"Cream or sugar?" she asked in a thin, high voice.
He chuckled at her shaking hand as she poured his coffee. "Jenny, you've been pouring coffee for me for years. You know I drink it black."
"I forgot."
"Like hell. You're just all atremble over what I said."
"It was outrageous and uncouth." She still couldn't look him straight in the eye. Her cheeks were burning.
"You're a paradox," he observed, learning back against the cushions to drink his coffee. He had finished his ice cream and had set the empty bowl on the tray.
"A paradox?"
"Yes. You're carrying a child, yet any time the subject of sex is even hinted at, you come all undone."
Her sweet tooth suddenly went sour and she set aside her bowl of ice cream after having taken only a few bites. "You think I'm a prude, a holdover from another era, a Victorian dinosaur trying to survive in the age of sexual enlightenment?"
"Don't put words in my mouth. I didn't mean to imply any such thing. Your innocence is endearing."
"I'm hardly innocent," she mumbled, her chin tucked against her chest. She closed her eyes, recalling the sound of her own breathing at the point of climax. The moans of fulfillment echoed in her head even now when she remembered how her body had exploded into full bloom like an exotic neon flower. She could feel again her back bowing, her hips lifting, her limbs quaking, all greedily experiencing the pleasure.
"You said you were a virgin the night—"
"I was."
"Never before?"
"No."
"Close?"
"No."
Cage placed his coffee cup on the tray. He moved closer to her, resting his bent elbow on the back of the sofa. He lightly stroked her cheek with his knuckles. "You must have been deeply moved that night to give away what you had cherished for so long."
"I've never felt like that in my life."
Cage's heart leaped in his chest. What he was about to do was unforgivable, but that had never deterred him. "Tell me how you felt."
Deep in thought, Jenny unconsciously lifted her hand to his chest. Her fingers strummed the placket of his shirt. "It was like I had stepped out of myself and was watching what was happening to someone else. I shed all my inhibitions. I cast aside the restrictions I normally impose on myself. I existed only for those moments.
I became purely carnal, and yet my spirit had never felt more elevated or expanded." She raised her eyes to his like a confused little girl. "Do you understand what I mean?"
"Yes. Perfectly," he answered honestly.
"Nothing that we did seemed sordid or wrong. It was all beautiful. I wanted to love and to be loved. It wasn't enough to verbalize our love; I wanted it demonstrated."
"And Hal was willing?"
"Not at first."
His hand cradled one side of her face. "But you talked him into it."
"That's a nice way of saying I seduced him."
"All right, you seduced him. What happened then?"
She smiled and ducked her head shyly. "Then he was more than willing. He'd never been that way with me before."