Loves Choices

‘Get in the bath, Hope,’ she heard him say in a suddenly hard voice, ‘and don’t stay there too long—I might be tempted to join you, and something tells me you’re far from ready for water sports—yet.’

Her face flaming, Hope glanced mutely at the door, shivering under the impact of raw sensuality she caught behind the words. For a moment she thought he meant to stay, but after a glance at the water, he moved towards the door saying wryly, ‘I doubt that it’s deep enough for you to drown in, but I’ll be back in ten minutes to check—so I wouldn’t linger if I were you, unless you want me to join you?’

When he came back, dressed in a brief towelling robe, rubbing his damp hair, Hope was seated in one of the chairs, wrapped in a towel, drinking the tisane Pierre had brought. There was coffee on the tray as well, and Alexei poured himself a cup as he watched her. Watching him, Hope felt a strange tendril of sensation curl upwards from her stomach; a curling, hesitant feeling that made her pulses race and heat flood her body, the sensation so unexpected she replaced her cup and stared sightlessly in front of her.

‘Hope? Hope, are you all right?’ Alexei’s voice, sharp with impatience, cut through her thoughts. She looked up, her eyes skimming the length of his legs, darkly tanned and sprinkled with dark hairs. She had an inexplicable desire to reach out and touch him, to discover if the dark hair felt as rough to her fingertips as it had against her thighs last night. Hard on the heels of the desire came realisation of what she was thinking, her breath expelled on a stifled gasp, her fingers whitening as they tensed on the cup. She forced herself to look into Alexei’s face to see if he was aware of her reaction. He was looking down at her through half-closed eyes, smiling faintly, and Hope’s skin burned painfully.

‘Poor little one,’ he said softly. ‘It is all very confusing and painful, hmm? But it will not always be so. Drink your tisane and then try and rest for an hour.’ He saw her glance at the bed and sighed, removing the cup from her tense fingers. ‘What an ogre you make me feel, child, but there is no need to look at the bed as though it is a place of torture. Can you not try to believe me when I assure you that one day not too far distant you will find it a place of considerable pleasure.’ He was laughing at her, Hope was sure of it, and all at once the emotions she had held at bay rioted angrily through her, all the years of convent training overwhelmed in a flash-flood of rage that would have reminded her father of his mother, a red-headed McDonald from the Islands whose temper matched her hair.

Hope’s grey eyes as stormy as gale-blown skies, she turned her face to her tormentor, a high flush of colour burning along her cheekbones. ‘I will never find any pleasure with you,’ she hurled at him, held fast in the grip of a fury that made her long to rake her fingernails along the smooth brown skin to draw blood, anything to make that cool, knowing smile disappear. ‘You think you know everything,’ she panted. ‘But you don’t. Whatever you do to me, whatever response you get from my body, my mind will always hate you. You talk about my father using me as a commodity, but that’s just what you’re doing.’

‘You’re becoming hysterical,’ he told her coldly. ‘If you don’t stop this tantrum right now I’ll …’

‘Slap my face?’ she taunted bitterly, eyes glittering with rage and pain.

Alexei shook his head, the anger suddenly leaving him, a smile curving his mouth. ‘No, it would be a different part of your anatomy to which I would apply the weight of my hand, mon petit, but of course I would always be willing to kiss it better—if you asked me.’ Her shocked eyes told him that he had won the battle, and Hope was left to acknowledge painfully that in any war against him he would always have the advantage. She put her hands to her burning face, her skin still betraying her shocked reaction to his teasing comment, and the glinting amusement in his eyes when he made it. He was a devil, a cold, hateful devil, and she loathed him!

‘Are you sure you want to go out for dinner?’ Alexei was standing in the dressing room door, fastening gold links in the cuffs of his white shirt. Hope nodded her head. She was already dressed, and had just finished applying her make-up. Alexei’s shirt was unbuttoned to the waist, and Hope was sure he knew how much the sight of his naked chest alarmed her. Again she felt that same wrenching sensation in her stomach. Alexei was buttoning up his shirt, tucking the tails into his trousers with a carelessness that said more loudly than any words that he did not find it strange that someone else should witness such intimacies.

Some of her feelings must have shown in her face because he paused in the act of fastening his shirt to eye her thoughtfully, before abandoning his task to stroll across the room. He stood behind her, and Hope shivered when he picked up her hairbrush, startled grey eyes meeting unreadable green ones in the mirror as he drew the brush smoothly through her hair, repeating the movement until Hope felt herself relax beneath the soothing strokes.

‘I appreciate that what has happened to you has come as a shock, ma jolie.’ In the mirror the green eyes still held her own and even though she wanted to look away, Hope found it impossible to break the contact. ‘But you are an intelligent child, who must realise by now that I mean what I say. That being the case, there is nothing to be gained from pointless defiance—you will hurt yourself far more than you will hurt me. Try to look upon this as another period of learning, after which you will be free to make your own life.’

‘Free to be some other man’s plaything,’ Hope stormed back at him. ‘The things I shall learn from you are things I should only have learned from my husband.’ Tears quivered on her eyelashes, a feeling of complete desolation surging over her as she remembered the Sisters’ stern warnings about the fate of girls who were foolish enough to ‘misbehave’. And now this man who had calmly taken her away from the sanctuary of the convent was equally calmly telling her that what he had done would benefit her.

‘You’re exaggerating like a child,’ he told her coolly. ‘Life is not all black and white, there are many, many shades of grey, and the days are long gone when a young woman assessed her value in terms of her virginity. In fact, you demean yourself by doing so. In the modern world a woman is assessed as she assesses herself, physical beauty without intelligence, compassion and humour is nothing. No one will judge you unfavourably because you’ve been my mistress, Hope. It’s only in your own juvenile imagination that “fallen women” exist.’

‘If that was true you wouldn’t be planning to get back at my father the way you are doing,’ Hope told him scornfully. Did he think she was completely without intelligence?

The brushing stopped. He bent down until his head was level with her own, grasping her chin and turning her to face him. ‘My dear child.’ His voice was dangerously cool. ‘Your father is far too much a man of the world to give a damn about your virginity, other than as a saleable commodity.’

‘I hate you,’ Hope told him pathetically, wishing she had the conviction to deny his allegation. ‘I can’t understand how the Reverend Mother allowed me to leave with you.’

‘Quite simple. I forged your father’s signature, and anyway, the Sisters were growing concerned about you. They were too relieved to discover that, after all, your father was not the uncaring parent they had believed to question my authority too deeply. And by the way,’ he added, reading her mind with an ease that shocked her, ‘don’t even think about trying to run away. I have your passport and I intend to keep it. You have no money, no friends here, and this part of France is still feudal in many ways. My family have been here for centuries, the same tenants living always on the land. Unless you give me your word that you will not try to escape, I shall let it be known that you are suffering with a mental disorder which makes you think you are the victim of a kidnap plot …’

He was still watching her, and Hope knew with a sickening sense of certainty that he meant every word he said. Dear God, how she longed to be able to do something …anything to break through that implacable mask, to hurt and destroy him as he had done her.

‘I’ve changed my mind,’ she said bitterly, ‘I don’t want to go out to dinner after all.’ She turned away, refusing to look at him although she was aware that he was standing up and then walking towards the dressing room.

‘Very well,’ he said from the door. ‘I shall instruct Pierre to prepare something for you.’ He went on fastening his shirt, and it was several seconds before the implications of his words sank in. He would still be dining out, she would be eating alone. Hard on the heels of the knowledge came a sense of … disappointment? No, simply one of anticlimax, Hope assured herself, anticlimax because her opponent had removed himself from the ring. The action of someone who knows he cannot win, she told herself, but somehow the thought was not convincing. If ever a man knew exactly how to win, it was Alexei.

Pierre brought her meal into the library, placing the tray on a small table in front of the fire. It was some kind of casserole, and Hope saw that he had also opened a bottle of wine and set the tray with a glass. The wine bore the crest of an eagle and Alexei’s name and she sipped it cautiously. Although they had been taught to recognise all the great vintages, and how to select the correct wine to serve with a meal, Hope had seldom tasted any.

The liquid she had poured into her glass was pale gold, sharp and clean to the palate, bringing out the flavour of the chicken in its delicate sauce. The world, which had seemed a grey hopeless place when she first came down to the library, suddenly seemed less oppressive. In fact, she could well understand why people drank, Hope decided owlishly as she poured herself a second glass.

She was halfway through her third when Pierre came to remove the tray and replace it with a pot of coffee, and Hope felt that the warm, slightly hazy cloud enveloping her was a definite improvement on the terrifying misery that had gripped her ever since Alexei had told her of his plans. Recognising that she was probably a little drunk, she contemplated the coffee pensively and then decided that her present delightfully relaxed state was infinitely preferable to sobriety.

The Sisters would be shocked if they could see her! For some reason the thought of the convent was so upsetting that Hope took another few gulps from her glass, dismayed to discover how the room whirled colourfully round her when she tried to stand up. Her only clear thought as she walked unsteadily upstairs was that at least she was spared the ordeal of having Alexei witness her foolishness. Deep down inside herself she knew that there could be no escape, and the rosy glow of good-feeling fostered by the wine started to fade as she opened the bedroom door and stared at the bed. There was no key in the door and somehow she knew that if she found another bedroom Alexei would only seek her out and bring her back. A small sob-turned-hiccup broke the silence of the darkened room.

It was only ten o’clock, but suddenly she felt very tired, so tired that she almost fell asleep in the bath, but at last she was dry and wearing one of the thin silk nightgowns she felt she hated, her body a tiny bump in the vastness of a bed plainly meant for dual occupation. Just as her eyes closed, for a brief heartbeat her mind cleared and Hope had a vivid impression of how her life would now be, her soul in perpetual torment, unless, as Alexei had suggested, she found a way to live with what had happened, to build on it and grow from it … Could he be right? Was the world not as clearly divided into black and white, good and evil as the Sisters had taught her? She couldn’t withstand him physically, but her mind was still her own, still inviolate, and she could keep it that way …

CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_f92ece5b-e049-590c-ab69-2db1b16d349b)

HOPE was dreaming. It was an intensely pleasurable dream. She was lying on a warm beach, the heat of the sun caressing every part of her body, its touch so relaxing that she felt as though her flesh and bones were dissolving, becoming part of the sun’s warmth, fluid and formless. But all the time at the back of her mind was the fear that something would take the sun away from her and that without it she would no longer be able to enjoy the languorous pleasure its touch brought.

Even as she enjoyed its caress her fears grew bigger, growing from a small cloud to a large one, a shadow stalking across the sand, obliterating the heat of the sun, depriving her of its touch. The shadow took on human form. Her heart started to pound, her mouth dry with fear as she struggled to recognise the formless person standing over her, knowing that she could recognise the features while struggling to put a name to them, until it swirled from the depths of her subconsciousness, forcing its way past her lips, breaking and shattering her dream, bringing her shiveringly awake, suddenly conscious of her whereabouts and Alexei’s arm curving her possessively against his body.

‘Hope? Are you all right?’ Any hopes she had had that her dream had been pure imagination were shattered as Hope recognised the impatience edging his voice.

‘I was having a dream,’ she muttered, suddenly conscious of the spread of his hand against her midriff, and the pleasurable heat of his body against her back, the same heat she had been dreaming about when …

‘You called for your father. Why? Were you dreaming about him rescuing you?’

The warmth of his hand seemed to radiate right through her body, and Hope had to restrain a small murmur of protest when it lifted, both hands going to her shoulders and turning her so that they were face to face.

‘I can’t remember what I was dreaming about,’ she lied huskily, ‘but isn’t it only natural that I should want my father, that I should dream that he is helping me …’

‘Quite natural, but you cried his name in pain and rejection, Hope, and the tears came afterwards, not before. In short, you were crying because of your father and not for him.’

She wanted to deny it, but all her energy was absorbed in trying to understand her own emotions. When the dark head bent towards her she made no move to avoid it, lying boneless and unresisting as Alexei’s mouth brushed her lips.

‘Pierre has been giving you the Serivace wine, I can taste it on your mouth.’ His tongue licked along the outline of her lips and something seemed to quiver into life inside her, fragile and trembling. She must still be suffering from the after-effects of the alcohol she had consumed, Hope thought dizzily as she lay motionless while Alexei removed her nightgown. She knew she ought to resist, yet she was too curiously weak to do any more than simply follow the movements of the lean brown hands as they dispensed with the fine silk, the moonlight revealing the hard contours of Alexei’s body to her as he thrust back the covers, propping himself up on one elbow to study her silvered curves in silence.

As he watched her Hope felt something happening inside her. It was the same sensation she had experienced during her dream, only this time the heat seemed to come from within herself, spreading languorously through her body, the alcohol relaxing her mind and undermining her defences, so that although she could register the slow movement of Alexei’s hand as it drifted over her body, it was with curiosity rather than tense panic. Her skin relayed the fact that the hardness of his palm and fingertips against her was pleasurable rather than painful, and her mind noted hazily that he was touching her rather as one might stroke a cat, and she felt the same urge to stretch and luxuriate beneath the slow caress.

If she closed her eyes the urge became even stronger, her senses oddly sharpened so that she was acutely aware of the differing textures of their skins. Her breath suddenly caught as Alexei’s hand reached her breasts, his palm cupping one gently until she felt weak with the surging sensation of her own flesh, the need to press herself into his hand, a tugging, aching sensation beginning somewhere deep inside her so intense that in ordinary circumstances it would have sent alarm signals racing to her brain. But now it only made her open her eyes in hazy surprise—not even the suddenly brilliant green of Alexei’s gaze alerting her to impending danger.

It was only when Alexei removed his hand and she glanced down and saw the unfamiliar burgeoning of her breasts, her nipples swollen and aching, that awareness finally pierced through her sleep and alcohol-induced haze, her mind shrinking in panic from the knowledge that she was exposing herself to Alexei like a … like a slave girl bent on teasing and arousing her master.

Instinctively, she knew that the languorous curves of her body were provocative, deliberately enticing the smooth brush of his hand against her, and the knowledge shocked her into panic, her body tensing, the fierce intensity of Alexei’s gaze shifting from her body to her face, his hands clamping on her shoulders forcing her back against the bed, stroking and soothing until panic gave way to a return of her earlier languor. This time it was very much against her will, her mind revolting against the weakness of her body, even while she admitted her inability to do anything about it.

By the time Alexei’s mouth touched the pulsing nerve at the base of her throat, her body was already a quivering mass of responsiveness. She should never have drunk all that wine, she thought weakly, subduing a small moan of pleasure as Alexei’s lips teased the smooth skin of her throat, tracing a line of tiny kisses from her ear to her lips. His breath was warm against her face as his tongue drew the shape of her mouth, his voice husky as he instructed her to part the lips she had tightened against him, teasing her with light kisses until she did so, her body’s involuntary response to the warm possession of his mouth making her tremble convulsively as he held her against him, deepening and intensifying the kiss until nothing else existed.

Vaguely, Hope was aware of Alexei’s hand resting at the top of her thigh, her lungs drawing in deep breaths of air, her body still trembling from the impact of his kiss. His teeth nibbled gently on her ear-lobe, waves of sensation exploding inside her as he explored the shape and curves of her ear, one hand holding her securely against him, the other …

She gasped and tensed, trying to pull away, trying to stop his hand from parting her legs, her small fists making no impression against the breadth of his shoulders, shock and outrage rapidly overtaken by sensations she tried to deny. Her eyes widened in stunned reaction, and she looked straight into Alexei’s face, hard-boned and watchful, something fierce and elemental glittering behind the impassive shadows in his eyes. The touch of his fingers made her writhe and gasp, hating him for touching her so intimately—what he was doing to her was worse, far worse than what he had done last night—and yet unable to prevent her body from responding almost deliriously to him.

‘Stop it. Stop it,’ she panted unsteadily, fingers curling into her palms as she tried to move away, but his free hand merely curled round her throat, tilting her head back until the pale skin was fully exposed. His lips moving lingeringly along it, his kisses punctuated with softly murmured sounds of pleasure, and a furious desperation was building up inside her. Barely aware of what she was doing, Hope uncurled her fingers from her palms, transferring them to Alexei’s shoulders, small whimpers of pleasure forced past her tightly-closed lips, her body abandoning her, seduced by Alexei’s touch, the aching urgency below her stomach increasing in time with the waves of sensation burning through her, her body trembling violently.

Gradually, the touch of Alexei’s hand became soothing rather than arousing, comforting her for the vague sensation of disappointment that somehow lingered, her mind too confused and bewildered by the reactions of her body to martial what was left of its defences. When Alexei’s mouth left her throat to explore the slope of her shoulder she was too exhausted to protest, too drained to even move when his hands cupped her breasts, his lips exploring their curves.

It wasn’t until she felt the rasp of his tongue against her nipple that Hope felt a resurgence of that earlier sensation, a tensing in the pit of her stomach, and then the slow uncoiling of tense muscles, the heady, liquid warmth that spread right through her urging her shamelessly to abandon herself both to the feeling and to the man arousing it.

She heard Alexei’s hoarse murmur of satisfaction as she stretched against him, but it was lost in her own sharp cry of pleasure as his mouth closed once again over her tautly erect nipple, his eyes closing and the moonlight revealing the dark surge of colour to his face as his body responded to the taste and feel of her, the ache inside her still unappeased when he eventually released her swollen flesh.

Hope shivered in rejection as she felt him move away, her mind telling her that what he was doing was wrong, but her body wantonly aching for closer contact with his maleness.

‘Hope, open your eyes.’