She recoiled. “Don’t call him that.”
“That’s what he is.”
“It’s an ugly word.”
“I agree.” He looked up from her breasts into her eyes. “So is whore.”
Her lips parted in shock.
“And that’s what you are, Norma.”
“I’m not!”
“The word fits you to a tee.”
His squeezes had become painful pinches. She pushed his grasping hands away and pulled her robe together. “You had better leave. Gabe wouldn’t like knowing that—”
“That I was fucking you on the night he called me in a panic over killing his wife?”
“He never has to know about us.”
“Maybe he should.”
“No! Anyway, that phase of my life is over. I got what I wanted.”
“A well-to-do husband with a lovely home.”
“Yes.”
“Respectability.”
“Yes.”
“Gabe hasn’t married you yet.”
“Soon, though.”
“But the blushing bride-to-be welcomes me, naked except for that cheap, tacky robe and red lipstick.”
“Before I knew you were going to be so horrid.”
“You thought we would end our affair on a sweeter note.”
“Yes.”
“I hate to disappoint.”
He pulled back his fist and slammed it into her face.
The pain was so excruciating she didn’t even feel the center mirror of her vanity shattering against her back when she fell into it. He hit her in the face again, this time hard enough to knock her to the floor. She groped for the vanity stool to try and pull herself up and attempt some kind of defense, but he kicked the stool out of her reach.
She crawled on all fours in an effort to escape his hammering fists and the vile things he was saying to her and about her. Worse, he didn’t shout the insults in outrage. He spoke them in a soft but repugnant parody of sweet nothings.
He kicked her in the ribs. Then he stopped and stood over her, breathing heavily. She thought that perhaps that was the end of it. He’d vented his rage. He was through.
But then he stamped on her, and the pain was unimaginable. She screamed.
He pulled her up by her hair and pushed her face-first onto the bed. He held her head down with one hand and used the other to shove her robe up above her waist.