He thrust the folded-up parcel at her as if it was contaminating him, and Sorcha felt like crying, laughing and screaming all at the same time. What would he say if she told him that this was exactly what she had been about to do before being interrupted?
With shaking hands she emptied it into the toilet, flus.h.i.+ng the offending drug away. The sound was magnified unbearably in the tense atmosphere. With legs shaking so much that she"d fall if she didn"t sit, she sank back onto the side of the bath. She looked at the ground. She had to try something.
"Romain-"
"I don"t want to hear it."
She looked up, her eyes huge, beseeching, and quailed at the coldness she saw in his face. It was nothing like she"d ever experienced.
She tried again. "It"s not what you-"
He laughed harshly, arms crossed against his chest. Arms that had just now held her so tight she"d never wanted him to let her go. She ached inside.
"Think? That"s original. No wonder you were in such a hurry after lunch. Tell me..." he said, and he relaxed back against the sink, one hip propped up. But the lines of his body screamed anything but relaxed. "Was the whole purpose of your little walk just now to get drugs? Is that why you were so eager to get away? Because you needed a fix? Did you have someone lined up before we even got here? I"m interested to know how this would work. Do you call ahead. Or is it-"
"Stop it!" Her hands gripped the edge of the bath as she tried to make sense of what he was saying, the barrage of questions. "I...How do you...?"
"How do I know you took a walk?" he asked. "Because I was taking a walk myself, and saw you go into the temple."
His mouth twisted as he remembered following her. Being captivated by her.
He looked unbearably harsh. "Charming picture. Playing with the kids...taking photos...lighting incense." He shook his head. "Dieu...what a fool I am. You were on your way to pick up your stash. I actually thought-"
He cut himself off. His eyes were so glacial that Sorcha felt as if a layer of her skin was being peeled off slowly. But she couldn"t take her eyes from his.
"I lost you, though...after the market where you bought that salwaar kameez. That"s obviously when you went off to find your little...contact."
She shook her head miserably and stood, legs still shaking.
"I promise you...it"s not what you think."
"Promise me? That"s rich." He stood upright and towered over her in the small s.p.a.ce. "To think that in Dublin when you asked if I would believe you"d never touched drugs I actually thought about it...considered it...I would have believed it if I"d heard nothing but your chain of lies today. But only a mere hour after telling me breathlessly about the outreach centre, how important it is, you"re-"
A look flashed across his face, and as if he"d said too much he cursed in French and strode back out into the bedroom.
Sorcha followed him, stood at the door of the bathroom. He had his back to her, looking out of the patio doors. She didn"t know where to start, what to say. She could see exactly how he would construe events...words...and could only watch his taut, unrelenting back helplessly. And even in the midst of this the memory of how it had felt...He turned and fixed her with those cold eyes, and immediately her skin flushed guiltily. As if he could see her shameful thoughts.
"What are you going to do?" she asked bravely, and steeled herself.
He looked at her for a long moment. She could almost see the cogs whirring in that sharp brain. And then, as if having come to a decision, he strolled nonchalantly towards her. His face was unbearably cold, but the look in his eyes was full of desirous intent. His demeanour spelt absolute danger. Sorcha instinctively grabbed onto the wall beside her as he came close. She looked up helplessly. Ensnared.
And suddenly she thought of something.
Without pa.s.sing it through the filter in her brain, she found herself blurting out, "Look, I know why you"re reacting like this. I know what happened with your mother..."
CHAPTER ELEVEN.
HE STOPPED dead in front of her, and immediately she knew she"d made one of the biggest errors of her life. He froze. His face became a mask of non-reaction, his eyes glittering jewel-hard shards of icy grey. He spoke after what felt like aeons, and his words dripped with disdain and disgust.
"What do you know?"
It was a question but Sorcha wasn"t foolish enough to open her mouth again.
"Maud told you. It can only have been her. What did she tell you?"
This person before her was someone Sorcha had never seen. Even at his most dismissive, judging...this cold creature hadn"t existed. A thousand miles gaped between this man and the man who"d taken her for lunch, the man who had kissed her.
He moved closer, and Sorcha tried to move back but the wall was in her way. She wanted to apologise, wanted to tell him that he was scaring her.
"Did Maud tell you that my mother was addicted to opium since she was a child growing up in Vietnam?"
Sorcha, horribly mesmerized by his nearness and eyes, just shook her head.
"Did Maud tell you that she lived her whole life in a drug-fuelled haze?"
Again she shook her head, horror spreading through her. He came even closer. She could feel his body now, his chest moving up and down against hers, and to her utter self-loathing she could feel herself respond, her nipples tightening.
"Did she tell you that she only came out of it long enough to have me and my older half-brother? To make two unhappy marriages?"
Sorcha couldn"t do anything. He was so close now that she could feel his breath. His head came close and a hand was cupping her jaw, angling her head up to his. Please, she wanted to beg. Stop.
"Did she tell you that at the age of seventeen I found her dead body? Bloated and almost unrecognisable from an overdose?"
An ache clogged Sorcha"s throat, and her eyes stung. With his hand cupping her jaw she couldn"t move her head. She opened her mouth to try and say something, to reach him, and he took advantage, driving his mouth down on hers, full of pent-up aggression and anger.
Sorcha"s hand had come up to his, to try and take it away, but in her shock she left it there. His words were swirling in her head, but all she could feel was him, wrapping his arms around her again, his tongue dancing erotically with hers. He was relentless, a master of her senses, and she could do nothing but succ.u.mb even as she felt a tear trickle out from under one eyelid and down her cheek.
After a long, long moment Romain pulled back with a jerky, violent movement and looked down at her. He shook with reaction-to what he"d just revealed, to what he"d found on Sorcha"s person, and most of all to the way she was making him feel. To the way she held his body in her spell. He could see wetness on her cheek, where a lone tear had left its mark, but instead of inciting concern, he welcomed the hardness that settled in every bone. She was looking up at him with those big eyes. Lips trembling, plump from his kiss. And he would have her. Even though it went against every moral principle he"d held dear. Even though he"d hate himself. Because he couldn"t not.
"You asked what I"m going to do, Sorcha...well, this is what I"m going to do. I"m going to take your delectable body when I"m good and ready. And I"m going to sate myself with you, burn myself free of this desire I feel."
Sorcha swallowed painfully, her head and insides in absolute chaotic turmoil. "But...you mean...you"re not going to send me home?"
He shook his head and a cruel smile touched his mouth. "No way. At this stage that would cost me money..." He trailed a finger down her cheek and around her jaw. "And cost me my sanity. You"re going to finish the job...as my mistress..."
Long after he had left the room, with nothing more than a curt reminder to be ready to leave for the set at five in the morning, Sorcha sat on the bed in a daze. With a weird, bizarre calmness that she knew was shock, she was thinking of all the advances she"d had from men over the years.
She"d inevitably found their attentions unwelcome, jarring, and very uns.e.xy. As a result, she was vastly inexperienced when it came to men and s.e.x. She had an ongoing fear that somehow she was cold, or frigid. More than one man had hurled those words at her. But, any man who"d tried to touch her with any kind of intimacy had left her feeling cold. And yet Romain was making her feel anything but frigid. Even when subjecting her to his ice-cold disdain.
Why, oh why, did it have to be him? She lay back, rolled over, and curled up into a foetal position. She could never be intimate with someone who was judging her so harshly, even though she knew she couldn"t blame him for this latest development. She had chosen to protect Lucy, and he"d had all the ammunition ready and lined up for just such a situation. And mentioning his mother? She squeezed her eyes shut, the pain of his words still sinking in like knives. She concentrated her breathing and forced her mind away from it, from the sympathy that still gripped her.
In turmoil, she thought of his autocratic a.s.surance that he would make her his mistress. She knew that he wouldn"t have to do much. He"d pretty much established that just by looking at her she turned to jelly and was his. It was pathetic.
She couldn"t stop her mind going back...Eight years ago something had happened to her. And even to this day she wasn"t sure what. How could she explain that to someone who was the least likely to believe her explanation of how she"d ended up in that awful spiral of events? She"d always expected that the moment she decided to let someone be totally intimate with her would be the moment she revealed herself fully. She"d never done that with anyone. Not even Katie or her brother-and they were the only people she trusted in the world.
How could she sleep with someone...with him...when she didn"t even know for sure if she was a virgin? She grimaced painfully. She was sure on an intellectual level that she was. But on some other level, deep down, enough doubt that had been placed in her mind to question herself...and that was a torture she only wanted to share with someone gentle enough, sensitive enough to handle it. She knew well how awful it would sound if she tried to explain, as though. As though- She couldn"t even go there with herself.
She buried her face in the bed, as if to block her predicament out completely. She wasn"t successful.
Sorcha moved from behind a leafy palm and stepped into the glittering white of the inner courtyard. It was dusk. A s.h.i.+mmering pool in the middle offered up reflections of the surrounding intricately carved walls. A bird of paradise flew through in a quicksilver flash of colour. Lotus flowers sat on the water like flowering jewels. And there, on the other side of this oasis of beauty, stood her lover, waiting for her. She walked slowly, as if in a dream, felt the silk of her long dress moving like liquid satin against her legs. She reached him. A stunning portrait of handsome perfection in a black tuxedo. He pulled her into his arms and kissed her.
Simon"s voice rang out. "That"s great, Sorcha and Zane. We"ll do it one more time, and then it"s Dominic"s turn."
Sorcha smiled at Zane as he let her go. It was a brittle smile, and hid the aching hurt in her throat and chest. It had taken Lucy a lot longer today to do her make-up, after her sleepless night, and it hadn"t been helped by the girl"s monosyllabic bad mood. Sorcha couldn"t feel bad as she was the one who had acted on a reflex, taken the drugs from her and decided to protect her.
She had refused to acknowledge or look to where she knew Romain stood behind a monitor, watching proceedings as they were filmed. Except just now, walking over to Zane, trying desperately to act her heart out, she"d found a lean, autocratic face coming into her mind"s eye, superimposing itself onto Zane"s features. And it was actually only six-thirty a.m. They were pretending it was dusk. There was a whole lot of day left to get through.
By midday, Romain was pacing like a caged tiger. Seeing Sorcha at the crack of dawn in a dress that was breathtakingly indecent was testing his control to the limit. Along with the fact that she hadn"t acknowledged him once, and skittered away if he came near her. Right now she was seated on the corner of the set. She was a picture of contradictions that made his head swim. And the inarticulate rage from yesterday was still close under the surface.
The long, flowing silver-grey dress clung precariously to the soft swells of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. A diamond clipped just under her bosom was the only feature, and the dress fell from there to the floor in a swirling symphony of silk. What had made his trousers feel tight all morning was the fact that it had an artful thigh-high slit. So when she walked one long, lithe and luscious leg peeped out in all its lissome glory.
His decision, his announcement to her that he would take her as his mistress, was making it hard for him to rein in the desire. He cursed himself again for not just taking her last night. Why had he left her alone?
Uncomfortably, he knew why. Because too much had happened, too quickly. He"d reeled with the shock of coming face to face with her duplicity, with the hard evidence...the image of that white powder still made his stomach contract. Reeled at the fact that all along she had been playing him, with what he"d revealed about his mother, and reeled at how, even after all this, he could still want her. Even more. It burned him up inside.
He couldn"t take his eyes off her. With her hair piled high, exposing a long graceful neck, she looked like a teenager playing dress-up. Her shoes were off, her legs were crossed, one small bare foot peeping out from under the folds of silk. Her brow was creased over her gla.s.ses in concentration as she read her book.
Who was she trying to kid?
After lunch, Sorcha waited for them to get the next set-up ready. She was congratulating herself on having managed to avoid Romain all morning, but every time she saw where they"d had lunch the previous day, on the other side of the courtyard, she felt ill. Clammy and sweaty.
She heard Dominic call for her impatiently. He had it in for her today, and she could only imagine that Lucy must have told him what she"d done. She prayed that he wouldn"t make an issue of it. She should have guessed that things wouldn"t be going her way...
Hours later everyone was crabby: a mixture of the dense, heavy heat and the jet lag which some were still suffering from. Dominic had become so unbearable that Sorcha felt compelled to go over to him and say something-anything, to get him to lay off. She"d even seen Romain raise a brow at one stage, when he"d been sharp to the point of rudeness. When she confronted him he turned on her, making her blanch, and real fear struck her. It was only then that she realised they were cut off from everyone else, behind a huge plant.
He gripped her arm at the elbow, drawing her further into seclusion, and Sorcha bit back a retort.
"How dare you play almighty G.o.d with Lucy? It"s none of your business what-"
Sorcha refused to let the fear rise, to be bullied, and she rallied back. "It is my business when it"s offered to me, Dominic. And what are you doing, giving her that kind of stuff anyway? She"s barely out of her teens."
He smirked, and it was ugly. "Yet she pleasures me every night like an adult."
Sorcha felt bile rise, and tried to wrestle her arm away-but his wiry strength was too much.
"But you know, Sorch, I"d much prefer to taste your sweetness. Christian told me all about you...how sweet you taste..."
A black hole threatened to consume Sorcha. Her deepest, darkest fear was being articulated out loud, here, by this odious man.
"Come on, Sorch, just a kiss..."
He pulled her into his wiry body, and she struggled in earnest now. This was a nightmare. What had possessed her to think she could reason with someone like this?
Bending away so far that it felt her back might break, she still felt hot breath on her neck. Panic gripped her. She pushed against him. "Dominic-no!"
"Come on...just pretend it"s lover boy..."
His mouth touched her skin. She felt teeth. A wave of dizziness washed over her, and then in an instant he was gone, pulled back so brutally that she went forward with him, and would have fallen if Romain hadn"t caught her, an arm holding her steady away from Dominic.
"This is not the time or place." His voice was so chilling that Sorcha was reminded of the previous day. "Now, go back out there and finish the job you"ve been paid to do."
Dominic just nodded, a mottled flush on his cheeks, his eyes overbright. Sorcha couldn"t believe it. He was high! How had she not even noticed?
When he had gone, Romain turned Sorcha to face him. She was shaking all over. He didn"t allow it to move him. He was still hard and unrelenting.
"We"ll talk about this later."
He had a hand under her arm and was leading her back outside. Her neck still stung from where Dominic had practically bitten her, and she still couldn"t believe it. Did Romain really think that he"d interrupted them lovemaking?
Forcing herself not to let a wave of self-pity engulf her, Sorcha called on all her professional pride and somehow got through the rest of the day. When they wrapped she stuck close to Val, and made sure she was on a boat with him. Dark shades covered her bruised eyes. Her mouth was a grim line. When she got off the boat and she heard a familiar voice behind her she stopped, but didn"t turn around. Her slim shoulders were rigid with tension.
Romain came and stood in front of her. She could see the rest of the crew walking away towards the hotel.
"You can avoid me all you want, Sorcha, but ultimately you won"t be able to. You know that, don"t you? And you will tell me what was going on with Dominic."
She said nothing. Didn"t move. If she had looked she"d have seen his jaw clench angrily at her stony silence.
Romain could see her throat work. Dark shades covered her eyes, and he nearly moved to take them off but at the last minute didn"t. Almost as though he was afraid of what he might see...?
Instead he cupped a hand around her jaw, felt the delicate line and saw a pulse jump in response.
"Be down in the lobby for dinner at seven." His voice was silky, deadly. "And if you"re not I will come and get you."
That evening Sorcha stepped out of the lift at seven on the dot. She was dressed traditionally in a salwaar kameez with her hair pulled back, plain hoop earrings, and she had her gla.s.ses on. Protective armour.
Romain watched her approach and felt the familiar tightening happen in his body at the way the black material clung and curved around her body, the tight trousers under the tunic making her legs look long and slim. Tonight he would have her. Make her pay.
To Sorcha"s intense relief she saw the rest of the crew and remembered that they were all going for dinner together. A reprieve. She made for Val, seeking protection but Romain blocked her before she could get to him.
He could see the frustration on her face, but he took her arm, and unless she wanted to create a scene Sorcha would have to leave it there. He made a joke with Simon, and then led the way down the street to a beautiful restaurant on the sh.o.r.es of the lake.
When Sorcha saw that Romain meant to have her sit next to him, and that Dominic looked likely to be on the other side of her, it was too much. She didn"t care. She reacted on pure, desperate impulse and grabbed Romain"s hand, making him look at her with surprise, his dark brows drawing together.
She entreated with her eyes, with all she had. It was the first thing she"d said to him all day and her voice sounded unbearably husky. "Please. I don"t want to sit next to him."
She couldn"t stop a shudder running through her, and Romain"s frown drew even deeper as he noticed the minute movement. He looked to his side and saw Dominic taking a seat. For some reason, and not wanting to look too closely at why, he just nodded perfunctorily and let himself sit between Dominic and Sorcha.
An hour later Sorcha was pus.h.i.+ng food around her plate. It was still heaped high with food that she couldn"t touch, because her insides were churning so much.
"Smile, Sorcha, you look as if you"re going to the gallows. And you haven"t eaten all day. You should make some effort."