‘Hugh, you promised.’
‘What did I promise?’
‘To give it a rest for a while.’
‘Did I? I don’t recall promising anything.’
She gritted her teeth hard in her jaw. ‘Don’t make me go home.’
His blue eyes narrowed on her. ‘No one’s making you do anything, Kathryn. I didn’t make you do anything last night. You wanted me as much as I wanted you. Why don’t you admit it?’
‘Well, I ’
‘There’s a chemistry between us,’ he swept on before she could formulate a decent defence. ‘Why fight it? I tried and it almost damned near drove me insane. I’d have tried to seduce you in the end, even if you’d stayed with Daryl. Even if you’d married him, probably. And I’d have succeeded.’
She just stared at him.
‘Don’t look at me like that,’ he growled. ‘Like I told you once before, I’m not a saint. And neither are you. Let’s at least be honest with each other. I’ll sit and watch that infernal movie with you if that’s what you really want. But I’d much rather be making love to you.’
It was extremely seductive, this mad passion he had for her, but also worrying.
‘And if I let you do that?’ she said. ‘What then?’
‘What do you mean, what then?’
‘You want me to be honest with you. All right. One part of me wants you to make love to me too. The foolish female part. My sensible side is worried sick that if I give you all the sex you want this weekend, then you’ll change your mind about marrying me. After all, you only proposed to get into my pants.’
‘Now you’re being crude.’
‘No, I’m being honest. I’m nearly thirty years old, Hugh. I’ve met a lot of men in my time, some of them practised womanisers who will say just about anything to get you into the sack. But once you’ve come across, they soon go cold on you. The challenge has been met, the mountain climbed and the woman screwed.’
Hugh looked far from pleased at being described as a practised womaniser. But that was what he was, after all.
‘There’s some element of truth in what you say,’ he admitted at last. ‘You have been a challenge, Kathryn. And yes, I am hoping that, eventually, I will get over this mad sexual obsession I seemed to have developed where you are concerned. It has, quite frankly, been a pain in the butt.’ One corner of his mouth tipped up into a wry smile. ‘Unfortunately, it seems where you are concerned that my obsession has now changed into an addiction, for which you only have yourself to blame. You are one hell of a lover, lover. In all honesty, I can’t see myself getting bored with you in bed for some considerable time.’
Kathryn tried to keep her head in the face of his perversely flattering words. But it was hard to hold on to common sense when your feminine ego was being stroked with such wicked expertise.
‘Still, I can understand your fears,’ he went on. ‘If you knew me better, you would trust me more. What can I do, I wonder, to reassure you that I will keep my word and marry you?
‘I know,’ he said before she could think of a thing. ‘No more sex today.’
She blinked at him. ‘None at all?’
‘Absolutely none at all. Come ’ He took her hand and led her over to a sofa. ‘We will watch Gone with the Wind together—not sitting too closely—after which we will talk.’
‘Talk,’ she repeated blankly.
‘Yep. We’ll tell each other things. Sit.’
She sat. ‘What things?’
‘All our deep, dark secrets. We need to become friends, Kathryn.’
‘Friends!’
He smiled one of his engaging smiles. ‘Is that such an impossibility? That we could become friends? You did say you liked me a little.’
And she wanted to keep it that way. Kathryn suspected that if he kept up this bombardment of charm she would end up liking him a lot more than a little.
‘I don’t believe you can do it,’ she said.
‘What—make you my friend, or go the rest of the day without sex?’
‘Both,’ she said, her chin tilting upwards.
‘You really shouldn’t challenge me, you know. Russ and Jimmy boy never do any more.’
‘You don’t want to shag Russ and Jimmy boy,’ she pointed out.
He laughed. ‘They’ll be glad to hear that. Now hush up. We’re going to the movies.’