side, getting her even wetter. They laughed a good deal. She felt such adoration for him, such complete devotion, and she guessed he realized it. She didn’t care.
When they reached the suite, he didn’t try to hold her in more conversation. He gave her a chaste kiss on her forehead and gently pushed her into her bedroom. She didn’t want the evening to end, but she realized she was drunk, not serious drunk, but dizzy, and wiped out with jet lag. She smiled and giggled a bit when she brushed her teeth in the bathroom. She pulled her cotton nightgown over her head and climbed into her bed. The room shimmered around her like a mirage in the desert. She felt soft and warm and the dizziness was part of the sweetness of her mood. What a wonderful evening, better than anything she could have fantasized. The best evening she’d ever have in her whole life. He was perfect and warm and so tender. Yes, perfect, and maybe tomorrow would be the same.
She wondered where he would take her tomorrow. This evening they’d wandered through Montmartre and he’d told her wicked stories of the artists who’d lived there at the end of the last century. La Belle Epoque, it was called, and he told her how one artist had painted himself making love to his model and how his wife had come to his showing, seen it, and set it and him and his model on fire. The painting had sold for a stunning sum just three years before here in Paris. Some Japanese had bought it, he said, laughing.
He was the most romantic man in the world.
Lindsay was on the point of sleep, her thoughts drowsy now and vague. The door opened quietly, and a shaft of light fell across her face from the living room.
She sat up quickly, disoriented. “Is there something wrong, Alessandro?”
The prince stood in the doorway, wearing a dark blue dressing gown, his feet bare. Her eyes adjusted to the light. She saw that he was smiling. Tentatively she smiled back at him.
“I’ve been thinking,
She saw then that he didn’t have pajama bottoms on. His legs were as bare as his feet. They were hairy. Black hair. His feet were long and narrow. Something stirred in her, something alarming, something utterly alien, something that made her heart pound in her stomach, something that scared the hell out of her. She pulled the covers to her neck and waited, not understanding, not wanting to understand, really, as his words replayed over and over in her brain.
“I’ve been thinking that it’s absurd for a beautiful innocent girl like you to allow a fumbling boy to take your virginity. You wouldn’t enjoy it at all. You’d cry and hate it. No, I’ve decided I can’t allow that to happen.”
She knew quite clearly at that instant exactly what he meant. It froze her, mind and body and tongue. Her dream of him died in that moment, became ashes, cold and insubstantial. He was a stranger and she was afraid. She’d been more than a fool, she’d been a blind idiot, a silly little girl. Oh, God, what was she going to do? She was alone here with him. She felt cold and numb and terrified.
“You’re very lucky, Lindsay,” he continued in his warm soft voice, coming ever closer. She measured with her fear each step he took toward the bed. Her breath hitched in her chest. “Don’t look at me like that,
She tried to find saliva in her mouth. She spoke in a desert-dry whisper. “You’re married to my half- sister.”
He gave an elegant shrug. “Sydney is a castrating bitch. She’s frigid and she’s really quite annoying with her bourgeois notions of morality. She’s also stupid, contrary to what your besotted ass of a father believes about her. She isn’t beautiful, she isn’t perfect, she isn’t anything. She doesn’t matter, just as that stupid baby she was carrying didn’t matter. She acted like a fool when she was pregnant, like it was so important to her, to me, to my family. She was enough for me to put up with without having her belly bloated out with a brat. Ah, yes, that was much too much to bear.
“I remember when I first saw you, you were all clumsy angles and bony knees and knobby elbows and you were just to my liking. I knew when I saw you at the wedding that you would become quite lovely in the future, but I knew too you would be older and I hated that. I wanted you then, with all your teenage awkwardness, all your little-girl innocence and guilelessness. God, I wanted you and your virginity. I wanted to cover myself in your sweet innocence. I still want you; I want your virginity even more now. I didn’t think I would, since you’re eighteen now, but I do. Other men will consider you more beautiful in the years to come, but that’s for them, not me.
“No, I can’t wait any longer, Lindsay. I’ve already had to wait too long for you. I sweated and worried, thinking it could already be too late. And your damned father gave you freedom by sending you to that school in Connecticut. I know what girls are like today, fucking when they’re young, far too young, letting young boys take them in the back-seats of their grubby cars. But you managed to make it to eighteen and you’re still a virgin. God knows that by the time you’re twenty, you’ll have let a good half-dozen boys fuck you. They’d all be Americans and clumsy boors. No, I’ll not allow that. I’ll teach you to be discriminating. I’ll teach you how to fuck a prince.”
He was standing by the bed now. He leaned over and switched on the Tiffany lamp. He sat down beside her. He took her cold hand and squeezed her limp fingers.
“Tell me,
She nodded, her eyes never leaving his face.
“Did you like it?”
She shook her head. He leaned over and his mouth touched hers.
He immediately straightened. “No, you wouldn’t have. They’re fools, those boys, not like me, not men. No, they’re not anything like me. I don’t mind you being afraid, Lindsay, because it really doesn’t matter to me. Perhaps it even amuses me. Have any boys played with your breasts? Kissed your nipples?”
She stared at him, unmoving, so afraid she was paralyzed.
“Or your crotch? Have they put their fingers in you? No? Well, I’ll make it very nice for you. Girls like to have their lips rubbed and kissed. And there’s your little clitoris. Have you masturbated much, Lindsay? Have you given yourself much pleasure? Did all the girls at your school talk about it? How much they wanted to do it?”
He leaned toward her again, his lips parted, his eyes intent on her mouth. “Have you any idea what it will feel like when I have my tongue hot on you?”
Lindsay cried out, the sound of her own voice shoving her back into reality, back into herself. But this reality was ugly and it was right here beside her. She rolled to the side away from him and onto the floor, coming up to her feet.
He was still smiling. He rose and came around the end of the bed. “Why are you afraid? It’s me, Lindsay, and you’ve loved me since you first saw me. Admit it.”
“No, no, stay back. Oh, God, you’re not what I thought you were.”
He moved quickly then, grabbed her upper arms as she tried to dodge past him, and dragged her back onto the bed. “I don’t mind if you fight me,” he was saying over and over against her cheek, his breath hot, his voice fast and high. “You won’t like it as much, but I will. Jesus, I’ll love it.” He was still smiling and she could see the gold filling in one of his back teeth.
“No, damn you, no!” She saw that words had no effect on him. He was going to rape her. The instant she thought the word, a string of stark images flashed through her mind, and she went crazy. He was ripping her cotton nightgown open at the throat and she felt cold air on her chest. She kicked her legs up; they were strong because she played soccer, and he grunted with pain. Her knees hit his groin and he grabbed her two wrists and now he pressed himself down on her, pinning her legs. He was breathing hard with exertion, trying to hold both her wrists in one of his hands, but she was too strong. She was a big girl and she was in good shape. “You’re acting like a bloody American bitch,” he yelled in her face. “Stop it, for God’s sake! Hold still for me! Don’t be like your fool of a sister!”
This was the real Alessandro, the man Sydney had married in good faith, the man Lindsay had fantasized about and dreamed about. He had set this whole trip up and he fully intended to rape her. God, she couldn’t believe—She twisted and yanked at his hold, tried to bring her legs up again to give her leverage. She was muscular, and she wasn’t going to lie there like a victim. She remembered her self-defense courses. Scream, scream, scream. Had he done this before, to Italian girls? And they’d just lain there whimpering and let him rape
