Still oblivious to his awakening, she cupped his face, her own etched with her coup de grâce, an expression that would have brought him to his knees if he hadn’t realized the truth. Total trust, full surrender. Temptation thundered through him.
He staggered away in self-disgust.
This time when he recoiled, he broke free from the prison of her thighs, dropped her back on her own feet. She stumbled, crashed back against the door.
Panic flashed in her eyes. His heart stampeded. Had his involuntary force frightened her, brought back memories of when another man had used his superior strength to hurt her?
Dio, what was he thinking? This was an act. Her sob story about the husband who’d abused her—the husband she’d used and destroyed instead—had been a string of masterfully composed lies.
Sure enough, the panic was turning to an uncanny emulation of pained confusion, then dread. “Durante…what’s wrong?”
Everything, he wanted to roar. You, the woman, the treasure I thought I found, doesn’t exist.
He glared at her, everything he wanted to yell frothing inside him. His body quaked as if on the verge of explosion.
Then, after a long moment filled with labored-breathing, without another word or glance, he turned on his heel and walked away.
He wouldn’t look back. Ever again. The dream was over.
Gabrielle stood plastered to her door, watching Durante walk away.
She couldn’t breathe. Something sharp and burning had lodged in her gut, twisting her to shreds, coagulating into a mass of pain.
A wave of darkness swamped her.
She stumbled around, pressed her clammy face to her door, fumbled inside her purse. Key. Get inside. Damned if she would faint out here. She’d given the tabloids enough fodder for a decade. This would see her to her grave.
Then she was inside. Alone. As she should have remained, as she would from now on. She’d never let anyone close again, never…
All her nerves seemed to snap. She went down in a heap on the ground, her dress swirling around her like a suffocating vortex.
She tore at it. Couldn’t bear the oppression. Had to breathe.
It took forever. Then she was in her panties, staggering up and to her bedroom. She fell onto her bed, folded into a ball of anguish. Her body was still throbbing, demanding him…Stop it.
Misery engulfed her, wrung her, first with dry heaves, then with tears so violent she thought she might dissolve, dissipate.
She’d thought she’d braced herself for the worst when she’d sought him out, preparing for anything from cold dismissal to ireful rejection. But how could she have predicted the events that had dominoed since she’d laid eyes on him, knocking sense and good intentions out of reach until she’d found herself wrapped around him, unaware and uncaring if the world was watching, begging for him to possess her, all but offering him carte blanche with her life?
She’d been certain of what he felt. She’d thought they’d shared something that transcended time and explanations, something real on the most fundamental level.
It had all been an illusion. He’d lied when he’d said he didn’t care about labels. He must have been trying to stimulate his glutted senses by leading on yet another desperate female to see how far she’d go, how much of herself she’d offer.
She’d offered him everything. Her pain and shame and trust. She’d left herself wide open, and the blow had crushed her.
In her mind, the feverish moments played again, filled with the cherishment and pleasure his every word and touch had bestowed. Then he’d demanded her name and she’d given it, delighted to complete his knowledge of her, unable to wait to hear it on his lips in all the ways he’d promised.
More images and sensations rose until she felt she was drowning in black ink. Durante, his body losing its gentle ferocity, stiffening, withdrawing, pushing her away.
For one moment, panic had flashed, fear that he, too, got his kicks abusing women. Worse, that something was wrong with her, like Ed had told her, something that drove otherwise normal men to abuse her.
The fear had passed as soon as it had flared. Not Durante. She wouldn’t let Ed’s vicious psychological sabotage fester again, not for a second. The only one who had something wrong with him was Ed.
But then, something worse than physical abuse had filled Durante’s eyes, twisted his face. The rage and revulsion he’d transmitted would leave a deeper scar than anything Ed had done.
After all they’d shared, she hadn’t warranted the benefit of a moment’s hesitation before he believed the labels she’d been stuck with rather than the reality of her. His decision had been instantaneous, the change in him clearly irreversible. It was the final proof that there was no use. That Ed had won.
He’d been winning for years now, he and his lackeys painting her so black that no one would believe her even if she broke her pact of silence and told the world what a sick bastard he was. And she hadn’t cared. She hadn’t cared for anyone enough to care what they thought of her. Until Durante…
Was this how despair took root in someone’s psyche? Would it now blossom into a monstrous growth that would suffocate everything in its path? Had an injury like this been the origin of her father’s suffering? His mother’s? Would she react the same way, follow in their footsteps down that bottomless spiral…?
She came to no conclusion before the blackness of exhaustion and heartache dragged her under.
Six
Durante was standing in the distance. His eyes were heavy with disparagement, accusation, his fists clenched at his sides.
She began to walk toward him, her steps gaining speed until she was running. She had to beg him to hear her out. She wasn’t what the rumors made her out to be. He of all people knew that. He was the only one she’d shown her real self.
But as she approached him, he turned around and strode away. And she went mad.
She felt her feet lifting off the ground as she caught up with him, sank her fingers in his arm, wrenched. He turned on her with a snarl. And she punched him. In the face. Felt the crunch of cartilage and bones in her hand and his nose, the pain explode through her joints.
She stared up at him in horror as his eyes brimmed with icy rage, and she knew he wouldn’t hit back. She almost wished he would, to show her some reaction besides that chilling disdain.
He gave her nothing, stared down at her as if at a maggot.
Her thoughts were swerving from insisting on paying for the reconstructive surgery that would repair the nose she’d pulverized, to deciding to give him a matching broken jaw to go with it… when she lurched awake.
Her eyes wouldn’t open. She’d cried them shut.
