“Sex with me never begins innocently,” he said. He couldn’t look at her; he stared at the paper in his lap. From the corner of his eye he saw her agitated posture perk up. Her full attention. Of course.
He wondered why his wound couldn’t begin to hemorrhage? Why couldn’t the doctor return to tell him he had ten minutes left to live?
“So youpayfor this non-innocent sex?” she theorized.
“No, never, not in as many words. If you must know—”
“Oh, I must know.”
Stoker squinted at her, working to string together words that would... end this. In truth, his assignations with women had been limited strictly to middle-of-the night encounters with partners both sexually aggressive and financially independent. These were wealthy widows, businesswomen of a certain age, the odd bored monarch. He’d never, not even once, entertained young women with aspirations to marriage or a conventional life. He’d never paid for sex, but he was generous with gifts or some security concern he might manage on their behalf. He was racked with guilt after every encounter, but he was a man, just like any other man, and his desire for sex did battle with his self-control. A gnawing hunger that was never fully sated. An emptiness that ashamed him as much as it drove him.
“Stoker?” she prompted.
He sighed. “The women I’ve taken to bed have all been carefully selected to require nothing, expect nothing, and want no part of me after I’ve gone,” he said. “They are generally older or widowed or both. They are independent beyond traditional standards for most women, so privileged in rank or social standing that they do as they please.”
“And so the transaction is...?”
“I cannot say exactly. It has never been an ideal arrangement. These interludes haunt me, actually, and the reason for this entire excruciating conversation is to avoid anything of the sort for you. You will not be haunted, and I will not have the sin of defiling you on my conscience. We made this deal from the beginning.” He glared at her.
She looked back with a pensive expression. “You find this conversation excruciating, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“I quite like it. Although, one thing is unclear. How does my touching your arm have anything to do with sex?” She accompanied this question with a flutter of her cool fingers on his arm.
Stoker’s body surged in response and he made a pained growling noise. “This is what I said from the first, Sabine. You cannot run your hands up and down my arm. You cannot caress and lean in and... look at me with wide-eyed... bloody... wonder. You are too innocent to know it, and I cannot fathom what has come over you, but this is how sex begins. No man could withstand it, least of all me. I’m sorry.”
Sabine crinkled up her nose and fluttered her fingertips again. “And what if I wish tochallengeyour theory that sex is always a... a transaction or an exchange? What if I’m to say this is not what I’ve been told, not at all.”
“Then I would be forced to say that you know virtually nothing about it and I know quite a lot. Again, I’m sorry.”
Sabine sucked in a breath, a flash of anger deepening her features. “Idetestbeing told that I ‘don’tknowsomething.’ Even if I don’t.”
“Well, you don’t, and it’s a gift. Be glad you don’t know.”
She was shaking her head. “Tell me I have something to learn, tell me I’m wrong, but please never say that I ‘don’t know anything about it.’ It’s infuriating. It goads me on, actually.” Her fingers closed around his arm and Stoker ground his teeth.
“Do you know what infuriates me?” he gritted out. “Being bloody taken by surprise. Being unprepared. Casting around for a solution to a problem that I could not have anticipated. And your sudden interest in my bloody tattoo, and your hands on my skin, and asking provocative questions about sex has taken me wholly off guard. So forgive me if I have not been gracious or articulate or clear. You’ve consistently claimed to want no part of any man, myself in particular, and yet your hands have been everywhere.”
“Come now,” she said. “Everywhere?”
Was she teasing him? Could she not see how he struggled to remain calm and reasonable and in control?
“Look,” she said, “I’m sorry if you are surprised, but perhaps I am as surprised as you are. I’ve not given your tattoo a second thought until now. I’ve never thought of touching you, and certainly I had no intention of discussing sex.Youwere the one who... who...” Her voice had risen; she was sucking in air to speak, but now she stopped. She blinked. She let out a deep breath and leaned in.
“What if,” she said lowly, but with a hard edge, “I concede that that last bit was a lie?”
Concede? A lie? This sounded like a trap.
Or a dare.
“What if,” she went on, “I tell you Iaminterested in touching your arm,andyour shoulder,andleaning in, and giving you...” Here she paused, and Stoker’s heart stopped. “A kiss? What if I tell you that?”
Stoker’s brain went completely blank. He saw only white. His last useful thought was of whipping off the covers and staggering from the room, down the hall, and into the street.
“Sabine—no,” he managed.
“I hate being told no,” she said defiantly. She leaned closer. Oh God, he was inundated with the scent of her—sunshine and butterscotch. Loose tendrils of her hair dropped against his arm.
