Come Lie With Me - Linda Howard [64]
“Are you comfortable?” he murmured.
Comfortable wasn’t the word for it; she was so tired that her limbs lay heavily, without strength. But she nodded, as he seemed to want an answer. What did it matter? She was just so tired….
After a moment he said with misleading mildness, “I thought you said you’d been married.”
Surprise made her lift her head and stare at him. “I was.” What did he mean?
Gently he threaded his fingers through her hair and forced her head back to his shoulder. “Then why was it so…painful for you?” he asked, his voice a rumble under her ear. “I damned near fainted, thinking that you’d been a virgin.”
For a moment her mind was blank, struggling to understand what he was saying; then realization came abruptly and a hot flush warmed her cold cheeks. “I wasn’t a virgin,” she assured him huskily. “It’s just that I haven’t…it’s been a long time.”
“How long?”
With rising alarm she heard the determination in his voice, barely masked by the quietness of his tone. He meant to know everything, to uncover all her secrets. Twice before he’d torn away the protection of her forgetfulness, forcing her to remember the pains and failures that she’d tried so hard never to think of again. Did he like causing her pain?
“How long?” he repeated inexorably. “Talk to me, honey, because you’re not leaving this bed until I know.”
Dione closed her eyes in despair, swallowing in an effort to relieve the dryness of her mouth. She might as well tell him and get it over with. “Twelve years,” she finally admitted, the words muffled against his skin because as she said them, she turned her face into his throat.
“I see.” Did he? Did he really see? Could any man really understand what goes through a woman’s mind when her body is violated? A wild bitterness sprang out of the well of pain that she usually kept covered. He didn’t care if he explored the clock’s workings until it could no longer tick, as long as he discovered what had made it tick in the beginning. Her hands stiffened against him and she pushed, but now he was much stronger than she was, and held her welded tightly to him, his body hard and unyielding against hers. After a moment she gave up the futile effort and lay beside him in rigid rejection.
He curved his long fingers over her smooth shoulder and tucked her even closer to him, as if to shield her. “Twelve years is a long time,” he began easily. “You had to be just a kid. How old are you now?”
“Thirty.” She heard the ragged edge of panic in her voice, felt the way her heart began to skitter, the increased rhythm of air rushing in and out of her lungs. She’d already told him too much; he could put the pieces of the puzzle together now and read the whole ugly story.
“Then you had to be just eighteen…. You told me that you got married when you were eighteen. Haven’t you been in love since then? I know men have been attracted to you. You’ve got a face and body that turn my insides into melted butter. Why haven’t you let someone love you?”
“That’s my business,” she cried sharply, trying again to roll away from him. He held her without hurting her, gently subduing her with his arms and legs. Goaded, maddened by the bonds that held her, she shrieked, “Men don’t love women! They hurt them, humiliate them, then say, ‘Whatsamatter? You frigid?’ Let me go!”
“I can’t,” he said, his voice catching oddly. She was in no state to pay any attention to how her words had affected him; she began to fight in earnest, kicking at his legs, trying to scratch his face, her body arching wildly in an effort to throw