“And it’s not over yet.” He leaned forward and pressed his lips to hers first before opening the door.
“Gosh.” She slid into the seat, all afluster, sending the boxes tumbling onto the floor. “Now look what you’ve done.”
He laughed, walked around the car, and got in beside her. “Good to know I have an effect on you.”
“Oh, you definitely have that,” she mumbled as he started the engine and pulled away. He turned her to mush just by looking at her. What on earth would happen when they finally got naked together?
The rest of the afternoon passed by in a blur, mainly because she couldn’t stop thinking about what was going to happen that evening. Danny took her for a drive to Matauri Bay, and they walked along the beach for a while as waves from the Pacific Ocean crept up the sand, and they talked about this and that and nothing in particular, just enjoying being together.
After that he drove her into the bustling town of Kerikeri, and they had dinner at a vineyard, where he encouraged her to sample some of the local wines.
It was a wonderful evening, and as time wore on she realized they had more in common than she would have thought possible—they liked the same music and enjoyed the same movies and TV dramas, and they both enjoyed travelling and were interested in different cultures.
But as the evening drew to an end, all she could think about was the feel of Danny’s lips, the warmth of his body against her, his hands on her skin.
“You’re quiet,” he said as they headed back to Paihia to her parents’ house. The sun had set, and the half-moon hung above them, casting its silvery light across the fields to either side of the road. “Something bothering you?”
“No,” she lied. Her stomach fluttered like a meadow full of butterflies, and her mouth had gone dry.
He didn’t say anything else, just drove along the beachfront and then up the hill to the long drive that led to her parents’ home. After pulling up outside, he released his seatbelt and switched off the engine, then turned in the seat to face her.
Darkness and the quiet of the evening filled the car. Moths fluttered around the lamp she’d left on to light the stairs to the deck. Outside, something that sounded like an owl hooted in the trees, but inside all she could hear was the thudding of her heart in her ears.
“Hey.” Danny reached out and brushed the back of his fingers along her cheek. “What’s bothering you?”
“Nothing.” She gave him a brief smile, but couldn’t maintain it, and returned to studying her hands.
He spoke gently. “Hermione, sweetheart. If you’ve changed your mind it’s not a problem.”
She lifted her startled gaze to him. “I haven’t—”
“It’s all right. I half-expected it to happen. I won’t be angry. I’d much rather you be honest with me.”
“No!” She didn’t want him to think that. “It’s not that at all.”
“Then what’s the matter, honey? Tell me.”
She nibbled her bottom lip. He didn’t look cross, just concerned and puzzled. He had such a lovely handsome face, with deep gorgeous eyes and a luscious mouth she was desperate to kiss. She so didn’t want to ruin everything, but she couldn’t keep quiet any longer.
“It’s just...” She sighed. “I haven’t had a lot of experience in the bedroom.”
His lips curved. “That’s all right.”
“I mean...very little experience.”
His eyes searched her face. “Okay...”
“I mean, like, um, actually, no experience. At all.” She swallowed.
He stared at her. “What?”
“I’m a virgin, Danny.”
Chapter Fourteen
Danny was aware his jaw had dropped and he was gaping like a fish, but for a brief moment he was so stunned that his brain wouldn’t work.
Hermione was watching him warily, chewing on her lip. “Please say something,” she whispered.
He closed his mouth and tried to jump-start his brain. “What do you mean? On the beach you told me you weren’t a virgin.”
“I lied.”
“Why?”
She shrugged. “I didn’t want you to laugh at me.”
“Why would I have laughed?”
“Oh come on, Danny, you’d already teased me about running a romance business. How could I tell you I’ve never been to bed with anyone? I’m twenty-five, for Christ’s sake. How many twenty-five year old virgins do you know?” Twin spots of color decorated her cheeks.
“So why tell me now?” he asked softly.
“You were waiting for me to ask you in.” She looked out of the window at the encroaching darkness. “I considered not admitting it, but I thought...” She sighed and looked back at him, a strange mixture of shyness and sadness on her face. “You’re a man of the world. I’m sure you’re great in bed, and that you prefer your women to know what goes where and how to please you. I’d make an idiot of myself if I didn’t admit it.”
They sat quietly for a moment, studying each other. Danny’s brain whirled. He couldn’t think what to say.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured eventually.
“Why?”
She blinked a few times. “I feel as if I’ve misled you, and I didn’t mean to do that. I hate to think I’ve upset or angered you.”
He shifted in his seat. “I’m not upset or angry. Puzzled, maybe. And completely fucking bewildered how a girl as gorgeous as yourself could make it to twenty-five and not have been talked into bed at any point.”
Her lips curved. “There’s a compliment buried in there, I think. Thank you.”
He ran a hand through his hair. “May I ask why you’ve never had sex? Were you... I dunno, saving yourself for Richard?”
She thought about it. “No. He’s had other girlfriends, and I don’t think he would have expected me to stay single all this time. Whatever you think, it’s not a medieval arrangement. It just never happened for me. It’s difficult to describe to someone who I’m sure lost their virginity at, what, sixteen?”
“Fourteen,” he said.
“What!” Her eyes nearly fell out of her head.
“I know. I nearly dropped my Power Ranger.”
They both laughed, and some of the tension lifted from the air.
“I grew up quickly,” he said. “But we’re not talking about me.”
She shook her head. “I can’t even...” She blew out a breath. “Then my predicament is going to seem even more unfathomable to you.”
“It’s not unfathomable, just...uncommon. So it wasn’t a conscious decision of yours to stay a virgin?”
“No, not at all. I dated a few guys, but for some reason we never got to that stage. I would happily have slept with a guy if I’d dated for a while and things had developed, but the men I met didn’t seem interested in anything other than sex, and I wasn’t interested in one-night stands. I couldn’t just do it, sort of cold, without any build up first. Does that make sense? I don’t suppose it does to you. You must have had lots of one-night stands.”
“Not quite,” he said, amused. “And actually, I do understand. I can see how it might happen.”
“And the longer time goes by, the worse it gets, and suddenly I’m twenty-five years old and completely inexperienced. It doesn’t help one’s confidence.”
“No, I suppose it doesn’t.” He smiled.
They fell quiet again. He tipped his head and studied her, admiring her high cheekbones, the curve of her lips, the pale skin of her neck. She was like Antarctica—virginal unexplored territory, breathtakingly beautiful.
“I’m sorry,” she said again.
“Will you stop apologizing?”
“But I’ve ruined your evening.”
“You really haven’t.”
She rubbed her nose. “You’re really not angry?”
He moved a little closer to her. “No, I’m not angry.”
Her large brown eyes widened. Her pupils dilated, and he remembered the moment in the Treats cafe when he’d
described what he was going to do to her and the air between them had sparked with electricity.
“You want me to leave?” he asked.
She nibbled her bottom lip and then, to his delight, gave a little shake of her head. “Do you want to go?” she whispered.
“No.”
She swallowed. “But you were expecting the evening to be a certain way, and, well, it won’t be like that.”
She thought he’d be disappointed in her because she didn’t know her way around the bedroom.
He remained silent for a moment, trying to think what to say. She was right in that the evening certainly hadn’t turned out the way he’d expected. He’d thought it would end in some fun and frantic sex, but the first time for most people was probably more nervous than passionate.
Was this what he wanted? He’d never taken a girl’s virginity before, and he surprised himself by feeling a weight of responsibility at the thought of it.
“Now you’ve waited this long,” he said, “do you not want to wait until you’re married? Wouldn’t it be something precious to give your husband?”
She laughed. “Now who sounds medieval? Shall I gift him my maidenhead?”
“I mean it. It’s not something you can get back. Even if he doesn’t care if you’ve slept with other people, don’t you think you might regret it?”
She studied her hands. “The thing is... I’ve accepted I’m going to marry him. I know it’s going to happen, and that’s okay, and I know if we work at it we’ll stand a good chance of being successful. But I don’t know that there will ever be passion. Maybe there will—I’m hardly an expert in these things, but all I do know is that when I look at him my heart doesn’t race, and I want to experience that just once, to be with someone who makes me breathless.” Her eyes came back to his.
His lips slowly curved up. “I make you breathless?”
Her lips mirrored his. “Yes.”
He took her braid and twisted it around his fingers. “I make your heart race?”
She smiled. “You do.”
Tightening the braid, he pulled her closer, stopping when his lips were an inch from hers. “You still want to go to bed with me?”
She moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue. “Very much. But I understand completely if you’d rather not.”
He brushed his nose against hers. “So explain to me why I wouldn’t want to take such a sexy, gorgeous, hot girl to bed?”
She lowered her gaze, fighting against a blush. “Because I’m not confident. I’m not skilled. I don’t know how to please a man.”
“You don’t think it would be fun to teach you?”
She fingered the buttons on his shirt. “I don’t know. Maybe fumbling around is dull to a man like you.”
“Let’s get one thing straight—I don’t know what kind of idea you have about me, but I’m not a tomcat.”
“Even so. You like sex.”
“I do, as it happens.”
“I’m sure you’d rather be with a girl who wasn’t shy and uncertain.”
He kissed her cheek. “At this moment, I can’t think of anyone in the world I’d rather go to bed with than you.”
She lifted her gaze to his, her expression wry, but with a hint of hope. “Be serious.”
Releasing her braid, he cupped her cheek and kissed her Cupid’s bow. “I mean it. It doesn’t change anything I said in the cafe. I still want to do all those things to you. But we’ll go slow, and I’ll be gentle, I promise.” He stopped speaking as emotion surged through him, surprising him.
Until that moment, a woman’s virginity had meant very little to him. It was just a state of being, the same as a person who hadn’t left the country—one minute you hadn’t travelled, the next you got on a plane and then you had. It didn’t mean anything. It wasn’t special or precious—if anything it was a hindrance. He’d never been with a virgin and it didn’t bother him, and he would never expect any woman he slept with to be one. Sex was fantastic—it was fun and natural, and denying yourself the beauty of sharing yourself with another seemed a crazy idea.
But now, the idea of Hermione being a virgin gave him strange goosebumps he hadn’t expected. He’d thought her naive and idealistic, but to find out she was untouched by another man, truly innocent, completely changed his view of her. Suddenly she wasn’t a superior, privileged girl determined to trample over him. She was shy and unsure, nervous about finding happiness, scared of turning her life over to the other guy before she’d had a chance to experience true passion.
“I’d be honored to be your first,” he said, his voice husky even to his ears. “As long as you’re sure.”
“I’m sure.” Her eyes were filled with longing.
It would be his job to show her what making love was like. To be the first person to tease her to the dizzy heights of passion. No other man had touched her, kissed her body, slid inside her. He’d be the first one to hear her cries of passion, to watch her come apart.
He was so hard, he was surprised he hadn’t burst the stitching on his jeans. His main problem was going to be slowing himself down when he just wanted to pull her into his arms and take her, hard and fast.
Leaning forward, he pressed his lips to hers.
She felt soft and warm. Her perfume rose from her skin, winding around him. She tasted of sweet wine and the chocolate truffle they’d shared on the way home from one of the boxes she’d bought. He wanted to take off her top, undo her bra, cup her breast, pull her onto his lap, but he did none of those things, just concentrated on her mouth, and kissed her gently.
When he lifted his head, she had a dreamy look on her face.
“Mmm,” she murmured. “Nice.”
He kissed her nose. “Come on. Why don’t we go inside and have a glass of wine, and we’ll see what happens?”
They got out of the car, and Danny collected his bag from the back seat, then they walked up the stairs to the deck and along to the sliding doors. He paused for a moment to cast his eye over the grounds. They’d done a great job so far, and he was pleased with their progress. The palms were taking, and the light shower of rain that had just begun would help.
But he had more important things on his mind for once than gardens and plants. He followed Hermione through the sliding glass doors into the living room, and placed his bag in the corner before joining her in the kitchen. She’d turned on a lamp, and it gave the room a warm, welcoming glow.
It was a superb house, built for the summer really, with lots of windows and high ceilings, so it wouldn’t be the easiest place to heat in the winter. It never got truly cold in the ‘winterless north’, but temperatures did drop into single figures, and they had the occasional frost. Hermione had obviously left the heat pump on before she went out, however, and the place was pleasantly warm. He supposed she didn’t have to worry about having enough money to pay the bills.
For the first time in a while, it reminded him of the gulf between them, and what different backgrounds they came from. Was he really planning on being the rough groundskeeper who seduced the virginal lady of the manor? He’d only wanted a bit of fun—did this make him a bad person, de-flowering another man’s future wife?
He shook his head, trying to rattle the thought out of his brain. This wasn’t the fourteenth century, and Hermione had every right to sleep with whomever she chose. He wanted her, and she wanted him, and nothing else mattered.
She’d taken a bottle of wine out of the rack and was now pouring it into two glasses. Her hand was shaking a little, and she spilled some onto the worktop.
“Damn.”
“I’ll get it,” he said, reaching for a piece of paper towel. He stood beside her and mopped up the drips. Then he caught her free hand and lifted it to his lips. “Are you nervous?”
She sipped her wine, watching him kiss her fingertips. “A little. But I’m excited too.” Her eyes sparkled.
His heart swelled. “I’m glad.” He let go of her hand and picked up his glass, then wrappe
d his other arm around her waist and pulled her close. They both took a mouthful of wine and swallowed, and then he lowered his lips to hers again.
They were cool from the wine this time, and when he touched his tongue to them, she opened her mouth eagerly. He swept his tongue inside, wanting to taste her, to claim her, and she sighed and leaned into the kiss, her tongue sliding alongside his.
Turning her, he pushed her back against the worktop, placed their glasses on it, and took his time to kiss her properly. Her arms rose around his neck, and he rested his hands on her hips, pulling her close. She was so soft against him though that eventually he moved his hands onto her butt, tightening his fingers on the plump muscles and lifting her a little so he could push his erection against her mound.
Fuck, how was she so soft all over? She was like a velvet cushion, and he wanted to sink into her, to let her close around him. Slowly, his brain scolded, don’t frighten her, but she was tightening her fingers in his hair, pushing her hips to his, moaning against his lips, as if she didn’t want him to slow down. She may have been a virgin, but she wasn’t seventeen, he told himself—she was a grown woman, old enough to know what she wanted and to make her own decisions. He wasn’t leading her astray. She wanted him, she’d made that clear, and suddenly he wondered if he was actually the one who’d done the seducing after all.
Chapter Fifteen
Hermione sank her fingers into Danny’s thick hair, loving the way he groaned when she raked her nails lightly against his scalp. His hands were tight on her bottom, his erection hard against her mound.
She couldn’t believe he still wanted to have sex with her. She’d thought that as soon as she told him she was inexperienced, he’d back off and disappear into the night. But he hadn’t. Instead his eyes had softened, and he’d said So explain to me why I wouldn’t want to take such a sexy, gorgeous, hot girl to bed? It made her melt.
Far from his ardor fading, he appeared to be growing more passionate as the seconds passed. He plunged his tongue into her mouth, and she returned it eagerly, pressing up against him, wanting his hands on her, wanting to feel his skin on hers.
He lifted his head, his eyes filled with desire. “You’re driving me crazy,” he said, sliding his hands up her ribs, then around to her back as if he wanted to cup her breasts but was willing himself to wait.
An Ocean Between Us Page 10
