The Married Mistress (6 page)

All colour leached from Sarah’s face, leaving her ashen, tinged with a ghastly cast of green. The next moment she recoiled violently, almost throwing herself off the bed, scrambling inelegantly in her haste to get away.

Damon wasn’t far behind her.

He felt sick. Sick, disgusted and damn well
used
. Twisting his long, lean body, he jackknifed off the other side of the bed to stand, blind black fury stamped on his face, glaring at her across the room.

‘Whose is this?’

He didn’t need to ask, of course. Didn’t need his already certain suspicions confirming. But he had to ask—to say something, no matter what.

Sarah wouldn’t meet his eyes. If he felt sick then she looked even worse.

‘You—you know…’

‘Answer me!’

Sarah couldn’t find the strength to say a single thing. Bitterly conscious of her half-undressed state, the way that her hair was ruffled and tangled, the dishevelled condition
of her skirt, she grabbed at the lilac towelling robe that lay over a chair and clutched it tight against her, gaining some morsel of strength at least from its protection.

‘Whose…?’
Damon repeated, ominous threat lacing every letter of the word.

‘J-Jason’s!’

He knew, damn him. He didn’t need to ask!

But what he didn’t know—and didn’t trouble to ask—was that the only reason Jason’s medallion had been in the bed was because the other man had been up here this afternoon—with Andrea. Never, ever with Sarah herself. Though that was the accusation that was etched savagely onto his face.

And his next words proved as much.

‘Jason’s,’ he repeated, spitting the name out as if it was poison. ‘Jason—your lover—’

‘No!’

‘No, not any more perhaps. Not since he spoiled things by playing away from home. Or, rather,
at
home…’

The grim humour in his tone, the glint of something demonic in his eyes threw her completely. How could he
laugh
?

But then Damon looked down at the rumpled, dishevelled bed, and all trace of humour, black or otherwise, vanished in the blink of an eye.

‘How could you?’

It was low and savage, a brutal, slashing demand with danger in every word.

‘How the bloody hell
could
you?’

‘How could I what, Damon?’

Her lips felt so stiff and tight that they might as well have been made of wood for all the expression she could put into the cold little voice.

‘How could I do—what?’

If he truly believed what she suspected then he was going
to have to say it. If he thought that she was capable of the appalling crime that had stamped that expression onto his stunning features, then he was going to have to accuse her of it to her face. She wasn’t going to give him a chance to slide out of things later by claiming
I never said that
.

‘Tell me.’

‘You were actually prepared to make love to me in the bed that you normally share with your boyfriend!’ he flung at her in pure ‘you asked for it’ tones. ‘The sheets were barely cold—’

‘From his assignation with
his
girlfriend!’

Her stomach lurched queasily at just the thought.

‘So you thought you’d do what? Have your revenge with me in the same place that he’d betrayed you? What is it you call it? Tit for tat?’

‘No! It wasn’t anything like that!’

She felt so ill that she couldn’t control her tongue in any way, letting it run away with her totally.

‘And don’t you dare call what just happened making love! We both know it wasn’t anything like that!’

‘We certainly do.’

After the hard incisiveness of his anger, the deliberately lazy drawl was viciously insulting.

‘There was nothing of love in that. All you were after was a quick—’

A swift glance at her face had him cutting off the crude description abruptly.

‘It was lust, nothing more.’

She’d known that all along; had been under no illusion from the start. But still it hurt so very much to hear him state his lack of feeling quite so openly and bluntly.

‘But then we both knew that already.’

He had the nerve—the vicious nerve—to
smile
, directing the icy, humourless look straight into her clouded green eyes.

‘Of course,’ Sarah responded tightly, and he nodded his satisfaction. The smile faded, turning his mouth into a grim, hard line.

‘At least we agree on something.’

Stooping, he snatched up his shirt from the floor and pulled it over his head. The brusque, decisive way he tucked it into the waistband of his jeans, pulling the belt tightly shut over the top, put a firm, cold stop to the passion that had flared so briefly and yet so wildly between them.

Not that he needed to bother, Sarah told herself miserably. She had never felt less passionate in all her life. Shaken and shivery after the desperate assault on her senses, the sudden, brutal halt to her arousal, she was distinctly unsteady on her feet. Her legs felt weak and hollow, lacking the strength to hold her upright. But she had to stay where she was. At least until Damon left.

She would rather die than have him see just how appalling she felt. So she tried to copy him by pulling on the robe she held, belting it so tightly round her waist that she pinched the skin underneath painfully.

‘It was a mistake we should be glad we never made.’

‘Absolutely.’

Damon’s glare threatened to shrivel her right where she stood and bitterness and pain at his hypocrisy stabbed straight to her already wounded heart. The anguish pushed her into wild, unthinking words.

‘Since when did you get so picky?’

‘Picky?’

For a rare moment he frowned his incomprehension.

‘I didn’t put you down as the fastidious type!’ Sarah elaborated cynically. The memory of Eugenia, beautiful, dark, exotic Eugenia, her looks so unlike Sarah’s very Celtic pallor and red hair, gave her words an added bitter bite.

‘I’m not just some sexual opportunist.’

‘Of course not! You were just driven wild with passion for me!’

‘So wild that I stupidly forgot what you are,’ Damon muttered darkly.

‘What I am…?’

Sarah froze in horror at his tone, looking into the carved coldness of his face, trying to read what was behind the black rejection in his eyes—and failing miserably.

‘What
am
I, Damon?’

The look he flung at her said so plainly, You
know
what you are, that she almost thought she had heard the words spoken aloud, and she started in shocked surprise when he actually answered her as well.

‘The sort of woman who will take a new man to bed when the door has barely closed on her last lover.’

‘A new…’

Sarah swallowed hard but still the words seemed to gather in a tight knot in her throat.

‘A new man!’ she managed to croak. ‘But you’re not a new man, are you, Damon, darling? You’re the past—over and done with. Nothing to me any more—or ever again.’

And right now she wished that it were true. At this moment she longed to be able to go back to the wonderful, if fleeting, days of peace she had known when she had thought that she was over Damon. That she had put their brief and unhappy marriage behind her and was ready to move on into the future.

But the truth was that she couldn’t. And the volatile mixture of love and hatred that she felt was boiling up inside her, creating a violent volcano of emotion over which she had no control at all.

‘Not quite the past,
agape mou
,’ Damon tossed back with icy contempt. ‘In the eyes of the law you’re still tied to me; I’m still your husband.’

‘And I wish you weren’t! I wish I’d never set eyes on you; never been fool enough to say I’d marry you!’

‘Nevertheless you are still my wife…’

‘No, I’m not!’

That emotive word was just too much for her, driving her into desperate action. Whirling towards the bed, she snatched up the nearest thing to hand—one of the big, feather-stuffed pillows—and flung it straight at him with all the force she could muster.

‘I’m not! I’m not! I’m
not
!’

Caught off guard, Damon didn’t manage to protect himself from the first attack so that the pillow flew straight at him and hit him hard in the face, temporarily knocking him off balance. But he recovered with incredible speed, righting himself in time to catch both the second and third missile and drop them coolly to the floor.

‘I’m not your wife—not any more! I’d rather be anything else than that! And I don’t give a damn about the law either! All I want is for you to go—get out of here and leave me alone!’

‘OK.’ Damon was surprisingly agreeable, making her blink in stunned confusion at his easy acquiescence. ‘I’ll do that. I need to get my things from the car and bring them in anyway.’

‘Get your…’

That was
not
what she had meant. And it was certainly not what she wanted!

‘You’re not staying here!’

‘Oh, but I am, sweetheart,’ he returned imperturbably. ‘Where else would I stay?’

‘Anywhere—a hotel…’

‘Don’t be silly, Sarah,’ he chided almost gently. ‘Why would I want to pay out good money for a hotel when I have the whole house at my disposal?’

‘Because I live here!’

‘But it’s
my
house,’ he reminded her, with a deadly emphasis on that ‘my’. ‘And, that being the case, I have every right to stay here whenever I choose. And there are another five bedrooms to choose from. It’s not as if I’m suggesting that I share your bed.’

‘Over my dead body! I do have some pride!’

Her defiant retort wiped the tolerant look from his face in a second, replacing it once again with the mask of cold black fury that made her quail inwardly in fearful distress.

‘And so do I!’ he snarled savagely. ‘Which is why the first thing that I’m going to do when I get to my room is have a long, hot shower.’

He gave a faint, but definite shudder, a grimace of distaste crossing his strongly carved features.

‘I don’t know about you but I feel distinctly grubby.’

Then, just in case she hadn’t quite got the point he was trying to make, he turned those deep ebony eyes on the bed once more before lifting them to look her straight in the face.

‘I think it will take me quite a while to feel clean again.’

And while Sarah was still gasping in shock and horrified disbelief, unable to find a single word to throw at him, he turned on his heel and strode out of the room, letting the door slam shut emphatically behind him.

‘Ohhhhh!’

With a scream of pure frustration, Sarah flung the last remaining pillow after him, needing to express her pain and anger in some physical way. She managed to retain what was left of her control only for as long as it took for the cushion to land against the wood with a soft, dull thud and tumble softly to the floor, but then all her strength left her. Throwing herself down onto the bed, she pummelled the mattress over and over again with her fists, wishing with all her heart that it was Damon’s cold, uncaring face, the
hard wall of his chest that was feeling the force of her blows.

‘I hate him!’ she muttered fiercely, timing each word to the pounding of her fists. ‘I hate, hate,
hate
him!’

But even as she vented the words, willing herself to believe them, she knew that they were only in her mind. That her heart knew the truth.

And in that truth was the seed of real despair.

Because even now, even hating him for the foul insults he had tossed at her, for his hypocrisy in calling her un-discriminating, with the implication that he believed she was promiscuous, for the way he had seduced her quite callously and unfeelingly, she still couldn’t deny the way she felt about him. She might detest him, but she also loved him desperately. He was as essential to her as the air she breathed, the beat of her heart, to keep her alive. And he always would be.

And as she admitted that to herself, the cleansing rush of anger waned, and in its place was a terrible sense of dread of what the future might hold.

How was she ever going to survive even the next few hours—never mind the possibility of
days
—with Damon actually living in the same house?

I
T WAS
a terrible struggle for Sarah to get out of bed the next morning.

Not because she had slept heavily. In fact she had hardly slept at all, but had spent most of the night lying wide awake and staring at the ceiling, wondering just what she was going to do. But by the time that dawn came around, and then each hour that passed after it, she was nowhere nearer to coming to any conclusions, and she was most definitely not ready to start the day.

Not with Damon living in the house and determined to stay there, no matter what she said or did.

Any foolish hopes she might have had that he had changed his mind, packed and left during the night, were cruelly dashed in the moments that she heard, dimly through the walls, the sound of his shower working. She was only able to listen to the murmur of the water for a few moments before the rush of memories it brought had her burying her head under the pillows to try and shut it out.

But even then cruel, painfully erotic images assailed her mind, forcing their way into her thoughts until she was gritting her teeth to hold back the cries of pain the recollections threatened to force from her.

Damon would be standing under the pounding water, his tall, powerful body slick and wet. His eyes would be closed, springing black hair plastered down onto his skull, emphasising the shape of the strong bones, the line of his jaw. His long, muscular legs would be planted slightly apart, bronzed skin startling against the white of the shower-stall
floor, and his hands would be moving over his chest, spreading soap and foam over the wide ribcage, the narrow hips and down, down…

‘No!’ she moaned aloud, tossing restlessly as a flame of pure physical need shot through her, heating her blood in an instant. ‘No, I mustn’t think…’

But she couldn’t
not
think, though the pain of her memories was almost more than she could bear.

In the early days of their marriage, Damon had rarely, if ever, showered alone. On the morning after they had shared his bed for the first time, he had woken before her and had silently padded his way on bare feet across the room to the
en suite
bathroom. Then, as now, the sound of the shower had woken Sarah and, unable to stay where she was, needing desperately to see this man who had come to mean so very much to her in such an amazingly short time, she had followed him, as if attached by a thread that had drawn tight and tugged her close.

He had already been in the shower, the steam from the water clouding the glass so that she could barely see him, and she had pulled open the door just a crack, meaning only to peep in. The faint touch of the cooler air had alerted Damon to her presence, making him turn. Sharply embarrassed by being caught acting like a peeping Tom in this way, Sarah had been about to hurry away, but, seeing her hotly pink face, the blush that washed her cheeks, Damon had laughed in good-humoured amusement.

‘Good morning, little wife,’ he had said softly. ‘Couldn’t you bear to be parted from me even for a second?’

And when she could only shake her head, too tonguetied to be able to utter a word, he smiled a wide, triumphant, arrogantly satisfied grin.

‘I like that,’ he said, his voice thickening noticeably in the same moments that his body hardened, responded to her presence in a hotly aroused manner. ‘I like that a lot.’

And he reached for her, opening the shower door to catch hold of her arm and pull her in under the water with him. Within seconds the fine silk of her nightdress was saturated, plastered against her body like a second skin, the water making it almost totally transparent.

For a brief time Damon contented himself with smoothing the wet material against the lines of her body, the heat of his palms adding to the warmth of the water cascading down on her. When her nipples peaked wantonly, pushing against his hands, he bent his proud head and suckled her hungrily through the soaking silk, sending stinging arrows of pleasure down right to the central core of her being. But very quickly this ceased to satisfy him and he tugged the delicate nightdress from her body, tossing it carelessly to the floor and trampling it underfoot as he pressed her up against the wall of the shower cubicle and pushed his hand down between her legs…

‘No, no,
no
!’ Sarah moaned again, flinging the pillow against the wall and tossing off the bedclothes, too hot, too jittery to stay still any longer.

She was out of bed and pacing restlessly around the room, struggling to get herself back under control, when she heard a new sound, that of a door closing, way down the long landing that separated them. Damon’s footsteps followed it, moving closer, past her room then down the stairs into the body of the house.

He was up and about, then, and no doubt expecting that soon she too would make her way downstairs to start her day. She couldn’t stay here and hide all morning. But she didn’t know how she was going to face him either.

It took her a long time to force herself to get dressed. Going into the shower was an ordeal that brought hot tears to her eyes, reminding her as it did of the heated scenes she had been recalling only moments before. Not knowing whether it was herself, or Damon, or simply fate that she
was furious with and hated most, she reached up and snapped the temperature control from warm to cold, gasping out loud in shock as the icy current pulsed down onto her exposed body.

Five seconds was all it took to drive the erotic memories from her mind. Shivering with cold, shaking all over, she turned the shower off again, and grabbed a towel, rubbing herself dry so roughly that her skin glowed pink from the friction.

But at least she felt more in control, cooler-headed as well as cooler-bodied. And, having pulled on a deep purple long-sleeved T-shirt together with a well-worn and distinctly baggy pair of jeans that had seen much, much better days, she felt stronger too, armoured both physically and mentally. A brisk, no-nonsense brush of her hair before fastening it into a tight pony-tail down her back completed her preparations—no need for fuss and fripperies like lipstick or mascara—and she was ready.

Head high, back straight, chin up, she marched down the stairs, ready to face any and every sort of sarcastic or caustic comment that Damon might decide to throw at her.

So it came as something of a shock when she stalked into the kitchen to find that Damon was not at all in the sort of mood she expected. Instead, he was lounging in a chair at the big oak dining table, long legs stretched out in front of him, his head buried in the financial section of one of the thick Saturday papers. He was even more casually dressed than she was, being still in a navy-blue silky robe, his legs and feet bare, and his strong jaw darkly shadowed with a night’s growth of stubble. He might have showered that morning, but he certainly hadn’t shaved or dressed.

‘Good morning!’

She looked as if she was preparing for battle, or some other sort of terrible ordeal, Damon reflected, slanting a swift sidelong glance in Sarah’s direction from under his
eyelashes as she stood hesitating in the doorway. Aggression practically prickled all over her, sending out electrically charged sparks into the atmosphere so that it fizzled with tension.

And she’d clearly slept as badly as he had. There were blue-grey shadows under her amazing eyes and she had pulled her glorious hair back into a severe, ruthlessly controlled style. He knew that style of old. It declared quite clearly that she was not in the mood for any messing about. She was also, obviously,
not
dressed to kill.

‘Morning,’ he acknowledged easily, his attention apparently still on his paper, as she forced herself across the threshold and into the room.

What would she think if she knew the way that the print was blurring in front of his eyes, growing worse the harder he tried to focus on it? He could only pray that she wouldn’t guess how much of a struggle he was having not to look at her, not to think of the glorious shape of her body beneath the baggy, unflattering clothes, the scent of her skin as it had surrounded him last night.

And didn’t she realise that the dragged-back, schoolmistressy way she wore her hair was in fact a silent challenge to any man with red blood in his veins? It just made him want to pull off the constricting elasticated band that bound the red-gold locks into such confinement. To rip it off and release the tumbling silk of her hair so that it fell loose onto her shoulders. He longed to comb his fingers through its softness, feel it fall around his face, stroke across his chest…

No!

His hands clenched tighter on the sheets of paper he held and the figures in the report he was pretending to read danced before his eyes.

Damn it to hell, he must
not
think like that! He had let such fantasies into his mind last night, and
look where that had got him! Tumbling into bed with her without a thought for the wisdom of his acts; the possible consequences.

Oh, face it, man, you didn’t
think
at all!

Or at least if he had done then it had been with a far more basic part of his make-up than his intelligence! The part that was reacting only too visibly now, making him shift uncomfortably in his seat, crossing his legs in what he hoped was a casual manner, and drawing the concealing newspaper lower down so as to cover his lap.

Why the devil hadn’t he taken the time to get dressed properly instead of just throwing on this far from covering robe, with only a pair of boxer shorts on underneath? He should have known that he wasn’t in control of his sexual responses where Sarah was concerned. That his body was likely to betray him if she was near.

But he had slept so badly that when he’d finally given up on the attempt to get any rest he’d just forced himself under the shower and then shoved on the dressing gown, thinking only of hot, strong coffee, a much-needed shot of caffeine.

‘There’s coffee in the pot if you want some.’ He tried to say it with a casualness he was very far from feeling.

‘Oh—thanks…’

What else could she say? Having nerved herself for a fight, or at the very least some sort of confrontation, she was thoroughly thrown off balance by his relaxed, almost totally indifferent reaction to her appearance. After the appalling scene in her bedroom the evening before, she hadn’t been able to force herself to go downstairs again, not even to get something to eat. Instead she had made up the bed with clean sheets and pillowcases, and stayed resolutely right where she was, watching mind-numbingly boring television programmes on the small portable set until well after midnight. It was only after she had finally heard Damon
switching off all the lights and heading upstairs that she had even tried to settle to sleep.

So his calm nonchalance was the last thing she had expected, anticipating instead some challenge as to what she thought she was up to, or a taunt about her blatant cowardice in hiding away.

‘Would—would you like some more?’

‘Please.’

A hand appeared around the side of the paper, holding out a used, empty mug in her general direction, Damon not even looking up as he continued reading.

‘Thanks,’ he acknowledged briefly as she took it from him.

‘No problem,’ Sarah forced herself to mutter, struggling to resist the urge to fill the mug and then throw it and its contents straight at his uncaring head.

Which was so totally ridiculous when she considered it that she actually laughed out loud. All last night she had wished that Damon had never reappeared in her life. She had longed for him to be anywhere but here. And she had dreaded the prospect of the coming morning which would mean that she had to face him when she fully expected that he would subject her, if not to any physical harassment, at least to some sort of verbal assault that would make her want to curl up and die inside.

So why was she now so annoyed that he was actually ignoring her? Wasn’t it really what she actively preferred? What she should feel most comfortable with? What would make her life a whole lot easier?

‘What’s so funny?’

Damon’s question caught her unawares, making her hand clench so tightly on the coffeepot that it shook precariously in her grasp.

‘What?’

The paper rustled as he finally lowered it to look straight
at her and, of course, with the perverse frame of mind she found herself in, she now would have preferred that he had done nothing of the sort.

‘You laughed,’ Damon explained mildly. ‘I was wondering what had amused you.’

‘Oh, just my thoughts.’

Sarah tried for airy carelessness and prayed that she had succeeded. She wasn’t too sure, though, and the way that Damon’s black eyes narrowed sharply warned her that she might actually have sounded revealingly uncomfortable.

‘I—was thinking of something I saw on TV last night…’ she invented rapidly, and was deeply thankful when he apparently seemed to believe her.

At least, he said nothing, but simply shrugged and went back to his paper, bringing it up before his face again as if as some sort of defence against her.

‘It was a comedy programme,’ she embroidered unnecessarily. ‘A funny one.’

‘Obviously.’

The dry comment made her realise how foolish she must be sounding and she forced her attention back on to preparing the coffee. For some strange reason the very simple task suddenly seemed to have acquired complications and difficulties that she had never encountered before. Impossibly, she couldn’t decide whether to put milk in her mug first or the coffee, and instead found herself frozen into immobility as she dithered from one move to the other and back again.

‘I take mine black.’

Unnervingly, Damon had sensed her hesitation, even though he hadn’t lowered the paper again.

‘Coffee—I take it black.’

‘I know that!’

Tension made Sarah’s voice tight and sharp so that she winced inwardly, just hearing it.

‘I remember!’ she added, struggling for calm. ‘It’s not
that
long ago.’

‘No, it’s not.’

The inflexion he put on the words twisted a knife in Sarah’s heart, eliminating even the faint hint of amusement she had felt earlier. In an awkward, jerky movement she slammed the coffee-mug down on the table beside Damon’s elbow, heedless of the way that some of the hot liquid slopped over the side and onto the table.