in the library carefully studying a document on the paper-strewn blotter. He looked up when she opened the door, and she could feel the sudden tension that gripped him.
“Well, hello.” He smiled crookedly as his gaze went to the businesslike dress. “Is that supposed to deter all my lustful tendencies?”
She carefully avoided glancing at the huge television screen dominating the far wall as she closed the door and came toward him. “I like this dress.”
“I didn’t say I didn’t like it. It’s just the kind of thing my personnel offices recommend for our secretaries. Definitely no nonsense.” He leaned back in his chair, his gaze appraising. “You look better.”
“I am better.” She braced herself. “And I’d like to leave now, please.”
He stiffened. “Really? You’ve hardly paid your debt with a one-night stand.” He paused. “Though I suppose you might consider giving me your virgin—”
“Oh, for God’s sake, you’re not going to start all that again?” she asked, exasperated. “Virginity in this day and time is only an inconvenience not a pearl without price.” She met his gaze directly. “Look, what happened last night was a mistake. If I didn’t believe that, I’d be even angrier than I am now. You behaved like an oversexed Neanderthal, and part of me wants to pick up that marble paperweight and brain you with it.”
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