THE UNSUITABLE BRIDE

CHAPTER EIGHT

Control mattered to Lisa. Discipline. Ruthless order. The one time she’d let her guard down had been a disaster, and she’d sworn never to repeat that mistake. Falling in love with Jennie had caught her off guard. Lisa hadn’t known what was happening, she hadn’t understood the impact Jennie’s soft temperament was having on her, so she’d been powerless to shield herself against it.

Not anymore – never again.

Lisa shielded herself as a matter of course, ensuring short, functional relationships, keeping things physical, refusing to get to know the women she slept with beyond the bare minimum.

The fact she was engaged to Roseanne shouldn’t change her modus operandi. The fact Roseanne was sweet and had been badly hurt, the fact Lisa found her words mesmerising and wanted to understand everything about why Roseanne felt as she did, only served as a warning to adhere more strictly to her personal code of behaviour.

Roseanne heard the door opening and immediately her body responded, her pulse firing into overdrive, her heart thumping at the prospect of Lisa’s possession of her body, even as her heart splintered apart. Every night Lisa came to her bedroom late like this. There was no attempt to conceal her purpose. No window-dressing of dinner first, conversation, flattery, romance. It was sex – not perfunctory, but purposeful. Necessary. Roseanne lived for this short hour, but she hated it too. Roseanne hated it for the very physical reminder of how little she meant to her future wife. Roseanne was a body, that was all. A means of begetting an heir.

And once they had their heir?

Once her pregnancy was confirmed?

Lisa’d no longer come to see her, and what would Roseanne live for then?

Their child, Roseanne consoled herself with, in the rational hours of the day. But at night, she knew it would never be enough to make her whole. Having felt the pleasures of Lisa’s touch, having her his possession and heat, Roseanne couldn’t imagine a life without. Living in this great palace with Lisa somewhere distant under the same roof, and no idea how Lisa was spending her time, and with whom?

It had been ten days since they’d come to Lisa’s palace, and every night except one she’d come to Roseanne’s room, made love to her and then left, always with the parting remark to ‘sleep, little one’. Didn’t Lisa know how difficult that was?

Roseanne turned reluctantly, never quite able to brace for the sight of Lisa. This was no different. Lisa Katabi swept into her room, her black eyes smouldering as they devoured Roseanne. There was no other word for it. Lisa looked at Roseanne as though she’d been trying to see her all day, Lisa’s eyes moving from her silky hair to her shoulders to her hips, down to her bare feet, then back up again, and all the while Lisa stalked across the room, so that by the time her gaze returned to Roseanne’s face she was sweeping her into her arms, her mouth seeking Roseanne’s.

A low groan escaped her as they kissed, her hands lifting to Lisa’s shoulders, pulling her closer even when she desperately wanted to push Lisa away. Roseanne wore only a cotton nightgown and Lisa stripped it from her easily, lifting her and wrapping her legs around her waist, carrying Roseanne towards the bed as though she weighed nothing. Seconds after laying her down in the centre, Lisa was naked, her eyes still boring into Roseanne as though she was trying to convey something to her, but it was nothing Roseanne understood. Lisa’s fingers weaved through hers as her knee parted Roseanne’s legs, making room for her.

Many times, after they’d made love, Roseanne later wished she’d rejected her. Not because she didn’t want Lisa but because she wanted to hurt her. To show Lisa that she wasn’t so completely at her mercy. And yet evidently she was, because she moaned Lisa’s name and lifted her hips, needing something of her, even this – just a physical sign that in some small way, for this small period of time, Lisa needed her too.