Free Blue-Eyed Devil by Lisa Kleypas Page A

swimming liquid inside me. I wanted nothing to do with his babies. I wanted nothing to do with sex either.

    I gasped with relief as he pulled out, heat trickling down my thighs. There were the sounds of Nick zipping and fastening his pants.

    “Your period’s started,” he said gruffly.

    We both knew it was too early for my period. That wasn’t where the blood had come from. I said nothing, only lifted myself from the ottoman and pulled my clothes in place.

    Nick spoke again, sounding more normal. “I’ll finish cooking dinner while you clean yourself up. What do I need to do?”

    “Boil the pasta.”

    “How long?”

    “Twelve minutes.”

    I hurt from my waist to my knees. I’d never had rough sex with Nick before. It was rape, a small voice said inside, but I immediately told myself that if I had only relaxed a little more, been less dry, it wouldn’t have hurt nearly as much. But I didn’t want it, the voice persisted.

    I stood and flinched at the brutal throbbing soreness, and began to hobble to the bathroom.

    “A little less drama, if you don’t mind,” I heard Nick say.

    I was silent as I continued to the bathroom and closed the door. I started the shower, made it as hot as I could stand it, and I undressed and got in. I stood in the spray for what seemed like forever, until my body was stinging and clean and aching. I was in a fog of bewilderment, wondering how my life had come to this. Nick would not be pacified until I’d had a baby, and then he would want another, and the unwinnable game of trying to please him would never end.

    This was not a matter of trying to sit down and talk honestly with someone about your feelings. That only worked when your feelings mattered. Nick, even when he seemed to be listening, was only gathering points to be used against me later. Someone else’s pain, whether emotional or physical, didn’t register with him. But I had thought he loved me. Had he changed so much since we’d gotten married, or had I made a fatal misjudgment?

    Turning off the shower, I wrapped a towel around my sore body and went to the mirror. I used my hand to wipe a circle in the fogged mirror. My face was distorted, one eye swollen at the outside corner.

    The bathroom door rattled. “You’ve been in there too long. Come out and eat.”

    “I’m not hungry.”

    “Open the goddamn door and stop sulking.”

    I unlocked the door and opened it, and stood facing him, this angry man who looked ready to tear me apart. I was afraid of him, but even more than that, I was utterly defeated. I had tried so hard to play by his rules, but he kept changing them.

    “I’m not going to apologize this time,” he said. “You were asking for it. You know better than to talk to me like that.”

    “If we had children,” I told him, “you would hit them too.”

    Fresh rage began to color his face. “Shut your mouth.”

    “You would,” I insisted. “You would knock them around whenever they did something you didn’t like. That’s one of the reasons I don’t want your baby.”

    Nick’s lack of reaction scared me. It became so quiet that the drip-drip from the showerhead made me flinch. He stared at me without blinking, his hazel eyes flat and shiny like buttons. Drip. Drip. Drip. Gooseflesh rose over my naked body, the towel damp and cold around me.

    “Where are they?” he asked abruptly, and pushed past me. He started rummaging through the bathroom drawers, tossing out compacts and hairpins and brushes, everything clattering to the wet tile floor.

    “Where are what?” I asked, my heart kicking into overdrive, going so wild that it made my rib cage hurt. I was amazed at how calm I sounded when terror was corroding my insides like battery acid. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

    He threw an empty water glass to the floor, smashing it. And he continued to empty out drawers like a madman. “You know exactly what I’m asking.”

    If he found the birth control