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‘A minute ago you didn’t want me—’
He pressed a finger to her lips and her eyes shut in instinctive response. The contact felt insanely good...
‘You cannot truly believe that?’
‘I might not be as experienced as you, Alejandro—’ heaven help her, but the taste of his name in her mouth was incredibly erotic; she rolled each syllable over her tongue, delighting in the feel of it ‘—but that doesn’t mean I don’t recognise a lack of enthusiasm.’
His laugh was a short, sharp sound, rich with disbelief. ‘You recognise nothing.’
She looked away, not in the mood to be lied to, flattered. She’d mistaken what they were doing, what he’d felt. She’d embarrassed herself by basically throwing herself at him...
‘My experience is partly why I stopped,’ he ground out, dropping his hand from her mouth. But instead of withdrawing it from her completely, he let it fall to her hip, gripping her close.
Sienna was holding on to her pride by a thread. She wanted to understand why but didn’t dare ask. She didn’t want to do anything to reveal how much she cared.
‘You are nothing like the women I usually take to bed.’
Her pulse ratcheted up a gear. ‘There’s no bed here.’
‘Fine. Have sex with.’
The raw description of what they’d been doing set her blood well and truly on fire.
‘I can imagine the myriad ways in which I’m different.’
He frowned. ‘I mean that you are sheltered. Innocent.’
Her mouth formed a circle of surprise.
‘You are not experienced, and I refuse to take advantage of you. Not when, for me, it would just be—’ He paused, searching for the words.
‘Another notch on your bedpost?’
He lifted a darkly sculpted brow, not rejecting the claim. ‘More or less.’
Her heart kerthunked against her ribs. So it wouldn’t mean anything to him. He wasn’t offering more than this—just one night. A night in Rome, beneath the stars, him, her and sex, finally, so she could at least be assured that she wouldn’t end up getting married while she was still a virgin. And she must get married, at some point in the next twenty months—the time was drawing closer, and in the back of her mind she had been panicking about the idea of walking down the aisle while still so inexperienced. She didn’t mind marrying someone she barely knew and didn’t desire, but she resented, a lot, the necessity of doing so without having gained some experience first. Didn’t she deserve this?
‘So you did want to sleep with me?’
‘Sleep had absolutely nothing to do with what I wanted,’ he responded with a mocking glint in his eyes.
She pushed aside his attempt at humour. There was too much at stake. Suddenly, Sienna was envisaging having her cake and eating it too and she suspected it would be rather delicious.
‘What you wanted?’ She lifted her hand to his chest, her fingers splayed wide as she felt the steady, heavy thundering of his heart beneath her palm. ‘Or what you want?’
He stared down at her, looking almost as though he were in physical pain. Why was he fighting this? She was torn between her rational, thinking brain and the part of her that had been filled, her entire life, with the worst kind of insults from her mother that made it easy to believe he could never be attracted to her—even when her brain assured her that he was. But she could have sworn he desired her. So why wouldn’t he act on it? What was it that was holding him back? It was as if an invisible barrier had formed between them and she wanted, more than anything, to push through it.
‘Drop it.’ The words were harsh. She blinked in surprise and he winced. ‘I’m sorry. But you have to understand—’
Impatience ignited in her gut. ‘What? What do I have to understand?’ She put her hands on her hips, so frustrated she could barely breathe. She was frustrated by her mother and the cruel taunts she’d lived with for so long, with the limitations that had been put on her life by her father’s cruel will, but mostly she was frustrated by the man in front of her, who was saying one thing with his body and another with his words.
‘You are a very beautiful woman—’
She made an exasperated sound. ‘I don’t need to be told I’m beautiful.’
‘But this isn’t going to happen.’
She narrowed her eyes. ‘What if I want to be a notch on your bedpost?’
