Beyond Eden by Catherine Coulter

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 astranger 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.
    â€œYou’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.
    â€œI 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 beolder 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.
    â€œNo, 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.
    â€œTell 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.
    â€œDid 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, notmen. 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