Wounds of Passion

round it.
Instinctively as she ran she kept listening for the sound of following footsteps. Sound was magnified by high walls, by water; you could hear a whisper on a quiet day.
She heard the sound of running feet for the first couple of minutes, and then she shot across a bridge to the Rio San Vio, a wide pavement beside a canal, and doubled back again later, across another bridge, and emerged behind the Accademia.
By then, she was sure nobody was following her. She didn’t slow down yet; she wanted to make quite sure she had lost him. Several streets away she halted at last, chest heaving, her body moist with perspiration, panting, in a small, empty square, listening, and heard nothing.
She had lost him. Walking unsteadily, she crossed the square, took a key from her pocket, unlocked a dark-varnished gate set in a high stone wall, and walked through into a shady green garden.
Nothing stirred there except a few birds, a whisper of leaves, a fountain splashing softly in the middle of the gravelled paths. She sat down on the stone wall around the fountain to get her breath back, and closed her eyes, shuddering.
He had changed; she couldn’t quite pin down how, but he had looked very different. Yet she would have known him anywhere.
What was he doing in Venice?
She ran her trembling hands over her face, raked them through her short blonde hair. Was he just here for a day? A day tripper? Or was he staying here? What if she met him again?
Oh, God, she couldn’t bear it if she did.
For two years she had been terrified of seeing him again, walking into him in a street somewhere, in a restaurant, an art gallery. The modern world was small; it was amazing how you did run into people you knew, in the strangest places. A friend of hers had been in the Hindu Kush when she ran into an ex-boyfriend, a thousand miles from where they had last met!
Antonia stared down into the water of the fountain; among the dark green leaves and huge white flowers of the water-lilies floating on the surface she saw his face again, and groaned, closing her eyes.
Desperately she dragged her sunglasses off, leaned down and put her face into the water, breaking up any reflections, cooling her overheated skin.
Dripping wet and refreshed, she sat up again, searching for a handkerchief in her jacket pocket, just as the gate creaked. Startled, she looked round, water clinging to her lashes, making a rainbow of light through which she saw him, standing in the open gateway.
Her heart plummeted, deeper than the ocean; she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move.
She must have forgotten to lock the gate again in her relief at being safe home. She couldn’t believe she had been so stupid!
White and terrified, she watched him, eyes stretched to their utmost, and couldn’t even scream.
He came in. Shut the gate. Walked towards her, his black shadow thrown across the stone wall.
Shivering, in spite of the heat of the sun, she opened her mouth to scream, and he leapt across the space between them, his hand clamping down over her mouth to silence the cry before it came.
His blue eyes bored down into her. ‘I’m not going to hurt you!’ he grated, his teeth tight, and she didn’t believe him. His face was taut with rage. ‘Don’t start screaming,’ he bit out. ‘I don’t want to get arrested again because of you! Once was enough!’
Her enormous sea-blue eyes stared up at him, trying to read his intentions in his face, fear making her glossy black pupils dilate. He was standing in front of her, his thighs against her knees, his palm pressing down into her parted lips, his warm flesh touching the tip of her tongue. She tasted the salt on his skin and shuddered.
His mouth indented, he frowned. ‘And stop looking at me like that! Do I really look like the type of guy who hurts women? I may have been as mad as hell with you two years ago, but I’ve had time to calm down. You’re in no danger from me. Promise not to scream and I’ll let go of you.’ He paused. ‘Nod your head if you promise.’
She couldn’t swallow, was half suffocating; she nodded.
He released her and moved away a little, but was still too close; Antonia’s heart was beating thickly in her throat.
Huskily she whispered, ‘You must have been very angry, I know that, and I’m sorry I told the police it was you...’
His face tensed, his eyes glittering. ‘So you did tell them it was me! You didn’t just give them a description—you actually accused me!’
The harshness of his voice was more than she could take. She couldn’t breathe; she was as cold as ice; the quiet garden began to dissolve in front of her terrified eyes.
She crumpled sideways a second later; Patrick only just caught her before she fell to the ground.
Her body sagged into his arms and he picked her up, thinking, She’s as light as a child. Doesn’t she eat at all? He carried her to an ornately wrought ironwork bench with wooden slats for a seat. Her blonde head lay against his arm, her short curls catching the light. He laid her down, went back to the fountain, damped his handkerchief in the water, then went back to her, knelt beside her, and gently stroked her temples with the cool, wet linen.
After a moment she shifted, frowning, her lids stirring, her lashes lifting, and looked up at him dazedly.
‘You fainted,’ he said.
She tried to sit up and he helped her, feeling her tense as he touched her.
‘You don’t have to be afraid of me,’ he bit out. ‘It wasn’t me who attacked you, or aren’t you still sure about that?’
A little dark red colour crept into her cheeks. ‘I’m not afraid of you,’ she denied, but it wasn’t true. She was afraid, even though it had not been him who attacked her. She wasn’t scared