Angel of Darkness

Had it been a punishment for calling that desire laughable? She turned cold and shivered. In anguish, she relived the torrid abandonment of her response to him. She didn’t feel like laughing. Fear fluttered in her throat and churned in her stomach. She was not as tough as she had thought she was. Angelo had shot down that illusion in flames.

With supreme self-assurance, Angelo reached down a lean hand and hauled her upright. Kelda trailed her fingers free in violent rejection. Her brain was working now at a furious rate. Nothing that Angelo had so far threatened her with was worth this humiliation! Tonight, somehow, some way, no matter what it took, she was leaving...

CHAPTER FIVE

KELDA had only brought one dress, fashionably floral, ankle-length and buttoned from scoop neckline to hem. She had packed it because it was casual and uncrushable. Her fingers fluttered tautly towards the glittering jewels still encircling her throat. People put collars on dogs to control them, and after the collar came the lead...it was all part of the training. Pure rage glittered in her emerald-green eyes. Later she would break the necklace. It certainly wasn’t going with her!

The high of fury and self-loathing powering her had yet to dissipate. She had degraded herself. She had been a fully participating partner in Angelo’s arms. Her skin burned as she recalled how he had made her feel, how she had behaved. There was no excuse. She was not a teenager at the mercy of rampaging hormones. She was a grown woman, supposedly in control of her own responses.

Dear heaven, she had actually thought that she had a fairly low sex drive. So many men had tried and failed to rouse her to passion. Her distaste for intimacy had been intense. She had blamed Angelo for her apparent frigidity. He had treated her appallingly that night six years ago. She had been at a very sensitive age when Angelo had contrived to combine sex, shame and sleaze all into one uneasy package inside her impressionable mind.

But what infuriated her most of all was that none of those inhibitions had prevented her from responding wildly to Angelo. It was sexual infatuation...what else could it be? A raw physical attraction of the lowest order. That Angelo had known that he could exercise such power over her, long before she herself even suspected it, was doubly humiliating. On that level, her own lack of experience made her a pitifully easy target and no way...absolutely no way was she sticking around for any further demonstrations!

Angelo was in the drawing-room when she came downstairs. Golden eyes gleamed beneath dense ebony lashes, a faintly sardonic curve hardening his eloquent mouth as he returned her perusal. Her chest tightened. She felt as if she had gone down in a lift too fast. And the spacious room suddenly felt claustrophobic.

‘What would you like to drink?’ he drawled smoothly.

He handed her the glass of pure orange with an edged smile of amusement that made her fingernails bite into the palm of her free hand.

‘You weren’t drunk on anything but desire this afternoon but I salute your choice,’ he murmured lazily. ‘Alcohol dulls all sensations.’

Her nails inflicted purple crescents on her palm. Her teeth ground together. She lifted her fiery head high. ‘Don’t you think this farce has gone far enough?’

‘Farce is comedy. I notice that you’re not laughing.’

‘Few people laugh at threats, grotesque or otherwise,’ Kelda countered fiercely.

A maid came in to announce dinner. Kelda sank down rigid-backed in a heavily carved chair in the dining-room. As soon as the main course had been served, she thrust up her chin. ‘I did nothing to be ashamed of six years ago! You have no right to threaten me and no excuse to keep me here!’ she told him angrily.

‘Nothing?’ Angelo repeated drily.

‘Nothing,’ Kelda reiterated with conviction. ‘And the way you treated me was absolutely unforgivable! When you came into the library that night, that boy was trying to rape me—’

Angelo quirked a satiric ebony brow. ‘Still tossing that old chestnut on the fire? Really cara...if you’re in search of an extenuating circumstance for what you did that night, can’t you do better than cry rape? In the light of your hot-blooded nature, I find it excessively hard to believe that rape would have been necessary.’

Furious colour flooded her cheeks, highlighting the brilliance of her green eyes. ‘I was switching out the lamps,’ she persisted doggedly. ‘I thought I was alone. He came up behind me and forced me down on to the floor. He hit me...’ her voice trailed away, her facial muscles tightening as she forced herself to continue ‘...he b-bit my breasts and he hurt me...’

What shattered her was Angelo’s raw burst of laughter. She had had to steel herself hard to describe that assault and she had been prepared to counter disbelief, but not the sheer earthy amusement raking through Angelo’s lean, muscular frame.

‘Love-bites,’ he breathed in a sizzling undertone that somehow contrived to combine the lingering remnants of his amusement with complete disdain. ‘I did notice them.’

‘I am telling you the truth!’ Kelda spat back at him tightly, painfully, outraged by his response. ‘I was terrified...if you hadn’t interrupted him, he would have got what he wanted!’

‘You’re not even a good liar,’ Angelo whipped back with derision. ‘The facts don’t fit. You were in a dark room behind a firmly closed door. You didn’t scream, you didn’t demand that I call the police, nor did you come up with the attempted rape story until that boy was safely out of the house.’

Her stomach was churning with nausea. She could have explained all those things but why should she humiliate herself by persisting? Describing that assault even briefly had brought it alive again. The sensation

of sick terror, overwhelming relief and shock had flooded back in a debilitating surge. Angelo’s laughter and derision had been brutally inappropriate. Trying to defend herself was a waste of time.

Loathing was rippling through her in violent waves now. How dared he dismiss her story out of hand? How dared he talk as though she had been a promiscuous little slut at eighteen? The truth lay at the other extreme. Compared with her considerably more experienced friends, she had been almost laughably innocent. But what was that saying about one picture being worth a thousand words? Angelo had seen her in a compromising position and had chosen to see only what fitted his own interpretation of her character.

In the electric silence she stared down at the plate in front of her without appetite and with sudden decision, she stood up, emerald eyes flashing like polished gemstones in the pale, taut stillness of her face. ‘I’m not hungry and I’m tired,’ she said shortly.

‘Madre di Dio...’ Angelo breathed with driven impatience. ‘You still sulk like a child!’

In the doorway, Kelda whirled round to face him again, all pale dignity banished by blazing anger. ‘You hateful bastard...somehow, some day, I’ll make you pay for bringing me here!’

As she strode through the hall, she paused beside an ornate marble and gilded side table. Angelo had tossed his car keys there earlier and they were still there, she noted with relief. She took the stairs two at a time, rage still storming through her veins in an energising tidal wave. Discarding the floral dress, she put on a pair of black leggings and a sweatshirt top before packing the remainder of her possessions. That small task taken care of, she sat down to wait for the rest of the household to go to bed.