Jason released her. Gemma’s emotions swung from annoyance to shock. Her mouth dropped into a gape and, for a moment, she felt sick. A sense of terror replaced her defiant mood.
“Spiked? Drug me? Why…?”
The implicat
ions rushed through her brain. She had told the girl she was on her own. The German believed Gemma was at the club alone and friendless. She should have put a big bull’s eye on her top. Vulnerable, lonely foreigner. Line up here to fuck me!
She needed reassurance, words of comfort from him. She wasn’t the disobedient schoolchild her mother would have frowned upon, the one who stayed out late and told lies. She was a damaged woman with a traumatic past.
***
In the back of luxurious spacious limo, Jason could see his wife process the information. The realisation of what might have transpired if she hadn’t been watched, protected by others. He thought she was about to faint. Her eyes drifted. She would remember being tricked by a woman before, a precursor to an attempted abduction. He cuffed her face, not hard, but sufficient to bring her back from her memory trail. She jolted, her bleary eyes trying hard to focus. She let out a low sob. A strangely forlorn sound of distress.
Jason quickly displaced his anger. He would not allow her to disassemble in the back of the limo. He pulled her up into his arms and lap, holding her tight in his arms.
“Shhh. It didn’t happen, Gemma. Look at me!” He waited for her lost eyes to find his. “You’re safe. You didn’t drink it?”
“No,” she whispered. “Oh, God. Jason. I...why me? Why is it always me...?” Tears held back, filling the brims.
“Bad luck.” Jason shrugged, trying to comfort her. Something in Gemma’s demeanour told him different. Always, she had struggled to lie to him, to hide her true feelings and inadequacies. Now, yet again, he could see guilt bubbling to the surface of her facial features.
Her pupils flittered. Her lower lip trembled. “I told her…I was on my own.”
He spoke through clenched teeth. “How could you be so idiotic!” He inhaled deeply, trying hard to keep his anger in check.
Gemma rattled off her confession with an air of resignation. “She bought me a drink because I implied I had no cash. I didn’t want her to know about your tab. I was pissed at you for making me put the bra back on. It’s all my fault she picked on me.”
Jason turned away from his wife in disappointment. Through the car window, he could see the waterfront and the illuminated Sublime.
Gemma had come clean. She had been unwise and had played into the girl’s hands, making herself vulnerable. The opportunity had been given to trick her, and Gemma hadn’t been innocent as she appeared. Now the truth was out, she would find out what the information meant to him.
“When we get back on Sublime, go to the stateroom and wait for me. The police have been called, and Lubinsky has stayed to speak to them. The girl was probably a lure, the bait. She would have taken you somewhere else. The drug added to your drink was probably Rohypnol or GHB. You understand, Gemma? This is what they do. They ensnare women. Once Lubinsky is back, I will deal with you.”
He pushed her off his lap and handed her his handkerchief. Gemma wiped away her tears, sniffling and blowing her nose. His anger had returned for a second time, and it proved harder to keep it at bay.
***
Gemma made her way to the stateroom, ignoring the welcome-back smile from Esteban. His face switched to a neutral expression. He would quickly surmise something bad had happened onshore. Maria joined her as she curled up on the bed in disarray. The groggy maid, summoned by somebody, wrapped in her dressing gown, didn’t question why she had to keep her company. Gemma said nothing to her. She suspected Maria was to report to Jason if she should become excessively anxious or distraught, almost a form of benevolence from him.
Deciding he was going to be some time, she undressed and bathed her tear-streaked face. She took the offered towel and satin dressing gown from Maria then sat staring out the panoramic windows to the docks and commercial areas of Dubrovnik. A long, sprawling city whose bright lights hid its historical turbulent past. She had been so looking forward to exploring the old walled city.
Curled up in an armchair, Gemma waited. It was nearly three in the morning by the time Jason arrived in the room. He quickly dismissed the dopey Maria. Gemma took a deep breath and looked up at him.
Chapter 28. Surrender
Jason placed himself in an armchair opposite his wife, his shirt half-unbuttoned and jacket gone. He noted the glass of half-drunk water on the coffee table and a pile of used tissues. Her makeup had been removed, making her face especially tired with her hollow eyes and her hair hanging loose about her face—tangled strands with no grace or form.
At that precise moment, when Gemma looked at Jason, he had only one wish on his mind. He had struggled to watch her dance, sharing her with the occupants of a nightclub and having men’s eyes ogle her all evening. In the club, he had witnessed yet again her vulnerability when left to her own devices and not simply to the opposite sex, but to her own trusting nature.
If there was a reason why she might easily be victimised, it was because she believed in others more than herself. A beautiful woman who liked attention and wished to be pleasing to others, desperate to be desired and needed. She had forgotten to keep him in her sights and mind. A flaw in her attitude, which had proved dangerous to her safety. She should have been dancing for him all night long, not for a hooker.
His loins ached for her, to claim her back from the clutches of others. Those eager men and temptresses who tried to lure her away from him. Seemingly decent people with wicked intentions to ply her with drugs and sweet talk. His eyes devoured her beauty, and his erection grew rapidly, hardened by her pathetic stance.
Gemma straightened herself up, then she slipped onto the floor, the robe discarded, and crawled to be at his feet. She came towards him, her nudity and silence her consent, her submission.
She looked magnificent, his painted wife. Seducing him with her tanned skin and parted legs, showing her sex right there before him, beckoning to him. Jason knew she had a romantic vision of the night’s endpoint. He loved her, and yet what he wanted was to repossess her. The sexual gratification he needed and the control he demanded all facets of his love for her.
“If you had kept me in mind while you danced as you said you would, you wouldn’t have been tempted away from me.” He let his final words of judgement hang in the air between them.