after the way you’d been playing up to him all night Slade might quite naturally have thought that you wanted to spend the night with him as well as the evening.’
‘I’m fine,’ Chelsea lied again. She had no wish to remember the black anger in Slade’s eyes when he had touched her body. Disgust for her own behaviour flooded through her. She had never thought of herself as sexually repressed, ‘sex-starved’ to the point where she would respond physically to any experienced man—just the opposite; and yet last night …
‘How’s Kirsty?’ she asked her sister, trying to obliterate Slade Ashford from her mind.
‘She seems fine,’ Ann told her. ‘In fact she seemed more puzzled than distressed about you going off with Slade. Perhaps she’s just trying to put on a brave front—I don’t know, but I do know one thing—she’s going out with Lance James tonight, to some disco. All we have to do now is to make sure that the rift becomes permanent. I don’t suppose you …’
‘No way,’ Chelsea told her firmly. ‘I’ve done my femme fatale bit to death—besides, I’ll be leaving at the end of the week.’
‘Ralph says I’m not to worry. He persists in believing that Slade was merely indulging Kirsty. He says a man like Slade doesn’t need to chase after seventeen-year-old schoolgirls, no matter how pretty they are … Are you sure you’re all right?’ Ann persisted. ‘You sound strange. Look, why don’t you come over …’
‘Ann, I’m fine,’ Chelsea interrupted firmly. With the night behind her it was easier to convince herself that she must have exaggerated her body’s response to Slade’s skilled lovemaking.
With a sudden start of horror she relived her flight from Slade’s apartment, shuddering with distaste as she recalled the way she had been dressed. Her dress! Hysterical laughter bubbled up inside her. What was more important—the loss of a dress, or the loss of her self-respect? Besides, something told her that she would never have been able to wear it again, because at the back of her mind was the knowledge that it was tainted for her by the way she had behaved while wearing it.
For Slade Ashford it had been nothing more than simply another brief sexual encounter; an automatic male response to an available woman; a casual acceptance of a way of life which was totally alien to her.
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