“You mean our sexual compatibility?”
“Yes.” What else had they been discussing these past ten minutes?
She cocked her head to one side. “Do you doubt your ability to please me?”
“Of course not.” He’d given her so much pleasure with a kiss that she had blacked out.
“Then it’s my ability to satisfy you that you doubt. To be honest, that has me worried too. Which is why I’m here.”
“That’s not what I meant, either.”
She looked at him like
he’d lost some of his marbles in the last few minutes. Hell, maybe he had. “There are only two options.”
“I’m just saying it doesn’t always go smoothly the first time. I don’t want you turned off from sex and thinking you don’t want to get married because the loss of your virginity is painful.”
“So it is your performance that has you concerned?”
“No, damn it.”
“Prove it.”
“This is ridiculous,” he felt compelled to say, though his resistance to the idea had dwindled to almost nothing.
“No more so than a twenty-first-century father selling his daughter to save his company.”
“I am not buying you!”
“What would you call it?”
“Marriage. Families supporting one another.”
“But you wouldn’t give the kind of support outlined in the contracts you brought to the house if you didn’t marry me.”
“I would if you asked me to.”
She stared at him, her expression stunned. “You mean that?”
“Of course.”
“But my father would not accept without our marriage.”
“I think he would.”
“Then why didn’t you just offer the money?”
“Because I want to marry you.”
“Why?”
“I need you in my life. If nothing else, I have learned that lesson over the past weeks.”
“Okay.”
“So you will marry me?” he asked with cautious optimism.
“I meant okay I believe you. But I still want to make sure we’ve got both sex and friendship going for us. Is that really so much to ask?”