‘One little thing…?’ Molly repeated unsteadily, striving not to be entrapped by the compelling sexual fire in those smouldering golden eyes centred on her.
‘I really can’t be expected to relax until we have consummated this marriage…not after our last unfortunate experience,’ Sholto pointed out with lazy mockery. ‘An annulment is not exactly what the average red-blooded bridegroom longs to see emblazoned in newsprint.’
‘How about “SHOLTO DITCHES FRIGID BRIDE”?’ Molly could not resist stabbing back. ‘Do you think I longed to see that?’
‘How about being asked by a sneering, weasel-faced paparazzo why I failed to get my bride horizontal?’ Sholto traded, his vibrantly handsome features clenching hard and darkening at that offensive recollection. ‘And, believe me, not one of them phrased it that politely. They were considerably more crude, cara.’
Molly flinched and bridled. How dared he throw that humiliating information in her face? How dared he tell her that disgusting, horrible men had been referring to her in such terms?
‘Considering that during the whole of our engagement you had about as much interest in getting me horizontal as a cehbate monk might have had, I am truly amazed that you should’ve considered yourself mortally offended by such questions!’ Molly shot back at him in sudden driven retaliation.
She had the rare satisfaction of seeing Sholto look utterly stunned.
‘A celibate monk…?’ Incredulous dark golden eyes landed on her like laser beams striking a target.
‘With your reputation I thought you’d be expecting me to sleep with you the first week but I soon learnt my mistake, didn’t I? I might as well have been dating a eunuch. You didn’t make one serious pass at me!’ Molly practically spat at him, remembered pain assailing her at the memory of how inadequate she had felt as a woman after they had finally parted. ‘And now, for some crazy, perverse reason, you’ve changed your mind about me.’
‘A eunuch,’ Sholto intoned with difficulty. ‘Correct me if I’m wrong but are you or are you not the shrinking virgin who leapt a foot in the air if I so much as laid a hand on your breast?’
Molly coloured hotly and squirmed. ‘I wasn’t shrinking, I was just shy…’
‘When I think of how hellish hard I found it to control myself and listen to you talking now, I wonder what planet I’m on,’ Sholto breathed with sudden rawness. ‘You had more inhibitions than a hedgehog has spines…and an even more major drawback.’
He had found it hard to control himself around her then?
‘Drawback?’ she queried unevenly.
‘Your stepfather sat up waiting for you to come home every time you went out with me. And one night you left your jacket behind in the car and I drove back minutes later to return it,’ Sholto revealed grimly. ‘I stood outside the front window and listened to that sadistic old buzzard lecturing you about promiscuity and telling you he’d throw you out of the house if he even once had cause to suspect that you were sleeping with me!’
A stricken gasp had escaped Molly during that confession. Suddenly she wanted to curl up and die with humiliation. At the time, those warning harangues and threats had put her through a nightmare of mortification. She had dreaded going home to face her stepfather’s coldly suspicious eyes and his demeaning demand that she account for every hour she had spent in Sholto’s company.
Sholto vented a harsh, humourless laugh. ‘He was talking to you as if you were a raving nymphomaniac on the loose. No longer did I need to wonder why you were the way you were. I learnt everything I needed to know listening to that bastard bully and humiliate you. Dio…I really don’t know how I kept my fist out of his smug, self-satisfied face after that!’
Molly bent her head, her fair skin burning. ‘I had no idea…’ The admission was stifled. ‘I’d have died a thousand deaths if I’d known you’d heard him talking to me like that.’
‘If I had made love to you then, you’d have slunk guiltily back into that house like a fallen woman and your stepfather would’ve guessed exactly what you had been doing,’ Sholto forecast ruefully. ‘I didn’t want to put you through that. I knew you weren’t capable of lying to him. You’d have confessed and he’d have made you feel like a whore.’
As she finally understood what had lain behind his astonishing restraint all those years ago, Molly just wanted the floor to open up fast and swallow her before she had to meet his eyes again. ‘Probably…’
‘You used to look at me with the most incredibly arousing combination of hunger and curiosity.’ Sholto expelled his breath in a slow hiss. ‘For the first time in my life, I was prepared to wait for gratification. But the biggest joke of all has to be that once I adjusted to that novel concept I found anticipation gave me a quite seriously erotic buzz.’
All Molly could think about was the disastrous conclusion that had been his ultimate reward. ‘I didn’t realise… I’m sorry I said what I did,’ she muttered shakily.
‘A monk…a eunuch,’ Sholto gritted with sudden savage amusement. ‘That was the longest period of celibacy I had had since I was fifteen.’
Sholto being noble and unselfish. Molly studied the carpet. How could she ever have guessed when he concealed so much from her?
‘Do you think you could explain again why you didn’t tell me that Freddy had left me something more than a little keepsake? And maybe I would understand better this time,’ she proffered with new generosity as his feet appeared in her line of vision.
Sholto bent down and gently untwisted her tightly linked hands, separating them, and she clenched them instead by her sides. He crouched down fluidly on one knee and looked up at he
r, his eyes scorching slivers of brilliance below dense black lashes. ‘All the reasons I quoted plus one very obvious one…or don’t you recall me telling you that when I want something I go all out to get it?’ he murmured teasingly as he reached up and snapped loose a suspender.
‘What are you doing?’ Molly gasped.
‘What do you think?’ Sholto enquired huskily, snapping loose the next and rolling down a stocking with slow, caressing hands to slide it off her foot. ‘I fully appreciate how much nerve it must have taken for you to go into a shop and buy lingerie like this. But you steeled yourself and did it for me…’
At that tenderly amused purr of satisfaction, Molly turned as hot as her corselette in colour. ‘I couldn’t wear anything normal with that dress.’