Authors: Sara Wood
She wanted to make him desperate for her. To love her—
her.
With a siren's lure in her eyes, she slid her tongue out and licked the sweat over the curving arcs of his chest, teasing the nipples till he gave a satisfying groan and she felt his rhythm increase to a pitch where she couldn't think any more, was only capable now of reacting like an animal, wildly driving her body against his, countering his thrust with equally hard, demanding jerks of her own body, drawing in her pelvis to hold him tighter and devouring him with her mouth as he devoured her, as if they'd starved for months and wanted to fill themselves to satiation.
Ginny flung her arms around Leo violently, bearing him over in a wild and uncontrollable tumble that had them both fighting to hold their bodies linked and to maintain the beautiful, shuddering rhythm, while she emptied all her passion into her body, kissing Leo with a fervour born of desperation and urgency.
He was so strong, so beautiful. They had been so in love and she wanted that back—the wonderful moments they'd shared together, the quiet evenings by the firelight, the walks in the park. A groan broke from her parted lips and she bit into his shoulder to stem her distress that their love had been threatened. He gasped and kissed her so hard that she felt the deep pressure of his teeth on her lips.
And then her body began to sing as it had never sung before, every nerve taut and stretched, all the bitter-sweet pain rising with the crescendo of Leo's fierce movement, the beautiful satin strength within her offering the wonderful promise of a release from all her distress and tension.
'Ginny,' he rasped thickly into her hair. 'Ginny, Ginny!'
She sobbed, groaned loudly, not caring who heard— oblivious of everything but the sensations crawling through her, the tingling, rippling waves driving all conscious thought away, lifting her into a fevered delight that shuddered for a few seconds on a peak of ecstasyand held there, seemingly for ever, while their bodies remained like tensile steel, taut and rigid, only their pulses and hearts and their blood pounding, and everything focused on the lyrical thrust of their loins and the spinning spirals of pagan pleasure that was driving them slowly insane with exquisitely agonising sensation.
And when she thought she'd die of love Leo let out a deep, shuddering groan. The turmoil that had held her in its thrall slowly subsided, easing with it every muscle in her body.
Beneath him, crushed by him as he lay for a moment in exhaustion—yet still somehow tense—she felt limp and drained. But her face shone with a radiant joy that came from every inch of her body, her heart, her soul. 'Oh, Leo!' she mumbled incoherently, blinded by happy tears.
And then he groaned. Once, twice, as if in despair.
His welcome weight lifted away when she wanted him to stay and to hold her in his arms. Her naked body chilled with the emptiness that was left by his absence. Dazed and confused, she struggled to lift her lids and clear her vision. Her heart missed a beat. Sounds nearby told her that he was dressing.
'Leo?' she murmured weakly. Even from there she could hear his harsh breathing, rasping like an angry saw. Panic clutched her heart. No, she thought. They were bonded together for ever now...
'Yes?'
She whimpered at the curtly spoken word. 'Didn't you... wasn't it... good?' she asked tentatively.
'Stunningly good. Highly accomplished and extremely satisfying,' he husked, the words shooting out painfully. His eyes smouldered at her. 'What a lot you've learnt since we last made love!'
'Don't say that!' Unusually awkward and uncoordinated, she struggled in horror to a sitting position and watched him grimly wrench his trousers up to his waist. 'Not so, Leo! I-'
'Don't try to explain,' he growled, angrily snapping his shirt around his sweat-licked torso. Every movement tight with anger, he picked up his shoes and began to stalk to the door. Ginny had the impression that he'd turn on her like a wounded animal and savage her if he stayed. 'Quite a sexual artiste, aren't you, now someone's taught you how to be uninhibited?'
'No one taught me,' she breathed, her throat dry with fear.
His eyes chilled every inch of her body as his scorn- filled gaze swept over it and dismissed her denial with a snort of disbelief. 'You expect me to believe that, after your performance just now? Yes, it was "good". For a moment there you made me forget everything. We were lovers again—but lovers as we'd never been before. And then I realised that some other man—or men—must have been teaching you the art of love.'
'No!' she wailed.
'I wish I could believe you!' he said fervently. '
I
wanted to be that man, Ginny!
I
wanted you to unfold that tight rein you kept on yourself. But no, some jerk I don't even know has shown you how to gain access to your sexual well!' He drew in a deep, shuddering breath, his face bleak with the same dark hell that he was digging for her. 'How could you, Ginny?' he roared. 'How could you do it? That exhibition told me everything I needed to know. Thanks for the information. Now I'm under no illusions about you.'
Ginny covered her icy, trembling body as well as she could with her hands. 'Leo—' she husked.
'Save it!' he said curtly over his shoulder. Then he turned, his face as black as thunder. 'I want honesty in my wife,' he bit out. 'Decency. A woman I can respect. Not a painted doll who uses her beauty to get what she wants. You did that with me just now, didn't you?'
'I—I wanted you to...care for me, to help me,' she jerked out.
'Sure. You let me have you because you wanted something,' he said, his mouth curling in contempt. 'Now I
do
believe the stories about you.'
Dispassionately, he studied her for long, interminable seconds while she fought the tears and her total exhaustion. She had to get up, run to him,
love
him into realising that everyone had misunderstood her and put her into a mould of their own making, not hers.
'I am innocent, Leo,' she said, wondering if she could ever crack that icy regard, the look of hauteur which reminded her forcibly that he was The Honourable Leo Brandon, born and bred with pride.
'Like hell! I should have seen it coming. I can't entirely blame you. That's the kind of world you entered when you were too young to prevent your slow corruption. I know what goes on, Ginny. But we Brandons prefer to protect the honour of our wives, if only to keep the blood line pure. You're right. Our worlds don't mix. Pack your things. You've got an hour to be out of here. Leave nothing behind to remind me of a very bad mistake I made. We're finished, Ginny. I'm divorcing you.'
A harsh, guttural wail ripped out from deep inside her. But he'd gone, in a storming, door-slamming rush. Ginny slowly lifted her head, tilting it back, and closed her eyes in despair. Her white-blonde hair swept down her naked back and she registered that the tightly secured chignon had been dismantled by Leo's hands, by his wild lovemaking. She blushed, at a loss to understand quite how a strictly brought-up woman could have abandoned herself so completely to the devils within her.
No wonder he'd been shocked. She was too, merely thinking of what they'd done, red stains working their way up from her slender feet to her mortified face. So she'd ruined her chance to show Leo that they could be lovers again by revealing an untamed and uncontrolled side of herself that he must have hated.
After all, she thought mournfully, everyone adored her Grace Kelly manner. They loved her serenity, her calmness. Leo had said that he liked the fact that she always behaved like a lady. Some lady. But that was what he'd wanted—a woman who'd project an image of breeding. And now she'd ruined that.
Her body quivered with the pleasure that had rippled through it in great roller-coaster waves. Over and over again they'd crashed through her and physically she felt totally sated. Emotionally, however...
Her perfect white teeth snagged her lower lip. It was bruised and swollen and she touched it with her finger, wondering whether Leo had always known what real, uninhibited sex was like and if she'd been a disappointment to him before because she'd never given her whole self. Till it was too late.
But he'd wanted her. Desperately. Beyond all his rigidly imposed self-control. He'd been crazy to have her and he'd hated her for that because he would have preferred to take her with cool ruthlessness and fling her aside.
Perhaps she could build on his desire. A ragged breath shuddered through her and she stood, quickly dressing. It was the only hope she had. Hastily she searched for enough of the scattered hairpins to do her chignon again and had to give up, combing the silken hair with her fingers instead. She paused as Leo's words came back to her, jolting her with their intensity.
Divorce... Life without Leo. Cold horror iced her body. He was all she had! The only man she'd ever loved. She wouldn't, mustn't lose him! Especially now that she'd given her whole self to him, abandoning a lifetime of restraint to show him what he meant to her.
Frantically she ran out of the library and began to search the rooms downstairs, then hitched up her tight skirt and raced up the wide stairs two at a time.
Relief flooded through her when she heard the shower running in their
en suite
bathroom. Thinking of nothing else but convincing him, she went straight to the cabinet, opened the door and walked inside.
'Leo! Listen to me!' she begged, water plastering her hair to her scalp.
'What the-? You're fully clothed, Ginny! Get out!' he said with an irritable frown.
But she held him, her arms wrapped around his waist. And instantly he became aroused. Relief burst into her mind. She had a chance. 'Don't turn me away, Leo,' she said softly, lifting her face to his. 'I can't imagine life without you—'
'You're already living it without me,' he muttered, wrenching her arms away and flinging open the shower door.
She stood there, saturated, dazed. Don't give up hope. Try again, she told herself. Try again. Stripping off her jacket as she spoke, she said, 'Everything is good except for the problem of my work and Castlestowe. We can discuss our differences and compromise. Change things—'
'One thing's changed. You've become a spectacular lay,' he said crudely. 'But I don't want a tramp for a wife or for the mother of my child.'
'I'm not a tramp,' she insisted quietly.
'The stories—'
'Are only stories. They're not true,' she cried desperately, easing off her soaking skirt.
'I've heard the details.' His eyes flashed. 'Confirmed by several people—'
'They're repeating the same he that someone's circulated!' she cried, beginning to fear that her protestations would be in vain. 'I can't prove my fidelity, Leo! But surely you must give me the benefit of the doubt?'
The lines around his aristocratic mouth were deep with pain. 'How can I when you so brilliantly display a sexual expertise you never had before? When you respond to me with such devastating sensuality that I—? Oh, Ginny!' He threw his head back in a gesture of helplessness. 'I stood up for you. I looked everyone straight in the eye at my club when they whispered behind my back. But now I'm sure I'm a cuckold. And I sure as hell won't stand for that!' he snapped. 'I want a divorce. I must remarry. Time is running out—my grandfather is ninety. I would like him to see that I have an heir to the earldom before he dies.'
'Leo! Is that more important than our marriage?' she faltered, naked now and grabbing a thick towelling robe and slipping into it.
'Having a child is an important part of marriage for me,' he growled. 'It always has been. That—and having a loyal wife.'
Ginny's anguished eyes watched him stride to the mahogany linen press. French. Priceless. Louis the something, she remembered, and inherited with a castle full of French furniture after one of the earls had married into the French aristocracy in the eighteenth century. France and Scotland had always been linked in the past. She thought of the castle, sitting on the windswept crag, all turrets and drawbridges, narrow windows and vast, draughty halls, and shivered.
It was an inheritance she didn't understand and didn't want to be part of. It had been a mistake for them to marry. She'd been naive to imagine that their marriage could be ordinary. Leo had expectations she couldn't meet however much she loved him.
'I love you,' she said quietly, sadly.
He froze, his arm halted in the action of reaching for a clean shirt. It was a moment before he moved or spoke again. 'I'm not sure you do,' he said shortly, slipping his arms into the shirt and not looking at her. 'Love has little to do with it, anyway. We're incompatible and that's that.' He picked up the cuff-links that she knew had been given to his father by a minor royal and finally met her eyes. As he dressed, she thought mournfully, he looked more and more the perfect gentleman with every impeccable garment he put on.
'I have a duty to continue the family line,' he continued. 'To see the Brandon name die out after nearly a thousand uninterrupted years would be unthinkable. I had hoped to father children by a woman I loved but it seems I'm to be denied that.'
Ginny's eyes widened. 'Are you intending to make a marriage of convenience?' she cried.
His eyes stared sightlessly ahead and he was still for several seconds before he answered. 'Do I have any option? Love was always a risk for both of us. We didn't know much about it from our parents, did we? And now all I have left is Castlestowe and a dynastic marriage some time in the future.'
She couldn't believe her ears. He'd marry, make love to a woman and father children all for the sake of a wretched blood-line... 'No! I won't give you up to anyone else!' she seethed.
'No?' He wouldn't look at her and his face was grim, his mouth working as if he was grinding his teeth. 'We'll see about that.' With a look of sheer determination on his face, he picked up a pair of linen trousers and stalked into his dressing room, locking the door behind him.
Two years and a few months or so later Ginny was secretly divorced.
Leo had convinced her that he had washed his hands of her only eight hours after the incident in the shower.