His voice held the same note of determination she’d heard in television interviews when he promised to dominate Green Bay. He released Molly’s leg. His hand slipped more reluctantly from her breast.

She’d gotten herself right back where she wasn’t supposed to be. “I really don’t think—”

“No more thinking, Molly. I’m your husband, damn it, and it’s time you start acting like a wife.”

“Like a—What do you—”

But Kevin was fundamentally a man of action, and he’d done enough talking. Shackling her wrist, he hauled her to the back door.

She couldn’t believe it. He was abducting her to have … Forced Sex!

Oh, jeez … Fight back! Tell him no!

She knew from watching Oprah exactly what a woman was supposed to do in this situation. Scream at the top of her lungs, drop to the ground, and start kicking her assailant as hard as she could. Oprah’s authority had explained that not only did this strategy have the advantage of surprise, but it used a woman’s lower-body strength.

Scream. Drop. Kick.

“No,” she whispered.

Kevin wasn’t listening. He was dragging her across the garden and along the path that ran between the cottages and the lake. His long legs ate up the ground just as they did when he was trying to beat the final whistle. She would have stumbled if he didn’t have such a tight grip on her.

Scream. Drop. Kick. And keep screaming. She remembered that part. You were supposed to keep screaming the whole time you were kicking.

The idea of dropping to the ground was interesting. Counterintuitive, but it did make sense. Women couldn’t compete with men when it came to upper-body strength, but if the male assailant was standing and the woman dropped … A shower of hard, fast kicks to the soft parts … It definitely made sense.

“Uhm, Kevin …”

“Be quiet, or I swear to God I’ll take you right here.”

Yes, this was definitely Forced Sex.

Thank goodness.

Molly was so tired of thinking, so tired of fighting what she wanted so much. She knew it was a lousy reflection on her personal maturity that she needed to believe that the decision had been taken out of her hands. Even crummier to regard Kevin as a sexual predator. But at twenty-seven she wasn’t yet the woman she wanted to be. The woman she intended to be. By the time she was thirty, she was absolutely certain she would have taken charge of her own sexuality. But for right now let him do it.

They were bump, bump, bumping down the path, passing Fairest Lord Jesus, passing Noah’s Ark. Lilies of the Field lay right ahead.