Strange Bedfellow (7 page)

“That's the last of them,” he announced.
 

Dina glanced around. “Where's your mother?”
 

“In the living room helping Deirdre clean up.”
 

“I'll give them a hand.” She started to turn away.
 

But Blake caught her arm. “There's no need.” He released it as quickly as he had captured it. “They can handle it by themselves.”
 

Dina didn't protest. The day had been unconscionably long and she felt enervated from the physical and mental stress she had experienced. What she really wanted was a long night of hard, dreamless sleep. She started for the stairs, half aware that Blake was following.
 

“You didn't return Chet's ring,” he reminded her in a flat tone.
 

Raising her left hand, she glanced at the flowerlike circlet of diamonds. “No, I ... must have forgotten.” She was too tired at this point to care about such a small detail.
 

When she started to lower her hand, Blake seized it and stripped the ring from her finger before she could react to stop him. He gave it a careless toss onto the polished mahogany table standing against the foyer wall.
 

“You can't leave valuable things lying around!” Dina instantly retrieved it, clutching it in her hand as she frowned at him—Blake, who insisted there was a place for everything and everything in its place.
 

“Valuable to whom?” he questioned with cool arrogance.
 

Her fingers tightened around the ring. “I'll keep it in my room until I can give it back to him.” She waited for him to challenge her decision. When he didn't, she walked to the stairs.
 

“He'll be over tomorrow,” Blake stated, speaking from directly behind her. “You can give it to him then.”
 

“What time is he coming?” Dina climbed the stairs knowing she was loath to return the ring when Blake was around, but he seemed to be leaving her little option.
 

“At ten for Sunday brunch.”
 

At the head of the stairs, Dina turned. Her bedroom was the first door on the right. She walked to it only to have Blake's arm reach around her to open the door. She stopped abruptly as he pushed it open, her look bewildered.
 

“What are you doing?” She frowned.
 

“I'm going to bed.” An eyebrow flickered upward as he eyed her coolly. “Where did you think I was going to sleep?”
 

She looked away, her gaze darting madly around. She was thrown into a trembling state of confusion by his taunting question. “I didn't think about it.” As she faltered. “I guess I've become used to sleeping alone.”
 

His hand was at the small of her back, firmly directing her into the room. “Surely you don't expect that to continue?”
 

“I...” Oh, God, yes she did. Dina realized with a frozen start. “I think it might be better ... for a while.” She stopped in the center of the room and turned to face him as he closed the door.
 

“You do?” Inscrutable brown eyes met her wavering look, his leathery, carved features expressionless.
 

“Yes, I do.”
 

Her nerves were leaping around as erratically as jumping beans, not helped by the palpitating beat of her heart. She watched with growing apprehension as Blake peeled off his suit jacket and tie and began unbuttoning his shirt.
 

She tried to reason with him, her voice quivering. “Blake, it's been two and a half years.”
 

“Tell me about it,” he inserted dryly.
 

Her throat tightened to make her voice small. “I don't know you anymore. You're a stranger to me.”
 

“That can be changed.”
 

“You aren't trying to understand, Blake.” Dina fought to keep control of herself. “I can't just hop into bed with—”
 

“Your husband?” he finished the sentence, and gave her a searing look. “Who else would you choose?”
 

The shirt was coming off, exposing a naked chest and shoulder tanned the same dusky shade as his face. The result heightened Dina's impression of a primitive male, powerful and dangerous, sinewy muscles rippling in the artificial light.
 

Her senses catapulted in alarm as she felt the force of his earthly, pagan attraction. In an attempt to break the black magic of its spell, she turned away, walking stiffly to her dresser to place Chet's ring in her jewel case.
 

“No one. That isn't what I meant.” She remained at the dresser, her hands flattened on its top, knuckles showing white. He came up behind her and she lifted her gaze. In the dressing-table mirror her wary eyes saw his reflection join with hers. “You've become hard, Blake, a cynic,” she said accusingly. “I can imagine what you've gone through....”
 

“Can you?” There was a faint curl of his lip. “Can you imagine how many nights I held onto my sanity by clinging to the vision of a blue-eyed woman with corn-silk hair?” His fingers twined themselves through the loose strands of her pale gold hair and Dina closed her eyes at the savage note in his voice. “Roughly nine hundred and twenty-two nights. And when I finally see her again, she's clinging to the arm of my best friend. Is it any wonder that I'm hard, bitter, when I've been waiting all this time for her lips to kiss away the gnawing memory of those hours? Did you even miss me, Dina?” With a handful of hair as leverage, he twisted her around to face him. “Did you grieve?”
 

Her eyes smarted with tears she refused to shed at the tugging pain in her scalp. “When you first disappeared, Blake, I was nearly beside myself with fear. But your mother was even more distraught—losing her husband, then possibly you. I had to spend most of my time comforting her. Then the company started to fall apart at the seams and Chet insisted I had to take over or it would fail. So I was plunged headfirst into another world. During the day I was too busy to think about myself, and at night there was your mother depending on me to be her strength. The only moments I had alone were this room. And I took sleeping pills so I would get enough rest to able to get through another day. To be truthful, Blake, I didn't have time to grieve.”
 

He was unmoved by her words, his dark eyes flat and cold. “But you had time for Chet,” he accused her with icy calm.
 

Dina winced as the point of his arrow found its target. “It began very innocently. He was your closest friend so it was natural that he kept in touch with your mother and me. Later, there was the company connection. He was always there, bolstering me, encouraging me, and offering me a shoulder to lean on the odd moments that I needed it, without mauling me in return,” she explained, refusing to sound guilty. “It grew from there after you were reported killed. I needed him.”
 

“And I need you—now.” He drew her inside the steel circle of his hands, flattening her against his chest.
 

The hard feel of his naked flesh beneath her hands rocked her senses. The warmth of his breath wafted over her averted face, the musky scent of him enveloping her. She pushed at his arms, straining to break out of his hold.
 

“You haven't listened to a word I've said!” she stormed angrily, inwardly battling against his physical arousal of her senses. “You've changed. I've changed. We need time to adjust!”
 

“Adjust to what?” Blake snapped. “The differences between a man and a woman? Those are differences we could discover and compensate for very quickly.” The zipper of her dress was instantly undone.
 

“Stop it!” She struggled to keep him from sliding the dress off her shoulders. “You're making me feel like an animal!”
 

“You are. We both are animals, species Homosapiens.” The words were issued in a cold, insensitive tone. “Put on this earth to sleep, eat and breed, to live and die. I learned in the jungle that that's the essence of our existence.”
 

Hysterical laughter gurgled in her throat. “Oh, my God.” Dina choked on the sound. “That sounds like ‘You Tarzan, me Jane!'”
 

“Eliminate the trappings of society and the pretty words and that's what it comes down to in the end.”
 

“No, our minds are more fully developed. We have feelings, emotions,” she protested. “We...”
 

The dress was stripped away despite her efforts.
 

“Shut up!” He growled the order against her mouth and smothered the sounds when she refused to obey.
 

Leaning and twisting backward, Dina tried to escape the domination of his kiss, but his hands used the attempt to mold her lower body more fully to his length, her hipbones crushed by oak-solid thighs. The silk of her slip was a second skin, concealing and revealing while callused fingers moved roughly around in exploration.
 

Cruelly, Blake ravaged the softness of her lips. Dina thought her neck would snap under his driving force. Beneath her straining hands she felt the flexing of his muscles, smooth like hammered steel, latent in their sensuality. He was devouring her strength by degrees, slowly and steadily wearing her down. Doubling her fingers, she began hammering at him with her fists, puny blows that had little effect.
 

The effort seemed to use up the reserves of her strength. Within seconds, a blackness swam in front of her eyes and a dizzying weakness spread through her limbs. Her fingers dug into his shoulders and she clung to him to keep from falling into the yawning abyss that seemed to be opening in front of her.
 

As her resistance ebbed into nothingness, so did the brutality of his assault. The terrible bruising pressure of his mouth eased, permitting Dina to straighten her neck. Gradually she began to surface from the waves of semiconsciousness, enough to become aware of his loosened hold.
 

With a determined effort, she broke out of his arms. Gasping in air in panicked breaths, she backed away from him, her knees quivering. Blake swayed toward her, then stopped. A second later she realized why, as her retreat was stopped short by a wall. A cornered animal, she stared at the man who held her at bay. A stranger who was her husband.
 

She lifted her head, summoning all her pride to beg, “Don't do this, Blake.”
 

Slow, silent strides carried him to her and she didn't attempt to flee. There was no mercy in his eyes and she would not submit to the ignominy of cowering. Her resistance became passive as he undressed, her eyes tightly closed.
 

“Are you choosing to portray the martyred wife submitting to the bestiality of her husband?” Blake taunted. “This display of frigidity is a farce. My memory wasn't damaged. I remember, too well, what a passionate lover you are.”
 

Dina paled as she remembered, too. A flicker of the old searing fire licked through her veins as he drew her to him and her bare curves came in contact with his nude body. The tiny flame couldn't catch hold, not when the hands fanning it were callused and rough instead of the smooth, manicured hands that had once brought it to a full blaze.
 

“Don't destroy our marriage,” she whispered, trying not to see the curling, sun-bleached hairs forming a pale cloud against the burnished bronze of his chest. “I want to love you again, Blake.”
 

With a muffled imprecation, he buried his face in her hair. “Damn you! Why didn't you say that when I came home?” he muttered thickly in a rasping sound that suggested pain. “Why did you have to wait until now?”
 

“Would it have mattered?” Dina caught back a sob.
 

“It might have then.” Effortlessly he swung her off her feet into his arms, his jaw set in a ruthless line. “I couldn't care less now. You're mine and I mean to have you.”
 

The overhead light was switched off, throwing the room into darkness. As if guided by animal instinct, Blake carried her to the bed. Without bothering to pull down the covers, he laid her on the bed and towered beside it.
 

“Blake.” There was an unspoken plea in the way she spoke his name, a last attempt to make him understand her unwillingness.
 

“No,” he answered, and the mattress sagged under his weight. “Don't ask me to wait.” His low voice was commanding near her ear, his breath stirring her hair. “It's been too long.”
 

And we both have changed
, Dina thought, stiffening at the moist touch of his mouth along her neck.
Can't you see the differences, Blake? Physical as well as mental. Haven't you noticed I'm wearing my hair longer?
As his hand slid over her ribs, to cup her breast, she remembered when the roundness had filled it. Now, with maturity, it overflowed.
 

But Blake seemed intent on discovering the ripeness of her female form, ignoring comparisons. His caressing hands roamed over her with intimate familiarity and she felt her body responding, reluctantly at first. A series of long, drugging kisses soon made her mind blank to all but the demands of her flesh.