Hold Back the Night by Abra Taylor Page A

speaking to himself.
    She tensed slightly for the first time but made no move to struggle, and the directness of her gaze shifted only in that it returned to his eyes. She had been feasting on the shape of his mouth, exulting in its firmness and virility, dwelling on a particular curve of lip that she imagined would be hard and soft and sensuous all at once. She wondered what he tasted like. 'I'm eighteen,' she said levelly. 'I'm not a girl, I'm a woman.' Her blood sang with triumph because it was so.
    He smiled and freed her shoulder, but his right hand remained very lightly laced in her hair because he was not through with his inspection yet. She wished his fingers were stroking her scalp or her temples or her eyelids.
    'I was speaking relatively,' he returned in a dry voice. 'When you reach the ancient age of thirty, as I have, you'll know what I mean. Anyway, I wasn't speaking of age, I was speaking of something else. Call it purity. Innocence. Lack of worldliness. Lack of fear. That total trust ... although God knows why you trust a perfect stranger like me. You shouldn't trust men at all. Do you know, I believe I could free your hair and you wouldn't even move away?'
    But his hand remained where it was, as though he were reluctant to end the light contact, while his gaze dropped to her mouth. Intuitive in her reactions, Domini knew instinctively that he was wondering about the texture and taste of it, just as she had wondered about his. Her head and her back and her bare arms still rested against the unyielding marble and that was part of the excitement rising in her, because her skin had grown very heated despite its pervasive chill. She had wondered sometimes if she was going to have a passionate nature; now she knew. She moistened her lips.
    'Please make love to me,' she whispered simply, certain that he must want such a thing as surely as she did.
    He reacted as if she had slapped him, jerking away swiftly and forcefully. He stared at her disbelievingly and swore softly in English, some raw, explicit words he probably thought she couldn't understand. She had heard them before and wasn't shocked. Then he returned to French. 'My mind must be playing tricks,' he muttered,. 'You can't mean that.'
    'But I do,' she smiled. 'Please make ... '
    'Don't bother repeating yourself!' he thundered. He was truly angry, even angrier than he had been at first, his brows drawn together in rage and his eyes glittering with an unholy light that seemed out of all proportion to Domini. What she had asked for was very simple, wasn't it? He did it all the time.
    'I don't know why you're so angry,' she said, honestly puzzled. Papa had always been very direct about such things with his mistresses, even in Domini's presence. 'Come, we make love,' he would say to his companion of the moment, and Domini would be left to play alone for a time. Making love was as natural as breathing, as laughing, as running in the rain. 'You should feel complimented,' she added. 'I wouldn't want to have sex with just anybody.'
    'Good God.' With a short harsh laugh that held no amusement, Sander cast his eyes skyward towards the block and tackle and rubbed a hand around the back of his neck. Then he looked back at Domini, less enraged than before but no more encouraging in his mien. 'You're a virgin,' he said tightly. 'And don't bother denying it, because I'm as sure of that as if I'd tested the evidence with my own hand. When I said you were a child, that is the precise thing I had in mind ... your virginity. You are a child:
    'Is that all that's stopping you?' she said, her expression sombre. She was a little hurt by his rejection, but she could still see no reason to be ashamed of her directness. 'I can't be a virgin forever,' she pointed out with great reasonableness. Even Papa had told her that.
    'You can as far as I'm concerned,' he gritted through his teeth, the words barely audible.
    'Or is it just because you made love to Nicole last night?' she asked