As Amanda shook her head to indicate to Wilson that Jack was not her lover, which was in answer to the question he had asked, since her tears would not allow her utter a word, Wilson groaned deep in his throat. She heard that groan and shuddered. Then his mouth was on hers, hard, erotic and punishing as though he didn't care if he was hurting her.His hands still bruised her shoulders, the strength of his fingers possessive and ruthless but Amanda's response was as violent and overwhelming as the blind anger that drove him.
Her lips moved under his, gentle and pleading with desire. She felt the quickening if his heart beneath her shocked fingers and wanted him, loved him too much to protest at his furious behaviour.
As the kiss deepened, her hands slid up to his wife shoulders to tangle in the darkness of his hair, stroking greedily.
Wilson shuddered, his anger dissolving in raw uncontrolled hunger.
His own hands left her shoulders and pulled her body against his, both arms around her. They ended up in her narrow bed, their lovemaking white-hot, restless with desperation.
It always happened that way. Wilson's dark possessive fury, the dark streak beneath his cool charm would surface from nowhere if she as much as looked at someone else. His obsessiveness terrified her. And she had loved him so much that it broke her heart.
'You are mine, damn it's, he told her once. 'You belong to me and I won't allow any one else close to you. Do you understand that?'
It hurt that he didn't trust her after that episode with Jack. She felt that she would never know him. She couldn't understand that darkness in him. The terrible jealousy that engulfed him in anger if she so much as looked at another man. She did not know what he expected her to do, to look down anytime she saw a man? That she should not greet any man or exchange any friendly pleasantry with anyone who was of the make specie? Perhaps it was the turbulence if his upbringing, the harshness of his life that had produced this need to possess totally. He was so unlike any other man she'd met before. He lived by his own rules and it showed in that untamed convulsive strength of his face, in every silk movement of his body. He defiled convention and the rule ordinary people lived their lives.
As Amanda narrated all this to Sharon, she realised that she had been too young, barely out of business school to understand a man as worldly as Wilson.
She recalled creeping into his room in the house and burying her face in his pillow. How childish it had been. She recalled the smell of cloying perfume she had perceived. A perfume Wilson did not wear and neither did she.
She had not been suspicious at the time. In fact, she had forgotten all about it until two weeks later when she had arrived at his house to surprise him.
She saw herself in slow motion, running up the stairs, imagining that he must still be in bed so that she could join him there and experience once more the indescribable ecstasy only he could give her. It was early and the rest of the house was deserted and she hoped to have quality time with him.
As she neared the bedroom, she heard the hissing of shower. She pulled open the door, calling his name, the word dying on her lips as she saw Jess in his bed. Jess with her cloudy black hair bellowing over Wilson's pillow, her smooth bare shoulders rising from the silk sheets.
The shower hissed on against Amanda's chaotic thoughts as it all became painfully clear.
How stupid she was not to have realised. Jess had been hostile right from the start. She was smiling now though. A slow triumphant deriding smile as though she was glad that Amanda had found her in such a compromising position.
And that perfume filled the room, that cloying scent choking her. Wilson and Jess had been going on for some time and she had deluded herself that she was the only one in his life.
Suddenly, her limbs had started working again, and without a word, she had turned and run like a wind down the stairs and out of the house.
She had driven back to her flat far too fast and once she was behind the front door, she had cried her heart out.
That had been the end as far as she was concerned. She had closed in on herself, feeling that something was broken inside her.
Her brother had found her later in the evening, huddled in the sofa still crying.
Without meaning to, she told him everything.
'I don't want to see him again!' she had muttered against his shoulder. 'Nit ever".
'You don't have to. You don't have to do anything you don't want to', his brother said soothingly.
'But if he comes around....'
'I'll speak to him, don't worry'.
'But I don't want him to know that I saw...' Her voice was high and fretful.
'Leave it to me', her brother had told her.
For some reason, that had been her worst fear, seeing him again. The pain had been terrible, she had wanted to die.
Wilson had come the next day. Perhaps he had been calling but couldn't reach her. The telephone had been ringing all afternoon and she had deliberately ignored it guessing that it might be him and not wanting to speak to him nor see him.
She heard the harshness, the violence in his voice and shuddered as she blocked her ears with her hands.
Amanda crunched in the darkness behind the door, a fist to her mouth, feeling sick to her stomach.
He left sometime later and she couldn't resist as she walked towards the window to see him walk away.
At the gate, she was shocked that he turned and looked straight at her window.
She docked. He can't see me, she thought hysterically but he seemed to be looking directly at her. His eyes silvered with a terrible bitter anger.
She watched him slid into his car, the engine roaring angrily into life, the tires squealing in protests as he shot away.
She stared out into the night and started to cry again.
Her brother came on fifteen minutes later, his face pale.
'My God's, he breathed. 'He scared the wits out of me'.
Amanda was silent for a while and said, 'I'm sorry'.
'I thought' he was going to kill me when I told him that you didn't want to see him anymore. He's crazy'.
Amanda sipped her coffee without knowing what she was doing. It was dark, bitter and it burnt her tongue. 'I can't stay here', she muttered dazedly.
Her brother looked at her frowning. 'If you mean that, maybe I can help. And I think that you should get away because I don't think he will let you go easily. The man is a maniac'.
Despite all that had happened, Amanda still wanted to defend Wilson but she bit back the words, angry with herself. It wasn't her brother's fault that he had such an impression of Wilson.
'How can you help?' she asked instead.
Her brother introduced her to a friend of his who offered her a job in America. She liked his friend instantly and locked up her pain and put in her best into her work, not wanting her brother's friend to regret giving her the job.
She saw Jack in America and he was happy that she was there.