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Her knuckles clenched. ‘It was very generous of you to offer to “liberate” me,’ she hissed. ‘But I’m not some charity case, eager for the big stud Martinez to show me where I’ve been going wrong all this time.’
He raised his eyebrows. ‘And where have you been going wrong?’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘Yes, it does.’
‘Please don’t push it, Luis.’
‘Why not? I think you should talk about it.’
And suddenly all the fight seemed to leave her. Her shoulders slumped as she sat down heavily on the edge of the bed and looked up at him. ‘What do you want to know?’
‘Everything.’
‘That’s a big ask.’
‘I know it is.’
For almost a minute Carly didn’t speak, trying to convince herself that he had no right to demand to know these things. Until she reminded herself that she had started the ball rolling. She had told him or, at least, told him some of it. She must have realised that someone like Luis would demand to know the full story.
She hadn’t talked about it for years. Not since it had happened. She had taken it and buried it in a dark place somewhere deep inside her. She hardly ever thought about it now, only when she awoke from those occasional nightmares, the ones where she was clutching her throat and unable to breathe. Did that mean that on some subconscious level it still troubled her? And mightn’t it be good to get it off her chest to someone, even if that someone just happened to be her boss?
‘So why, Carly?’
His soft question slid in through all her defences, and suddenly she was back there. Back with those lights flashing and music pounding and that horrible dizzy feeling, which had ended with her bent double at the bottom of a frosty garden, being sick into one of the flower beds. In the bright, sunlit bedroom of the luxury Mediterranean villa, it seemed as if it had all happened to someone else. But it had happened to her.
‘I was at a party,’ she said tonelessly.
‘When?’
‘I was sixteen, but I probably looked older. I hadn’t been out of the house for weeks because of Dad, so I went with a schoolfriend to this big party on the edge of town. For once, I was wearing make-up and I’d borrowed some of my friend’s clothes and I felt excited. And there was this...this guy...’ She stumbled over her words, trying to present them in the fairest possible light. Because hadn’t she asked herself again and again if she’d somehow deserved what had happened to her? Wasn’t that what women always did in situations like this? ‘I’d had a couple of drinks—and so had he. He’d probably had a bit more than a couple, come to think of it.’
‘So he was drunk?’
‘A bit,’ she said. ‘But mostly he was just in love with someone else. Someone who didn’t want him.’
‘You’re not making any sense, Carly.’
‘Aren’t I?’ she said and she gave a hollow kind of laugh. ‘Okay, then, I’ll spell it out for you. I was supposed to be his substitute lover for that evening, though I didn’t know it at the time. I was the lucky person he’d picked to make him feel better about himself. To make him know that he was still desired. Surely you can guess what happened next?’
‘Oh, I can guess, but I’d rather be told.’ His mouth had grown hard. ‘You say you want to be a doctor. Well, you’ll make a much better doctor if you don’t cling onto the past and use it like some kind of security blanket.’
There was a pause which seemed to go on for an uncomfortably long time.
‘He started to kiss me,’ she said eventually, her voice a stilted whisper. ‘And then to touch me. At first I liked it. I liked the way it made me feel. But then....’
‘Then what, Carly?’
His words sounded distant. As if they were coming from somewhere far away.
‘He...’ She winced with pain and shame. She could almost feel those fingers probing her, digging into her dryness and telling her she should have been wet. Telling her that she was frigid and useless. The clamp of those teeth was sharp on her breasts and the sound of her knickers being ripped apart seemed deafening. She had attempted to scream, but he had blotted out the scream with the vodka-soaked slick of his mouth. ‘He...’ Her voice shuddered to a halt as, wordlessly, she shook her head.
‘Raped you?’
His appalled question broke the spell and Carly opened eyes she didn’t even realise had been closed. She shook her head again. ‘No. Not that.’
‘But he touched you...intimately?’
