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Her brow puckered in confusion at the strange change of topic. “Sell art?”
“No. What you do with men. What you are doing here, with me now.”
Those little barbs he’d scored into her heart were digging in deeper now. The pain was a physical shock. “You mean have sex?”
“No. I mean have sex with many men, without bothering to get to know them first.”
She was hot and cold all over.
“That’s none of your business,” she muttered firmly, sending him a warning look.
He chose to ignore it, though he understood that she was angry. “I beg to differ.”
She released her cutlery and it clattered noisily to her plate. She stood jerkily and brushed her hands down her front. Though they were alone, she whispered angrily. “I’m not the only one having sex with a virtual stranger.”
He was quietly thoughtful. “But you deserve so much better. Why do you treat your body with such disrespect?”
“Oh my God,” she groaned, striding back to the bedroom and scooping her clothes up hurriedly. She was talking to herself, but he had followed and heard every word. “What a bloody hypocritical thing to say.”
He understood the charge, but was all too willing to refute it. “I do not do this often. In fact, I have never done it. Not like this.”
“You’ve never had a one night stand?”
His look darkened. “We are not a one night stand, as evidenced by the fact this is our second encounter. And I have slept with women that I did not know well, but I always went through the motions. A date. Two dates. Conversation. Not fucking for the sake of fucking.”
“So why me?” She shouted, pulling her shirt over her head and then reaching for her jeans.
“I don’t know,” he responded quietly.
“But it is what we’re doing. Sex for the sake of sex. Yet you dare act as though I’m the one who’s at fault here?”
“I did not say that anyone is at fault.” He thought of the men who had made love to her before him and felt his self-control snap. “Only that you should respect your body more than you do.”
“Oh my freaking God! You have no right to judge me!” She was furious. Her blood boiled with the unjustness of his accusation. “I don’t need to defend my life to you.”
“What life? You work and then you go and sleep with men who think of you as a gorgeous, available body and nothing else.”
She stared at him in shock. “Is that what you thought of me?”
“Yes.”
Her stomach was in knots. She spun away from him, her whole soul racing with indignant despair. “Screw you,” she muttered under her breath, trying to steady her shaking hands.
“If my words upset you so much, then why do what you do? I am being honest, and you know it.”
She shook her head. “This was a mistake. Coming here to you was stupid of me. I thought …”
“What did you think?”
“I thought you understood,” she said finally, her anger ebbing to make way for hurt.
“Then make me understand. Why? Why turn sex into some meaningless act when it can be so much more.”
Her brain refused to listen to his words. They brought with them far too much pain; memories she had long ago suppressed were snatching in her mind, trying to get her attention.
“It’s what we both agreed to. You’re here to meet your wife, for goodness sake. What do you want from me?” She spun around to face him, her blue eyes enormous in her pale face. “What do you want from me?”
He compressed his lips, and tried to water his anger away. But she was so beautiful, so fragile and bright, so utterly unique, and he could feel her slipping through his fingers. Time was marching on, and soon he would be back in Takisabad. And Cassie?
