Christie closed her eyes, strove to keep her lips tightly compressed, her body rigid with resistance. Let him see how much pleasure he gained from taking her by force. None, unless he was so sated with normal lovemaking that the idea of taking a woman against her will stimulated his jaded appetite.
His grip was hurting her captive wrists and yet, as he went on kissing her, less fiercely now but more sensuously, she was appalled to realise that, already, it was having an effect on her. She could feel the strange trembling of her thighs, the ache low down in her body, the desire to open her lips to the lips moving softly on hers.
Then all at once terror revived as Ash let go her wrists and, using that hand to pull her closer, made her suddenly, fearfully aware of the hard, aroused state of his body.
This was how it had been before. She could not endure it again. With clenched fists she beat on his chest, wrenching her mouth from under his, fighting him with a desperation which gave her twice her usual strength.
But it was no defence against Ash. Her violence merely amused him.
She saw his teeth flash in a grin as he let her go for an instant, then grabbed her and tossed her bodily on to the bed.
She landed flat on her back, was rebounded by the excellent springing and, for a few moments, lay still, breathing hard and glaring up at him, her grey eyes glittering with tears of impotent fury.
As she started to struggle up, he flung himself beside her, pinning her down with one arm stretched across her to clamp her right arm at the elbow. Her other arm was trapped underneath him. When she raised her legs, intending to strike at him with her heels, he foiled her by throwing his right leg across her slim thighs.
'Who would have thought you could be such a termagant?' he teased her.
But the mockery in his voice was not matched by the look in his eyes.
They were brilliant with undisguised desire. Christie could see that her struggles had excited him, and he would not play with her for much longer.
When he tried to kiss her again, she whipped her face aside, twisting her neck as far as she could to keep her mouth out of his reach.
His lips were hot on her throat, travelling slowly up to the delicate hollow behind her ear. His teeth softly nibbled the lobe. She felt the tip of his tongue exploring the spirals of her ear, and the heavy beating of her heart, and resistance dying down inside her.
'Give me your mouth, Christiana.'
The low-voiced command made her shiver.
'No . . . never . . . never,' she whispered, keeping her face averted.
He gave an almost soundless laugh at her futile refusal to submit to a conquest she could not avoid.
'You will,' he said softly. 'You will. And there are other places to kiss.'
With a sudden change of position he shifted himself lower down, the weight of his chest on her hips, and his face on a level with her breasts, still heaving after her struggle with him.
The pressure of his hands on her outflung arms was lighter now, but she guessed it would rapidly harden if she attempted to move them.
So she lay inert and despairing while his breath scorched like fire through the flimsiness of her nightie, and instead of nibbling her ear-lobe he found a more sensitive spot to concentrate, for the moment, his siege of her body?
But it wasn't the expected disgust she felt as his mouth kissed its way from one soft quivering breast to the other. And when he said, 'Too many lights on,' and suddenly rose and left her, she lay still for at least twenty seconds, not quite grasping that she was free, if not for many moments.
When she realised, she leapt to her feet and fled for the bathroom yet again, only to be caught at the threshold and hauled backwards into his arms.
'If you think that door would protect you, you don't know me,' his voice mocked.
Before she knew what was happening, her nightdress had been whipped upwards to hamper her flailing arms and cover her head.
Then, naked from the chest down, she was thrown on the bed a second time and kissed as before, but now with not even thin lawn between Ash's lascivious lips and the tremulous, satin-smooth flesh which the sun had not touched.
Knowing it was useless to attempt to pull down her nightie, she struggled to extricate herself from it in the other direction. Sprawled as she was, this was not easy, and it took her many agitated seconds to rid herself of its folds. For all the time she was struggling, Ash's hand was exploring the rest of her until, when at last she had freed herself, and given a gasp of relief, he reached the top of her thighs and drew another sharp gasp from her.
'No!'
She tensed every muscle against the insidious caresses.
'Yes,' was his hoarse-voiced response.
She could feel the pounding of his heart, his heavy breathing. Yet there was no impatience in his touch.
She had not known a man could throb with so fierce an ardour, but keep his passion in check. He seemed to have total control.
All at once she herself had none.
She began to tremble from head to foot, as if she were shivering with cold instead of burning all over. Then, as her braced muscles slackened, Ash slipped his hand between her legs and her shivering became violent shudders.
Only dimly aware of frantically clutching his shoulders, she heard her own laboured breaths, and no longer felt any shame as her body writhed in abandon to the waves of delicious sensation induced by his expert caresses.
Again and again he drove her to the point of frenzy. Not until she was almost exhausted with pleasure did he let go his iron self-discipline.
For an instant, eyes wide in the moonlight, she saw him looming above her, and felt his hard, muscular flanks between her soft, spreadeagled thighs. As their bodies fused, she cried out; not a cry of pain, but rather of astonished joy at being unafraid and ready for his final possession.
And when he had taken his pleasure, and kissed her softly on the mouth, she burst into tears of relief at not being condemned to relive the misery she had known before.
He seemed to know why she was crying and, instead of moving away, he continued to hold her in his arms, and was still there when she was calm and almost asleep.
* * *
When Christie woke in the morning, she was alone. Ash was not in the bedroom, nor was there the sound of water running or the buzz of an electric razor from Joss Hathaway's dark blue bathroom next to Miranda's pink one.
Perhaps Ash did not use an electric razor. He might be in there, shaving quietly with an ordinary one. For a dark-haired man with a strong beard, he had been very smooth-cheeked last night. There was not a mark on her body, she discovered, peering at herself.
None of the bite marks and bruises, none of the red stubble-grazes which had marked her pale and tender skin on the morning after her first night in bed with Mike. When she stretched it did not make her wince. In fact, although she didn't want to admit it, she had never felt better in her life.
Rested, refreshed, invigorated; all her hormones the right way up.
Where had that phrase come from? she wondered. She had read it somewhere, but where?
When she sat up, she saw that the door of Ash's bathroom was open.
He must have gone down to the beach for an early swim. How long before he came back?
At the thought of having to face him, after all he had done to her last night, her face grew hot and she had a revulsion of feeling.
It wasn't only what he had done which was mortifying, but that she had allowed it—and responded. He had virtually raped her—not brutally, not like a beast. But that didn't alter the fact that his slow invasion of her body had been against her will, or by a coercion of her will.
That he was her husband made no difference. However carefully he had phrased his assurance that he would not expect her to sleep with him, it was still a despicable ruse for which she could never forgive him.
Yet even while she wanted to hate him, a part of her mind held the thought, Why did Mike never make love like that? Why did I have to go through all that disillusioned unhappiness, thinking it was my fault, thinking there was something terribly wrong with me?
It was a distasteful idea: that enjoyment in bed had nothing to do with the emotions, but was merely a matter of technique. She did not want to accept that any man with Ash's experience could have inflicted the same rapturous sensations on her. But the only other explanation—
'Good morning. How did you sleep?'
He had caught her lying on her side, with her head cradled on her arm and her other hand absently smoothing the lustrous black silk crepe-de-chine of the undersheet.
At the sound of his voice, she rolled over, clutching the oversheet to her. Ash was standing in the space left by one of the sliding glass doors which gave on to the Hathaways' private breakfast patio.
'Good morning.' Without answering his question, she sat up, returning his quizzical half-smile with a look of smouldering hostility.
Her glare made his smile more pronounced. He strolled to the bed and sat down on the edge of it. 'It's usual for husbands and wives to exchange a good morning kiss—especially after a night as pleasurable as last night.'
He held out both arms, inviting her to come to him from her place in the centre of the bed. He must have removed his wet trunks down on the beach as now he was wrapped in a small towel which covered him from waist to mid-thigh.
Christie's bosom heaved with indignation. 'Have you
no
compunction?' she burst out.
'No, none. Should I have?' he asked equably.
Perhaps there was a slight risk that your claim to be frigid was justified. But you know what they say— There's no such thing as a frigid woman, only an inept lover. And if my judgment of a situation is ever in doubt, I favour the S.A.S. motto—Who dares wins. Last night was a mutual victory. Can you deny it?'
She wanted to burrow under the sheet to hide her scarlet confusion.
'No, you can't,' said Ash, with a low laugh. 'Because you remember as well as I do that when you gasped and cried out it wasn't because I was hurting you.'
'How can you! Oh, God!' She buried her face in her hands, unable to bear the reminder of those moments of total abandonment.
She felt a movement on the mattress. The next moment he was beside her, pulling her into his arms, making her uncover her face.
'Twenty-four, and so shy,' he teased her. Then the mockery died out of his eyes, replaced by a curious expression which she could not fathom.
'It was like taking a virgin,' he told her, his voice low and vibrant. 'Not that I speak from experience, having always avoided them before—endangered species that they are. But perhaps, just once in a lifetime, there's something to be said for being the first man to hear those whimpers of pleasure which you gave last night.'
'I hate you ... I hate you,' she ground out. 'You're disgusting ... a disgusting satyr!'
'If you think that, my dear, on the basis of last night's experience, you have a great deal to learn. So much that I think I'd better continue your tuition immediately.'
It must have been at least an hour later, while Christie was staring at a hairline crack in the ceiling plaster, with nothing else in her mind, like someone in a deep trance, that Ash raised his head to look at her.
Big and broad as he was, she was not in any way cramped. His weight was all on his own arms.
Her gaze fixed on the crack, she wondered if her face was still dewed with the moisture which, earlier, she had felt breaking out on her forehead, under her eyes, everywhere.
The same thing had happened to Ash. She had felt the sudden dampness of his back, like the moment of crisis in a fever when the high, burning temperature falls, and the restless delirium is eased. But that had been some time ago, since when she had lain in a daze of emotional exhaustion.
After studying her face for some moments, he kissed the tip of her nose before rolling aside to sit up.
'Time for breakfast, I think, don't you? Then perhaps another tutorial.
A sailing lesson,' he added blandly. 'I'm going for a shower, and then I'll organise breakfast. Don't be too long having your bath.'
She watched him walk to his bathroom, his buttocks only a little less tanned than the rest of him. They had concave planes at the sides, and tighter curves than her own still partially white behind on which, when she went to her bathroom with its mirrored walls, she discovered one small dark love bite in a place which only Ash would see.
Like a brand, she thought, anger reviving. His property now, his woman. For although his caresses were gentle as long as she submitted, he had left her in no doubt that if ever she attempted further resistance, he would use his superior strength to enforce his mastery.
Without any love between them, she was in the position of a new addition to a harem. And although she had his undivided attention for the time being, how long would it be before he tired of her?
During breakfast she discovered that Miranda and Ash had arranged for John to spend that day and night at the home of some of the children he had met at the Christmas Day party.
'Fond as I am of him, I don't want a child at my heels during my honeymoon,' said Ash.
Reluctantly, Christie was forced to say goodbye to her nephew many hours before she had expected to part from him. John himself seemed unconcerned. He promised to be a good boy all the time they were away, hugged her, hugged Ash, and went off happily with his hostess when she came to fetch him.
They spent the rest of the morning sailing, first in the Sunfish and then in the Hobie Cat. After lunch, Ash suggested a drive to Devil's Bridge on the eastern side of the island. He told her it was an area which had been bought by the Mill Reefers and presented to the Government of Antigua to remain an unspoiled beauty spot.
Although it was a lovely day, the heave and surge of the deep green water under the bridge of rock, carved by centuries of pounding by the sea, made her unaccountably nervous.
She did not step on the bridge, but Ash did. When he was halfway across she felt a sharp thrust of fear in case it should suddenly give way, plunging him into the turbulent water beneath.