Free Season of Shadows by Yvonne Whittal

except that dark-blue towelling robe
which left a large section of his deeply-tanned chest bare. She stared
fixedly at the short dark hair curling against his skin, but when he
came towards her she backed away instinctively, her heart leaping into
her throat.
    He paused abruptly, and his autocratic features contorted
with something close to rage. 'For God's sake, don't look at me like
that!'
    'How do you expect me to look at you?' she demanded,
forcing the words past the paralysing grip which fear had on her throat.
    'I'm not a monster, Laura.'
    'What you're expecting of me is monstrous,' she countered
swiftly, her nervous fingers automatically tightening the belt of her
gown.
    'What are you afraid of, Laura?' His compelling eyes held
hers captive as he lessened the space between them, and she stared back
hypnotically. 'Are you afraid of the possibility that you might enjoy
being made love to?'
    'I shall hate every minute of it,' she hissed at him, but
a hateful smile curved his mouth when he observed her heightened
colour. 'We shall see about that.'
    She stood immobile, caught between a weird kind of
fascination and horror as he brushed aside her hands to undo the belt
of her gown before sliding it from her shoulders to lie at her feet.
The transparency of her nightdress offered her very little protection
from the intrusion of his smouldering glance and, heated with
embarrassment, she cried out hoarsely, 'You can't do this to me!'
    His reply was to pull her roughly against him, and with
his hand in her trailing hair, he jerked her head back to expose her
throat. His face became a twisted blur when her eyes filled with tears,
then he lowered his head, and his lips trailed fire across her skin
before that hard mouth fastened on to hers.
    Laura fought against him with every ounce of strength she
possessed, but the all-consuming passion of his kiss drained her of her
resistance, and left her humiliatingly supine in his arms as he carried
her across the room and lowered her on to the bed. His mouth never left
hers as he snapped off the light to plunge the room into merciful
darkness, then she felt him shrug himself out of his robe, but when he
lay down beside her, her alarming suspicions were confirmed. There was
nothing between them save the fragile thinness of her nightdress, and
this, too, he was removing with a dexterity born of experience.
    Her dulled mind came alive once more to what was
happening, and her fear returned with every thundering beat of her
heart until, submerged in a well of panic, she fought him off like
someone demented, but there was no escape from the brute strength of a
man intent upon satisfying his desire.
    'Stop fighting me, Laura,' he ordered harshly, placing a
muscled leg across her thighs to pin her thrashing body to the bed.
    She flung every insult at him that she could think of, but
he held her firmly until, exhausted, she had no strength left to fight
off the sensuality of his lips and hands invading her body with an
intimacy which had, till that moment, been forbidden to other men, and
her humiliation increased rapidly when she found that he was drawing an
unwilling response from her.
    She felt his weight above her, and her nails bit into the
hard flesh of his shoulders as her body grew taut with resentment and
fear. 'Please! I can't! Please, Anton!'
    'Relax, dammit, or you're going to get hurt!' he warned
thickly, but her tension merely increased with the realisation of what
was about to happen, and the despairing knowledge that there was
nothing she could do to ward it off.
    Her cry of pain was stifled moments later beneath his lips
when he took possession of her. Her body arched convulsively, giving
encouragement where none was intended, and then she was conscious of
nothing except the hardness of his thrusting body, and a numbness that
left her devoid of all feeling.
    When Anton finally rolled away from her, she lay for a
long time staring into the darkness, dry-eyed and disillusioned.