LITMIR.BIZ

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nodded jerkily, her face crimson now. ‘Yes, but the thing is I’ve only ever slept with Simon...’

      Ben would have never envisaged this scenario in a million years. In one fell swoop any remaining misconceptions he might have had about Julianna Ford were blasted apart. She was inexperienced, and she was achingly vulnerable right now, even though he could tell she hated it from the way her hands held her dress together in a white-knuckled grip.

      And instead of feeling the urge to get up and run in the opposite direction Ben got up and sat on the couch beside her, feeling something close to protective.

      Lia looked at him. ‘I’m sorry. I’m not very experienced.’

      Ben felt something dark rise up. ‘What happened with this ex-fiancé?’

      Now she went pale. ‘When we made love for the first time...it hurt. A lot. After that I didn’t really want to...to make love.’ She grimaced. ‘It wasn’t as if we were in love. We’d both agreed to the marriage for our own reasons. But he told me that I was frigid, and that was why he was sleeping with his secretary. I couldn’t...didn’t want to get married after that.’

      Ben reeled. He wanted to find that man and punch him for betraying this woman, for leaving her confidence in tatters. Never in Ben’s life had he been remotely interested in the notion of taking a woman’s virginity, but now he felt a ridiculous sense of loss, just imagining the way her rutting fiancé had probably not even realised the jewel he’d had in his hands. This woman was not frigid. Not remotely.

      Then he thought of what else she’d just said. ‘Why did you agree to a marriage of convenience?’

      As if the questions were probing too deeply, Lia got up off the couch, still graceful even while she was deliciously dishevelled. She turned her back to Ben and pulled the dress around her, tying it in front.

      When she turned around again it was all Ben could do not to yank her back down onto his lap.

      She folded her arms over her chest, as if she could hear his lusty thoughts. ‘It was primarily for my father. I told you...he’s traditional. He believes I’ll only be secure if I’m settled. He was sick a while back and I got a fright... He begged me to give Simon a chance—he knew he’d been asking me out on a regular basis.’

      She shrugged and looked down, scuffing the floor with her toes. ‘I went out with him and it turned out that we were both happy enough to agree to something more...clinical than a romantic relationship.’ She looked back at Ben, almost defiant. ‘At the time it seemed like a good idea.’

      ‘You don’t need to convince me,’ Ben said with a bitter edge to his voice. ‘After seeing how little there was to hold my parents’ marriage together when the crisis hit, I’m under no illusions about the myth of a romantic ideal.’

      For a long moment neither said anything else and then Lia took a step back.

      Ben stood up. ‘Where are you going?’

      * * *

      Middle Earth, hopefully.

      Lia had been ready for the ground to open up and swallow her right from when she hadn’t been able to stop the verbal equivalent of This is My Life from spilling out. She blamed Ben, and the fact that he’d wrung a response from her body that she’d never believed she’d feel.

      He was looking at her now as if she had two heads, and the thought that he might pity her after what she’d just told him was making her burn with mortification. Of anything she might have expected from this man, she’d never expected that. Nor wanted it.

      She struggled to look cool and calm, even though she was in tatters. ‘I’m going to bed.’

      Ben shook his head. ‘We’re not done here.’

      Excitement and trepidation warred in Lia’s chest. Ben was unmistakably alpha. Maybe he saw her as some kind of challenge?

      ‘Look,’ she said, ‘I know this isn’t what you expected when you thought of indulging in a weekend fling. I think we’ve established that I’m not exactly cast from the same mould as your usual women.’

      She went to walk past him, instinctively seeking a place where she could be alone and deal with her sense of exposure without that incisive gaze watching her every move. He’d laid her bare—completely. She’d been right to resist him.

      A hand on her arm stopped her. She looked up.

      Ben pulled her around in front of him. ‘There are no other women. There’s only you. Are you saying you don’t want this?’

      Lia flushed at his words. ‘There’s only you.’ And how could she deny she wanted this when she’d just been writhing and moaning under his expert touch?

      She said tightly, ‘You really don’t owe me anything, Ben. If you just feel sorry for—’

      His hands tightened on her arms so much she stopped talking. He looked incredulous. ‘Feel sorry for you? Believe me...that’s the last thing I’m feeling right now. I want you, Lia. Because you make me feel like I’ll combust if I don’t have you. And that’s not pity. That’s desire.’

      Suddenly she didn’t have anything to hide behind. He was calling her out.

      She felt nervous. ‘I’m not experienced enough for you... I’ll disappoint you.’

      He speared her with that bright blue gaze, like two flames. ‘You couldn’t disappoint me if you tried, Lia. And there’s no such thing as inexperience—there’s just how two people fit together. You’re not frigid—not remotely. That man was an idiot, and he couldn’t recognise a brilliant precious gem when it was right in front of him.’

      Ben’s words reached deep inside her and melted the insecurity Lia had been carrying around like a weight.

      He moved closer, as if sensing her vacillation. ‘I want you, Lia, more than I’ve ever wanted another woman. But if you can say that you truly don’t want this, then I’ll let you go.’

      He took her elbows in his hands and pulled her gently to him until they were touching. If she’d had any doubts about how much he wanted her, or thoughts that he just pitied her, they fled when she felt the hard, thrusting evidence of his desire against her soft belly.

      Her heart started to pound and her blood heated. Her defences were annihilated. And then she felt a spike of anger. Anger that he’d brought her here and laid her bare, forced her to delve deep inside herself to where she ached and wanted...so much. Where she wanted him. Forcing her to admit it.

      She felt fierce. ‘I can’t tell you that.’

      Ben was intense. ‘What can’t you tell me?’

      She looked up into his eyes and drowned. ‘That I don’t want you.’

      Lia didn’t care any more how or why she’d got here, just that she was, and she didn’t want to be anywhere else. She desperately wanted Ben to show her again how she could respond to a man. That she wasn’t frigid.

      As if reading her mind, Ben bent and lifted her into his arms. And then he was carrying her up the stairs.

      She was mesmerised by his jaw, by the play of the powerful muscles of his chest under her arm. Breathless at the thought of what she was doing, and so far out of her comfort zone that it wasn’t funny, she pushed all her trepidation down.

      Ben shouldered his way into his room, and Lia was vaguely aware that it was just as palatial as hers but more masculine in tones and colours. And then her gaze fell on the massive bed in the middle of the room and her mouth dried completely.

      A part of her wanted to leap from Ben’s arms and run away fast, but a stronger part realised that she wanted to be strong—for this, for herself. Her confidence had been eroded when she was a young child, when her own mother had rejected her, forcing her to shut away a part of herself for fear of rejection. Then she’d let Simon decimate her confidence as a sexual

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