‘I know quite well what you wanted,’ Dominic cut her off, his mouth twisting as he added coldly, ‘but you’re not going to get it…at least not tonight, and most definitely not from me.’
As he spoke he came towards her, wrenching back the bedclothes and dragging her out of his bed. She averted her eyes from his in shamed distress, her teeth clenching together as she caught his sharply indrawn breath, and felt his fingers bite even more painfully into her arm.
His touch hurt and she whimpered deep in her throat, intimidated by an anger and contempt that seemed to reinforce all the unkind gibes Ricky had thrown at her, and which for some reason seemed to hurt far, far more. As she instinctively arched away from the contact of his flesh against her own, she heard Dominic curse, and then say harshly, ‘It’s too late to play the injured innocent now. My God,’ he added thickly, ‘does Rick know what kind of wanton he’s married? No wonder he drinks and gambles so heavily!’
Kate wanted to protest that he was wrong…but her throat ached too badly, her muscles bunched in agonised protest at the way he had destroyed all her hopes and illusions. She wanted him to go away and leave her alone so that she could go back to her own room and hide herself away, as much from her own inner sense of humiliation as from him, but he didn’t seem disposed to do any such thing.
Swallowing down the painful lump in her throat, she whispered achingly, ‘Please…’ stopping abruptly as she caught the savagery of his indrawn breath and felt the anger tremor through him as his eyes glittered darkly into her own.
‘You ask me for pity?’ he demanded softly. ‘It’s Rick who gets that. This is what you deserve.’
He bent over her, his body blocking out most of the light, fear keeping her body rigid as his mouth ground down on hers. She could taste whisky on his breath; feel the tension and rage in his body as his mouth savaged hers, in a kiss that was a parody of all that a kiss should be.
She felt her inner lip split beneath the pressure of his mouth, and tasted the rusty iron flavour of her own blood. She was under no illusion about what he was doing, and when at last he released her mouth she told herself that she was lucky that previously all she had suffered from her husband had been his indifference. Perhaps she ought to be grateful to Dominic, she thought miserably, forcing down the weak tears building up her eyes, because now she knew just how lucky she was that she had not been forced to endure Ricky’s hatred.
Numbly she was aware of him p
icking her up, and striding towards the door. Terror held her silent as he thrust open her own bedroom door and carried her to the bed, dropping her callously down on to it.
She forced herself to keep her eyes open and her body still until she was sure he had gone, and even then she couldn’t relax. Terror held her completely immobile.
She wasn’t sure how long it was before she was able to get up and stumble into her bathroom. She felt abused, degraded in the worst possible way, more contaminated somehow than if he had been a stranger who had callously attacked and raped her, because then at least she would have been free of the taint of having invited what had happened.
It was only a kiss, she told herself feverishly as she scrubbed at her pale skin…a kiss, that was all, but inside she felt so scarred and mutilated that she didn’t think she would ever be the same again. But the fault was hers…she had been the one who was to blame… And yet she couldn’t help thinking that had she been one of the beauties Ricky openly dated, he would not have reacted to her in the same way…no, it was something in her that had caused him to reject and humiliate her…something in her that was lacking, that made it impossible for any man to feel anything other than disgust for her. At last, exhausted by the trauma of the evening and completely drained of energy, she climbed into bed.
Tonight something inside her had died and she didn’t think it could ever be brought back to life again. From now on she would live her life as though she were a nun. No man would ever get the chance to do to her what first Ricky, and then Dominic, had done.
* * *
The harsh ring of the telephone jerked her abruptly from the past to the present. Numbly Kate reached for the receiver.
‘Kate?’
Sue’s familiar voice sounded faintly anxious.
‘I was just ringing to check that you got back all right—and to apologise again for what happened.’
Soothing her friend’s apprehensions helped her to close her mind on the past, although she could feel the tension flaring inside her when Sue added, ‘I had no idea you and he had met before, or that he was a friend of Rick’s.’
‘Sue, I’ve got some milk on for a cup of chocolate, I’d better go before it boils over.’
It was a lie, but it got her out of answering any more questions. Damn Dominic Harland, Kate thought bitterly as she replaced the receiver. What malign whim of the gods had brought him back into her life just when a clear new future seemed to promise freedom from the pain of the past?
CHAPTER FOUR
IT was lunchtime the following day before Kate felt as though she was beginning to get Dominic Harland’s unwanted presence on the fringes of her mind, back into proper perspective, and that alone was disturbing.
She had promised herself, once she had managed to drag herself free of the morass of self-loathing and misery that had drained her of the willpower to do anything other than merely exist from day to day for months after that dreadful weekend, that henceforward she was not going to waste a single second’s thought on Dominic, or what he might think of her.
That he had made totally incorrect assumptions about her morality she knew very well, but logic—something she had developed within herself with fierce zeal after her meeting with him—had imposed upon her that no matter how much she might differ from the type of woman he had obviously thought her to be, her motives on that particular night were not open to any kind of misinterpretation. She had quite simply wanted him to make love to her so that in doing so she could shed the misery of knowing herself unwanted by Ricky.
Another woman, she knew, might have developed a fierce hatred of Dominic for his rejection of her, but in her, that hatred had been turned in upon herself, burning away what she now chose to think of as her stupidity and weakness in convincing herself that she could find the answer to her own inadequacies in a man’s arms. Now all that was past. She no longer allowed herself to even think of men in any sexual sense. It was safer that way…much, much safer. Never again was she going to allow herself to be as vulnerable to pain and humiliation as she had been with Dominic.
Midway through the afternoon an unanticipated telephone call from Vera disrupted her hard-won calm.
The other woman was telephoning to suggest a time for them to meet to discuss her conservatory. Her voice sounded slightly strained, and Kate guessed intuitively that Vera felt uncomfortable about what had happened at the dinner party. Her initial instinct to cut herself off from the hazard of any potential contact with Dominic, no matter how slightly, was overridden by stubborn pride, as an inner voice taunted her that if she refused to meet Vera now, and Dominic got to hear of it, he would assume that she was afraid. So when Vera suggested that she call round at the house the following day at two-thirty, Kate found herself agreeing.
It was irritating that this should happen now, just when she had felt that life was starting to blossom out a little for her. Would Dominic’s opinion of her affect her chances of getting a commission from the Bensons?