Page 23 of Savage Obsession

Although he had left the greater part of his own meal, she saw the sense in what he had said. She had eaten nothing all day and mixing alcohol with pregnancy wasn't the best of ideas. But already he was taking over and she dragged her mind together and began using it furiously while she ate as much as she could, the food she had been so ravenous for now tasting like so much sawdust.

And she knew she had been right to concentrate on working things through when he carried their coffee-mugs through to the sitting-room, gestured her to the only comfortable chair the cottage boasted, and straddled the hearth.

'There is no question now of a divorce, a trial separation, whatever.' His eyes were harder than she'd ever seen them. 'No matter how little it seems to mean to you, you are my wife, and you are car­rying my child. And you are coming home to South Park with me, tomorrow, where you will be watched over with merciless attention by the best consultant I can find. And if you have any irresponsible no­tions about bringing up our child on your own, forget them. I would apply for custody. Make no mistake about that. Do you understand?'

Perfectly. It was what she had expected, the reason she had kept her secret. There was no way he would let her go now. And yes, he would have no hesitation in applying for custody, and with his financial clout, his standing, her own seemingly flighty desertion of him, he might just win. In any case, she dared not take that risk.

Zanna had done another of her disappearing acts, taking Harry with her. And although he could demand access to his son, it could be tricky. But she, as his legal wife, would be allowed no such freedom. The coming child was his legitimate off­spring. And what he had, he kept.

His reason for marrying her in the first place had hinged upon his desire for a family to inherit the newly affluent Savage dynasty, to enjoy the fruits of his hard labour, his clever brain, to carry on the line.

So she said, 'Yes, I understand you,' her voice emerging rustily as she mentally injected a dose of stiffening into her backbone. He might have her neatly trapped, but there was no way he was going to make her feel trapped, no more than by the bounds of her living space, anyway.

At one time she would have agreed to anything and everything he asked of her, because of the love she bore him. But not now. Not any more. She would wean herself away from the dependency of her love for him. And she said crisply, 'I agree to go back to South Park with you, to run your home as you expect me to, entertain your guests. But, in return, I have stipulations of my own to make.'

Uncrossing her slender legs, she got to her feet, moving restlessly over the tiny room to put her coffee-mug down on a table. The dark intensity of his unwavering regard was making her feel over­whelmed. And that, the disturbing sexual mag­netism that was such an intrinsic part of his make­up as far as she was concerned, was something she was going to have to get to grips with, fight, emerge, if not exactly a winner, not a victim either.

'And those are?' His cool, almost indifferent tone made her shudder. She knew him well enough to recognise the concealed threat. Tilting her chin, she disregarded it, pacing the room with a swirl of soft skirts, aware of the way his guarded eyes followed every movement she made, yet desperately pre­tending she wasn't.

'I need to work. To achieve something in my own right. I need to be more than your appendage.' Needed something to hold on to, something to take her mind off the empty sham of their relationship. Something to blunt the pain of knowing that her old dream of teaching him to love her was com­pletely hopeless.

'I see. And just how will that be achieved?'

'No hassle.' Stoically, she ignored the patron­ising tone. He had only ever seen her as someone who could be useful to him. Run his lovely home, entertain his weekend guests, bear him the sons and daughters he had decided he needed. He had never seen her as a woman who had needs that could not be satisfied by a gracious home to live in, beautiful clothes to wear, his attention in the bedroom when he felt so inclined.

Ignoring the knot of pain that had so annoyingly planted itself behind her breastbone, she continued coolly, 'Allie has often asked me to go back into partnership with her. We made a good team. And she wants to expand the area of the agency's ac­tivities. It's the sort of challenge I'd enjoy.'

Enough of a challenge to take her outside the closed and unsatisfactory arena of their marriage. True, she would have their child, and she would love him or her to distraction. But she would need something more, something outside the sterile boundaries of her marriage, if she were to keep her self-respect, her sanity.

'And the child?' He had finished his coffee and was pouring more of the wine for himself, the un­spoken tension in him translating itself into the terse rattle of the neck of the bottle against the glass. 'If you are harbouring any delusions of putting on your business suit and prancing out to the office each day, leaving our child to the mercies of a hired nanny, then you can forget them.'

Which pulled her mouth into a straight line, made her eyes glitter like bright green glass, equalling the hardness she saw in his.

'I have no delusions,' she spat. None at all, not now. Not a single one was left to cloud the issue, which, she reminded herself, just in time, just before she lost her temper, was all to the good, wasn't it? 'I would be working purely in an administrative ca­pacity and could do that from South Park. You worked from home often enough. Or used to,' she tacked on snidely, unwisely, she saw, recognising the slight upwards drift of one dark male brow. He wasn't a fool and would ferret out all her hang-ups if she didn't keep a more careful watch over her tongue.

Making herself relax because she was fighting for the chance to make a life for herself, distance herself from him and destroy the soul-draining, all-consuming love he so unconsciously called from her, she slowly walked to the chair she had vacated and resumed her seat, tilting her head in his di­rection, her expression so very carefully bland, tossing the ball straight back at him. 'Well? You agree?'

He gave her a coolly sardonic look then took a hard-looking pinewood chair from the chimney corner, swivelled it round and straddled it, resting his arms along the back, his wine glass held loosely in one long-fingered hand. All this before he told her with soft scorn, 'We seem to be reaching the heart of the matter. You should have been honest about this before. Am I so much of a tyrant?'

He lifted one wide, hard-boned shoulder in a shrug so minimal as to make it practically non­existent, the insouciant gesture clearly telling her that whether she regarded him as a tyrant or not was not of any particular interest to him. Then his hard, incredibly sexy mouth curved into a smile that held no humour at all as he stated, 'So you want to fly. You were so greedy for some sort of freedom outside our marriage that you used the grimy little pretext of a trial separation in order to stretch your wings. Our marriage, so it would seem, was not enough of a challenge.' He drained his glass, setting it down carefully at his feet, turning the cold scrutiny of his eyes back to her, his chilling as­sessment making her shake inside because she was sure he could see beneath the calmness of the re­laxed front she presented to the mass of miseries deep inside.

Desperately, she bit back the scathing words of bitter condemnation that crowded on her tongue. How could she now explain that the conversation which he knew she'd overheard between him and Zanna had been the reason for the way she'd walked out on their marriage?

How could she, when she had been so deter­mined to get in there first, leading him to believe—for the sake of her self-respect—that she had de­cided on a separation, pushing home that concept because she hadn't been able to bear the final hu­miliation of having him ask her to divorce him,

leaving him free to marry the mother of his son?

She had spiked her own guns in that respect and she was damned if she was going to tell him the truth now. And he said, 'Your pregnancy, of course, has put an end to all that. However, within the boundaries of what you have outlined, I agree.'

Was she supposed to curtsy, or genuflect? she asked herself acidly, trying to make herself hate him because her next stipulation, his agreement so necessary, was going to be far harder to make.

It was growing darker now, the forest trees cutting out the last of the evening sunlight, casting a dark green shade that made the small room like an underwater cavern. Charles got to his feet, going to light one of the oil-lamps, and she said quickly, before her already shaky resolve could desert her, 'There is one last thing. I want us to have separate rooms. I don't want to sleep with you again.' She saw him go very still, the honed features having a demonic quality in the orange flare of lamplight.

The eyes he turned on her as he straightened were deep in their shadowed sockets, unreadable, his mouth thinned, accentuating its fascinating cruelty, but his voice was casual to the point of boredom as he thrust his hands into the pockets of his jeans and told her, 'You surprise me. Your response to my recent lovemaking has been, frankly, cata­clysmic. Not to mention your avid initiation of the process on one or two quite memorable occasions earlier today. However, my dear, you can be as­sured that I would never waste my sexual energies on an unwilling woman.'

A furious scarlet stain covered her entire body at his calculatedly cold description of what had happened this morning, but she was shivering inside because she knew he would feel perfectly free to seek his sexual pleasures elsewhere. Preferably finding emotional and physical release with Zanna, who obviously still found him sexually exciting even if she balked at the constraints of marriage.

But it was a stipulation she had had to make. His lovemaking might be everything she craved, but for him it was meaningless, a mere assuaging of a natural appetite. And having him share her bed would only leave her feeling degraded, leaving her just as far away as ever from falling out of love with him, finding the self she had once lost in her unreasoning love for him and would be in danger of losing again.

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