The Disobedient Virgin

“You do that. By now half the staff are probably in the hall, just waiting to hear you go nuts so they can watch the men in white coats come and take you away.”

He reached for her. She slapped at his hand. He cursed, grabbed her anyway, wrapped the silk tie around her wrist, wrapped it around his and made the kind of knot a Boy Scout would have admired. She was still sputtering when he pushed her back on the bed and lay down beside her.

“You can’t do this!”

“Shut up.”

“I will not! I am not going to sleep with—”

She gasped as he leaned over her. His eyes had gone from green to black. “You’re right. You’re not going to sleep with me. You’re going to sleep next to me.”

“Words,” she said, and tried to figure out why his mocking laugh changed her fear to anger, why his closeness was changing her anger to something else.

“Trust me, kid. There’s a big difference between sleeping with a man and sleeping next to him.”

“I am not a kid.”

“What you are,” Jake said, “is a pain in the—”

To hell with it.

He reached past her, shut off the bedside light and lay back against the pillows.

“I hate you!”

“Yeah. You already told me that.”

“I despise you!”

Jake yawned. “Sticks and stones,” he said, and then he was silent.

He was asleep.

Catarina lay staring at the shadowy ceiling. This couldn’t be happening. She was in a man’s bed. She was sleeping with a man and, yes, she knew what that meant. Knew what the books said that meant, anyway. What a couple of the girls had said that meant, when they returned from weekends home.

Images danced in her mind. Heat rose in her face. She would not think of such things. They were sinful. Besides, she hated Jake Ramirez. Hated, hated, hated him!

He was the enemy.

He was also the unknown.

Catarina swallowed dryly.

If she moved, even a little, her body would brush Jake’s. Not that she wanted that to happen, but if it did…if it did, so what? He was asleep. He was harmless.

And if she touched him she might learn things that would be helpful. Things she should learn about men. She knew, of course, about the basic male-female anatomical differences. She was naïve, but that didn’t mean she was stupid.

But there were other things—things she didn’t know.

Jake’s body didn’t just look different than hers, it felt different. When she’d slugged him, when he’d dragged her in here with him…He was all hard muscle. Was that because he’d been tense and angry? Or would he feel that way if she touched him when he was relaxed, too?

Hadn’t some historian said you had to know the enemy to conquer him?

Slowly, carefully, Catarina turned onto her side. Edged up on her elbow. Looked down at the man lying beside her.

“Senhor?” she whispered. “Jake?”

He didn’t answer. Didn’t move. The slow rise and fall of his chest assured her that he really was asleep.