“Because you have Villiers.” Saying his name aloud steadied Damon.

She nodded. “You need to understand that. I’m a terribly hard-headed woman, and I always have been. You can ask my father. I knew the moment that I saw Villiers that I wanted to marry him.”

“Why?” He had to ask. “And don’t say because you’re in love. I’m not a big believer in love at first sight, and I’m not entirely sure that you are either.”

“It doesn’t matter how you put it,” she said. “I look at Villiers and I know exactly what sort of marriage we will have, and it’s exactly the sort I want to be involved in. He is controlled.”

“Controlled?” Damon was stunned. “You’re marrying Villiers because he’s controlled?”

“He will never embarrass me. He will never launch into gushing flights of emotion. He will never write a poem to my toe, or any other part of my body. He will never weep.”

“Well, you’re right about that,” Damon said. “It could be your funeral, and Villiers would just stand there with that snarling little smile of his.”

She walked over to him and put a hand on his arm. She didn’t even seem to feel the slightest bit of embarrassment at being in her chemise, nor at the fact that he was next thing to naked. She truly wasn’t a normal virgin. Whatever that was. “Villiers is right for me. And I am lucky that he recognized the same in me. We will be an excellent match and I think we’ll live together happily for years.”

Damon’s teeth were so tightly clenched he thought he might break his jaw. “Fine,” he managed. “Married bliss. I see it. You and Villiers will get old together except—hold on a moment!—he’s already old, so I guess you’ll be a happy widow.”

Her eyes turned a dark navy again, and every bit of native caution he had in his body warned him that was an even worse sign.

He was right.

“You’re an ass. I have no idea why you are being such an ass, but I’ve learned over the years that men are impossible to understand, and so I shan’t try to fathom you. There’s something I want from you, Damon.”

His mouth went dry. “There is?” Every inch of his body knew exactly what she wanted, and those same inches were straining to satisfy her.

With one swift gesture, she pulled her chemise right over her head and tossed it to the side. Then she looked at him, and for just one moment, there was a flash of uncertainty in those beautiful eyes of hers.

That was enough. Every ethical sense that Damon had in his entire body melted like sugar in hot water.

“You’re sure, Buttercup?” He had her in his hands when he said it, his palms sliding over her round derrière.

“I choose you for my first experience with men,” Roberta said, sounding far too logical for the moment.

He almost said something about her first man being her last, but he caught it back. She didn’t want to hear it yet. She was hanging onto the dream of a controlled marriage.

Obviously, it was up to him to teach her the bliss of losing control.

He shut the thought off and dragged her against his chest. Little Miss Inexperienced Know-It-All was about to find out what it was like to actually sleep with a man, as opposed to talk about it.

Chapter 30

H e had spread out the huge silk skirts of her gown and put her on it, but she wouldn’t stay there. She was supposed to lie back and let him gently introduce her to the fruits of pleasure while she trembled and shrieked, “No, no!” In fact, experienced matrons had done that on occasion, because he was the kind of man who thought that every inch of a woman tasted good.

But Roberta?

She did squeal, and even squeak, but he hadn’t heard a single “No, no.” Sometimes he couldn’t understand exactly what she was saying, but it sounded an awful lot like “Yes!”

So he let a bit more guilt slip away from him, and turned back to nuzzling her breast. What she liked best was when he sucked her nipples into his mouth. He kept doing that, and then pulling back and shaping her breasts in his hands, and even giving her little bites, and nibbles, until she was all calmed down—of course, he wasn’t; he’d never been harder in his life—and then he would suckle her again and her back would rise just like that, and she would start gasping and crying. He didn’t even want to think about what would happen when he made his way down her body.

He was sliding his fingers there now, slowly because so often ladies didn’t want to be touched, or rather, they had no idea what they wanted.

But he wasn’t getting much resistance from Roberta. He slid his fingers a bit lower, flicking her nipple with his tongue so that she didn’t notice what he was doing. But then she shocked him because one of her beautiful slim legs slid up and she sobbed, “Damon,” and her knee fell open.

And if that wasn’t an invitation?

Damon was a man who considered making love to be a work of art. You prepared the canvas (kisses) and then threw on some background (special attention to certain parts of the body) and then you painted the main event. With your brush, ha ha.

In other words, he never made love without generous attention to the woman, and in general he believed that she should come before he did.

Which must be why he found himself absolutely mad in this case, unable to stop himself. Because Roberta had the sweetest, reddest, most—

He couldn’t stop himself. He couldn’t. He was poised over her and she curled up against him with a little puffing wail of desire and even though he was a man who never came before the woman…

He did.

He thrust where no man had been. Into her plump sweetness, and the only thing he had enough self-possession to do was rub a thumb over her breasts at the same time.

Her eyes got huge, but he wasn’t thinking, he couldn’t think. His entire body was concentrated on the most glorious sensation of his life, on the sleekest, wettest, tightest experience of his life—

She wasn’t saying “yes,” anymore, but Damon didn’t know it. He threw his head back and plunged forward a few times, almost sobbing at the exquisiteness of it. It was all too much, though, and he came with a muffled groan wrenched from his chest.

He collapsed on top of her but managed to catch most of his weight on his elbows. “Oh God”—he was babbling—“you were—that was—Roberta, are you all right? I’m sorry.” She didn’t look angry, just kind of perplexed. “You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you?” he said, feeling a rush of protectiveness and affection such as he’d never experienced before. “You’ll see, Roberta. Just let me have a moment to gather my strength and next time you’ll…see…”

He closed his eyes to recover his strength.

Roberta St. Giles found herself lying next to a sleeping man.

She looked down at herself. There was no sign of blood, which was reassuring. She’d heard various stories about gushing blood and then the opposite, from Selina, who told her that women over the age of twelve never felt a thing.

“Surely not—under twelve?” she had asked. There was something closed about Selina’s face that didn’t allow her to finish that question.

Roberta sat up. Her body had a faint tingling sensation about it still. The whole experience was quite interesting, really. She looked down at Damon. He was peacefully sleeping.