Free Tempting the Bride by Sherry Thomas Page B

between them. “What any woman means when she says she is a virgin.”
    He snorted. “What then were you doing all those nights you spent with Martin?”
    “Pleasurable activities that did not impact my virginity.”
    His brow rose. “Did those pleasurable activities include buggery?”
    Another woman might have flushed. She was only further offended. “No.”
    “I find it inconceivable that Martin has that sort of self-control. How could he have you in his bed and not profit from it?”
    “We remained clothed, both of us.”
    “At your insistence or his?”
    “His, but how does it matter?”
    “You would have taken them off?”
    “Yes, I would have gladly disrobed for the man I love.”
    He said nothing, but picked up her jar of toilette cream, unscrewed the cap, and dipped a finger inside. She couldn’t say why, but the gesture made her face burn.
    He rubbed the unguent between his fingers. “Nice. I can probably find some use for it later.”
    Behind her, her hands gripped the windowsill.
    He glanced at her, a heavy-lidded look she felt all the way to her soles. “And you, my dear, will learn to love the idea of disrobing for me.”
    S he was still, her gaze focused somewhere behind him.
    Redheads were often characterized as passionate and temperamental. He didn’t doubt that she was passionate, but Helena Fitzhugh had always been cool, a woman who liked being firmly in control.
    Presently her coolness was almost glacial, sharply contrasted against all that Titian hair spilling down her shoulders and back in soft, gleaming waves. Words usually came easily to him, a versatile, malleable medium to be layered and blended like paint on a palette. Yet when it came to her hair, his mind could not conjure anything more imaginative than
fire
and its various synonyms.
    Flame. Blaze. A conflagration to swallow him whole.
    Her body, leaning against the windowsill, was elegantly elongated. He used to call her a giraffe to her face, which she’d always taken as an insult. But a giraffe in person was an impossibly beautiful creature, a testament to the Creator’s skill and imagination.
    And just a few hours ago, that body had pressed into his, her fingers plunging into his hair.
    “Why?” she asked, snapping him out of his reverie.
    He almost couldn’t recall what they’d been talking about. “Why learn to love the idea of disrobing for me?”
    “No. Why are you involved at all? Were you a more gallant man, I might have understood your action. But you possess not an ounce of chivalry. How does this profit you?”
    Everything he did, he did because he loved her. Her entire family knew it, but she was determined to perpetuate her ignorance.
    He thought of Millie’s advice. She and her husband had been the most affectionate of friends for years, and still she’d hesitated to make her true feelings known. What if she and Fitz had locked horns at every turn? Would she have ever taken her own advice?
    “Were your bosom more bountiful, there might have been something in it for me.” He shrugged. “Oh well, I trust eventually I will come to enjoy straddling your bony person.”
    She pulled her lips taut. “For someone with so little interest in my person, you’ve certainly spent a good deal of time attempting a measure of intimacy.”
    “It’s the nature of man. No one really
wants
to go to the South Pole or cross the Sahara; they just want to see whether it can be done.”
    “Whether it can be done,” she repeated slowly.
    “Indeed. Shall we proceed?”
    “You will wait until we are, in fact, married,” she said coldly.
    “Mr. Martin didn’t have to wait.”
    “Mr. Martin didn’t actually get to
sleep
with me.”
    He grinned. “Do to me what you did to him—I should be more than happy enough.”
    She took a deep breath. “You are a disgusting pig, Hastings.”
    She’d compared him to far baser entities over the years, but something in her tone struck him. He’d always been a game to her, a somewhat