Vendetta by Susan Napier Read Free Book Online Page A

a soundless moan as she saw that what she had myopically mistaken for a clothes-horse was in fact a tripod, topped with a fearfully sophisticated-looking camera, its lens pointing malevolently at the bed.
    ‘And as for the I and you, well—we appear to be pretty brazenly self-evident, too, don’t we? Here, for instance…’
    Vivian’s hypnotised gaze followed his pointing finger. ‘See the way you’re arched across the bed under me, your arms thrown over your head in abandoned pleasure…’
    Vivian clamped the blankets rigidly under her arms, freeing her trembling hands to try frantically to push his away as he sorted through the collection and selected another.
    ‘But this one is my own personal favourite, I think. So artistic…so erotic…so expressive. Don’t you agree that we make a sensuous contrast of textures and patterns? With your ginger-dappled skin and my deep tan, and the way our bodies seem to flow over and around each other…’
    Vivian tuned out his honeyed taunts, transfixed by the searing image suspended from his fingers.
    She had seen raunchy advertisements for perfume in glossy women’s magazines that were more physically revealing, but it was impossible to be objective now. The couple in this photograph weren’t anonymous models posing for public display. That was her caught in an attitude of utter abandon, that was his nude body aggressively crushing her to the bed. She went hot and cold at the idea that he had somehow tapped into her forbidden desires.
    Even as a tiny, clinical voice of reason was pointing out that the alignment of Nicholas’s fingers on her hip conveniently covered the precise area where the thin strip of her bikini panties would be, Vivian was shattered by a sickening sense of betrayal. The pictures lied; they depicted an act of violation, not of love!
    She tried to grab the photograph out of his hand and, when he laughed jeeringly and held it out of her reach, she fell desperately on the others, tearing them into meticulously tiny pieces, all the while trying to protect her threadbare modesty with the slipping covers.
    He laughed again, making no attempt to stop her wild orgy of destruction beyond retaining safe possession of his avowed favourite. ‘There are plenty more where those came from, Vivian. It was a very long, exhausting night…’
    ‘I was unconscious,’ she panted, rejecting his sly insinuation. ‘Nothing happened—’ She stopped, stricken. ‘My God, you were going to do this to Janna? ’
    ‘Actually, the original plan was for someone else to play your sister’s partner in sin,’ he drawled. ‘And when they supposedly disappeared together, with the payment for the land, I would send you photos of the lovers and evidence that they had planned the fraud together. You were supposed to come dashing to her defence on the eve of your own wedding, sadly too late to rescue the contract that your company was depending on, but in plenty of time to negotiate the salvage of Janna’s personal and professional reputation—at the price of your own, of course…
    ‘Your arriving in Janna’s place sabotaged the exquisite complexity of the plan, but I’m nothing if not flexible. As soon as I saw you, I knew I wanted the privilege of handling you to be purely mine…’
    She had already guessed much of it, but the callous detachment with which he outlined the bare bones of the plot was chilling.
    She gasped, as an even more horrible thought smacked her in the face. ‘Who took the photos? Who else was inhere, watching us—?’ She broke off, shuddering with humiliation at the thought that Frank had been a flint-eyed witness to her degradation…
    ‘I can promise you, Vivian, you weren’t seen or touched by anyone but me.’ He took a small black wafer of plastic from the table by the bed and pointed it towards the tripod, pressing a button so that she could hear the electronic whirr as the flash momentarily dazzled her eyes. ‘Remote control. It’s a