Heartless

But she fought it. This was only how it began, her mother had told her, with fierce need that blinded a woman to the reality of a man’s desires. It began like this, but it ended in pain and humiliation and, ultimately, tragedy. Tragedy. Gunshots and the metallic taste of blood…

And then, quite suddenly, Jason’s hard, warm mouth slid down her neck and right onto the fullness of her breast, pressing so hungrily that she panicked.

Memories from the past surged up in her mind, frightened her. His mouth was insistent on her breast, twisting. In a few seconds, she knew, his teeth would bite into her, and she would look like her mother had, bleeding…!

She pushed at Jason’s broad chest, fighting the images in her mind as certainly as she fought this unexpected loss of control in a man whose place in her life had been tempered with iron control. She didn’t know Jason like this. His arms were contracting, and his mouth was opening, as she knew it would…! She pushed harder.

Jason realized, belatedly, what he was doing and he lifted his head. A shudder ran through him as he felt her body move frantically against him. But she wasn’t trying to get closer. She was fighting to get away from him.

“Jason, no! Put…me down! Please!” she cried, panic in her face, in her choked voice. She pushed harder. “Let me go! Let me go!”

“Damn you! You started it,” he ground out, as shocked by his own feverish lack of control as by her rejection of him as a man.

“I know. But I…I didn’t mean to! I didn’t want…that! I’m sorry!” she sobbed.

He put her back on her feet abruptly and let her go. She looked up at him with shocked, anguished eyes. He stepped back, his jaw clenched. He looked down at her with smoldering black eyes in a face harder than rock. There was violence and barely leashed passion in his expression. He looked at her as if he hated her. A harsh sob burst from her lips. She had started it, even if accidentally, and now he was angry again. It was her fault. He hated her for tempting him…!

Before he could speak, she was gone, into the house, running like a madwoman for the staircase. He stared after her with turbulent emotions, his eyes blazing, his body tense and aching. Desire evaporated slowly out of him, to be replaced with embarrassment at his lapse, with Gracie of all people. He was furious with himself. Then he was furious with her, for the teasing that aroused him and the deliberate touch of her mouth on his that had kindled his passion and made him cross the line. She’d permitted the intimacy at first, and then, when he turned up the heat just a little, she’d pushed him away as if she found him utterly repulsive. He replayed the episode in his mind, and anger grew from the embarrassment, along with rejection and humiliation and wounded pride. He’d betrayed his desire for her, and she’d been…disgusted. He’d seen it in her face.

The pain hit him like a flood. At first he was hurt. And then he was enraged. Damn her! Why tempt him into indiscretion and then behave as if he was totally responsible for it?

He turned on his heel and stalked back out to the truck. At that moment, he didn’t care if he ever saw her again as long as he lived. He cursed her every mile of the way back to Comanche Wells, so unsettled that he didn’t even see the wrecker pass him on its way to San Antonio. He’d never had anything hurt so much. Gracie didn’t want him. She was afraid of him now, running scared. He would never be able to erase this painful episode from both their minds. In a heartbeat, they had become enemies.

He stepped down hard on the accelerator. He didn’t care if he got a speeding ticket. Nothing mattered anymore. Not now.

UP IN HER ROOM, Gracie stood in the darkness, shivering. Hateful memories flooded her mind. Screams from the bedroom. Tears. Bruises and fear and blood, staining the bodice of her mother’s nightgown. Her mother, crying. Her father scathing, brutal, accusing. Other memories; of the boy who’d brought Gracie home, far too late because of a flat tire. Her father, snatching her up in his arms and throwing her at the wall with all his might. She’d fallen, dazed, bruised and terrified, only to have him come at her with a doubled-up belt. He’d snapped it on the way to her. The sound, loud even above the thunder of the storm outside; the horror of the blows, the blood…

She turned on the light and went to look in her mirror. Her face, like her mother’s had been, was covered with tears, flushed, anguished. The boy had never come back. Gracie had been bundled out of the house, bloody and sobbing, by her mother. Her father’s threats had followed them as they ran next door for help. Her mother got away. Gracie didn’t. She wasn’t quick enough to escape her father’s pursuing rage. She was lifted, carried forcibly back to her own home while her mother screamed and begged from the yard next door.

Blue lights flashing. Sirens. Men in a van, dressed like soldiers, but all in black. Big guns. Gracie trapped in her father’s arms, being dragged to the door, the pistol held at her head, her father laughing. Her mother might leave him, but Gracie would die, and she’d have to live with it. Taunting, refusing to speak with a negotiator. He wanted the news media to know it was the fault of Gracie’s faithless, whoring mother. Gracie would die now, in time for the six o’clock news! He yelled it to the policemen who were standing with their weapons drawn in the street. And he started to pull the trigger.

A shot. One shot. A crack like thunder. Wetness on Gracie’s face, in her mouth, metallic and thick; a searing pain in her head as she and her father both fell to the wet ground…

She jerked her mind back to the present. Jason had kissed her. His mouth had pressed down hard on her breast. Had he meant to grind his teeth into her flesh, the way her father had done to her poor mother? She’d told Gracie never to marry, that a man lured a woman in, and then he beat her and tortured her in the bedroom, because it was the only way he felt any pleasure or release. Gracie understood. Sex was only for a man’s pleasure, and a woman paid for it with pain. Blood and screams and pain…

Gracie gripped the edge of her dresser and felt sick. She’d run from Jason. He must think she found him disgusting. She wished she could apologize, but that would involve admitting the truth about her father and mother, and she couldn’t do that. If she did, Jason would probably throw her out of the house. It would be a terrible scandal if anyone ever found out about Gracie’s past. But it had been a long time ago, and people had short memories these days. Nobody would connect the newspaper article about the bloody little girl crying in a policeman’s arms beside her father’s body outside the dilapidated little house, with the grown woman who lived in a mansion. Especially when her own mother had told everyone that Gracie was only her stepchild. Nobody knew that her last name had been legally changed in the days just after her father’s death, to Marsh—her mother’s maiden name. She was safe.

She dabbed at her eyes as she stared at the puffy-eyed woman in the mirror. Her mother had been beautiful. Gracie favored her father, whose face had been ordinary. She had a nice mouth and her figure was well-proportioned, if a little small-breasted. Her long hair, twisted into a tight bun, would have been her best feature if she’d let it stay loose. But it was like Gracie, tied up tightly so that it couldn’t ever escape. Inside, Gracie was tied up in horrible memories.

Jason would hate her now. Maybe that was best. He wouldn’t be tempted to touch her again, to make her so weak that she wanted to do anything he liked. She felt a sense of profound loss. She would have loved being a normal woman. Jason was a kind, gentle, very masculine sort of man, for whom women held no mystery. He would make a wonderful husband and father.

But Gracie was certain that she could never submit her body to a man’s physical dominance. She had men friends—mostly gay ones—but she’d never had what they called a “hot date.” Word got around early in the circles she frequented that Gracie was ice-cold. It suited her that people thought that. It saved her the humiliation of refusing any man who saw her as dessert after a nice dinner. It protected her from amorous advances. Especially now. Jason would think she was frigid, that she didn’t want him to touch her. It hurt to let him think that. But it was the only way she could escape her mother’s fate. Even Jason, in passion, would be the same as her father. Hadn’t she felt his mouth grinding into her soft breast? He hadn’t used his teeth—but then, she’d pushed him away just in time. Just in time. She turned away from the mirror. She felt dead inside.

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