The Virgin's Choice

ad up toward his, and she could barely hear the roar of the ocean over the rapid beat of her heart.

“I’ve never met a woman like you before,” he said softly, his black eyes searching hers as he stroked her bare forearm lightly with his fingertips. “You…amaze me.”

This honeymoon cottage, so remote in the middle of a wide, distant ocean, seemed like their own distant world. His handsome, rugged face, the powerful curve of his body as he leaned toward her, the light feeling of his touch against her skin, made her brain stop working. She trembled, licking her lips. Would she fall into his arms when he kissed her? Would she fall into his bed?

He glanced down at her half-empty plate. “Are you finished?”

She stared up at him, unable to even say yes.

He smiled, then took her hand in his own. “Come.”

He led her from the kitchen to the large sitting room and sat her down gently on the couch. Going back to the kitchen, he returned with a tray. She watched as he dropped fresh raspberries into a crystal flute. Popping open a bottle of expensive champagne, he poured it over the raspberries then held out the flute to her, watching her with his inscrutable dark eyes.

“What is this?” she whispered.

“I’m making it up to you.”

“What?”

“I ruined your wedding night.” When she didn’t take the flute, he pressed it into her hand, wrapping his fingers around hers. She could barely breathe as she looked up at him, feeling his large hand wrapped around her smaller one. He said in a low voice, “I am going to make it up to you tonight.”

“How?” she stammered.

He stepped back, his gaze still intensely upon her. She felt butterflies in her stomach and nervously drank the rest of the delicious raspberry-infused champagne. But the butterflies only increased. Xerxes silently refilled her champagne with a sensual promise in his dark gaze.

Then he left her, going into the adjacent white marble bathroom, with its bathtub built for two that overlooked the moonlit sea. He turned on the faucet, starting a hot, steamy bath, filling it with fragrant bubble bath.

“It’s ready,” he whispered, pulling her to her feet. She gripped his hand, feeling a little unsteady.

He pulled her into the elegant bathroom. Still holding her champagne flute, which had somehow been refilled again, she looked down at the enormous bathtub full of bubbles. Beyond it, an enormous open window overlooked the moonlit Indian Ocean. She felt the warm breeze off the lanai. Warm steam and the scent of exotic, spiced flowers filled the room.

She felt his touch move like silk against her waist as he opened the belts that held the two gauzy robes to her body. He dropped first one robe, then the other, to the marble floor.

Xerxes towered over Rose as he looked down at her, his eyes slowly tracing her body as she stood nearly naked in her pale pink bikini. He gave her a dark, sensual smile and a flash of heat raced over her body, causing a bead of sweat to break out between her breasts. What was his electricity that made her so weak, that left her shaking from the inside out?

The smile dropped from his sensual mouth.

“Take off your bikini,” he whispered.

Without thinking, she reached up for the tie behind her neck. Then she realized what she was doing. She dropped her hand.

“I can’t,” she stammered. “Not with you right here.”

“I’ll turn around.”

She had a sudden view of his broad-shouldered back in the form-fitting T-shirt as he turned around. She stared at his form, his slim hips in his jeans, the hard-muscled curve of his backside.

“Done?” he said without turning around.

With a jolt, she put her hands unsteadily to her head. Had she been ogling him? The bubbles of the champagne made her feel so strangely unlike herself.

But it wasn’t just the champagne. She looked back at the fragrant, steaming bubble bath. She knew she should leave this room at once. She should tell Xerxes she had no interest in champagne or warmth or bubbles. She should go back into the bedroom alone and close the door. That was the sensible thing to do.

But she suddenly didn’t want to be sensible.

She’d spent twenty-nine years waiting for her prince to come, saving herself for a man she could love forever. But what if he wasn’t coming? What if, as Xerxes had said, her knight in shining armor did not even exist? What if she’d wasted all her youth yearning for a romantic dream that would never happen?

She was tired of being the girl who was always alone. Always waiting, as locked away from pleasure as any sleeping princess in a glass coffin.