He grabbed her hair and harshly pulled her to her feet. His smile had more in common with an animal baring its teeth than a human expression. He twisted her face to his and put the muzzle to her temple, gripping her hair as if he wanted to pull it out by the roots. They stood there like lovers, close enough to kiss.

“Let’s not have any more of this nonsense, chérie,” he whispered.

She nodded dumbly and walked stiffly beside him to the Mercedes. He shoved her in from the driver’s side and told her to cross her wrists behind her. Then he tied her hands and started the car. The cords were too tight and it was very painful. She could feel the knots digging into her skin and told him so.

“Ça m’est égal,” he shrugged with icy indifference, but there was a harsh note in his voice and a gleam in his eye that might have been hatred, or perhaps just the greenish reflection of the dash lights. He was enjoying her pain, she thought, and began to feel queasy again. It reminded her of the ferocious resentment she had once heard in her father’s voice after a quarrel with her mother. The ice cubes in his highball tinkled like wind chimes as he stared at her, damning her for the irrevocable crime of being female. That was when he first got into politics. Her parents had quarreled a lot in those days.

“A woman’s main purpose in life is showing men how noble women are compared to the male beast,” her father had said, that bitter edge in his voice.

She thought he meant that he didn’t love her.

They sped down the Porte Maillot and headed out towards the périphérique, the autoroute almost empty in the three o’clock darkness. Every once in a while, he glanced over at her, a thin curious kind of smile on his handsome face. But there was nothing sexual in the smile and she shuddered. She kept thinking that he was certainly going to a lot of trouble if all he wanted to do was to rape her and then the bitter taste of bile was at the back of her throat, because she didn’t think that he would be satisfied with just raping her. Tears stung her eyes and she tried to think over the pounding in her temples. Perhaps if she seduced him, let him think that he could have her now and any time he wanted, he would let her live. If she could just survive tonight, she’d make it somehow, she told herself.

“You don’t have to do this, you know,” she said, surprised at how calm, even seductive her voice sounded. Inside, she was quivering like a leaf in a high wind. “I’m terribly attracted to you. I’ll do things for you no woman ever has,” she whispered.