"He didn't make me wish to lie with him as you do."
"I turn you on?" He was dumbfounded.
She frowned. "I am not an electrical switch."
"You want to lie with me?" he rephrased. The sun shone bright overhead, but this was the most surreal conversation he'd ever had.
"I have just said that." Her brow knit. "Why do you make me repeat it? Have you lost your desire for me?"
Couldn't she see exactly how much desire he felt? Then he caught himself. No. She'd kept her eyes firmly above the waist-shy innocence or a beautiful woman playing with a scarred man's mind? At the end of his patience, he walked closer. Her cheeks bloomed with a delicate blush at his nearness, but she didn't back away.
"You don't want me," he stated, his voice hard.
He wasn't going to allow some pampered little princess to make fun of him. Not again. Never again. Memories of being humiliated by Lydia Barnsworthy, daughter of Trevor Barnsworthy III, shoved their way to the surface of his mind. He'd been good enough to clean her car, cut the grass and do other menial chores, arid over a summer of flirting, she'd made him believe he was good enough to date her.
When he'd finally asked her out to a school dance, she'd said yes. Using some of his hard-earned cash to rent a tux and buy a corsage, he'd shown up at the doorstep. The maid had informed him that Lydia had gone to the dance with someone else, leaving him only a message. "It was just a bit of fun. I never thought you'd actually think I might go with you. Sorry."
That was all the apology he'd received, and he'd known it was meaningless. She'd intended to do this from the first. Fuming, he'd gone to the dance and seen her laughing at him from the arm of the school's star quarterback. In spite of working so many jobs, Marc had managed to be picked for the baseball team. He'd played not because he loved it but because he'd known it would get him through college on a scholarship, allowing him to pursue what he really wanted to do.
But being a sporting hero hadn't been enough to touch the perfect tennis-toned body of Lydia Barnswor-thy; he had to have the money and the pedigree, too. As he'd watched her dance, he'd found a new maturity born out of cold rage. To her clear disappointment, he hadn't caused a disturbance. What he'd learned that night was that a beautiful woman was worth nothing if her. heart was cruel. Unfortunately, the two seemed to go together.
His wife gave him a fiery look, shattering the memories. Lydia was a hag compared to the woman he'd married. Yet, as he'd already discovered, Hira's beauty wasn't enough. If she'd remained the ice queen he'd met on his wedding night, he would've ignored her and eventually annulled their marriage, He'd had enough coldness and pain in his lifetime. But she'd kept him on the verge of hope with those fleeting moments of vulnerability that teased him with hints of the woman beneath the ice, the woman he'd seen on that moonlit balcony.
"Why should I lie to you?" She put her hands on her hips and moved closer. They were both in bare feet and she had to tip her head back a little to meet his gaze. He wondered if she realized her breasts were pressing against his sweaty chest. "I do not lie...perhaps sometimes I try to lie, but then I always tell the truth!"
What the hell, Marc thought, bracing himself for a blow. The worst she could do was reject him. Perhaps then he'd finally accept that the hope had been a mirage, an illusion sent to torture the vulnerable part of his heart, the part that held the soul of the bayou boy used to surviving unbearable hurt.
He clamped his hands on the exposed skin above her skirt. Smooth and warm under his touch, her body invited him to satiate himself in any way he wished. The hunter in him growled that she was his mate, his to do with as he wished. The civilized man barely managed to keep the instinctive reaction in check.
She shivered under his touch, a smooth whisper of soft skin against callused flesh. "That is odd."
"Odd?"
Those exotic eyes looked at him in accusation. "Why do your hands make parts of me burn that you don't touch?"
Marc moved his hands up and down the curve of her waist, still not certain of her desire, trying to scare her off with his nearness and undeniable masculine arousal. Instead of backing off, her lips parted and she put her hands on his shoulders, pressing close.
He wasn't convinced. Not when she hid her face in the curve of his neck. Calling on every ounce of control he possessed, he ran his hands up her torso and boldly cupped her breasts. She jerked at the accelerated intimacy.
"Husband," she whispered against his skin. "What... do you do to me?" Her voice shook, but when he went to remove his hands, she moved just the tiniest bit closer, as if not wanting to lose his caress.
"Do you like this?" he asked in her ear, letting her continue to hide her face because he could feel the pebbled hardness of her nipples.
Her hands clenched on his shoulders. "Yes."
If she really was a virgin, there was no way she could be faking the needy ache in her voice.."How's this?" His voice was a husky whisper as he released her breasts and moved down to gently squeeze her bottom.
Fingers digging into his shoulders, she pulled away, eyes big and worried. "Husband, these things shouldn't be done outside."
"There's no one to see." And he wanted to take her under the cerulean-blue sky, because he'd just figured out that she was telling the truth. His bride wanted him. There was a shocked innocence in her eyes that couldn't be fabricated. He knew that in his desire to test her, he'd touched her far too boldly, but he intended to make up for it by pleasuring her any way, every way she wanted.
She drew her head away. "Please." For a moment he saw such deep vulnerability in those tawny mountain-cat eyes that he was shocked. Never had he imagined that his sophisticated princess had a heart so very soft. What else was she hiding behind that hauteur of hers?
His interest in her multiplied again. At the same time, an almost painful tenderness took root in his heart, barely a bud but powerful despite it "All right, cher,"
He kissed her once, lingering at the mysterious taste of her, at the sweetness of her tentative response. When he asked for entrance into her mouth, she hesitated. "It's okay, baby," he whispered, his tone gone rough and low, "let me in."
Her body shivered under his hands as her lips softened, giving him what he sought. Fighting the urge to conquer, he tasted her just enough to have him craving more. When they parted, she was staring up at him, roses blooming on both cheeks. No woman on Earth could've counterfeited the passion clouding those magnificent eyes. "Let's go inside. I need to shower, anyway."
"I will help bathe you." Her voice was soft, almost lost on the whispering bayou breeze.
His arousal became excruciating. "What?" Maybe he was still asleep and this was one hell of an erotic dream, because only there would a maiden wife make a suggestion like that.
"In my clan, it's the oldest of traditions that wives help their husbands bathe." She was biting her lower lip, her guilt obvious in the way her body had gone tense. "I've been shirking my duty because I knew you didn't know of it."
And, he guessed, because she was a virgin. How could he have expected an untutored girl to understand the barbarian hunger she'd probably seen in his eyes last night? Tenderness that he hadn't known he could feel made him move his hands up and down her back, gentling her.
"Would it be such a chore?" he whispered. Despite a lifetime of confidence, he found himself waiting for her response, armoring his heart against pain.
Her cheeks tinted again with that rosy shade that made her golden skin glow. "No." It was the softest of murmurs. Her lashes drifted down to hide her eyes from him, but he continued to feel her arousal in the way her nipples pressed against his chest. "You make me wish to touch you," she confessed, mouth almost on the skin of his chest.