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Pensively Jake watched her. Suddenly an awful lot of things were beginning to fall into place.
‘No, you can’t,’ Lucianna contradicted him wildly, the panic starting to flood through her as she mentally relived the emotions and fears she had suffered through inadvertently listening in on her brothers’ macho conversations coupled with the well-intentioned but clumsy lectures they had given her on the wisdom of the way she should behave with boys and the pitfalls that lay in wait for her if she didn’t take heed of their advice.
‘You’re a man and you don’t…you can’t—’ Abruptly Lucianna stopped, conscious that she had been on the verge of saying too much.
Jake, though, was refusing to let the subject drop, prompting gently, ‘I can’t what?’
Tight-lipped, Lucianna shook her head and looked longingly towards the interior of the shop. What ten minutes ago had seemed an inhospitable, unfriendly, alien place now seemed like a welcome haven when placed alongside Jake’s unwanted probings into her most closely guarded thoughts and feelings.
‘I can’t what, Lucianna?’ Jake persisted. ‘I can understand how destructive, how emotionally and physically blighting it must be for a young girl on the brink of exploring her own sexuality and emotions to overhear a group of young men discussing such subjects without the guards they would normally put on their tongues in the presence of her sex.’
‘It didn’t do me any harm.’ Lucianna immediately defended her brothers. ‘In fact, it did me a favour. At least I knew what boys thought…’
‘You knew what boys thought, yes,’ Jake agreed quietly, ‘but what about men, Lucianna? Did you…do you know how they think and feel, or did the lessons you inadvertently learned from your brothers go so deep that they instilled in you a fear and dread of being talked about as your brothers talked about their first sexual experiences? Did their conversations inspire in you such a dread of having all your dreams violated by the crassness of some boy who might later boast about his sexual conquest of you to his friends that sex is still something you view with distaste and embarrassment?’
‘Of course not,’ Lucianna denied quickly. ‘In fact…’ she tilted her chin towards him bravely as she lied ‘…I don’t think anything of the kind…I—actually, I like sex; I like it a lot…’
‘I see. So if I were to suggest that instead of continuing with our shopping trip you and I go back to the Hall and spend the afternoon in bed mutually enjoying sex you’d be perfectly happy to agree?’
Lucianna was almost unable to believe her ears, her shock showing in her eyes, her voice quavering betrayingly as she responded, ‘No…No, I wouldn’t.’
‘But you just said you like sex,’ Jake pointed out reasonably, ‘and since I haven’t had a relationship with anyone for quite some considerable time, and of course being a man…’
‘I can’t go to bed with you,’ Lucianna protested squeakily.
‘Why not? I’m no different from any other man,’ Jake told her, adding silkily, with a deliberately sexual downward glance at her body, ‘I don’t intend to boast, but I think you’ll find I’m equally satisfactory as any of the other men you’ve had.’
‘Other men!’ Lucianna’s eyes rounded. ‘I don’t…there haven’t…I think you’re forgetting about John,’ she managed to say.
‘Ah, yes, John,’ Jake agreed, but then added swiftly, ‘But he isn’t here, is he, and you and I…?’
Lucianna had had enough. Now that she was over the initial shock of Jake’s astounding proposition, common sense was pointing out several salient facts to her. Tossing her head, she told Jake forthrightly, ‘You’re just trying to make fun of me. I know perfectly well you don’t want to go to bed with me, you don’t want to have sex with me…’
‘You’re right, I don’t,’ Jake agreed, but as he watched the emotions chase one another across her face he added mentally to himself, But I sure as hell want to make love to you, again and again and again, and if I had your precious brothers here with me now, friendship or not, I’d wring their wretched necks.
To Lucianna’s relief he started to walk towards the shop, but as she made to follow him he stopped and turned back to her, catching her totally off guard as he asked her almost absently, ‘Presumably there aren’t any problems with the sexual side of your relationship with John…?’
Immediately Lucianna bridled.
‘Of course there aren’t,’ she denied, thankful that Jake wasn’t standing close enough to hear the way her heart was hammering. The last thing she wanted was for Jake of all people to discover her most closely guarde
d and shameful secret…which was that she was still a virgin.
Technically she knew what sex was all about, of course. How could she not do so with her outspoken elder brothers? Elder brothers who had not been merely outspoken in their frank teenage discussions about their own sex lives, when they thought she wouldn’t understand or hear what they were saying, but who had been equally outspoken and frank in their fraternal advice to her about the way in which she should respond to any sexual approaches to herself.
‘Say no and make sure you keep on saying no,’ had been David’s stern advice. ‘That way they’ll know they can’t take advantage of you and they’ll respect you.’
‘Yes, and if they don’t they’ll have us to answer to,’ Lewis had added fiercely.
What they hadn’t told her, though, Lucianna recognised, was when and how a girl changed her no to a yes and, even more importantly, as she was discovering via her relationship with John, how she should let a man know that she was ready to be given the option to do so.
In the early days of their relationship John had certainly been keen enough to try and coax her into bed, and she, faithful to her brothers’ stern lectures, had very firmly said no, but in the weeks before his departure he had seemed quite happy with the tepid kisses and caresses they had exchanged and Lucianna had been at a loss to know how to generate a little more passion between them.
When she had tried tentatively to snuggle up a little closer to him he had simply asked her if she was cold; when she had tried to deepen the kisses they had shared he had seemed oblivious to the hints she was trying to give him.
Hopefully, though, the tips she had picked up via the books she had bought should help her to make things clear to him, but it was a subject she certainly wasn’t about to discuss with Jake. Jake, who, despite his surprising announcement earlier about the lack of any current relationship in his life, certainly had far more experience of her sex than she was ever likely to have of his.
Caught up in her thoughts, Lucianna suddenly realised that she had actually entered the shop and that the girl approaching her, far from being the haughty, disdainful type of person she had been dreading, was actually smiling at her with genuine warmth.
