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‘No.’ She shook her head decisively. ‘I was weak. And it ended badly,’ she added. ‘And you don’t need to hear the rest.’
‘You can’t stop now, Karina.’
As Dante’s black eyes blazed into hers she knew he was right. Inhaling raggedly, she told him the rest of it. ‘I thought I could forget you if I was with someone else. I thought I could forget that night and start over. I thought it would dull the pain of...’
This time he didn’t try to rush her. He waited until she was ready to start again, and she had never appreciated his calm strength more.
‘I knew it wouldn’t be exciting, but...’ she stopped again and pulled a face as she thought back ‘...it would definitely be calmer,’ she said at last, staring into the distance as she put herself back in the past. ‘I pictured myself contented—settled down—an academic’s wife even. Perhaps it wasn’t the life I’d dreamed about but, then, my fantasies had always let me down.’
‘So you slept with him?’
Dante’s face was rigid. ‘If I’m going to tell you, please let me finish.’
He nodded.
‘He wasn’t you, but you were no longer part of my life. Someone as different from you as possible seemed the logical answer at the time. It all came to a head one night when he’d taken me out for a meal. I’d had too much to drink. He took me back to his place. I’d seen this coming for a while, which was probably why I drank too much in a failed attempt to numb myself. That’s why he’s not wholly to blame,’ she insisted. ‘It’s not like I was an innocent, walking into this with my eyes shut. I used him to get over you.’
‘Losing a baby would affect you in all sorts of ways,’ Dante growled. ‘Did he know what you’d been through?’
‘Yes, of course. He was my tutor. We were supposed to confide things like that so the tutors could reach out to help us.’
Dante’s expression turned grim. ‘So you told him everything and he took advantage of your fragile mental state.’
‘I allowed him to do it,’ she argued stubbornly. ‘After losing the baby I felt like a failure. I didn’t know if I would ever be anything but—’
‘Deus, Karina! So, he made it his mission to prove you wrong?’ He stared into her face intently. ‘How could you put yourself in such a vulnerable position?’ And then he slumped back. ‘You were already in a vulnerable position,’ he groaned softly, answering his own question.
‘I had this idea that sex and I were enemies,’ she went on over Dante’s pain. ‘I had to confront my enemy and conquer my fears. If necessary, I was prepared to face the alternative—a life without sex. Lots of people live perfectly happy lives without sex,’ she insisted, when Dante stared at her.
‘Not in my world,’ he ground out.
‘Your world’s different from most other people’s,’ she said wryly. ‘There’s a popular conception that you only have to be young and healthy to be at it like rabbits, but I broke that mould, because I don’t like sex.’
Dante’s scowl broke into an incredulous laugh. ‘And you say that because of your professor?’ And then his face darkened again. ‘Or are you saying it because of what happened with me?’
She shook her head and thought back. ‘He took me to supper and then to bed. I told myself it would be all right. I had put myself on the Pill—belatedly, I know. I just couldn’t face another loss. And I had squirrelled away a tube of lubrication, so I can hardly claim to be the innocent party here.’ She ignored Dante’s look and went on, ‘I thought to myself, What can possibly go wrong? He’d do it. I’d be over you, and I would have proved myself normal.’
‘So what went wrong with this master plan?’ Dante was practically snarling.
‘I couldn’t do it. When it came to it, I just couldn’t do it.’ Raising her head, she blazed a look into his eyes. ‘Why can’t you men accept that some women just don’t like sex?’
‘Don’t speak of me in the same breath as that man,’ he warned softly. He let a few moments pass, and then prompted gently, ‘Are you ready to tell me the rest?’
She drew a steadying breath. ‘I did everything he asked, but then he couldn’t do it.’ Ignoring Dante’s facial expression, she tried to explain. ‘He said it was my fault because I wouldn’t relax. He said I was too tight for him. I tried to help him but I couldn’t, and then he was angry with me, and that’s when he fell into a rage—’
