His Independent Bride: Wife Against Her Will / The Wedlocked Wife / Bertoluzzi's Heiress Bride. Catherine Spencer
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arms as Harry pulled her against him.
‘I’m one of your guests, sweetheart,’ he said thickly. ‘I need some entertaining too.’
Shock immobilised her. Turned her rigid. His face seemed to swim in front of her, the grinning mouth descending towards hers. Instinctively she closed her eyes to blot him out, as bile rose acridly in her throat.
Then, above the roaring in her ears, she heard Joel’s voice saying quietly, ‘Good evening.’
The punishing grip was suddenly released, and she stepped quickly back, stumbling as her heel caught on a tile, her eyes turning towards the doorway, where he stood, watchful and unsmiling.
Her heart seemed to lurch suddenly.
‘My dear Joel,’ Harry drawled. ‘I was just mentioning your capacity to intervene at exactly the wrong moment, and here you are again.’ He flicked Darcy’s chin with a casual finger. ‘Sorry, my pet. It seems that our little reunion will have to wait for a more auspicious moment.’
‘No,’ Joel said, without expression. ‘It will not. And don’t feel constrained to stay for the rest of the party,’ he added, walking slowly into the conservatory. ‘I’ll gladly make your excuses.’
‘You mean you’re throwing me out?’ Harry mocked. ‘I suppose it is one of your specialities, old boy.’ He paused, his smile calculating. ‘But all the same, there’s no need to lose your cool. Just because I had her first.’
Darcy saw Joel’s facial muscles tense, and his eyes go blank. Violence suddenly hung in the air like the smell of burning, so real and fierce that she almost choked on it.
‘Joel, no.’ Her voice cracked. ‘Please don’t. You mustn’t…’
As the silence lengthened, Harry walked jauntily past him, and disappeared. Leaving them alone together.
‘What’s the matter?’ Joel said at last, his voice of steel. ‘Afraid I might damage that pretty face of his?’
Afraid, she echoed silently—numbly. Yes, she’d been scared out of her wits, but for a very different reason.
She lifted her chin. Met the harsh blue ice of his gaze. ‘I know what you must be thinking.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t believe you do. At least I hope not.’ She swallowed, then tried again. ‘But it wasn’t as it looked. Really.’
‘No?’ he queried coldly. ‘You mean you hadn’t sneaked out of our supposed engagement party to be alone with him? And you weren’t in his arms, with your eyes closed, waiting for him to kiss you?’
She said huskily, ‘You really believe that I deliberately invited that?’
‘Why not? We can hardly pretend that you and Metcalfe don’t have unfinished business.’ His tone was molten. ‘But, apart from the fact that you’re nominally engaged to me, did you conveniently forget that he has a wife—a girl worth twenty of him—who’s about to give birth to their first child? Or did nothing matter to you but the passion of the moment?’
Darcy went on staring back at him, her head feeling suddenly hollow. Was it passion? she wondered. This feeling that you’d been smeared with slime? That you’d been made unclean? And that nothing would ever make it right?
Of course, she thought. That’s it. To Joel, I’ll always be suspect. The spoiled little tramp who chases other women’s men.
It would never occur to him that Harry was going to kiss me against my will. Or that it could have destroyed me.
His only concern is ensuring there’s no betrayal of the girl he loves.
The cousin who chose someone else instead of him.
It’s Emma that he wants to protect, her capacity for hurt that must be shielded at all costs. Not mine. Not ever mine. Because I only cause pain. I don’t feel it.
She felt a soft moan rising inside her, and bit it back.
‘The saintly Emma,’ she said, her tone light and hard, as she fought the unexpected, unwanted pain inside her. ‘No, I certainly wouldn’t forget about her.’ Or, my God, the torch you’re carrying for her. Harry was so right about that at least.
‘And that’s all you have to say?’ he asked harshly. ‘No excuse to make?’
She shrugged. ‘I could say a great deal, but what’s the point? And now that I’ve been tried and condemned all over again,’ she added defiantly, ‘maybe you’ll allow me to rejoin our guests.’
Her heels clicked on the tiles as she headed almost blindly for the door.
‘Darcy—wait.’ Joel suddenly came after her. His hands were on her shoulders, turning her squarely to face him. His voice was strained. ‘If you want me to understand, why not try to offer an explanation? Talk to me. I’m ready to listen.’
To other people, she thought with sudden anguish. But not to me. Your mind is made up.
She shook herself free, her face and voice cool with challenge. ‘Joel, surely you must know that you’re the last person I’d ever confide in about anything. Now may I get back to the party? Please?’
‘Presently,’ he said harshly. ‘But first I think you need a reminder of exactly whose wife you’re going to be. And that if you attempt to play around elsewhere while you share my name, then you’ll suffer the consequences. So, sweetheart, if you’re that desperate to be kissed…’
He jerked her towards him, and his mouth came down hard on hers, with none of the consideration he’d shown her before.
This time she was being punished, she realised wretchedly, and there was little she could do but stand, unmoving and unmoved, while he possessed her trembling lips, forcing them apart so that his tongue could enjoy the moist inner warmth of her mouth with a relentless pagan sensuality that was totally outside anything she’d ever experienced before.
And which scared her in a way that almost—almost bordered on excitement.
She was pinned ruthlessly against him, the heat of his hard, strong body surging through the thin taffeta of her dress as if she were naked.
Every bone, every muscle of him seemed to be imprinted on her, as if they were part of each other.
Darcy was trembling violently inside, her stomach churning and her legs turning to water. It would have been so easy in that moment to give in. To succumb to the warm weakness pervading her body, and sapping her resistance. To slip to the floor at his feet, and stay there.
But that might have seemed like an appeal for mercy, and she couldn’t let him think that. There could be no quarter asked for in this battle between them.
No matter what he did, she told herself desperately, she had to maintain her stance of total indifference.
So she had to stay there, and endure. To steel herself against the calculated insult of this brutally invasive kiss that he was deliberately inflicting on her, because she could not risk making him angrier than he already was by attempting to struggle free from the imprisonment of his hands.
And as she mutely endured she found suddenly, incredibly, that she wanted very badly to weep.
And then, at last, Joel raised his head and looked down at her. A flush was staining his cheekbones, and the blue eyes had darkened stormily, almost to the colour of ink.
She heard him say something half under his breath that might have been her name.
For a moment she felt again that curious stammer in her heartbeat, as if her entire being had shifted slightly off its axis, then, summoning all her strength, she stepped backwards, shrugging off his grasp with as much contempt as she could muster.
Her breathing was still ragged, but she managed to find her voice.
‘Thanks for the warning,’ she said.