Hold Back the Night (9 page)

With deliberation, watching her face as he did so, he grazed the tip of one nipple lightly through the lawn and then moulded it between thumb and forefinger. Hard already, it hardened yet more, springing erect beneath his ungentle seizure. Sick with mortification and yet shaking with strange uncontrollable new feelings, Domini closed her eyes and moaned, swaying forward with parted lips.

'Oh, God,' exploded Sander as if in pain, 'is there nothing you won't allow?'

She opened her eyes and saw the naked hunger in his eyes, the wanting that had twisted his mouth into a slash of anguish. Primitive in her reactions, she listened not to his words but to her own instincts. They told her that his blood was pounding, too; that he hungered for the conquest as much as she ached to be conquered; that the anger in him was in large part the anger of frustrated desire. Wouldn't the anger pass if she allowed what he wanted? And didn't she want it too?

She knew that with a few words she could make all the erotic fantasies of the past few weeks come true. 'I love you,' she whispered with no second thoughts.

In the next instant Domini felt herself swept into strong arms. With rage and passion warring in his face, Sander strode for his living-room, gaining it in moments and kicking the door to the landing closed behind him. He deposited Domini on a couch and then crossed to the bedroom, closing that door, too, with one violent sweep of his hand. It said more clearly than words that she was not being invited to take Nicole's place in his life. A chill of doubt touched Domini's skin. But wouldn't his rage soon end?

'Undress,' he rasped, turning to face her from across the room. His stance was vengeful, his jaw grim. When she failed to obey at once, he demanded, 'At least get Nicole's robe off or I'll tear it from your back!'

Shivering, she slid the satin garment from her shoulders and sat watching him with apprehensive eyes. Nothing in her life had prepared her for the perplexity of sensations she felt … the clamour of heart, the clamminess of skin, the wild trembling of her limbs.

With no ceremony Sander peeled the sweater from his back, revealing his wide shoulders and broad chest. At his lean waist the chest hair arrowed, drawing the eye downward even as it disappeared. The lithe, aggressive thighs hypnotized Domini as a flame hypnotizes a moth. Unconcealed by the close cut of the suede trousers, the powerful contours of his body were taut with readiness. Even knowing what to expect, she found herself shaken at such visible proof that the textbooks had not exaggerated about male anatomy.

He advanced across the room, closing in until he came to a stop at the side of the couch. Domini realized she must have been staring openly when Sander paused with his hands at his zipper and said angrily, 'A man's body can't help itself any more than yours can. Didn't you know what to expect, you foolish child?'

She nodded, too heartsick at his tone to respond in words, unable to tell him that it was his anger, not his desire, that alarmed her. But the anger would pass, wouldn't it, when the love-making began? She smiled up at him uncertainly and tensed her fingers over a cushion, a gesture that betrayed her nervousness.

It seemed only to infuriate Sander further. 'This is your doing, not mine! Turn your eyes away, then, if you don't dare to look at what you've done to me!

'Sander, please,' she whispered in agony, her eyes enormous, bearing silent supplication that he cease his cruelties.

'Saints preserve us,' he groaned, and for a moment he stood there with head thrown back, eyes closed as if in extreme pain, teeth clenched with effort and agony.

Domini saw beads of sweat form on his forehead and slide unchecked over the dangerously clenched jaw. At length his entire frame shuddered and he muttered shakily: 'Go, then. But for the sake of my sanity do it at once! If you're still there when I open my eyes, I won't be responsible for my actions!'

Domini caught her breath and held it, the desire to flee evaporating with the opportunity to do so. For too many weeks, too many erotic fantasies had filled her head, and Sander's strong sexual urge excited her, just as his last-minute forbearance reassured her. Wasn't this what she had wanted all along?

When there were no sounds of departure, Sander opened his eyes. He took in her tousled hair, her expectant eyes, her mouth reddened and swollen by his earlier onslaught. His dark pupils silvered not with compassion but with contempt. Nervously Domini wetted her lips, unaware that the mannerism appeared thoroughly provocative.

'So ready to submit to a man, even one who doesn't love you?' The cruelty had returned to his voice, replacing the anguish of moments before. Angrily he lowered his zipper. His flanks came free, the virile hips hard, marble-smooth, untouched by sun, the maleness of him overpowering now that the trappings of civilization had been discarded.

'You little fool,' he muttered savagely as he came down beside her, his voice thickened with dangerous emotion. 'You seductive little fool . . . don't you know I'll never forgive you for what you've done?'

But Domini thought he would. She met his fiercely intrusive kiss ardently, offering openly and fully the softness, the vulnerability of herself. Her hands were pressed against his naked chest, and the first feel of its textures sent a shock of electricity running through her fingertips. Reckless in her abandon, she moved her palms to explore what only her eye had known; to mould the unyielding muscles of his upper arms, to feel the sculpture of his powerful shoulders, the straining tendons of his nape. Each part of him felt hard, warm, wonderful. And then she wound her passionate arms around his neck and clung, willing away thoughts of the unkind things he had said, optimistic in thinking that he would surely forgive and forget once he had taken her in the act of love.

Impatient, he took no time to strip her of her nightdress. His palms blazed over the flimsy cotton, caressing the young breasts to peaks of desire, moving restlessly downward to push the fabric to her waist, baring the golden goal he intended to brand as his. Clinging to his kiss and as hot-blooded as he, Domini clutched his shoulders and gave herself up to all the passion of her nature. Delirious with pure sensation, she arched and moaned as his searching hand roughly sought her vulnerable thighs, lingering only long enough to test her readiness. Finding the answer, he pushed her legs apart to receive him and mounted her at once, mastering her easily and deeply without once freeing her mouth. The thrust that cost Domini her innocence came before Sander lifted his head away from that long, reckless, impassioned kiss.

'Oh, God,' he groaned, as if from the very depths of his being, as he sank his face into the softness of her throat. A deep spasm shook his shoulders. 'Oh, God, it's done.'

Domini moved her fingertips to the base of his hair, digging into the vital crispness while she gasped through a rigid moment of deep-driving discomfort. But nothing could stop what nature had started, nor restore what Sander had taken. Moments later his dark head lifted, his eyes smouldering with black, embittered passions too strong to be long denied.

'That's what you wanted. Are you so sure you like it, now that it's too late?'

For Domini, the stirrings of desire were already rising to blot out the pain of first possession. Quivering at the fullness of his need for her, proud of her new womanhood and longing to discover the moment she had read of but never known, she ran her fingers into his hair to bring his face close to hers. 'Teach me to make love,' she whispered eagerly.

'This isn't love,' he shot back at her, a terrible silver fire leaping in his eyes. 'It's lust. Lust and rage and nothing more! Love is what I had with Nicole!'

Suddenly more frightened than she could tell, Domini shook her head in a soundless denial, willing him to stop when the stopping point had long been passed. Her whole body tensed and arched, willing his away, but the joining had already been done, and the movement seemed only to incite him to a frenzy of passion. His hands cupped her head to hold it still, and his mouth descended again, forcing her lips apart with a ferocity that should not have been required, had he given any heed to Domini's needs. The cry of protest she might have voiced was driven into silence by the depth of that kiss. His lips were cruel, barbaric in their assault. Stifled and shocked, Domini was too well pinioned by his virile limbs to think of struggling free. But she no longer thrilled to the masculine texture of his hair-roughened chest, no longer responded to the hands that moved over her with such bruising urgency, no longer wanted this thrusting possession that seemed to have become an act of brutality, not of love.

Her rigidity seemed only to enflame whatever terrible demons drove him, as though he wished to take by storm what she now refused to give. As if possessed with fury at her sudden lack of response, he tried to wrest it from her with burning caresses, with fiery kisses, with the domination of his male sexuality. But the battering of her defences only caused every part of her to tighten, rejecting his hurtful and unwanted invasion. And when at the finish she started to rake his shoulders in a belated effort to fight him away, he imprisoned her hands above her head.

That was the end; it was over in the next moment. He finished with a soul-deep groan, his hard-muscled body cleaving her with a final vehemence that left Domini limp, shaking, and gasping when he was through. He lay utterly spent for a time, still a part of her, the weight of him heavy over her vanquished body, the laboured sound of his breathing harsh in her ears.

'I hate you,' Domini sobbed. 'I hate you.'

'Shouldn't you have thought of that before?' he gritted as he rolled away. And then, with not one backward glance at her shivering frame, he flung away and banged into the bedroom he had shared with Nicole.

And out of that brutal union, Tasey had been born. Domini pressed taut fingers against the pain in her eyes, remembering, hurting as if it had all happened yesterday...

❧

Sander had vanished at noon the following day. From her bedroom, where she had been huddled in misery with the shattered remains of her adolescent dreams, Domini heard his footsteps descending the stairs. There was a short rap at her door, unrepeated, and Domini did not answer. She thought she had learned the meaning of true hatred in the happenings of the previous night. Violated in mind even more than in body, she burned for vengeance, wanting to hurt Sander as much as he had hurt her.

At the dinner hour, not having eaten for more than twenty-four hours, she rallied enough to brave the trip downstairs. And then came the news of the accident.

'He was in a rented car,' the landlady explained to the unnaturally hushed group at the supper table after announcing that Sander had been taken to a hospital. 'It happened on the road to Rouen.'

'Rouen?' puzzled someone. 'Then he must have been on his way to Nicole. Isn't that where her family is from?'

It seemed that the brakes of a school bus had failed at

the intersection of a crossroad. To avoid collision, Sander had swerved off the highway, braking hard but still travelling at considerable speed. The rented car had telescoped against a tree. Miraculously, when Sander's unconscious body was finally extracted from the wreckage, no bones had been found broken. But there were severe contusions about his scalp and some damage from shattering glass. A brain operation had been performed to halt internal bleeding. It appeared to have been a success, but he was bandaged and still under heavy sedation. Although groggy, he had been asking for Nicole; the landlady had been able to provide the hospital with her home address in Rouen.

Numb with shock, Domini felt as if the heavens had opened to wreak their vengeance. And she felt that it was her doing, not only because Sander had been seeking out Nicole and perhaps driving recklessly fast in his despair, but because she knew in her heart that she had wished upon him fates a thousand times worse.

'Isn't it the way,' sighed one of the boarders. 'And so soon after he started his first important commission. It's going to be good, too, that big sculpture of Nicole in the shed. Such talent!'

'And half finished already,' said another. 'How he flies at the marble!'

'Not half as hard as Nicole flew at him,' someone sniggered. 'I wonder what caused the fight?'

'Who knows?' shrugged someone. 'He was working too hard, probably ... I heard Nicole complain about that. Or perhaps it was her extravagance.'

'Maybe it's another woman. Yesterday I heard Nicole scream at him that he wasn't the only one whose eyes had strayed. When he was out of town for two days last month, she said, she had done some kissing too. When he got angry at that, she claimed she had gone no further and attacked him about something else.'

That caused a renewal of gossip about Nicole's various flirtations and whether or not kissing had been the full extent of her straying. At least one young man at the table remained unnaturally silent. So did Domini, who also knew something about the subject. At last someone said, 'Odd that the American was on his way to fetch her back. I would have thought him too proud to put up with that kind of shrewishness from anyone.'

'I wonder who his other woman was?'

'I don't believe he's been unfaithful to Nicole. He's besotted with her,' came a disgusted comment from the landlady, who had little love for Nicole. As the only continuing inhabitant of the house, she also knew more about Sander than the transient boarders did. 'For nearly three years she's managed to enchant him, when before that... well, he was not always so patient with others.'

She sighed, having left the impression that Sander's previous amours had been of short span and no particular consequence. 'Oh, I grant you, Nicole has wiles to make a strong man weak. No doubt he decided he couldn't do without her . . . ah, Didi, leaving the table so soon? And you have not yet tasted my raspberry flan!'

After what had happened, there was no question of visiting Sander in the hospital; Domini knew he would not be pleased to see her. Her emotions confused her. Hate and hurt were all mixed up, and to add to that there was guilt. Sander had wronged her, she was sure ... but hadn't she wronged him? He had been cruel, brutal even; but surely he deserved no punishment as dire as a car accident!

The following morning her sense of personal guilt was multiplied a thousandfold. She learned the rest of the news about Sander, the worst of the news, in the worst possible way. She had skipped classes and was lying agonizing on her bed, trying to sort out the tangle of her emotions, when a sharp knock came at her door.

It was Nicole, her eyes full of poison and her arms full of personal possessions. Behind her in the hall was a pile of suitcases, and when Domini appeared at the door Nicole flung her armload of clothes on top of them in a gesture of pure spite. 'Well, are you satisfied with what you've done?' she said.

'Nicole, I ...'

'I could kill you,' Nicole interrupted, walking into the bedroom without invitation. Not wanting to be overheard by anyone who happened to be in the house, Domini closed the door behind her unwelcome visitor. Nicole rounded on her furiously. 'He was the only man I ever truly loved. You destroyed him! You destroyed us!'

Domini learned a swift lesson in lying, although the lies were larded with truth. 'Nothing's happened between me and Sander, Nicole. He's never even looked at me. Why, he asked me to stay away from him the first time we met. There was no truth to the things I said, not a bit. And he ... he despises me for saying them, for coming between the two of you.'

Nicole's eyes snapped. 'Liar,' she said. 'He made love to you after I left. I know he did, for yesterday at the hospital I accused him of it, and he didn't deny a thing. Besides, do you think there are no signs of you upstairs, signs I have just seen with my own eyes? Or are you too naive to know that a little virgin always leaves her traces?'

Domini swallowed deeply, remembering how she had fled down to her own room without giving thought to telltale evidence. There was no point trying to continue the lies. 'What happened was all my fault. He tried to resist, but I seduced him. He ... he really loves you, Nicole. He told me so.'

Nicole's angry gaze narrowed on Domini's earnest face. 'I don't need you to tell me that,' she hissed. 'He's told me often enough himself! But when a man lusts elsewhere, what use are his words of love? I want to hear them no more.'

'But surely, now that I've told you he never encouraged me in any way...'

'Pah! Let him rot in his hospital bed! The faithless snake! I never want to see the man again in my life!'

Domini stared, hardly believing her ears. 'Have you always been faithful to him? I don't believe you have. Last month when Sander was away, I heard the bedsprings creak.'

Nicole shrugged, a little sulkily. 'What a man does not know, does not hurt,' she said at last. Nicole's double standard, evidently, did not include faithfulness on her own part.

'Nicole! He loves you. He needs you, especially now.'

'Needs me? I suppose he does. But even if I could forgive him, do you think I intend to support a blind man for the rest of his life?'

'Blind,' choked Domini, clutching at her bedpost for support. The world whirled. 'Blind...'

'Didn't you know?' Nicole retorted, her eyes bright with malice. 'I was told yesterday, when they called me to the hospital. Well, are you pleased with yourself? You took from me the man I loved, and then you took from him his sight! If he hadn't been driving so fast, it would not have happened.'

Domini shook her head numbly, as if by denying the facts she could change them. 'It can't be,' she whispered.

'It can't be, but it is. And for that, blame yourself!'

'But surely... there are operations...'

'Operations, yes, if he is lucky enough to be helped by such things! But who knows if they will be successful? Even with operations, it will be months without work, months of pain, months of poverty! Half finished in the shed, the big sculpture earns not a single sou. Sander has only the money he makes with his own hands, with his own eyes! And where do you think the money will come from to pay the doctors, the nurses, the hospital bills? To pay the rent and put food in his stomach? Not from me. I will have trouble enough to keep food ir my own! I am through ... finished! And I hate you for what you have done to me!'

Domini stared wild-eyed. 'But Sander... you can't walk out on him. Not just like that. Not now!'

'Watch me,' said Nicole, nostrils flaring. She walked to the door and opened it, but stopped long enough to look back at Domini with poisonous eyes. 'Oh, I almost forgot. I have a message for you from the hospital. Sander asks that you stay away. Perhaps you should listen this time!'

Domini grew up in many ways during the days that followed. She writhed with remorse. Face-to-face with the terrible consequences of her infatuation and her thoughtless words, she ceased almost overnight to be the joyful, carefree, impetuous person she had been on coming to Paris. Her feelings for Sander were in a state of suspension: it was hard to hate a man for whose blindness she felt responsible.

More news came through the landlady, and none of it was particularly good. Sander would be in the hospital for some time. Though the accident had not disfigured him, severe inflammation from his injuries made it difficult as yet to determine the precise cause of his blindness. The doctors were watching and hoping that it might be a temporary condition, due to traumatic shock. And if not, new techniques of laser and microsurgery held out considerable hope; but no thought of performing any operation could be entertained until the exact cause had been pinpointed.

After an inspection of the third floor, the landlady had more to report. Nicole had indeed cleared out all of her possessions, and some of Sander's too.

'Money grubber,' she muttered. 'Would she have left so fast if there were still money under the mattress? She is a sharp one, that one, and make no mistake!'

As time went on, the subject of Sander's mounting financial problems came up for discussion at the pension table. There were bills to be paid, too few cheques from his dealer, even a request that the advance on the commission of the unfinished sculpture be returned, as he could no longer meet the deadline. As for the eye operation, a necessity as it grew apparent that the loss of vision was not going to cure itself, how would Sander pay for that? The doctors had advised a clinic in Germany, and such things cost money. Moreover his rent was overdue, and although the landlady was sympathetic, she was in need of the income and could not hold his rooms empty forever...

On her next visit to the now wintry Pyrenees, over the Christmas holidays, Domini asked her father for a large sum of money, so large that he stared at her in disbelief. When she tried to explain, he interrupted, 'Do you love him?'

Guilt had caused her to be unsure exactly what her feelings were, but she was sure of one thing. 'No, Papa,' she said honestly.

'Has he been your lover?'

Domini's eyes were cast downward. She had expected to be truthful about such things, and perhaps if the man had been anyone but Sander Williams she would have been. But she found herself saying. 'No, Papa, he hasn't. But it's very important. I couldn't bear to stand by if there's something that can be done to help.'

Le Basque heaved a great weary sigh. 'Yes, it is hard sometimes to stand by and let people help themselves. But it must be done. Why do you think I let you go to Paris? Not because I wanted to, but because I knew you must start finding your own way in the world.'

'But, Papa, he could be a great sculptor. If you could only see his work, you'd understand. Besides, I feel . . .' She had been going to say responsible, but because that entailed many explanations she did not want to make, she changed it to something else. 'I feel sorry for him, she said.

'Then I want to hear no more of this! You are past the age of taking in stray cats and birds with wounded wings, as you used to do when you were little. You asked to learn life, and life is hard. The world is hard! Perhaps I made a mistake by not letting you learn of it sooner.'

'I've learned of life now,' said Domini steadily, and her father looked at her sadly. For the first time she became conscious of how much he had aged, a slow, natural process that had not been so apparent to her while she was living at home.

'Have you?'he muttered. 'I wonder.'

'Please, Papa.'

Once, her pleading might have softened her father, but now his expression only became more stern. 'Berenice is right, it's time I let you grow up. You have chosen to be an artist, and art is a hard master. Artists suffer! Will you help every painter, every sculptor, who tells you a sad story? If you want to help them, first learn to help yourself!'

'I promise I'll pay you back when I start selling paintings. I'll be doing that soon. I know I will!'

Le Basque took a deep breath as if about to say a good deal on the subject, but instead closed his mouth firmly over the single word, 'No.' He turned his back on Domini to return to the painting he was executing, dismissing her with a curtness he had never shown before. And because Domini was not quite the same person she had been a few months before, she pleaded no more. Help herself? Indeed she would!

Back in Paris, on the same day that she learned of her pregnancy, she gathered together a portfolio of the work she had done since her arrival at the pension and called for a taxi to take her to the Right Bank. She wasn't sure her paintings were quite ready to be shown to the world, but she was strongly motivated by her determination to solve Sander's problems and assuage her own guilt. And if Sander was too proud to accept … well, that was simply cured. The money would go to him through his dealer, and Sander would believe it came from the sale of his own sculptures.