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It was pathetic to first learn such a lesson when you were twenty-one, but at least she’d learned it before her guardian married her off. Marriage was no place for on-the-job training—especially since the odds wer
e excellent that her husband would be the suitable Brazilian as demanded by the terms of her parents’ will.
Jake would find her a rich man who’d take over the handling of both her money and her life. He’d expect her to know her place. Almost without question, he’d be older.
And he’d want to do things to her in bed.
She couldn’t go into such a marriage blind. Until yesterday she’d known nothing about men. Literally nothing. She knew a little now, all of it picked up in—Catarina frowned and checked her watch—in the past twenty-four hours.
She had Jake to thank.
Because of him she knew that that men had tempers. That they were intractable. That they’d agree to do outlandish things as long as they could convince themselves they did them to live up to some sacred code of honor.
Catarina ran the tip of her tongue across her lips.
She knew, as well, that the thing she knew the least about—the physical thing, sex—was more complex than she’d anticipated.
Just look at those wild ideas she’d had last night, when she was in bed with Jake. She’d shocked herself. No. Wrong. She’d frightened herself. The same as he had frightened her when he’d kissed her this morning.
That was what sex was all about. Power.
It was, wasn’t it?
Then how come her bones had all but turned liquid when she’d imagined him making love to her? How come even when he’d been kissing her, when his kiss had been harsh and demanding to show her he could control her, she’d liked it?
She drew a shaky breath.
Even then she’d liked it.
In a heartbeat she’d gone from feeling small and helpless to delicate and eager. Jake’s size, the way he’d held her so she couldn’t escape him, the way he’d tilted her head back as if to emphasize the difference between his strength and her fragility, had stirred her.
And then, just when she’d been about to sigh and let herself feel what he was doing instead of analyzing it, he’d taken the kiss one hundred and eighty degrees, softened the pressure of his mouth, eased his touch, and she’d gone into meltdown.
Physically, mentally, emotionally.
Did a man’s kiss always do that to a woman? If it did—and she had no reason to think otherwise—who knew what would happen if a man really made love to her? Would she turn into an obedient slave? Weren’t there ways to prevent that? Couldn’t you ward off that devastating meltdown?
No way was she going to wait until she was locked in marriage to find the answers. She needed them now, long before she had to deal with the intricacies of wedlock.
Jake would teach her. She’d learn all she could from him.
Not that she’d let things go All The Way. She knew what that was, more or less. Jake had asked if they’d talked about sex in Health Class and she’d said no, they hadn’t, which wasn’t exactly true. Sister Angelica had mentioned the word once, said it was a Wife’s Duty and crossed herself.
She’d never been more specific than that.
One of the girls had been a lot more specific, whispering things late at night that Catarina had never quite believed were physically possible.
Jake could teach her. Not everything, but enough. She would not go into marriage completely uninformed.
She glanced at him again.
Of course there were probably other factors to consider. Jake was good-looking. Very. And he was young. Being made love to by a man like him would probably be different than being made love to by one who was old or ugly—like that fat businessman across the aisle, snoring away in happy oblivion, or the attorney, Estes, with his skinny little moustache and a bunch of white hairs growing out of his ears.
Catarina shuddered.
No. She couldn’t count on the man Jake chose for her looking like him. She couldn’t count on lying beside him at night and having the delicious freedom to touch him, find out where that silky arrow of hair on his flat belly went after it vanished under the waistband of his trousers…
“Flight attendants, prepare the cabin for arrival.”
