“Kiss me,” she commanded.
He bent down, taking his time, closer and closer. His gray eyes were warm and smiling beneath his dark brows, and she could smell fire smoke and brandy on him. Where had he been?
He stopped just before his smiling mouth reached hers.
“Richard”—she sighed—“don’t be cruel.”
“Aren’t you supposed to pretend you’re indifferent to me? To increase my ardor?”
“I don’t need a lesson. This isn’t part of our business arrangement,” she retorted, and turning on the seat slid her arms about his neck and pulled him down beside her.
He did kiss her then, their lips clinging, their mouths hot and eager. But it wasn’t enough. He slipped his hand inside her robe and enclosed her breast in his big, warm palm.
Tina gasped, aware of sensations she’d only dreamed about until now, and a hot, tight feeling building low in her belly.
“May I?” he said huskily, and before she could find the wits to answer he drew the edges of her robe apart and bared her upper body to his gaze.
Tina made no attempt to cover herself or play the coy innocent. She was innocent, but this seemed so right she didn’t feel the need to act any part but being herself.
“Beautiful,” he groaned.
He bent to press his mouth to the curve of one breast while his hand was busy with the other. His lips trailed down until he was able to envelop an engorged nipple, his finger flicking the other one, stroking her over and over again until it felt more pain than pleasure, but she did not want him to stop.
Tina’s gasps turned to soft cries. She pressed his head to her hot skin, wanting more, much more, because something was building within her, and she could not go back now. The need, the sensation of his mouth on her made her frantic, and she tugged his shirt from his trousers, her hands exploring his bare chest and hard belly. His skin was so warm, and different from her own soft curves, and she licked her tongue over it, tasting him, unable to resist.
But there was more, there must be more, and she wanted to experience it all. She must know what it was his body was promising to show her.
“Tina,” he said hoarsely, catching her hands as they moved lower to the fastening of his trousers. “No, stop it.”
She looked at him as if he were insane, still completely immersed in her desire. “Stop?”
“I will not take your virginity.”
The bluntness of his words confused her even more, and she blinked up at him. “I thought you . . . I thought we . . .”
“Not because I don’t want to,” he added, answering the unspoken question in her eyes, “but because I have made a promise. I’ve sworn I will not marry until I have fulfilled that promise.”
She shook her head with a spurt of anger. “But what has that to do with us? I don’t care about marrying you, Richard. Don’t you understand? I am sick to the stomach of spending my every waking moment trying to make men marry me!”
His eyes lit with laughter, but he bit his lip to stop it spilling from him. Just as well, Tina thought darkly. She wouldn’t be laughed at, not tonight.
“Tina, I don’t want to compromise you, do you understand?”
“No, I don’t understand.”
“I don’t want to take your virginity until I know I can secure our future—if that is what you want. If that is what we both want.”
Their future? Promises? What did any of that matter to her now? Tina shook her head, her long, dark hair whipping wildly about her. “I don’t care about that,” she told him decisively. “You don’t understand, Richard. It was all a lie. I have nothing to offer you or any man, nothing apart from myself. I am poor, my family is bankrupt. We have lost everything, and by the time I go home, we will have lost our home. No one will want me when that is known. I will vanish into the shadows. This night . . .” Her mouth trembled, but she firmed it, refusing to feel sorry for herself. “This night is all I have.”
She would have climbed to her feet then, brushing by him, fleeing with her misery to some small, quiet place. But he caught her and held her, gripping one of her hands firmly in his and placing it against his body. Her surprise at the touch of that hard piece of flesh contained by only a thin piece of cloth made her stop.
“Oh.” She looked back at him, eyes wide and dark in the moonlight from the window, her face full of amazement. “Does that mean . . . ?”
“That I want you?” he rasped. “Yes it does. I want you more than anything else in the world. But I won’t take your virginity, Tina, not until I know I can offer you a future you deserve.”
“Then how?”
“There are other ways.”