Come Lie With Me - Linda Howard [66]
“I knew then that the marriage was an awful mistake, that I wanted out, but he wouldn’t let me go. Every night I’d fight him again, and he’d force me again. “He was going to teach me how to be a woman if he had to break every bone in my body,” he said. I couldn’t stop fighting him,” she muttered to herself. “I never could just lie there and let him get it over with. I had to fight back, or I felt like something in me would die. So I fought, and the more I fought, the rougher he got. He started…hitting me.”
Blake cursed violently and she jumped, throwing her arm up to cover her face. She was so deep inside her bitter memories that she was reacting as she had then, defending herself. His curse changed into a groan and he cuddled her, coaxing her to lower her arm. “I’m sorry, darling, I didn’t mean to startle you,” he panted. “When he started hitting you, why didn’t you turn him into the police?”
“I didn’t know that he couldn’t do that,” she said tiredly. “I was so dumb; I read a lot of things about it afterward, but at the time I thought he had a legal right to do what he wanted with me, short of murder. He got worse and worse; he almost stopped wanting sex. He’d just start right in hitting me. Sometimes he’d go ahead and rape me, as roughly as he could, but most of the time he didn’t.”
“You stayed with him for three months? Isn’t that how long you told me your marriage lasted?”
“Not even that long. That I stayed with him, I mean. I can’t remember…. He pushed me down the steps one night, and I landed in the hospital with a broken arm and a concussion. I was there for several days, and a nurse figured out that I hadn’t simply tripped while going down the steps. She talked to me, and a counselor talked to me. I didn’t go back to Scott. When I was released from the hospital, the nurse let me stay with her.”
She was calmer now, the memories easier to bear. In her normal voice she said, “Scott’s family was horrified by what had happened, they were good people, and when I filed for divorce they forced Scott to go along with it. They gave me a lot of support, paid for my training as a therapist, kept Scott away from me, even got him into psychiatric counseling. It must have worked; he’s remarried now, and they seem very happy. He has two daughters.”
“Have you kept in touch with him?” Blake asked incredulously.
“Oh, no!” she denied, shaking her head. “But while his mother was alive she kept track of me, sort of looked after me like a guardian angel. She never got over what had happened to me, as if it were her fault because Scott was her son. She told me when he remarried, and when her grandchildren were born. She died a couple of years ago.”
“So he lived happily ever after, and you’ve been dragging a ball and chain around with you for all these years,” he said angrily. “Afraid to let anyone touch you, keeping people pushed away at a safe distance…only half-alive!”
“I haven’t been unhappy,” she said wearily, her lashes sweeping down. She was so tired…. He knew all of it now, and she felt so empty, as if all the terror that had filled her for so long had seeped away, leaving her hollow and lost. The warmth of Blake’s body was so comforting in the chilly room; the steady rumble of his heartbeat in his strong chest was so reassuring. She could feel the iron in the bands of flesh that wrapped around her, feel the security of his strength. She’d given him that strength; it was only right that she rely on it now. She turned her face against him, inhaling and tasting on her tongue the heady scent of his body. He smelled of man, of sweat, of a clean grassy scent that eluded her when she tried to search it out. He had the musky smell of sex, a reminder of the incredible night.