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things private.
    â€˜We all need to talk…’
    It was Jason who put the words into the silence, the disquiet that Penny felt she could actually breathe in from the atmosphere.
    â€˜We need to know what happened…’
    â€˜And you will learn—in good time.’
    Zarek spoke without taking his darkly burning gaze from Penny’s face, the words almost tossed over his shoulder at his stepbrother. Jason was saying the things she should be saying. The words she couldn’t find the strength or the courage to form on her tongue.
    â€˜But for now you will surely acknowledge that there are some things that are private between husband and wife and are not to be shared with anyone else?’
    Was she deceiving herself, Penny wondered, or had that deep, slightly husky voice subtly emphasised that ‘husband and wife’ as if deliberately driving home the fact that here was something in which Jason’s presence was not at all welcome? Staking a claim, so to speak, like some powerful wolf moving in to demonstrate possession of his mate, the wild hairs along his spine lifting in open challenge.
    â€˜Of course, but—’
    â€˜In good time,’ Zarek repeated, reaching out a hand to the edge of the door and pulling it open wide, the meaning of his message clear. He wanted everyone out of here and Jason would be a fool to ignore the signs. They were dismissed and that was it.
    But still he lingered, looking across at Penny, a question in his eyes.
    â€˜Penny?’ he queried, appearing to check how she felt.
    How did she feel? She supposed to some it would seem wonderful that her husband, this man who had been away missing for so long—who had once been believed to be dead—would lay claim to her like this. To them it might appear that he was still so ardently in love that he couldn’t wait to be alone with his wife, to restore the links of their marriage, renew their relationship.
    But recalling what had happened between them before he had left, the rifts that had opened up between them, dividing them from each other, she knew she couldn’t see it that way at all. Oh, yes, Zarek wanted to be alone with her but for his own personal, darker reasons rather than any loving reunion. And she could only begin to guess at just what those reasons might actually be.
    But, ‘It’s fine, Jason,’ she said, exerting every ounce of control she could manage to keep her voice firm and evenwhen inside her nerves were quailing at the thought of how far from fine everything was. ‘Absolutely fine.’
    Was there some light of approval in the flash of the dark eyes he turned in her direction? The niggling worry that there was also something else had her shifting in her seat, finding herself able to move at last. Her brain seemed to have started working again too, sending the message Zarek is back —Zarek is back !—into her thoughts in a mixture of wild delight and shuddering apprehension. What was she to think? Yes, Zarek was back—but just who was this man who had been missing for two years? And what had happened to him while he had been away?
    Exactly who had come home to her?

CHAPTER FOUR
    P ENNY pushed herself to her feet as Jason, Hermione and Petros made their way out of the door, tight knots forming in her stomach at the thought of being alone with her husband for the first time in so long.
    She had never felt like this before, not even in the very beginning when she had first known him and had become his bride so very soon after that. Then she had been fizzing with excitement, just waiting for everyone else to go and leave them alone so that she and Zarek could become truly man and wife.
    She had been so sure then. Sure that he wanted her—that he loved her. After all, he’d married her, hadn’t he? At barely twenty-two she had been so very young, so naïve in matters of the heart, and even more innocent of the force of physical desire. It