‘I haven’t spent the last seven years plotting to be seduced by you, if that’s what you mean,’ Fliss parried.
They were still in bed together and, much as she would have liked to get up and protect herself by getting dressed again, she suspected that if she did Vidal would know immediately she was doing so because she felt vulnerable.
Vulnerable because her body felt almost giddily euphoric and delighted with itself, delighted with Vidal, and all too ready to explore the possibility of experiencing a repeat of the pleasure he had just given her. It was as though in place of her virginity Vidal had given her flesh a need that it believed only he could satisfy. And if that was true.
But, no—she must not start thinking like that. She must remember instead how she had felt before that pleasure. She must remember why it had been so important to her that Vidal confronted the reality of her virginity.
Vidal pressed her before she could say anything else. ‘No more games, Felicity.’ His voice was controlled and empty of emotion. ‘You urged me to take your virginity not to pleasure me or even yourself but to punish me. Not as an act of intimacy, but as an act of retribution.’
Since his voice was so expressionless it was surely strange that she should feel as though he was holding within him a great weight of some hidden emotion. He was just trying to make her feel she was in the wrong, Fliss told herself. And he was doing it because he didn’t want to admit that he was the one who had been wrong.
‘You misjudged me and you kept on misjudging me,’ she reminded him. ‘You kept on throwing my supposed past in my face. I didn’t deliberately set out to plan what happened, if that’s what you think, but when the opportunity presented itself, yes—I did want it to happen.’
‘You could have stopped when you recognised I had realised that you were a virgin.’
A quiver of apprehension flickered down her spine. Had he guessed that she had ended up wanting him so much that the original purpose of what she was doing had ceased to matter? That way lay fresh humiliation for her. She was twenty-three now, not sixteen, and the very idea of having secretly longed for him for all those years was not one she was prepared to entertain.
‘Maybe I felt that if I did there would always be a question over the … the factual evidence, and that you might choose afterwards to believe that you had imagined my virginity.’
‘Maybe?’
Fliss gave a small nervy shrug. ‘What was the point in leaving things there? You’ve always disliked me, Vidal,’ she continued before he could answer her. ‘We both know that. I wanted to make sure that we both knew the truth.’
‘So you remained a virgin on the off chance that the opportunity might arise for you to confront me with that truth?’
He was mocking her. Fliss was sure of it. She could feel her self-control slipping away from her.
‘Have you any idea what it’s like to be branded as you branded me? Not just by your words and your beliefs about me, but … but by the way in which they impacted on the way I felt about myself. I’m twenty-three. How do you think I felt about the thought of having to explain to a man I might fall in love with that I haven’t had sex. He’d think I was a freak.’
‘So it’s my fault, is it, that you were still a virgin?’
‘Yes. No. Look, I don’t see the point in us discussing this. I just want to draw a line under it and move on. Like I’ve said, I know that you’ve never liked me, or the fact that I exist. You proved that when you wouldn’t let me write to my father.’
‘You wanted me.’
The words slipped so adroitly under her guard caused Fliss to exhale shakily in shock.
‘No. I wanted justice.’
‘You were aroused by me—by my touch, my possession.’
‘No. I was aroused by the knowledge that you would be forced to admit you were wrong. Strong emotions can do that. After all, you don’t even like me. But you. you.’
‘Made love to you? Aroused you? Possessed you?’
He was too quick, his logic too sharp for her to combat right now, when all she could do was think about the delight of the pleasure he had given her. And long for a repeat of that pleasure? Desperately, Fliss struggled to find a way in which she could be as practical and unaffected by what had happened as Vidal obviously was. But the truth was that there wasn’t one. The truth was that if he turned to her now and took her back in his arms … if he touched her as he had done before …
‘I don’t want to talk about it. I just want you to go.’ No, she didn’t. She wanted him to stay. She wanted him to stay and hold her and—and what? Love her? She wasn’t sixteen any more, Fliss reminded herself.