Desire Has No Mercy Read Online Free PDF Page B

I like behave like gentlemen, and for all your fine clothes and your villa in Campania, you're basically a ruthless, vindictive brute who pretends to care for the memory of your mother. If you had any real respect for women, I wouldn't be here right now, married to you and hating every minute of it.'
    'Do you mind lowering your voice?' he said pleasantly. 'I don't care to have it broadcast that I have a shrew for a wife.'
    'I'd like to tell the world what I have for a husband.' Her eyes blazed into his. 'I'm no sweet and adoring Italian girl for you to order about,
signore
. Respect and adoration have to be earned, and all I have for you is aversion. It's only because you're tall that I look up to you, but to me you'll always be low class.'
    '
Grazie
.' He inclined his handsome head, his lashes still dark across the centres of his eyes. 'With a shrew for a mother and a brute for a father the pair of us can expect to have a charming infant!'
    'It's your fault there's to be an infant at all,' she rejoined bitterly. 'Nothing could be harder to bear than having your child inside me. A child should be made with love, and this one is already branded with hate.'
    'Not mine,' he said quickly. 'It wasn't one of the worst experiences of my life, having you in my arms. You're very lovely—'
    'For God's sake stop it!' She flung a hand over her eyes and turned her head away from him, gazing out blindly at the sheer white clouds bouncing by in a sky of incredible blueness. The plane dropped a little, then rose again and her stomach heaved. No… no, she mustn't be sick. Not in front of Rome. It was bad enough that she felt so queasy when she first woke up, the physical proof that she was bearing his child, so mortifying when she looked in the mirror and saw her own pallor and the tiny beads of sweat on her skin. And there would be more to suffer! Her body would fill out and grow heavy, and that unwanted burden inside her would sap her energy and take the youthful spring out of her walk and the lustre out of her hair. She would look horrible, and then would come the painful, sweating business of giving birth!
    A shudder went through her body. It would be different if she wanted the baby… if she loved the man who had given it to her. 'Are you feeling all right?' His fingers closed upon her arm. 'Come, Julia, if you wish to be sick—'
    'Shut up and go to hell!' she said fiercely, pulling free of his touch. 'I don't want you or your concern. Leave me alone!'
    'You know I can't do that, so don't be childish, Julia. What has to be, will be, and we have to make the best of it.'
    'All right for you, Rome. Your body hasn't been violated!'
    '
Santo Dio
, do you have to say such things?'
    'Do they hurt, Rome?' She turned to look at him curiously. 'Can you actually feel them pricking your insensitive skin? I'd never stop saying them if I thought that was possible. It would be a gratifying way to pass the time I must spend with you.'
    'I won't take too much goading,' he warned her. 'Push me too far and you already know what happens.'
    'Yes, Rome, you use brute force. I imagine it's in you. The Romans were never very gentle, were they? Look what they did to the Sabine women, not to mention those poor devils they fed to the lions. Isn't it true that we are what our forebears have been?'
    'No doubt the Van Holdens kept slaves for years,' he said sarcastically. 'Your grandmother certainly took it for granted that other people were around to take her orders. But maybe you wouldn't be aware of that. She obviously spoiled you and your sister and turned the pair of you into pretty little dolls, too rare -to be touched by human hands. I remember the boys at your sister's party, wearing kid gloves to handle the little girls in their satin dresses. Kids who grow up thinking there are two types of women, those they must treat like art objects, and those they pay for an hour's fun.'
    'You'd know all about that, no doubt,' Julia said coldly.
    'On the contrary,'