Читать книгу The Sheikh's Unwilling Wife - Шэрон Кендрик, Sharon Kendrick - Страница 10

ALEXA stared at Giovanni, her heart now beating very fast.

‘You want what?’ she echoed incredulously, as if somehow she might have misheard him—though in reality every silk-dipped word had been as clear as the look of enjoyment on his dark, rugged face. He was getting a kick out of this, she thought.

‘Stop playing for time, Alexa—it really is very simple. Come with me to Kharastan,’he murmured, and his eyes narrowed in sardonic query. ‘You can afford to be so blasé about it?’ he mused. ‘I confess myself surprised—after all, it isn’t every day that a woman gets an invitation to a royal wedding. Doesn’t the prospect of that tempt you?’

She guessed that there were women who would have been thrilled to bits by the prospect of such a high-status event—no matter what the price they had to pay to get there. But Alexa wasn’t the kind of woman who could be swayed or seduced by money or trappings. Hadn’t she left every item of clothing and jewellery behind in Naples when she had fled the marriage?

‘You have to be out of your mind!’ she choked. ‘Give me one good reason why I should accompany you anywhere?’

‘Because you are my wife.’

‘In name only.

‘In name is enough.’

‘Not for me, it isn’t.’

‘But I am talking about my needs, cara—not yours.’

Alexa picked up her wine glass and managed to successfully negotiate a mouthful of wine before putting it tremblingly back down on the table. She felt it burning its way down to her stomach, but at least it gave her a little bit of courage.

‘You’re not making sense, Giovanni—and even if you were the answer would be the same. It’s no. How could it possibly be anything else, in the circumstances?’ She could see that stony, obdurate look she knew so well on his face. ‘There must be women who would queue up around the block to accompany you!’

He stilled, and when he spoke his voice was as cold as ice. ‘You would not care? It does not bother you to think of me taking another woman?’

She injected bravado into her voice. ‘Why should it?’

So she did have the calculating heart of a woman who could just walk away from a marriage without a backward glance or single regret. Hadn’t there been some small and crazy part of him which thought she might react—that she might have cared?

Giovanni’s face darkened with a rage which made him want to hurt her. ‘It does not concern you to think of me kissing her? Nor to imagine me deep inside her body, with her legs wrapped tight around my back, until she cries out her pleasure?’

Unprepared for his sexual taunt, Alexa was not expecting the hot swell of nausea which rose up within her. She flinched. ‘Giovanni—’

His mouth curved and he made no attempt to hide the triumph which washed over him in a heady wave. ‘Of course it does!’he gloated. ‘You would have to be made out of stone for it not to affect you.’

And nobody could accuse her of that. Her body had been soft and warm. It had trembled violently beneath his touch as if he’d been a virtuoso playing a brand-new instrument. Where he had led, she had been content to follow—he had drawn up the boundaries of their sexual relationship and she had seemed happy to comply with them. When she had nodded in flushed agreement to his stern suggestion that they wait until after the wedding before they consummated their relationship, he had known a thrill of expectant pride like no other.