Helen Bianchin - The Wedding Ultimatum

‘Watch me.’

‘You’re nothing but a tyrannical bully!’

He unfastened the towel knotted at his waist and tossed it aside. ‘I’ll wear only so many insults.’ He slid in beneath the covers. ‘Get into bed, Danielle.’

‘What if I don’t?’

Dark eyes pierced hers. ‘I’ll put you there.’

A lock of hair fell forward onto her cheek, and she tucked it back behind her ear in an involuntary gesture.

Capitulation was born out of wisdom…for now. Although she didn’t feel particularly wise as she reluctantly slid into bed. In a final gesture of defiance she turned her back towards him and hugged the edge of the mattress.

Something that gave her little satisfaction, for he merely snapped off the light, plunging the room into darkness, and she lay there tense, listening to his breathing slow into a steady rhythm.

How could he slip so easily to sleep? Too much practice in the face of danger? Or a finely tuned mechanism that permitted him to wake at the slightest sound, the faintest move?

What had he witnessed in his youth to have created such a hard exterior? Had fate dealt him such a difficult hand that he had no heart?

Could the right woman change his perspective? Could she?

Dear lord, what was she thinking? Her sole purpose in his life was to produce a child, then, following the requisite time span, move on.

Besides, what woman would willingly welcome a man of Rafe Valdez’s calibre into her life?

Many, she admitted with obvious reluctance. The size of his cheque-book guaranteed obsequious adoration from the trophy wife prepared to be both gracious hostess and a seductive mistress. In all probability, willing to gift him a child.

So why her, when he could have chosen any one of several young women?

Because she refused to conform, and frequently opted for confrontation? Even to her detriment?

Or was it simply circumstance, as he’d claimed? Let’s not forget the d’Alboa lineage, she added silently.

Did it really matter?

With a faint sigh she attempted to ease her tense body. Curled into a tight ball on the edge of a mattress was not her normal sleeping position.

She was already beginning to feel the tightness in several muscles. And she hurt, inside and out. Her breast ached from his retaliatory bite, and she ran her tongue over the tissues inside her mouth where he’d heartlessly ground them against her teeth.

It would be so easy to indulge in a crying jag. Wasn’t there some analogy that credited weeping as a release to soothe the soul?

One solitary tear spilled and ran warmly down her cheek, and she brushed it away in angry rejection.

It was a while before she slipped into an uneasy sleep, from which she stirred to Rafe’s touch as early dawn fingered the day’s first light through the shuttered windows.

His sexual appetite ran to night and morning? Maybe if she simply lay there…

Fool, she accorded minutes later as warmth flooded her veins. He played her like a finely tuned instrument, seeking an unbidden response that had her clinging to him like a craven wanton.

Afterwards she slept, and when she woke it was morning, the space in the bed beside her empty.

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