If You Dare(64)
Each night she lay awake waiting, hoping he would take the bed again. Because then she could rebuff him! Yet nothing happened, nothing but mounting exhaustion and disappointment for her.
Last night, she’d realized, miserably, that she’d never planned to rebuff him.
She squeezed her eyes shut. Why should she be surprised? One couldn’t escape one’s fate. She’d tried so hard, been the opposite of what everyone expected of her. She’d tried, and all because of some rough Highlander’s seduction, she’d failed. A seduction that vanished as if never there.
These thoughts made her head hurt, so she leaned against the coach side near the window and tried to sleep. She needed to make up for two nights without, and a breeze was blowing in the window. Sunlight teased her face through the tree leaves. Wonderful….
When Annalía woke a short time later, she blinked her eyes to focus. Feeling heavy in her body, feverish, she glanced down, saw his huge hand slowly stroking her nipple through her blouse.
“Sleep well?” he said, his voice rumbling against her ear.
She scrambled away. More awake, she realized she’d been lying half on his lap, clutching his shirt. On the opposite seat.
While she marshaled her scattered wits, determining the most effective way to curse him for touching her while she slept, he said, “You talk in your sleep.”
“I do not!”
“Aye. Just now and every night I’ve spent with you.”
How humiliating! She smoothed her hair in place, checked her choker, then crossed her arms over her sensitive breasts. “You shouldn’t have…petted me while I was unaware!” she cried. “I know you are not a gentleman but this…this…It wasn’t fair.”
“Doona speak to me about what’s no’ fair. It’s no’ fair that I canna stop.”
He couldn’t stop? Well, he had for the last fifty-nine hours. Or so. Oh, she was sorry off—Wait, he made it sound like it was her fault? How dare he turn it around? “I want you to apologize.”
He curled his lips into a shadow of a grin, dismissing the idea so easily. “I’ll never be sorry for that. Besides, you pressed against me, rubbing my chest and lower. Saying soft words in Catalan—”
“What did I say?” she asked, her voice shrill. Probably begging him to make love to her. She was so common!
“It’s a wee bit dirty. Are you sure you want me to repeat it?”
“No!” she said, glad for a way out. “But I still don’t accept that I did these things.”
“Aye, you did them, as soon as I carried you onto my lap where you belonged, you started to.”
Her jaw slackened. “You have no shame!”
“Annalía, we canna go on like this. I know why you’re mad at me—”
“I’m not mad at you, I’m mad at myself,” she lied, because actually she was furious with both of them.
“How’s that? There’s no way you can blame yourself.”
“Of course, I can blame myself. It’s just as you said. I wasn’t behaving like a lady.”
He glanced away and muttered, “If you knew how many times I’ve kicked myself…” Bringing his gaze to hers again, he said, “Anna, if anyone’s to blame, it’s me. That night I coaxed you into doing something you would no’ normally do. Remember? I’m the ruthless bastard. I pushed you into it.”
She shook her head insistently. He had no idea how much she wanted him to touch her. How even now she craved it—
“Have you done what we did with another man?”
“No!”
“Then it was me. My doing.” He sounded so confident.
“You’ve done this with a lot of women?”
He didn’t answer, just continued to watch her face.
Other women. No doubt many other women. Like the women who stared at him on the street. Why did that make her furious? Scaldingly furious?
“Anna, I’m past thirty years of age. I have no’ lived my life as a monk.”
Bastard! She was just one of many. But she would never think of another man as she did him. In the grotto, before her humiliation, she’d felt wonder and awe. The feelings he’d given her were indescribable.
“I’m twenty-one, and apparently I have!” A thought occurred to her. If she was to be cursed with memories of him, he deserved no less. She wanted him to long for her above all the others—above all the shopkeepers and barmaids and farmers’ daughters, the entire hateful legion she’d dreamed up—when they parted ways. She wanted to be better than all the rest.
Instinctively, she thought she could….