‘Are you cold?’ he asked.
She shook her head, surprised that he’d so quickly picked up on her feelings of discomfiture. ‘No, it’s not that.’
‘Then what…?’
She could feel the heat rising in her face as she struggled to answer, already regretting her quick denial. It would have been easier to agree that she was cold. How could she possibly admit that she was afraid without telling him everything?
She could so easily imagine the type of women he was used to dating. They would be sophisticated and poised, with the confidence that came from being surrounded from birth with money and opportunity—hardly the type to feel uncertain about their place in the world. That was what he was probably expecting with her. As a successful doctor, with a growing and successful clientele, that was exactly how she should be—how she would be, if it weren’t for the scars.
He was looking down at her, waiting, expecting her to say something. And she knew she had to find some words to try to explain something of what she was feeling.
‘I warn you now, I’m not very good at this,’ she admitted at last, with a weak smile forced out briefly around gritted teeth. ‘I’m actually—a bit nervous.’
His eyes narrowed and he angled his head closer to his shoulder, almost as if weighing up her words. What was he thinking? She held her breath, wondering what it meant for their budding relationship if even that tiny admission was making him reconsider his plans for the night.
‘Are you telling me that you’re a virgin?’
She blinked, momentarily taken aback that she’d so totally misinterpreted his look. But wasn’t that exactly how she’d sounded? Like some timorous virgin?
‘Heavens, no!’ she protested. Garry had well and truly taken care of that, before discovering her secret and throwing her out of the car. Then, because she thought she’d made it sound as if there was something wrong with being a virgin, and because losing her virginity wasn’t something she was particularly proud of given the inglorious circumstances, she dropped her head and added, ‘Well, just no, really.’
His fingers found her chin, encouraging her with gentle pressure to lift her gaze once more to his. Her lungs clamped down, the gentle lap of the waves against the shore drowned out by the drumbeat of her pulse as she searched his face. His eyes looked almost doubtful.
He must be having second thoughts this time. Her inexperience was bound to be a turn-off for a man like Loukas. He’d be used to partners who could give as good as they got—partners who could provide pleasure even as they were accepting it. There hadn’t been too much of that in her experience. Quick sex in the back seat of a car didn’t leave too much time for covering much more than the basic mechanics.
He moved his hand then, so that her chin rested against his palm and his long fingers cupped her cheek. ‘How about we take things slowly, then?’
She could have kissed him then and there—if only because at least now she could breathe again. As it was, she didn’t need to go to the effort, because his lips were upon hers, slanting in a series of passes that had her wanting to catch his mouth and hold it prisoner against hers for ever.
His hand slipped behind her head, his fingers tangling in her hair and unwinding the casual knot she’d tied it into so that the length of it tumbled over her shoulders. He growled and pulled her closer, and yet his touch was still tender, unhurried, as he continued his exploration of her back, skimming the fabric of her silk blouse with a touch that was gentle and yet devastating in impact. His hands swooped lower, capturing her behind, and his arms moulded to the shape of her, so she could feel him all around her, feel his heat feeding into her, feel him pressing her closer against his hardness. And all the while he used his lips to woo her.
It would be all right.
His message was relayed to her in his kiss, in the touch of his mouth to her throat, and in the warm, mellifluous world he’d transported her to.
There was no panic, there was no hurried rush, there was no frantic desperation in his movements. There was only a languid inevitability about his exploration of her mouth and her body.
She steeled herself for his first contact with her breast, knowing it would come, forcing herself in the warm blanket of his attentions not to be scared, not to panic. It didn’t have to be like before.