She knew quite clearly at that instant exactly what he meant. It froze her, mind and body and tongue. Her dream of him died in that moment, became ashes, cold and insubstantial. He was a stranger and she was afraid. She’d been more than a fool, she’d been a blind idiot, a silly little girl. Oh, God, what was she going to do? She was alone here with him. She felt cold and numb and terrified.
“You’re very lucky, Lindsay,” he continued in his warm soft voice, coming ever closer. She measured with her fear each step he took toward the bed. Her breath hitched in her chest. “Don’t look at me like that, cara. I’m still Alessandro, the man you’ve loved for nearly two years now. I haven’t changed. And I’m going to teach you how to be a woman and you’re going to be grateful to me for it. You’re going to thank me. Tell me, cara, how much petting—? That is what you teenagers call it, isn’t it? Yes, well, you must tell me how much you’ve let those bumbling boys do to you.”
She tried to find saliva in her mouth. She spoke in a desert-dry whisper. “You’re married to my half-sister.”
He gave an elegant shrug. “Sydney is a castrating bitch. She’s frigid and she’s really quite annoying with her bourgeois notions of morality. She’s also stupid, contrary to what your besotted ass of a father believes about her. She isn’t beautiful, she isn’t perfect, she isn’t anything. She doesn’t matter, just as that stupid baby she was carrying didn’t matter. She acted like a fool when she was pregnant, like it was so important to her, to me, to my family. She was enough for me to put up with without having her belly bloated out with a brat. Ah, yes, that was much too much to bear.
“I remember when I first saw you, you were all clumsy angles and bony knees and knobby elbows and you were just to my liking. I knew when I saw you at the wedding that you would become quite lovely in the future, but I knew too you would be older and I hated that. I wanted you then, with all your teenage awkwardness, all your little-girl innocence and guilelessness. God, I wanted you and your virginity. I wanted to cover myself in your sweet innocence. I still want you; I want your virginity even more now. I didn’t think I would, since you’re eighteen now, but I do. Other men will consider you more beautiful in the years to come, but that’s for them, not me.
“No, I can’t wait any longer, Lindsay. I’ve already had to wait too long for you. I sweated and worried, thinking it could already be too late. And your damned father gave you freedom by sending you to that school in Connecticut. I know what girls are like today, fucking when they’re young, far too young, letting young boys take them in the back-seats of their grubby cars. But you managed to make it to eighteen and you’re still a virgin. God knows that by the time you’re twenty, you’ll have let a good half-dozen boys fuck you. They’d all be Americans and clumsy boors. No, I’ll not allow that. I’ll teach you to be discriminating. I’ll teach you how to fuck a prince.”
He was standing by the bed now. He leaned over and switched on the Tiffany lamp. He sat down beside her. He took her cold hand and squeezed her limp fingers.
“Tell me, cara, have you let boys stick their tongues in your mouth? Have you let them French-kiss you?”
She nodded, her eyes never leaving his face.
“Did you like it?”
She shook her head. He leaned over and his mouth touched hers.
He immediately straightened. “No, you wouldn’t have. They’re fools, those boys, not like me, not men. No, they’re not anything like me. I don’t mind you being afraid, Lindsay, because it really doesn’t matter to me. Perhaps it even amuses me. Have any boys played with your breasts? Kissed your nipples?”
She stared at him, unmoving, so afraid she was paralyzed.
“Or your crotch? Have they put their fingers in you? No? Well, I’ll make it very nice for you. Girls like to have their lips rubbed and kissed. And there’s your little clitoris. Have you masturbated much, Lindsay? Have you given yourself much pleasure? Did all the girls at your school talk about it? How much they wanted to do it?”
He leaned toward her again, his lips parted, his eyes intent on her mouth. “Have you any idea what it will feel like when I have my tongue hot on you?”
Lindsay cried out, the sound of her own voice shoving her back into reality, back into herself. But this reality was ugly and it was right here beside her. She rolled to the side away from him and onto the floor, coming up to her feet.
He was still smiling. He rose and came around the end of the bed. “Why are you afraid? It’s me, Lindsay, and you’ve loved me since you first saw me. Admit it.”
“No, no, stay back. Oh, God, you’re not what I thought you were.”
He moved quickly then, grabbed her upper arms as she tried to dodge past him, and dragged her back onto the bed. “I don’t mind if you fight me,” he was saying over and over against her cheek, his breath hot, his voice fast and high. “You won’t like it as much, but I will. Jesus, I’ll love it.” He was still smiling and she could see the gold filling in one of his back teeth.
“No, damn you, no!” She saw that words had no effect on him. He was going to rape her. The instant she thought the word, a string of stark images flashed through her mind, and she went crazy. He was ripping her cotton nightgown open at the throat and she felt cold air on her chest. She kicked her legs up; they were strong because she played soccer, and he grunted with pain. Her knees hit his groin and he grabbed her two wrists and now he pressed himself down on her, pinning her legs. He was breathing hard with exertion, trying to hold both her wrists in one of his hands, but she was too strong. She was a big girl and she was in good shape. “You’re acting like a bloody American bitch,” he yelled in her face. “Stop it, for God’s sake! Hold still for me! Don’t be like your fool of a sister!”
This was the real Alessandro, the man Sydney had married in good faith, the man Lindsay had fantasized about and dreamed about. He had set this whole trip up and he fully intended to rape her. God, she couldn’t believe—She twisted and yanked at his hold, tried to bring her legs up again to give her leverage. She was muscular, and she wasn’t going to lie there like a victim. She remembered her self-defense courses. Scream, scream, scream. Had he done this before, to Italian girls? And they’d just lain there whimpering and let him rape them? She yelled right in his face, spittle spraying him, and heaved upward, nearly knocking him to the floor off her.
Suddenly he released her left hand, and immediately she was clawing at his face. He struck his fist into her jaw. She felt pain slam into her face, saw flashes of light, and gasped. He struck her again, hard.
She was on the brink of unconsciousness for a few seconds, enough time for him to rip her nightgown open to the hem. He jerked the cotton edges apart.
He was straddling her now, keeping her legs down by sitting on them, and he was staring down at her. He was smiling; there was triumph in his dark eyes. He forced her hands down on her abdomen, holding them there.
“I hadn’t thought your breasts would be so large and your nipples so big,” he said now, dissatisfaction clear in his voice. All the softness, the gentleness, was gone. “Most young girls aren’t so filled out as you, but it doesn’t really matter. It was my choice to wait, so I have only myself to blame.” Because he couldn’t hold both her hands down with just one of his, he had to force her hands upward with his so he could touch her breasts.
She screamed at the feel of his fingers against her cold flesh.
He released her hand and hit her again with his fist. He was smiling as he hit her.
It didn’t register in her mind; she screamed again, gurgling because she was choking on her own saliva.
He grunted in fury and quickly brought his mouth down over hers. It was brutal and it hurt and she tasted blood. She was biting her own tongue. She wished he’d stick his tongue in her mouth. She’d bite it off, but he didn’t.
He struck her again, without warning.
Her head flew back and for a few moments she was unconscious. When she opened her eyes, he was between her legs and he w
as looking at her, his hands on her, probing, hurting. He was ready, she knew it, and he was simply waiting for her to wake up. He saw her open eyes, saw the awareness in them, and he reared back and slammed into her.
Lindsay rose up off the bed, yelling blindly with the pain. He pounded into her, harder and harder still, and she yelled and cried out, but he didn’t slow.
Her tears began to choke her. But still she yelled and cried out.
“Shut up, damn you!”
He slapped her hard, sending her head violently to the side. He was heaving now, hurting her more and more, and she realized vaguely that he was enjoying this. This was what he liked, what he was good at. This was what he’d always wanted from her. She screamed again, blood bright red on her lower lip, the coppery taste of it in her mouth. She managed to free her right hand. She slammed her fist into his mouth. He went at her in a frenzy then, striking her in rhythm with his punishing blows inside her. Then, suddenly, he tensed, his whole body freezing, his back arched. She bucked and yelled and pushed. She felt the semen burst deep inside her, and in that moment she wanted to die.
“My God! Oh, my God, no!”
Lindsay stared at the unexpected voice and yelled again, disbelieving. It was Sydney and she was watching, mouth agape, frozen just inside the open bedroom doorway.
“Help me, Sydney! Please, help me!”
The prince didn’t seem to hear his wife’s voice. He was heaving and jerking over Lindsay. And then he was groaning, and she felt his body’s contractions with the power of his orgasm.
“Help me, Sydney!”
The prince laughed and struck her again, hard on her jaw. He raised his hand again for another blow, smiling, oh he was smiling grandly, his pleasure full to bursting, but his violence still lacking.
There was a loud popping sound. The prince stiffened suddenly and then he was staring down at Lindsay, and he was frowning in confusion. Slowly he swiveled about, still inside her, to see his wife standing not ten feet away, a .32-caliber pistol held straight out toward him in her right hand.
“Sydney? Is that you? Whatever are you doing here? You should be at home. You should be tending my mother. Why did you shoot me? Why?”
Sydney, pale, still now, screamed, “By God, my own sister!” She aimed the gun and pulled the trigger again.
He shuddered when the bullet went into his flesh, then he fell sideways, sliding out of Lindsay, rocking sideways, slipping silently onto the floor.
Lindsay couldn’t grasp it. She saw the gun, saw the blood, all over the bed. She leaned over and looked at him. There was blood all over his chest, and then she saw her own blood between her legs and his sperm leaking slowly out of her. She started shaking.
She was cold, out of control, she realized vaguely, but couldn’t do anything about it. She hurt inside and out, and she couldn’t seem to think. There was Sydney standing there, dead white, eyes dilated, and holding that damned pistol straight out in front of her, and she said, her voice as dead frightening as hell because it was emotionless and singsong, “Are you all right, Lindsay?”
“N-no.”
“Jesus, I wasn’t in time. I’m sorry, Lindsay. I wasn’t in time. God, I’m so sorry. I came as soon as I found out what he’d planned. The bastard really covered his tracks this time, so it took me longer. When I realized he was still after you, I went crazy. I couldn’t believe it at first. It was too insane, too much, even for him. Oh, God, what the hell are we going to do?”
“Is he dead?”
“Dead? He should be, I shot him twice.” She looked at the prince’s sprawled naked body. “I shot him,” she said again. “I shot the bastard twice.”
Suddenly Sydney sank to her knees. She rocked back and forth, back and forth, a strange keening noise coming from her throat. The pistol fell from her fingers onto the carpet.
It was the sight of her sister—perfect Sydney, brilliant and beautiful Sydney—looking like a crazed woman that gave Lindsay a focus. It gave her a notion of reality and what it was they now faced.
She scrambled off the bed and onto the floor next to her sister. She didn’t look at the prince. He didn’t matter right now. She was unaware of her nightgown flapping around her body.
She grabbed her sister’s shoulders and shook her. “We’ve got to do something! Stop it, Sydney, for God’s sake, stop it, get hold of yourself!”
“I murdered him. There’s nothing to do. I murdered him and everything’s over now.”
She raised her face from her hands then and stared blindly at Lindsay. “Our daddy’s a judge. Isn’t that something, Lindsay? He’s a fucking judge!”
“No, no, listen to me, you saved me. He was raping me and you saved me! It was self-defense. We’ll be all right. I swear it, Sydney.”
Sydney merely stared at her, shaking her head slowly back and forth, so pale Lindsay thought she would faint. But she didn’t.
Sydney said, even as she shook her head as if in denial, “You stupid little idiot.” Her voice was now strong and hard, her eyes dark and wild. “You fool girl, you let him think you wanted this. He’s not normal. He took your silly infatuation for sexual overtures. For two years you’ve let him get you ready for this. What did he do, write you his titillating little postcards? Show you how caring and tender he was? How much he appreciated you, a very young girl? No, don’t bother saying anything. It’s far too late now. I know, you see, he never changes his routine, there’s never been any need to, because I let him have his fun. No choice really, once I figured out what he was all about. Don’t you know why he married me, Lindsay? Jesus, of course you don’t know. He married me for my future inheritance! The interest from my trust fund doesn’t begin to satisfy him. And there you are, gawking at him like he’s God. You came running, didn’t you? He loves young girls, haven’t you figured that out yet? He thinks I’m old. He thought I was too old when we got married. Eighteen is really his limit. He had to wait for you because he couldn’t get to you before. I’ll just bet he was dying, wondering if he could get to you before an American boy had taken your virginity. Oh, it doesn’t matter. I would have killed him anyway, whether or not he was raping you. You stupid little fool, Jesus, stupid, stupid.”
Sydney began crying into her hands, harsh ugly cries. Lindsay watched her, unable to move, unable to think, her half-sister’s words dinning in her mind. No, no time to think about this, it was time to act.
Lindsay shrugged off her shredded nightgown. She felt the awful stickiness between her legs, felt the vague stinging inside her. Her face throbbed from his blows. She wanted to vomit. She was eighteen years old, too young, too young, and yet there was no one else to help her. She might as well have been alone with a dead man.
What to do?
She managed to rise. She felt herself begin to tremble, knew she was about to lose control, just as Sydney had. She couldn’t allow it. She walked to the ornate telephone and picked it up. She stared at it, wondering how to ask for the police in French. Her hand shook; she stopped it. She drew a deep breath. She got a good grip on herself, and said when the operator came onto the line, “Les gendarmes, s’il vous plât. C’est tre`s important.”
Suddenly the prince groaned.
4
The Aftermath
Lindsay was on her knees vomiting into the toilet when the police came running into the suite. She staggered to her feet, clutching a blanket around her. Her mouth tasted bitter and dry. Sydney was standing now, pale and still, the .32-caliber pistol in her hand again, and she was staring down at her husband, who was still lying nude on the bedroom carpet, covered with blood, moaning.
Lindsay was aware of men staring at her, at Sydney, at the prince, taking it in. She pulled the blanket more tightly around her. Her face hurt, her insides burned, and her stomach was roiling. She couldn’t speak, just stared back at them. She heard Sydney sobbing, saw two more men carry in a collapsible gurney. They put the prince on it, covered him, and wheeled him out. Lindsay’s last view of him was of a man with a
gray face, black hair plastered with sweat to his head, and he was moaning. There was a man from the hotel, obviously, because he was very nearly distraught, chattering wildly, wringing his hands.
One of the policemen, a young man with thick black hair and a huge mustache, strode toward Lindsay. She backed away, one hand in front of her to ward him away. It was instinctive. He slowed, spoke to her, his voice low, but she couldn’t understand his words. She couldn’t understand anything. One of the other men said in English, “You are too ill to walk. He will carry you, mademoiselle. He will not pain you. I promise, everything will be okay now.”
Okay? That was crazy. Said with a thick French accent it sounded even crazier. She closed her eyes when the man picked her up and carried her to the elevator, through the lavish lobby of the George V, to the police car whose front tires sat on the sidewalk in front of the hotel. She lay against him, aware of the siren, aware of the low talk between him and the two men in the front seat. There were avid faces pressing against the police-car windows and there were loud voices. She turned her face inward. This was reality and she couldn’t bear it. She wondered where Sydney was. She felt the pain building inside her, the horror of what had happened to her, of what she had allowed to happen to her. She couldn’t seem to stop shivering, but she knew she wasn’t cold. The man who was holding her continued to speak quietly. She heard his words, but she saw the prince’s ghastly gray face, saw the people’s greedy faces as they’d tried to get closer.
The police officer carried her into the emergency room of St. Catherine’s Hospital—she saw the huge sign—and then into one of the small curtained cubicles. He laid her onto an examining table. She was shaking, her teeth chattering, clutching the blanket to her like a lifeline, clutching now at him. He spoke more, then pulled her arms away from him. He left. A nurse leaned over her and she understood the word americaine but nothing more. Then two men were there, standing over her, both in white coats, and they looked harried and impatient. They were tugging the blanket off her. But she was naked, she knew she was naked, and the prince’s sperm was on her thighs, still wet and runny, and there was her blood as well, and it was too much. She fought them, yelling at them to leave her alone, tears streaming down her face.
Beyond Eden Page 5