“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“It’s okay.”
“I panicked. Claustrophobia, I guess.”
“You woke up frightened. You’re cold, hungry, uncomfortable. So am I. But for the time being, this is the best we can do.”
His voice sounded funny. She didn’t have to ask why. Her own was none too steady. The feel of his breath against her face, the way his fingers were moving comfortingly through her hair, the heat rising from the places where skin contacted skin were the reasons behind her tremulousness.
“Why did you do it, Kerry?”
“What?”
“Commit yourself to a vocation so unsuited to you.”
Oh, that. She felt wretched about her lie. With the exception of their bitter quarrels, he had treated her honorably since he had mistaken her for a nun. If he had continued to be aggressive and abusive, she would have taken a blood oath that her life was committed to a religious order. But his nobility demanded the truth. At least a partial truth.
Yet, she stalled. “Why do you say it doesn’t suit me?”
Linc’s head was whirling with discrepancies. Kerry felt more womanly than any woman he’d ever held in his arms. He couldn’t reconcile this young, beautiful, desirable woman with his concept of a nun. The sweet pressure of her breasts against his chest, the way her mouth had yielded to his those few times he had kissed her, just didn’t jibe with black habits and cloistered abbeys. He was streetwise enough to know that some first impressions were sound. And he’d bet his life on this one.
In answer to her question he said, “You don’t look like any nun I ever saw.”
“Nuns look like everybody else.”
“Do they all wear bikini panties?”
She blushed hotly. “I...I happen to like frilly underwear. That’s not a sin. Feminine things appeal to me because I’m a woman.”
That he didn’t need to be reminded of. She was a woman, all right. He could feel her womanliness with every masculine cell in his body.
“You just don’t have a holy aspect.” She stiffened with the affront, but he held her tighter. “I don’t mean that you’re unholy, it’s just that...hell...”
He paused for a moment, searching for words. “I mean, didn’t you ever think about having kids? You’re great with these orphans. Didn’t you ever want to have kids of your own?”
“Yes,” she answered honestly.
“And a, uh, you know, a man?”
“I’ve thought about that, yes,” she said softly. She wondered if he could feel her heart pounding against his chest. Her answer was truthful. But she’d never thought about
having a man as powerfully as she was thinking about it now.
She was recalling the masterful way his tongue had parted her lips and moved inside her mouth, and the manner in which his hands had been both caressing and commanding. She had felt the grinding thrust of his hips against hers. Total possession by this man must be an ultimate sexual experience for a woman.
“You’ve thought about making love with a man?”
She nodded, rubbing her nose in his crisp chest hair.
“You’ve wondered what it feels like?”
She held her lips tightly together to stopper the longing groan that pressed against them from the inside. “Of course.”
He sifted his hands through her hair. “If he knows what he’s doing, a man can give you pleasure. Pleasure never dreamed of.”
She was liquifying, melting against him. She wondered how he could continue to hold her when surely she must be dissolving in his arms.
“Aren’t you curious to know how it feels?”