The Billionaire's Marriage Bargain (13 page)

He wasn’t sure what it was himself yet, only that what he had just shared with Kenzie had been unlike anything that he had ever known before, with her or anyone else. The pleasure had been so intense, and the sheer joy of their possession so intimate, so complete, it was beyond description.

What the hell had just happened?

Fourteen months ago he had wanted Kenzie enough to marry her, and he hadn’t been disappointed. Taking Kenzie to bed had been as good as he had thought it would be and that had never changed. In fact, he hadn’t wanted to have sex with anyone else since he’d met her.

But this, what had happened just now, was something else entirely. It had knocked him totally off his feet and turned his brain to mush, leaving him dazed and incoherent.

Kenzie had actually cried with pleasure!

What did it mean?

It didn’t mean anything, he told himself determinedly as he moved abruptly away from her, standing up to begin putting on his clothes.

This was what he had brought Kenzie here for. Sex. Just sex. And that was all it had been.

Kenzie had been with another man for five months, he reminded himself scathingly. She had been sharing Jerome Carlton’s bed, and that was why just now had been different. It was because Kenzie was different; she had learnt new and exciting ways to arouse, to give pleasure. At the end she had taken him, for God’s sake!

The cold knot of anger that had hardened inside him the last four months turned to ice as he imagined her with Jerome Carlton in the way she had just been with him.

Giving him none of the satisfaction he had thought to find after bending Kenzie to his will.

‘Dominick…?’

He looked down at her now, fully dressed while she still lay naked and wanton on the cushion, her hair a dark tangle, her body still warm and beautiful. ‘Put some clothes on, Kenzie,’ he scorned harshly. ‘Play time is over for now. I would like to go back up to the house and eat.’

Kenzie stared at him. He wanted food now? After what had just happened?

But what had really happened?

Dominick had come down to the pool, discovered her half naked, and decided to complete the process, to take what he had always considered his, as he had been warning her for the last week he would do.

The fact that it had been such intense pleasure for her, so much more than ever before, urging her on to behave in a way she never had before, didn’t mean that it had been the same for Dominick.

In fact, if his demand for food was anything to go by then she was sure that it hadn’t been the same for him!

‘You see, Kenzie, it wasn’t in my bed at all,’ he said, breaking into her tortuous thoughts. ‘And, as we both know, you were far from unwilling!’ he added with husky mockery.

She briefly felt the hot tears of humiliation, before anger took over, her overbright eyes burning like twin emeralds of fire in the pallor of her face as she got lithely to her feet, totally uncaring of her nakedness.

She was intent now only on hurting him as he was deliberately hurting her. ‘I wasn’t the one who begged—Let me go, Dominick!’ she breathed raggedly as he grasped her arms to pull her hard against him, her face only inches away from his now as he looked down at her coldly, his breath warm against her skin.

He thrust her roughly away from him, hands clenched at his sides, a nerve pulsing in his rigidly clamped jaw. ‘Get some clothes on and then come back up to the house,’ he grated. ‘Our weekend isn’t over yet.’

It was as far as Kenzie was concerned!

And there was nothing that Dominick could do or say that was going to make her stay here with him any longer than it took her to dress, collect her bag, and then go!

KENZIE dressed and tidied her appearance as best she could before returning to the house, breathing an inward sigh of relief when she discovered Dominick wasn’t in the kitchen as she had expected he would be.

Although she wasn’t quite so lucky as she walked through the main house with the intention of going up to her bedroom to get her bag before leaving.

‘Drink?’ Dominick growled as she passed the doorway to the sitting room, holding up the glass of brandy he was obviously enjoying.

Kenzie entered the room slowly. It was a beautiful gold and cream room, and the early evening sunshine shining in through the huge bay windows should have looked warm and welcoming, but failed to succeed when it was being dominated by the presence of the tall, darkly brooding man standing beside the unlit fireplace.

Kenzie eyed him in challenge. ‘Am I going to need one?’

His mouth twisted humourlessly. ‘Probably,’ he drawled calmly, moving to the drinks cabinet to pour a second brandy before putting it down on the coffee-table that stood in front of the sofa.

Either Dominick no longer wanted to touch her again, even accidentally, or this was a move on his part to force her to sit down on the gold-coloured sofa, the fact of her having to look up at him instantly putting her on the defensive.

She would take a guess on it being the latter!

Kenzie moved to pick up the glass before strolling over to stand in front of one of the windows, her back to the garden, and the sun streaming in behind her putting her face into shadow.

She hadn’t rushed to return to the house, and had taken some time to try to think how she was going to get away. She had tried to decide how she would deal with Dominick if she didn’t manage to leave without seeing him again, knowing that her uninhibited response to him in the pool-house had put her at a definite disadvantage.

It was a disadvantage she intended taking back if she could.

‘I believe I did try to warn you that statistically those sort of—experiments, never work out,’ she reminded him before taking a sip of her brandy, her gaze remaining unwaveringly on his.

Dominick studied her through narrowed lids, filled with the need to hurt and kiss her at the same time!

To hurt her because he couldn’t stand the thought of her making love to a man like Jerome Carlton in the way she just had with him. To kiss her because that once hadn’t been enough. Not nearly enough!

Instead he looked at her coldly. ‘Obviously not,’ he agreed icily, enjoying the angry flush that suddenly coloured her cheeks.

She hadn’t liked him saying that. Good. Because he wasn’t enjoying himself, either.

And he had expected to. During the months since Kenzie had walked out on him, the thought of what was going to happen next had been the driving force behind all of his actions. He had believed that revenge would be sweet, and this added bonus of making love with Kenzie more than he could possibly have hoped for. But the only result of that was that he knew he still wanted her, damn it!

‘Better?’ he scorned as Kenzie took another sip of her brandy.

Kenzie didn’t respond as he had thought she would, her green eyes glittering with anger rather than tears as she met his gaze full on. ‘The brandy is excellent,’ she bit out coolly.

He had to admire her, Dominick acknowledged grudgingly; after the passion they had shared down in the pool-house, and his harshness afterwards, he knew Kenzie must be feeling more than a little unsure of herself, but not by so much as a blink of the eye did she reveal that emotion.

Instead she looked tall and self-possessed, and the bitter rage that welled up inside him made him want to wipe that air of confidence off her beautiful face!

‘So aren’t you curious to know why your boyfriend had to delay his visit to England for a couple of days?’ he asked tauntingly.

Kenzie tensed, but only inwardly; after the humiliation Dominick had tried to inflict earlier she had no intention of letting him see how upset she really was.

She had reacted instinctively to Dominick’s lovemaking; she couldn’t have denied her response to him even if she had wanted to. How Dominick must be loving that. In fact, his scathing comments afterwards had already shown her that he did. They both knew now exactly how ‘unwilling’ she hadn’t been!

For a while, a very brief while, Dominick had once again been the man she loved, the experienced but considerate lover who had initiated her into all the pleasures of lovemaking. Even though Dominick refused to believe it, he was the only man she had ever made love with.

But the Dominick he had been after their lovemaking, the Dominick he was now, wasn’t the man she had fallen in love with.

Had she really thought that their making love would make any difference to Dominick? To the way he felt about her now?

She hadn’t been thinking at all, that was the problem. From the first moment Dominick had touched her, she had only been able to feel!

She drew in a controlling breath. ‘If by the phrase “boyfriend” you are referring to Jerome—’

‘How many other boyfriends do you have, Kenzie?’ Dominick mocked, his brown eyes as hard as pebbles, and his mouth a thin, derisive line.

Her cheeks became flushed in spite of herself. For one thing, at forty-two, Jerome was hardly a boy, and for another, he had never been a boyfriend or anything else in the least intimate to her!

‘My marriage to you hasn’t exactly made me eager to return to the dating circuit!’ she told him accusingly. She was sure the same couldn’t be said for Dominick; as she knew only too well, he might not believe in love, but he was an extremely sensual man, and had been involved with lots of women before the two of them had met.

His mouth tightened. ‘I very much doubt that’s the reason for the oversight, Kenzie. I feel sure that Jerome Carlton is no more eager to share you than I was!’

Kenzie breathed her impatience. ‘How many times do I have to tell you that I am not, nor have I ever been, involved in an affair with Jerome Carlton?’ Her eyes glittered with anger.

Dominick gave an uninterested shrug. ‘You’re the one that feels that need, Kenzie, not me.’

‘And anyway, what do you know about Jerome’s delay in coming to England?’ she prompted impatiently, sure from his attitude that Dominick did know something.

The scowl disappeared from Dominick’s brow as he gave a relaxed smile. ‘Quite a lot, as it happens,’ he answered easily.

Kenzie swallowed hard. ‘And are you going to tell me?’

‘I was going to leave it to Carlton to do that—but why not?’ Dominick shrugged. ‘About two years ago Carlton Cosmetics hit a few financial difficulties, at which point Carlton decided to float forty-nine per cent of the company shares on the open market, retaining thirty-one per cent for himself, and ten per cent to his two siblings, a younger brother and sister.’

Kenzie had met both Adrian and Caroline Carlton. Adrian actually worked for the company, and she had found him as charming as Jerome, whereas Caroline Carlton had no interest in her brothers or the family-run company, and was only concerned with the income she received from it.

Kenzie moistened her lips. ‘And?’

He grimaced. ‘At a guess I would say that Carlton has spent the last few days running around in ever-decreasing circles trying to work out how he came to lose control of fifty-one per cent of the shares of his own company!’

He watched with satisfaction as the colour drained from Kenzie’s cheeks, her eyes darkening to fathomless pits of green glass.

‘You—’ She swallowed. ‘Tell me you aren’t the one responsible for that, Dominick!’ she gasped in disbelief.

He gave a humourless smile. ‘Now what possible reason would I have to lie to you about something like that, Kenzie?’

She stared at him disbelievingly for several long seconds before moving to the sofa and sitting down abruptly, her hands trembling as her fingers curled about the brandy glass.

‘I did warn you you might need the brandy,’ Dominick said, with a smug look on his face.

Kenzie was breathing shallowly, feeling so stunned she couldn’t move or speak. It was incredible to think that for the last four months Dominick had been plotting and scheming—

So these were the ‘plans’ he had still had to finalize on Wednesday!

But why had he done this? He didn’t love her; he had never loved her, so why should her leaving him have bothered him in the slightest—even if he did persist in believing she had left him for the arms of another man?

Pride.

She had damaged that Masters pride, and Dominick had taken retribution for it.

But in what a way—!

‘I can’t believe you did this, Dominick,’ she said quietly, shaking her head in disbelief.

Dominick’s top lip curled contemptuously. ‘If you have any doubts that I’m the person who now owns fifty-one per cent of Carlton Cosmetics, then don’t,’ he assured her confidently before drinking the remainder of the brandy in his glass, enjoying the smooth burning sensation of the alcohol as it slid down his throat. ‘But I’m afraid Carlton only learnt of the takeover very recently when Caroline told him that she had sold her ten per cent of the company shares. To me,’ he added with satisfaction. He shrugged impassively, his dark eyes narrowing as he watched Kenzie’s reaction.

Pained disbelief. Followed by slow acceptance which quickly turned into an anger that now burned in the depths of her glittering green eyes and the twin spots of colour in her cheeks. She slammed her brandy glass down on the coffee-table before standing up to glare at him.