Fear cut Billie as deep as a knife wound and a kind of panic raced like a wrecking ball through her more usually calm thoughts, creating mental havoc. Her blood ran cold, her skin turned clammy. 'L-lies?' she queried, playing desperately for time.
'That certainly wasn't the very first time you had sex. You weren't a virgin before I married you, yet you were determined to make me believe that you were. What is that other than a lie?'
He was disappointed, she assumed, realising just what a pit she had dug for herself to fall into. How could she tell him the truth without telling him the whole truth? The few hours of grace she had believed she still had had suddenly vanished, depriving her of any control over the situation.
'Of course it would be downright hypocrisy for a guy of my experience to expect or demand a virgin bride in this day and age,' Alexei drawled in glancing continuance. 'I may have made a false assumption but you lied by omission. Lying by staying silent when you should have contradicted me is still a lie.'
'I didn't know how to tell you,' Billie framed uncertainly. 'When you made that assumption I felt trapped by it—'
'No, don't make the mistake of trying to lay your dishonesty at my door,' Alexei cautioned her, his lean handsome face hardening into grim lines at her response. 'I also want to know who your first lover was: Damon Marios, your spineless first love?'
The instant he flung that arrogant demand and that name at her she froze, wondering whether she really had to trail out all her secrets there and then, if there was no escape, no other way of deflecting him. And then she marvelled at her own reluctance to speak, her terror of breaking free of the cosy bridal bubble of happy-ever-afters and fantasy. 'You're not going to believe me when I do tell you who it was.'
As he stared at her from below the dense dark screen of his luxuriant lashes Alexei's handsome mouth took on a sardonic quirk. 'Try me. At least you have the wit not to persist in the lie.'
Billie no longer felt comfortable in the bed. She was no more comfortable under his intent scrutiny when she slid out naked from below the sheet to move a few steps away and reach for the light silk robe draped in readiness for her use over a chair. Enveloped within its concealing folds, the sash tightened round her waist with unsteady hands, she felt curiously more in control again.
'How did you know? How did you guess?' she suddenly pressed, unable to resist asking that question.
'You told me. You betrayed yourself by the expression in your eyes, your face, your very responses. You looked and acted guilty.'
'Because that's how I feel and it's really not fair because not all of this is my fault,' Billie reasoned with a defensive edge of defiance. 'You can't be so judgemental about lies. Not everything is that black and white.'
'Spare me the moral philosophy speech,' Alexei derided. 'You may be my wife but one thing hasn't changed: I still expect a straight answer to a direct question.'
'You asked me who my first lover was but, quite honestly, you have no right to ask me that question!' Billie dared, flashing that answer back to him in retribution.
Alexei dealt her an arrested appraisal, her insubordination clearly coming as an unwelcome surprise to him.
Billie was trembling. 'I mean, how do you even dare to ask me that question?'
His golden gaze was splinteringly hard and unyielding. 'I dare because you're my wife and nothing in your life should be hidden from me.'
Billie tried and failed to swallow at that bold, startlingly idealistic expectation. A tiny pulse at the base of her throat was flickering wildly. The tip of her tongue snaked out to moisten the taut dryness of her full lower lip. 'You were my first lover…but you don't remember the time we spent together—'