LITMIR.BIZ

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of how it had felt to the touch. She breathed in sharply, only to have her senses bombarded by the tangy scent of his cologne and the heat coming off him. Then, as if to add insult to injury, his touch sent something close to an electric shock up her arm. Horrified by this totally unexpected and unwanted reaction, she froze in disarray, mind crying out a silent, No!

      ‘You’ll live.’

      Pierce’s declaration snapped her out of her state of shock, and the momentary delay in his looking up gave her just enough time to regain control of her features, leaving them once more remote.

      ‘It’s little more than a scratch, and looks clean enough,’ he observed, meeting her eyes with a feral glitter in his own. ‘What did you imagine the glass was, my throat?’

      Try as she might, she could not quite sustain that gaze, and she hastily glanced away from the mockery in those deep blue chasms. Her eyes fell on her hand, and she discovered he had made a makeshift bandage out of his handkerchief. There were traces of scarlet on the pristine white cloth. Her blood. Always her blood when Pierce came into her life! Her lips thinned, that moment of awareness evaporating in the bleak, chill winds of memory.

      ‘If any man deserves to have his throat cut, you do,’ she declared coldly, as she glanced up once more, her precious defences safely intact.

      If she was scoring any hits, she would never know. Pierce’s only reaction was to laugh lightly, at what must seem to him a minnow turning on a pike. ‘Many have tried; none succeeds.’

      Alix smiled thinly at his supreme conceit. ‘Such pride is bound to be brought down. I only hope I’m there to see it.’

      There was a moment when something which could have been regret flickered in his eyes, but it was gone before she could quite pin it down. ‘That’s our heritage in us. Wouldn’t you say this has all the makings of a classic Greek tragedy? Vengeful wife plots husband’s downfall. Would you dance on my grave, Alix?’

      He was toying with her, but she refused to play his game. ‘Ex-wife,’ she pointed out swiftly, even as her heart contracted sharply—though precisely from what emotion even she couldn’t have said at that moment.

      Pierce inclined his head in wry acknowledgement, as if he had expected no other answer. ‘You say that with such alacrity.’

      Her chin came up instantly, and her eyes shot sparks. ‘It was the happiest day of my life!’

      If she had hoped to wound him, her aim was glaringly abroad. ‘Strange, I seem to remember you said the same of our wedding-day,’ he reminded her dulcetly, the low timbre of his voice exploding on her senses like dark chocolate, eminently seductive.

      To have to acknowledge how he could make her react even now made Alix furiously angry—with herself as much as him for bringing back all too clearly that worst of times.

      ‘I didn’t know then what an utter bastard you were.’ But she had learnt. How she had learnt.

      It seemed he did have a few chinks in his armour, for all trace of amusement left him abruptly. The only movement on his tight face was the tic of a muscle in his jaw. ‘It had to be done. You should understand that.’

      Grey eyes, darkened by seething emotions, sent him a message of hate. ‘I’ll never understand it, and I’ll never forgive it! I’ll hate you till the day I die!’

      Nostrils flared as he took a sharp breath. ‘Never is a long time. You may yet have cause to thank me.’

      It took every ounce of control she had not to leap at him and claw him to shreds. It was a distressing measure of just how he was getting to her. The minute she lost control, he would have won. That had to be avoided at all costs. She responded instinctively. ‘For what? Killing my grandfather?’

      Her barb found a tender spot, for Pierce took an angry step towards her, then controlled himself with patent effort. ‘That you will not lay on me, Alix. He was an old man, I agree, but he lived several years after I last met him,’ he pointed out grittily.

      Her lips trembled, as much with anger as distress, and she pressed them together. ‘Maybe so, but you hastened him into his grave by taking away everything that was precious to him.’

      He stiffened in outraged pride, blue eyes becoming flinty, almost dead. ‘I took nothing that wasn’t mine by right, and in exchange I left him you.’

      Alix laughed hollowly. He had left a shell—the carapace of a woman he’d all but destroyed! ‘You’re a thief and a murderer, and I despise you.’

      His face could have been carved from stone, so still did it become. ‘Despise away, but I still have something you want.’

      ‘I’d cut off my hand before I accepted anything from you, Pierce Martineau!’

      The smile returned, but it was cold, mirthless. ‘Always so dramatic. I’d forgotten just what a passionate creature you were, in bed and out of it.’

      Only he would have the gall to remind her of her uninhibited response to him, a response he had used to his own ends. She had been a fool then, but never again. ‘You’re right, I do have something for which to thank you—for teaching me a valuable lesson. One I’ll never forget,’ she declared tersely.

      There was a fraction of a second before he replied, when his eyes lazily roved over all he could see. The inspection brought a soft curve to his lips, even as it set her back up.

      ‘If I was a good teacher, then you were a very willing pupil,’ he said softly, deliberately misinterpreting her. ‘You seem to have done well on it too. You’re looking even more beautiful than I remember.’

      Alix ground her teeth in fury. The fact that he had taken a virgin bride to his bed and awoken her to the pleasures of the flesh was something she found hard to live with, when linked to what had followed. That he should have the insensitivity to remind her of it now churned her stomach. ‘I hope you don’t expect me to thank you for the compliment, because, quite frankly, the words would choke me!’ she shot back.

      His eyes danced. ‘And that would never do. Perhaps I should stop before you have an apoplectic fit, but I can’t resist it. I like your hair cut short this way. It makes you look elegant and fragile at the same time. Quite a feat. When did you have it done?’ he went on conversationally, and she swallowed down hard on her anger because it was doing her no good, and only appeared to amuse him.

      Yet she couldn’t help shooting him a challenging look. ‘Actually, I first had it cut five years ago!’ she retorted, and let him make what he liked of it.

      Pierce had never been slow on the uptake, and now he understood immediately. ‘Hmm, off with the old, on with the new? I used to be fascinated by your long platinum locks. I’d dream of catching my fingers in it as I made love to you.’

      She very nearly choked then, because she had had virtually the same dreams about him, and long after the marriage had ended. Now the memory set like ice about her heart. ‘Precisely the reason I had it cut. I wanted nothing to remind me of you,’ she added, trying to cut him down to size.

      Pierce crossed his arms, regarding her mockingly. ‘Yet you haven’t forgotten me, it seems. Is that why you’re here alone tonight?’

      She breathed in sharply. There was no other man like Pierce for asking questions with subtle nuances others missed. ‘You can rid yourself of the notion that you have any bearing on my life right now! I’m here alone because my father, as you probably know very well, is ill. We would have come as a family group, but instead I came on my own. Does that satisfy your curiosity?’

      ‘Hardly. Are all the men in England blind? Wasn’t there someone else who could have escorted you? What about the latest man in your life?’ he probed, ignoring the way her eyes flashed angrily at the cross-questioning.

      She squared up to him. ‘What exactly do you want to know, Pierce, the state of my love life?’ she charged, hot colour storming into her cheeks at his audacity.

      ‘Judging

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