Innocent Surrender: The Virgin's Proposition / The Virgin and His Majesty / Untouched Until Marriage

Anny gave a quick shake of her head. “No.”

Demetrios tilted his head to regard her curiously. “You didn’t like it?”

Anny felt her cheeks begin to burn. “You know that’s not true,” she protested. “You know I liked it. Very much.”

He scratched his head. “And yet you don’t want to do it again.”

“I didn’t say I didn’t want to do it again. I said I didn’t think we should.”

He stared at her. “Your logic eludes me.”

“It would mean something if we did,” she explained.

He blinked. “I thought it did mean something last time. All that stuff about your idealistic youthful self…”

“Yes, of course it meant something,” she agreed. “But it would be different if we did it again. That time it was…like…making love with a fantasy.” Now her cheeks really did burn. She felt like an idiot, didn’t want to meet his eyes. But she could feel his on her, so finally she lifted her gaze. “When we did it then, I was with the you I—I had dreamed about. The ‘fantasy’ you. The one I imagined. If we did it again, it wouldn’t be the same. You wouldn’t be the same. You’d be—you!”

“Me? As opposed to…me?” He looked totally confused now.

Anny didn’t blame him. She didn’t want to spell it out, but obviously she was going to have to. “You’d be a real live flesh-and-blood man.”

“I was before,” he told her. “Last time.”

“Not the same way. Not to me,” she added after a moment.

He still looked baffled. “And you don’t want a ‘real live flesh-and-blood man’?”

What she wanted was to jump overboard and never come up. “It’s dangerous,” she said.

“No, it’s not. Don’t worry. I won’t get you pregnant. I promise. I can take care of that.”

“Not that kind of dangerous. Emotionally dangerous.”

He looked blank. Of course he did. He was a man.

“I could fall in love with you,” she said bluntly.

“Oh.” He looked appalled. “No. You don’t want to do that.” He was shaking his head rapidly.

No, she didn’t. Not if he wasn’t going to fall in love with her in return, at least. And he’d made it clear that he had no intention of doing so. She supposed there was always the chance that she could change his mind, but from the look on his face, it didn’t seem likely.

“Like I said, dangerous,” Anny repeated. “For me.” She shrugged when he just continued to stare at her. “You said it was up to me,” she reminded him.

His mouth twisted. “So I did.” He rubbed a hand through his hair. “That’ll teach me,” he muttered.

“I’m sorry.”

He made a sound that was a half laugh and half something Anny couldn’t have put a name to. “Me, too, princess,” he told her. Then he gave her a wry smile. “Let me know if you change your mind.”

“Sure,” Anny said.

But it wasn’t going to happen—she hoped.

She was the most baffling woman he’d ever met.

When she didn’t know him, she wanted to make love with him. When she knew him, she didn’t want to—but only because she might fall in love with him.

Where the hell was the logic in that?

Well, perversely, Demetrios supposed, squinting at the Italian shoreline as if it might provide some answers, there was some. But it wasn’t doing his peace of mind much good.

It made all those glimpses of Anny he kept catching out of the corner of his eye all too distracting, though he supposed she intended nothing of the sort at all.

She wasn’t coy and flirtatious the way Lissa had been, eager and enthusiastic one minute, pouting and moody the next. With Lissa he’d never known where he stood or what she wanted.

With Anny, she flat-out told him.

When she wanted to make love, she’d said so. Now she didn’t, and she’d said that. No, he’d never met a woman even close to her.

After their discussion, she had finished her lunch, then taken both their plates below. He’d expected she would stay there to avoid him and his “dangerous” appeal. But she came back to put her feet up on one of the cockpit benches and leaned back to lift her face. She still wore Theo’s visor, but for the moment her face was lit by the sun and the wind tangled her hair.

“Isn’t this glorious?” she said, turning a smile in his direction. And there really was nothing flirtatious about the smile at all. Just pure enjoyment of the moment.

“Yeah,” Demetrios agreed, because it was.

But also because it was pretty damned glorious to stand there and simply watch her take pleasure in the moment. For the longest time she didn’t move a muscle, didn’t say a word, just sat there silently, absorbing, savoring the experience.

She didn’t glance at him to see if he was noticing. Lissa had always been aware of her audience.

He remembered when she’d badgered him to take her sailing. He had been in Paris at the time and she back in L.A., having just finished a film. And every time they talked on the phone she’d chattered about how wonderful it had been going sailing with a couple of big A-list stars.

“We could go sailing,” she’d said to him.

It was the first time she’d shown the least interest in any such thing. When he’d taken her to his parents’ place on Long Island right after they were married, she hadn’t set foot on the family boat. She’d had little to do with anyone, and she’d been eager to leave almost as soon as they’d arrived.

He’d thought at the time it was because she’d wanted to spend some more time with him alone. Only later he began to realize a family vacation on Long Island wasn’t fast-lane enough for her.

But when she’d made the remark about sailing, he’d taken her suggestion at face value and offered to charter a sailboat so they could go to Cabo San Lucas as soon as he got back home.

Lissa had been delighted.

“Ooh, fun,” she’d squealed on the phone when he’d tossed out the idea to her.

They hadn’t seen each other for more than two days at a time in the past two months. It seemed like a great way to spend some time alone with her. And he’d been delighted she was as eager for some uninterrupted time together.

“It will be wonderful!” Lissa had crowed. And he knew that tone of voice—it was the one that went with the impossibly sparkly blue eyes. She’d let out a sigh of ecstasy. “The wind. The water. The two of us. Oh, yes. Let’s. I always feel as if I’m in communion with nature.”

So two days after he got home, he’d chartered a boat, and they’d set sail to Cabo from Marina del Rey.