Shadow Marriage

by Penny Jordan

Her stomach churning unpleasantly, Sarah shook her head. ‘You’re wrong, Dale,’ she announced with more firmness than she felt. ‘I know you warned me to be on my guard before, but Ben doesn’t… hasn’t…’ She struggled for words, and Dale relaxed.

  ‘That’s okay, then,’ he said softly. ‘I don’t want him hurting my favourite girl—not a second time!’ Sarah could still hear the noise of the party when she prepared for bed. On the pretext of needing to read through her lines again she had stayed up until gone twelve, hoping that Ben might return, but he still wasn’t back, and even if he had been she didn’t quite know what she had hoped for.

  At first when she heard the urgent knocking on the trailer door, she thought it was Ben, but when she opened it, it was Paul who stood there, his face creased in anxious concern.

  ‘Sarah, can I have a word with Ben?’

  ‘He isn’t here,’ she told him slowly. ‘He’s still in Seville. Can I help?’

  ‘I don’t know. It’s Dale. He insisted on going into town after the party had finished. I went with him—he wasn’t fit to drive, although he threatened that he would, and now…’

  ‘He’s drunk?’ Sarah ventured.

  ‘And how! He’s still in the car, and I thought Ben might be able to…’

  ‘If you can bring the car up here and we can get him into the trailer, I might be able to get some black coffee into him,’ Sarah suggested, ‘and then between us we could get him back to his own trailer to sleep it off.’

  ‘Would you?’ Paul looked relieved. ‘I’ll go and get him.’

  By the time she heard the car Sarah had the coffee ready. It took the two of them to get Dale into the trailer, and once in he dropped senselessly on to the bunk-like settee, at first refusing all their efforts to get him to drink the coffee.

  ‘We’re never going to sober him up. I shouldn’t have involved you in this,’ Paul muttered grimly. ‘And what makes it worse is that I’m sure he’s only doing it to spite Ben. Ben told him to cool his drinking and this is his way of getting back at him. He knows quite well the film’s gone too far now for Ben to replace him, and if he starts delaying things now, making Ben waste time while he gets him sobered up, the backers are going to come down hard on Ben.’

  He made it sound almost as though Dale hated Ben, Sarah thought. And she was just turning this thought over in her mind, when Paul gave a cry of pain as Dale moved, jerkily, and the mug of boiling hot coffee tipped over his wrist and hand, soaking through his jeans.

  ‘You go and get changed,’ Sarah told him as she mopped up the mess. ‘Dale seems to be coming out of it now. I’ll try and get some coffee into him while you’re gone.’

  ‘Thanks. I’ll be as quick as I can.’

  ‘Come on, Dale, drink this.’ Paul had been gone for just over ten minutes, and Dale mumbled something unintelligible as Sarah held the mug to his mouth. At least he was sitting upright now, she thought tiredly. With any luck, by the time Paul returned, Dale would be able to make it to his own trailer under his own steam.

  ‘Don’t look at me like that, sweetling,’ Dale remonstrated in slurred tones. ‘Just because I had a good time! You’re getting almost as bad as that husband of yours. Where is he, by the way?’ he asked, looking round the trailer. ‘Not gone off and left you, has he? Poor Sarah, we’ll have to do something about that, won’t we?’

  ‘Dale, stop it!’ Sarah protested as he put his arm round her, leaning drunkenly against her, his lips moving along her jaw. For someone who was drunk he showed surprising strength and determination, and Sarah grasped him crossly, trying to push him away. He didn’t realise what he was doing, of course. He couldn’t.

  ‘Lovely Sarah,’ he muttered thickly as she tried to move him, pressing his mouth against her throat. If she couldn’t move him then she would have to move herself, Sarah decided despairingly, not realising as she pulled away that he was half lying on her robe. There was a brief tearing sound as she moved, but the words of protest she was about to utter were lost as the trailer door suddenly opened and she saw Ben looking down at them.

  The look on his face beggared words, and Sarah felt herself flushing crimson with guilt as she realised that he had completely misinterpreted the scene.

  ‘Couldn’t he even wait to get you to bed?’ Ben snarled at last. Adding grimly, ‘I warned you, Sarah!’

  ‘But Ben…’ He’s drunk, she had been about to say, but Dale suddenly lifted his head and looked at them, the smile he gave Ben bringing a dark tide of anger to the latter’s face. Sarah shrank back as Ben reached for Dale, half dragging and half lifting him out of his seat.

  ‘Ben, please, you don’t understand,’ Sarah protested, reading murder in the hot fury of his eyes.

  ‘Be quiet!’ he gritted at her. ‘I’ll deal with you later.’ Almost throwing Dale out of the trailer, he turned and followed him, while Sarah held her breath, praying that Paul would return in time for them to explain.

  ‘I know you’re burning to thump me, Ben,’ she heard Dale say, suddenly far more sober than he had been in the trailer, ‘but if you break my jaw, you’ll only delay completion of the film. Never mind,’ he mocked, and Sarah shivered at his foolhardiness, ‘third time lucky!’

  How could he remind Ben of the first time he had found them together in compromising circumstances? The look on her husband’s face had shown all too clearly that his anger had exploded out of control, and Sarah was shivering when she heard him return.

  ‘Dale might have got off scot-free,’ she heard him saying suavely somewhere above her as he closed the door, ‘but you’re not going to! I’ll have to think of a punishment that won’t show; won’t spoil that pale skin and delay filming, won’t I, my dear wife?’ He almost snarled the last words, and Sarah shrank from him as he reached down and with one violent movement ripped both what was left of her robe and the fine lawn nightgown she was wearing beneath it.

  ‘Ben, please!’ she begged in a last-ditch attempt to deflect the violence of his rage, but it wasn’t any use, his hands were already on her body, and Sarah shivered as he swung her up into his arms and carried her the few yards to his bedroom. In contrast to the untidiness of the area where he worked in the trailer, everything was immaculately neat, the bed made and the room somehow impersonal. She wasn’t going to fight against him, she decided resignedly; she would only lose, and anyway she had a sickening suspicion that that was exactly what he wanted her to do, and that the demons that rode him would enjoy punishing her folly if she did, but a deep-seated feminine instinct that wouldn’t be denied made her cringe instinctively from him when he dropped her callously on the bed and then turned to take off his clothes, his eyes glittering savagely as he subjected her pale body to a slow and insulting inspection that left her flushed and humiliated, wishing she could match him look for look. But somehow her glance skidded uncertainly from broad male shoulders, downwards to the hard flatness of his belly, registering somewhere along the way that his tan extended to every inch of his body, and wondering with a swift stab of jealousy if he sunbathed alone, or if someone had been with him, and if so, if he had turned to her in the drowsy heat of a Californian afternoon, and they had made love.

  ‘Frightened?’ He purred the word with all the deceptive softness of a jungle cat before demolishing its prey. ‘No need to be, I’m only taking what’s rightfully mine.’

  ‘There’s now a law that forbids a man to rape his wife—just in case you didn’t know,’ Sarah warned him, wishing her voice didn’t sound quite so breathless, but her words seemed to have no effect upon him at all, he simply walked round the bed still watching her, studying her, and she had to fight against her need to protect herself from the narrowed and mocking assessment of his gaze by reaching for some form of cover.

  ‘Shy?’ The mocking jibe stung, and she gasped a protest as Ben suddenly sat down beside her, reaching for her hands, and uncurling the fingers she hadn’t realised were digging into the softness of the duvet. ‘There’s really no need to be,’ Ben drawled
softly. ‘After all, the entire film-going world has seen you like this at one time or another, if only briefly.’

  There had been a scene similar to this in Shakespeare, Sarah remembered, and how she had hated filming it, but it had been very brief and she hadn’t been completely nude, and then Ben had been tender and understanding, helping her through what was for her a formidable ordeal. ‘And Dale, of course,’ Ben added, not quite as softly, moving slightly so that he was lying beside her, his head supported by his hand as he continued to study her. In spite of her fear, Sarah felt an immediate response. Her mind was a frantic ball of fear, tensed inside her skull, but her body… ‘But tonight you’re going to forget him.

  ‘Don’t say a word,’ he warned her, when she opened her mouth to protest, and then his mouth was hard and angry on hers, deliberately punishing and inflicting hurt. She struggled against him, but his hands slid from her shoulders to her waist, digging into the vulnerable flesh.

  Her struggles brought her into closer contact with his body, her breasts pressed against his chest, the friction of his hair-roughened flesh against their sensitive tips instantly arousing. Anger and despair burned through her, mingling with her love and need; she hated him for what he was trying to do to her; for all that he had already done to her, and yet she still loved him; yearned for him to love her with a matching intensity.

  When Ben released her mouth it was throbbing from the violence of his kiss, his eyes brilliantly green as he looked down into her face. ‘What’s the matter?’ he mocked. ‘Too scared to fight?’

  Something seemed to explode inside her, and her body tensed under the force of the emotion burning through her, her hand lifting to claw at the arrogantly mocking face.

  Just for a moment she thought she glimpsed satisfaction in Ben’s eyes as his fingers closed on her wrist, forcing her arm down to her side, his mouth on hers demanding a bitter tribute from the vanquished to the victor. A red mist seemed to dance before her eyes, a savage, choking feeling racing through her veins, her body tensing against the hard presence of Ben’s hand cupping her breast, the hand he had released forming a small fist to hammer unavailingly at the breadth of his shoulders, while all the time the molten anger kept on growing and changing, so gradually that she didn’t realise that anger had given way to an equally fierce passion, her body responding to Ben’s with an intensity which surely betrayed her in a hundred ways. But when she looked into his face, there was no recognition of his victory there, the normally acutely perceptive green eyes hazed by a desire which she recognised was as strong as her own.

  ‘Sarah.’ He muttered her name thickly, as though he was barely aware of having done so, his hand tangling in her hair, tugging back her head, exposing the vulnerable column of her throat. When his mouth moved over it she thought she would die of the explosive pleasure shooting through her body, and realised with passion-distorted haziness that he was as much in the grip of desire as she was herself; rationality suspended as their bodies took over from their minds. A tiny detached corner of hers registered that he was breathing harshly, his forehead damp as it rested against her skin, a dark flush colouring his skin, his hands trembling faintly against her body as his mouth burned compulsively against her skin, the savage teeth of anger softened by their mutual passion.

  When his mouth left her throat she was shivering, shaking with something she no longer wanted to pretend was fear, the pressure of her fingers digging into the hardness of his back indicative not of anger, but of need, an inner instinct telling her that no matter what had motivated Ben originally, it, and his habitual cool control, were both suspended. Dimly she realised how much she had yearned to see him like this, as much a victim of need as she was herself, something she had always thought missing when he made love to her in the past. Even when he had finally possessed her she had been conscious of a holding back; a fine control.

  ‘Sarah, touch me. Want me!’ The words shivered across her skin, muttered against it, his gaze burning feverishly into her as he looked the length of her body, his eyes darkening in acknowledged arousal as his hands cupped her breasts witnessing the evidence of how he had affected her, her body unashamedly arching invitingly as he lowered his head and touched first one and then the other swollen nipple with his lips and then again with his tongue. Desire ran like quicksilver from the heat of his mouth on her body to every nerve ending, her nails biting deep in mute ecstasy against his skin. Through the melting pleasure his touch was giving her Sarah felt him tense, mutter something against her skin, and then possess the swollen fullness of one breast, sucking it with a compulsive hunger, which she knew once would have shocked her, but now only awoke a corresponding hunger within her to touch him, driving her to press her body closer to his in an aching frenzy of need, her hands moving hungrily over the satin smoothness of his skin, exploring the male shape of him as she had never done before, marvelling at the variety of sensations relayed to her as her fingertips moved over his body, and finding a deeply intense pleasure in Ben’s shuddering response to her exploration; his hoarsely muttered insistence that she touch him with her mouth as well as with her hands, and her own eagerness to comply.

  The climax was as frenetic as all that had gone before, Sarah aching for the complete fulfilment of Ben’s possession long minutes before it was accomplished, when she sensed he denied them both to intensify their eventual mutual pleasure. But his control was obviously greater than hers, her need only briefly appeased by the hard urgency of his body against hers, whispered pleas mingled with the kisses she pressed against his skin, her tongue delighting in the faintly salt taste of him as it moved along his throat, her body registering the tense response of his muscles to her touch with a shivering delight that when communicated to him dissolved the last barrier of his control, his hands and mouth suddenly urgent in their demands, her cries of pleasure lost beneath his kiss, both of them abandoning themselves to the shuddering crescendo of pleasure.

  Afterwards, lying limp and exhausted in his arms, Sarah could barely comprehend what had happened; how punishment had turned to pleasure, anger igniting a passion which had burned with unanticipated ferocity. She glanced at Ben. He was lying with his eyes closed, but they opened as though he sensed her look. Quite what she had expected him to say, she wasn’t sure, but when he turned to her and said perfectly evenly and mockingly, ‘Now tell me about Dale,’ the fragile illusion that they had shared something rare and precious shattered into a thousand irreparable fragments. Half a dozen retorts sprang to her lips, only to be discarded. He had tricked her again. What she had thought of as shared passion had obviously all been a sham. In a daze of pain she heard him adding insultingly, ‘I’ll say one thing for him, though, he’s taught you to be a woman, Sarah, and a very passionate one. Perhaps it’s a pity after all that you don’t have any major love scene in Richard. You’re wasting a very excellent talent, my dear. You could make a fortune from appearing in…’

  She hit him before he could continue, the imprint of her hand leaving a white and then red mark against his face. Tears threatened, and without waiting to see his reaction she fled, terrified with every thudding heartbeat that he would pursue. Only when she had been lying in her own bed for half an hour did she realise that he wouldn’t, and only then did she acknowledge that her punishment was perhaps that he had not.

  What they had shared in making love had opened her eyes to many things she had not previously known; among them her own deeply passionate nature. Ben had made love to her to punish her, but even knowing that she hadn’t been able to stop herself responding. Thank God they were leaving Spain in the morning, she thought achingly. She could not endure to live in such close confines with Ben any longer. He must surely have guessed how she felt about him. He hadn’t taunted her with it yet, but no doubt he would. And it wasn’t until she was on the point of sleep that she remembered Dale, and the original cause of Ben’s anger.

  ‘Well, that’s that,’ Lois exclaimed. ‘Everything packed up and ready to go. I must
admit I’m looking forward to getting back. My boy-friend works for a local radio station,’ she explained, ‘and being away on location without him is hell!’

  Sarah had gone to see her to find out what arrangements had been made for her journey to Hollywood. She had learned that seats had been booked on flights for all the cast and crew. ‘Although of course Gina is returning with R.J., in his private plane.’ She pulled a face and grimaced. ‘Poor guy, he’s quite sweet, I don’t think he honestly deserves her—she’s such a bitch.’

  R.J. had arrived the previous evening, just in time to join the party, but because Sarah hadn’t gone she hadn’t seen him until the morning when he had arrived to discuss the film with Ben.

  Sarah had been making coffee when Ben brought him in, and after being introduced, she had made herself scarce, realising that they wanted to talk privately. In fact she was only too glad not to have to face Ben alone. She had woken hating herself for what had happened between them, not knowing how on earth she was going to endure the mocking comments she was sure must be on the edge of his tongue.

  ‘Sarah!’

  She flushed wildly and turned, hearing Ben’s voice, relieved to find that R.J. was still with him.

  ‘R.J.’s offered us both a ride back in his private jet, and I’ve accepted. It will give you a few hours to get settled into the house before we get on with the rest of the filming.’

  ‘The house?’ Sarah eyed him uncertainly, and was rewarded with a briefly impatient frown.

  ‘Yes, my house, on Malibu beach. I prefer to live there, and it isn’t too far to the studio, or the location where we’ll do the rest of the filming.’

  ‘But…’ but I don’t want to stay with you, had been the words trembling on her lips, but she sensed that to utter them would bring down fresh censure on her head, and she felt too tired and drained to argue. Of course Ben would want this fiction of a marriage to continue until after he had completed work on the film. But how long would that be? How much longer could she endure? At least one small blessing was that in a house there would be more opportunity to avoid one another. Last night, for instance, she had lain sleepless listening to the sound of him breathing, knowing that only a thin wall separated them. A thin wall… and a wide gulf embattled with contempt and deceit on Ben’s side, and disillusionment and despair on hers, she decided tiredly.