Free Never Leave Me by Margaret Pemberton

stockings and as his fingers touched the naked flesh of her thigh she moaned, a tremor running through her.
    â€˜I won’t hurt you,’ he said, his voice smoke-dark with suppressed passion. ‘I promise.’
    She turned her head away from him, tears of shame stinging her eyes. It wasn’t pain that had caused her to tremble. It was something far, far worse. Something she would die rather than allow him to see.
    Slowly, with unutterable care, he eased the tattered remnants of her stocking down towards the knee. The old-fashioned, unprotected metal handle-bar had gouged deep into her thigh, slicing the flesh open in a long, ugly gash. His jaw tightened at the sight of it. Quickly he reached for a cotton wool pad, pressing it against the wound, bandaging it with swift dexterity.
    She lay unmoving, her head averted, her hands tightly clenched. Soon it would be over. She would forget his concern. His care. She would not leave it to Elsie to betray his plans to the Allies. She would betray them herself. It would be her revenge on him for the assault he had made on her body and her senses.
    The bandage at her thigh was secured. His hands moved lower, easing the bloodied wool over her knee and down her leg. Summoning the last vestige of control that was left to her, she opened her eyes, pushing herself upward on the elbow of one arm. There was another deep gash at her knee and long, raw grazes the length of her leg.
    â€˜I can bandage my knee myself.’ she said stiltedly.
    He glanced up at her, one eyebrow slightly raised. ‘I’m sure you can, but I can do it much more efficiently. My hands,’ he said pointedly, ‘are not trembling. Yours are.’
    Her cheeks flooded with humiliated colour. ‘It was the fall … the shock…’
    He hesitated fractionally before pressing a cotton wool pad against the gash on her knee, his eyes curious. That her fall had caused her state of shock was so obvious that it hardly warranted explanation. Yet her voice had been fiercely defensive. He slid his hand beneath her calf to support the weight of her leg as he reached for another bandage. As he did so he heard again the small, desperate gasp of breath that he had previously thought was pain.
    Slowly, very slowly, he raised his eyes once more to hers. The pupils were still widely dilated, pansy-dark in the pale ivory of her face. Excitement, sure and hard, seized him. The tremor that had run through her body when he had first touched her had not been of pain. It had been the same age-old, primitive response that had flared through him when he had first confronted her across the vast, silk-draped bed.
    She saw the expression in his eyes change; saw the realization and the answering heat and she knew there was nowhere to run to, nowhere to hide.
    â€˜Don’t touch me,’ she panted desperately. ‘Please don’t touch me!’
    A smile touched the corners of his mouth. It was a protest he had no intention of heeding. From the very first he had suspected that beneath the ice was fire and now it was palpable. He could both see and feel it. Quickly, carefully, he bound her knee, every sexual nerve end in his body raw with desire. There would be complications. However badly she wanted him, she would not submit easily or without guilt. But it would be submission. It would not be violation, the careless rape so many of his compatriots freely indulged in.
    â€˜Don’t be afraid,’ he said, and took her hand in his.
    The nightmare was here and now, all around her. She could see the blond hairs on the back of his wrists, the strong, well-shaped fingers.
    â€˜No …’ she whispered as he slowly turned her hand over, palm upward, raising to his mouth. ‘Please, no…’
    The hard, hot imprint of his mouth seared her flesh. She shuddered, closing her eyes, wanting his hands once more on her naked thigh, on her breasts, wanting to submit totally and irrevocably. His