Page 54 of Frankly, My Dear

“No?”

“I forget what it is.”

“Liar.”

“Well, it’s not the kind of thing you can describe anyway. You have to—”

“—demonstrate?”

“I thought you had to be in the sugar fields today.”

“I should be, but, Mon Dieu, for an orgasm that lasts for hours and hours I might be willing to let Fergus take over. That is what you told Reba, isn’t it? Hours and hours?”

“You’re teasing me, aren’t you?” she asked, narrowing her eyes suspiciously. “You know I’m nothing great in bed, and you think that’s funny. Devon told me that men can tell that about women.” Tears welled in her eyes as she looked at him accusingly.

“Devon was a fool.”

She blinked in confusion.

“Selene, chérie, after the kiss we shared last night, how could you doubt that you and I would be anything less than spectacular together? I don’t think we would need any special positions, either.”

She stepped toward him, the yearning in her vulnerable eyes clearly evident. Mon Dieu, if she didn’t do something repulsive soon, like pop an eyeball or belch a bird, he would be lost.

He felt a roaring in his ears, probably the wall of his carefully erected good intentions falling brick by brick. Backing up a pace, he put out a halting hand. “No. Don’t touch me.”

She recoiled, mistaking the curt words he lashed out.

Merde! The look of shame in her eyes would soften a strong man’s heart, and he was becoming weaker by the second. “Selene, sweetheart, have mercy. If I touch you…if you touch me…I won’t be able to stop. And that would be a mistake. You know it. I know it.”

A single tear slipped down her face, and he groaned inwardly, grasping for some thread of logic in his disintegrating brain. “Selene, I’m drowning in responsibilities. I can’t afford to be distracted by romantic notions.”

“I know,” she said, and another tear slid out of her misty hazelnut eyes.

“We have no future.”

“I know,” she agreed, but her traitorous eyes willed him to come closer. “But tell me one thing. If I were blonde, would you be able to resist me so easily?”

He laughed mirthlessly. “Don’t for one moment doubt that I want you more than…anything. Even a blonde.”

She smiled tremulously, and his heart expanded and threatened to burst the walls of his chest. Through the haze of his passion, he fought for strength, some way to save them both from sinking into the magnetic pull of their mutual attraction.

She, too, seemed to be fighting off the heavy lethargy of the thick air that surrounded them. After a long, charged silence, she dropped her eyes before his steady scrutiny and turned back to the mirror. Clearly seeking to change the subject, she made a tsk-ing sound of dismay. “I need my hair diffuser.”

“What’s a diffuser?” he asked, thankful for her efforts to relieve the tension between them, hoping he would be able to escape the room without making an utter debacle of both their lives.

“A diffuser keeps the hair from getting frizzy. I shouldn’t have fallen asleep with wet hair last night, but I was tired and you kissed me, and I didn’t want you to stop,” she rambled on in a rush of words, and James saw that her emotions were no more in control than his. “Now I’m so mixed up. I’m not even sure I want to go home. But what would I do here in this godforsaken place without my job? Oh, Lord, what am I going to do?” She put her hands to her eyes and began to sob pitifully.

More bricks crumbled from the wall of his good intentions as James gazed helplessly at Selene. She looked so forlorn that James couldn’t help himself. Casting caution aside, he stepped right into the quicksand of the most powerful temptation of his life.

He told himself it would only be for a second. He could step away at any time.

Hah! He was fooling no one, least of all himself.

He took her into his arms and soothed her, patting her shoulder, running a palm over the smooth planes of her back and the sharp shoulder bones.

Closing his eyes, he buried his face in her neck and inhaled deeply of her seductive scent. He tried to resist. He truly did. But he was sinking fast. He knew it even before she turned her face up to his, offering her lips.

Like a starving man, he devoured her mouth. Hard and soft. Demanding and coaxing. Giving and taking.