Читать книгу Rings of Gold: Gold Ring of Betrayal / The Marriage Surrender / The Unforgettable Husband - Michelle Reid - Страница 13

AND that was it. Sara was trapped. Trapped by necessity. Trapped by her own body, which would respond to the slightest touch from the man who had reawoken it to its pleasures. And did he pleasure her! Night after night, hungrily, devouringly. But she never woke up to him still there beside her, and that trapped her too—trapped her in a tight little world of self-disgust and helplessness because she could not do a single thing to change the status quo, his status quo, where she played the loving wife and he played the ravaging conqueror.

She was trapped by his ruthless determination to appear the master of his own household by making her sleep with him, eat in the dining room with him and his father, where she was polite to Alfredo but that was about all and Alfredo teased her with cleverly chosen words with double meanings that she did not dare react to for fear of bringing Nicolas’s wrath down on her head.

And she was trapped by her daughter, who loved it here and, worse than that, adored Alfredo. A daughter whom Nicolas had managed to avoid at every possible opportunity, so they only came together on very rare occasions, when he would be coolly polite and the little girl would be warily cautious. And Sara would feel her heart break a little more each time she witnessed the guarded manner of both.

Then there was that terrible trapped feeling she experienced when twice a week Nicolas would take himself off to Taormina and not come back until late in the night. Those were the only nights he didn’t touch her. And that trapped her too, because she wanted him to touch her, she wanted him to come from his mistress and still need her, still need to drown himself in her kisses, her body, her arms, her—

Love.

And, God, but she didn’t know how long she could go on bearing all of this—bearing the fact that she did not dare say anything about his precious Anastasia because Alfredo’s lies about herself had robbed her of the right!

Then came the big crunch, which she supposed had to do with so much pressure building up inside her. They were a month into this awful situation and Nicolas had not been away once. He worked from his office here in the villa and spent most of his time there, only appearing for the odd working lunch with his father, which Sara was not expected to attend, and every dinner, which she was. And from there he would either escort her back to their room for a night of heated passion or out to his mistress, leaving her to weep alone in their bed. Then her period came, and he added further insult to injury by disappearing to Taormina for the next five nights.