She climbed back into their bed with her own narrow crystal, sipping it decorously. “Delicious,” she pronounced. “Do do you think we could dip your . . .”
“No!” he said, and he began to laugh again.
“Why not?” she demanded. “Have you done it before?”
He shook his head. “It is not advisable, Aurora. You know what will happen if we begin such love play, and then there will be champagne and oyster shells all over the bedclothes.”
“Oh, very well, Valerian, but one day when we are not so encumbered we must try it. Perhaps I shall bathe in a tub full of champagne, and you may lick me dry,” she tempted him.
“How can a girl who was a virgin until a day ago have such lascivious and libertine thoughts?” he demanded of her.
“Are women not supposed to think of it?” she asked him. “Even after they are wed? That is not fair! Certainly men think on it, and for that matter, men get to do it without any criticism before they are married, and ofttimes after with other women.”
“But we will not do it,” he said, “with anyone other than each other, Aurora.” Rising from the bed, he took their plates and then brought her a wet cloth with which he wiped her face and hands before doing his own. “Would you like some dessert? Cook has sent up some lovely grapes, and little meringues.”
“Bring the champagne, and we shall make our own dessert,” Aurora told him. “I have a great many more licentious and salacious thoughts to share with you, my husband. Perhaps I shall even convince you to act upon them, or perhaps I shall act upon them,” she teased him.
“You have it in your head to kill me,” he said. “Don’t you?”
Aurora chuckled. “Only with love, Valerian, and only if you promise to slay me with your love too.”
Shaking his head, he refilled her crystal goblet and his own. Then he joined her in their bed, the burning look in his dark blue eyes matching the passion in her aquamarine-blue ones.
KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by
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Copyright © 1998 by Bertrice Small
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ISBN: 978-1-4201-2471-2
Deceived Page 26
