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I nodded, not trusting myself to speak. The house itself didn’t frighten me—the things it meant, though…
“I’m not hungry right now, either,” he said.
Oh, no.I wasn’t sure exactly how I had picked up the implication in Rick’s words, and maybe it had happened entirely in my head. Something seemed deeper in his voice, or more gravelly…
I’m not hungry right now…Not for food, anyway. I didn’t think I imagined that my husband meant not just to say that we would order pizza later, but also to tell me that he had developed a different sort of hunger.
“But…” I said, my thoughts turning to my stomach in desperation, willing it to grumble so that when I said what I meant to say I wouldn’t be lying to my loving husband. I wasn’t hungry, though; the enormous, delicious burger and fries in the horrible Selecta lounge in Newark seemed likely to fuel me for at least the next twelve hours if not the next three days.
I lied anyway.
“I’m hungry, Ricky. Can we get the pizza now?”
Rick had done enough unexpected things that day that I didn’t have the confidence I would have had, the day before—that he would simply do as I had asked. It seemed like such a reasonable request, though, that a shock of dismay went through me, seeming to center in my suddenly unsteady knees, when he didn’t immediately answer.
He said nothing, but I felt his arms loosen a little, and he turned me around. He put one hand on the small of my back and the other on the back of my head. The hand on my back was right at the waistband of my jeans, two of his fingers almost at my tailbone. I bit my lip at the unwelcome thought that he might mean to lower that hand even more—that hecouldlower it if he wanted.
That here in Rocky Falls the community—Mrs. Purdy, Joan the receptionist, Scott, April, the women it seemed I would meet at the country club tomorrow, all of them—wouldexpecta man like my husband to lower his hand to my bottom, and remind his wife of… of…
I swallowed hard as both of the mortifying ideas that it seemed I couldn’t keep down seemed to supply themselves at once, to continue the alarming thought.
And remind his wife of punishment.
And remind his wife of intimacy.
Of what he intended to do in the bedroom, whether that meant discipline or sex.
He held me tight for a moment, as I went stiff yet again in his arms and again—in that brand new way—he waited me out and kept holding me until I relaxed into the hug. Then he spoke.
“Dee,” he said, the seeming gentleness of his voice contradicting his words, “I know you’re lying.”
“No—” I protested instantly.
“Shh, babe,” my husband said, and even in the non-wordshhI could somehow hear that the gentle tone had begun to give way to a more assertive, deeper, growling kind of voice.
“I’m not going to punish you for the lie,” he said.
My lips had remained open in theoofnoeven as my denial had faded to silence. Through those open lips I took a gasping little breath. As he spoke, Rick had indeed moved his hand downward, past my tailbone, to take hold of my denim-covered bottom and squeeze it firmly. The sheer possessiveness and frank self-assurance of the gesture made my heart thud wildly in my chest.
The fight-or-flight reflex rose in me, taking hold of my limbs in an instant. My body moved without any conscious intention on my part other than the thought,This isn’t happening.I tried to escape from Rick’s arms. I used all my strength, twisting and pulling and pushing.
My husband didn’t say anything. He just held me in his huge arms as the strength of his body impressed itself on me in a way it never had before—a way I suddenly knew I had subconsciously avoided coming face to face with.
Or body to body with.
With a blazing flash of blood to my face I remembered a moment in our courtship I had tried to forget, because when I thought about it all my rationality seemed to come off the rails. I remembered lying in Rick’s bed in his shared apartment, with his arms around me. I remembered thinking, over and over,He could break me.
A few days after the firstForget itmoment when I had refused to go into his room with him, I had consented to one of Rick’s less insistent and thus less embarrassing requests to cuddle. I had lain there, longing—for reasons I didn’t understand at all—to resist his embrace, to try to get out of it, not to let him kiss me or touch my breasts. Not because I didn’t want him to do those things but because Ididwant it… because I wanted ittoo much.
He could break me.
I had forced myself not to struggle in my fiancé’s arms because I didn’t know what would happen if I did. I knew he wouldn’t hurt me, of course, and yet I couldn’t stop thinking it:He could break me.
I hadn’t thought about that breaking with fear, in Rick’s bed in the shared apartment. I didn’t think about it with fear here in the huge house in Rocky Falls. Not fear of Rick, anyway. The terror that flooded my body as I did struggle and found my strength quickly exhausted by my husband’s physical power had much more to do with my own dark desires than with his.
“Let me go, Ricky,” I said. “I’m not lying. I… I’m hungry. What are you… let me go!” I tried one more twist, trying to get clear of his thick arms, his huge hands.
I felt him grip my bottom a little more firmly.
