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“Nick?”
“Yes?”
She tipped her face up to look at him. “Why didn’t you want me to touch you?”
All the air in the room drew away from him, eluding his lungs. It belatedly occurred to him that there was a problem with this genuine connection. A friend would notice things a stranger would not.
Why didn’t you want me to touch you? What could he say to that? He could only lie to her. Familiar as he was with falsehoods, the words still felt like cotton in his mouth.
“I can’t imagine what you mean.”
“I wanted to touch you the way you touched me.”
Lancaster swallowed hard to clear the truth from his throat. “Men do not care for that kind of attention.”
He’d hoped that her inexperience would prove to her disadvantage, but Cynthia pulled her chin in and gave a brief laugh. “Pardon? As far as I can tell, men enjoy every bit of attention they can get. And you. You used to sit at your mother’s foot and read while she stroked your hair like a cat.”
“I was a child,” he muttered, and that was the truth at least. “And men are not…Men are not conditioned to need that kind of touching.”
Her nose scrunched up in doubt. “Are you quite sure?”
“I think I would know.”
“Well,” she scoffed, “we may have to work on that. I’
m keen to pet you a bit.”
Lancaster laughed in that way he’d perfected. A laugh that sounded real because he’d trotted it out for nearly ten years of deceit. “I’m flattered. But you’ll have to leave the petting to me.”
“We’ll see,” she answered ominously. She hesitated for a moment, and Lancaster braced himself for more poking and prodding, but she managed to surprise him. “So…what was your first time like? Very exciting I’d suppose.”
“Er…” Good God, the woman had some sort of awful gift for uncomfortable topics.
“I’ve listened to the village boys speak of their conquests for years. It’s nothing I haven’t heard before.”
“I…As your first lover was, at best, a miserable failure, I feel it’s my duty to explain that the warm glow of pleasure one feels after lovemaking is best sustained by quiet contemplation or perhaps even sleep.”
“It’s the middle of the day.”
“Aren’t you sleepy at all?”
“No.” But she quieted down, nuzzling her nose into his chest and relaxing with a deep sigh.
He was a fraud. He knew nothing about the proper way to behave after making love as he always simply pulled on his clothes and left. There had been no sweet whispers or warm embraces after his first time, nor had there been any in the years since. Until now.
Breathing in the scent of her hair, Lancaster let himself feel the way her naked skin pressed his. How hot their bodies were together. She shifted her knee, sliding it a few inches up his thigh.
He could smell her skin and her sex. He could feel her from her toes all the way to the top of her head. Her breath tickled his chest. Her heart beat close enough to hear.
Lancaster closed his eyes.
“It was awkward,” he said softly, and she went still beside him. “Exciting and frightening at the same time. And I wish…I wish it had been you.”
Chapter 14
“’E’s a right odd fellow,” the old boat maker said. His tongue poked through his teeth as he considered his own words. “Strange.”
“Strange how?” Lancaster did his best to hide his frustration. Everyone seemed to agree that Bram was an odd man, but no one could explain why.
