‘I – I don’t know. I shouldn’t have brought you here. I—’

‘Don’t, Mags, please don’t. Let’s get back what we felt downstairs. Maybe I was a little too eager, but I thought . . . well, I thought we were ready. I am. I want you so badly, Mags.’

Guilt bored into her. She wanted to ask him to leave, but was afraid of his temper, and thought he might do that literally and she wouldn’t see him for months. Something in her suspected that the affair Flors had told her of was still going on, and if she didn’t give Harold what he desired, then Susan would.

‘Mags?’

His plea made up her mind. She wanted Harold with all her being. ‘Yes, let’s start again. Gently, like you were downstairs. What you did just now frightened me.’

‘Oh, Mags, I’m so sorry. I so want you, I got carried away. I keep forgetting this is your first time. I’ll remember that now. I promise, darling. Let me kiss you. Oh, my darling, let me kiss you.’

His tone and his gentle hold on her melted Mags’s resistance. Though guilt rocked her, when he said this was her first time, she couldn’t spoil that illusion for him. She wasn’t practised at deceit, but maybe if she cried out as if in pain, he would think that normal?

Harold dispelled any worry she might feel, as he exclaimed at the beauty of every limb that he bared and caressed when he undressed her.

She had seen many men’s naked bodies, but always racked with pain, and thin and bony after a great toll had ravaged them, but Harold was magnificent. His body was honed and contoured. And when her eyes travelled downwards, she felt an increase in the heat that crept over her. He truly was beautiful.

His loving of her was gentle and patient, until she cried out for him to come to her. When he did, her ecstasy was such that she forgot her resolve to show this was her first time, but lost herself in the extreme pleasure that shuddered through her body, taking her to a place she had never been before or thought existed. In this place she was a different being. A pliable and yet demanding woman. One who knew what her body wanted, and one who gave herself completely to loving her man. All memory and horror of her rape were gone in that moment, and her cries were ones of joy.

This stunning world of love and sexual desire seized all her senses, making her demand more – demand something she knew she could attain, something that was building inside her. Then it came, a surge of feeling so powerful it had her begging Harold to stop, as she stiffened beneath him and allowed the sensations to release an explosion inside her of wave after wave of exquisite thrill, taking her to an abandonment of everything she’d been up till this moment.