This isn’t happening, she kept telling herself; it can’t be. It’s just a nightmare; it isn’t real, she thought in her dream, as she had thought that night on the beach. I’ll wake up soon, and it won’t be true, any of it.
The dream abruptly changed, as they always did, like the spinning of a kaleidoscope, everything suddenly taking on a new pattern. She was still on the beach, but she could see again; the tape across her eyes had gone, her mouth wasn’t gagged, nobody was hurting her. She looked up through the windswept tangles of her long blonde hair at Patrick in the moonlight.
‘You don’t have to be afraid of me, Antonia,’ he told her.
‘I’m not,’ she whispered, but it wasn’t true. She was afraid and confused. Had it been a dream, after all? Was she awake now?
‘What do you want, Antonia?’ Patrick softly asked, then put out a hand and touched her breast, and she saw suddenly that she was naked, and gasped. His fingers trailed across her bare pale skin and she cried out with pleasure and shame.
‘Patrick...’
He bent his head and kissed where his hand had lain, and the pierce of desire was like a hot knife.
‘No,’ she cried out, shuddering. ‘Don’t...oh, Patrick, don’t; I don’t want you to do that...’
But she knew she was lying, that she ached to have him touch her like that. It was a tormented confusion between fear and desire that made her deny him and her own feelings, pushing him away. She came up through the cloudy layers of sleep to find herself in her bed, her sheet wound round her like a shroud.
Still dream-dazed, kicking and struggling to break free, she heard movements, the sound of running footsteps, and her nerves leapt with panic. She fought free of the sheet to look at the door, but sat up only to be hit by the solid wall of a man’s chest as someone threw himself at the bed.
For a second she was so confused that she didn’t know whether she was awake or dreaming, but her senses told her, This isn’t a dream; this is real.
Antonia began to scream.
‘It’s OK, it’s only me. You’re safe; nobody’s going to hurt you,’ Patrick hurriedly whispered, pushing her face down into his shirt with one hand clamped behind her head.
For an instant she ached to stay there, buried against him, safe. His body was warm; she heard the deep rhythm of his heart under her cheek; her nostrils inhaled the scent of his skin, a maleness which made her quiver.
But it wasn’t safe being that close to this man. It made her want to be closer, and at the same time it made her blood run thickly in panic. She had to get away from him.
She began to struggle, and at once he let her go. Antonia half tumbled back against the pillows, breathing wildly.
Patrick leaned over and switched on the bedside lamp. Dazzled by the sudden explosion of light, Antonia blinked blindly at him, trying to slow her breathing.
When she could control her voice enough she stammered, ‘What...what...are you doing here? How did you get back into the house? The doors were locked. I checked them myself.’
‘I never left,’ he coolly informed her. He was sitting on the side of her bed, still wearing the black shirt and jeans he had been wearing earlier, although they looked a little creased now, as if he might have slept in them.
She breathed audibly, staring while she took that in. ‘You mean you hid somewhere?’
His brows met. ‘I didn’t hide!’ he said curtly, offended. ‘I went into the sitting-room.’
‘There was no light on in there when I went down!’
‘I didn’t put one on. I sat in the window-seat and looked out into the garden.’
‘All this time you’ve been here, in the house, while I thought you had gone?’ She found that thought alarming; her blue eyes dilated, their pupils shiny as black sloes against the pallor of her skin. ‘Why did you do that?’ she whispered.
He looked angrily at her, his features taut and grim. ‘Don’t look at me like that! Why the hell do you think I stayed? I was worried about you; you were in such a bad way I was afraid to leave you alone.’
‘If I was in a bad way it was your fault!’ she threw back at him, and saw his face tighten even more, as if she’d hit him.
‘OK,’ he muttered reluctantly. ‘Maybe I was afraid I might have triggered bad memories, brought it all back—’
‘And you felt guilty,’ she broke in, and his eyes flashed.
‘Until I remembered that you were engaged, and I asked myself what sort of marriage it was going to be if you couldn’t even stand being kissed!’
She stiffened, her eyes sliding away sideways. ‘But you’re not the man I’m going to marry!’
He leaned towards her, and she felt a pulse begin to beat in her neck.
‘Then tell me he makes love to you and you like it!’
‘I’m not talking about my private life to you!’
‘That’s just the trouble, though, isn’t it? You haven’t talked about it to anyone.’
‘I saw a therapist back in the States!’ she retorted, bristling.
He gave her a disbelieving stare. ‘If you did, it didn’t help much, or you wouldn’t be so screwed up now.’
‘I’m not!’ She was getting angrier, her eyes brilliant with resentment. ‘Just because I don’t want you to kiss me doesn’t mean I’m screwed up. You may believe that every woman you meet goes weak at the knees at the sight of you, but—’
‘I’ve never had a woman throw up because I kissed her before!’ he roughly muttered, his mouth hard, and then he said, ‘Just now...you were having a nightmare, weren’t you?’
She shot him a look, glanced down, nodding. ‘You...heard me?’
‘Yes,’ he said tersely.
A wave of heat went through her as she remembered what she had been dreaming when she woke up—Patrick’s hands caressing her, his mouth on her naked breast, all
