anything but bone-deep.
He wondered where she was going with this and reluctantly was curious to find out.
He kissed the corner of her mouth and she squirmed and manoeuvred her body so that they were facing one another.
‘Have you any idea how tough this is for me?’ Dio asked her roughly and Lucy blushed.
‘What?’
‘Feeling your sexy little body pressed up against me. No, I take that back. I think you have a very good idea of how tough this is for me because you can feel my desire against your skin. That says it all.’
‘You’re...you’re very big,’ Lucy whispered, and Dio grinned.
‘I’ll take that as a compliment.’
‘I mean...have you ever found that a problem?’
Dio frowned. ‘What are you talking about? Why would I have found that a problem? A woman’s body is engineered to accommodate a man of my size.’
‘There’s something I feel you ought to know,’ she whispered, heart beating fast. ‘I’m not as experienced as you probably think I am.’
‘I never thought you were the sort of woman to sleep around.’
‘I’m not. In fact, actually, I haven’t slept around at all,’ she admitted awkwardly and Dio edged back from her.
‘Are you telling me that you’ve never made love to a man before?’
‘It’s not that big a deal,’ she returned defiantly.
Dio remained silent for so long that she wondered whether he was trying to concoct an excuse to withdraw from the situation which he had been so keen to engineer.
‘How come?’
‘I don’t feel comfortable having this conversation. I just thought that...that it was something you should know before...well...’ She laughed nervously. ‘When you’re disappointed, then you’ll understand why.’
Dio sat up.
His wife was a virgin. Incomprehensible. How had she managed to withstand the advances from men, looking the way that she did? Why had she? He raked his fingers through his hair then swung his legs over the side of the bed.
Lucy took advantage of the moment to yank the duvet over her.
This was a nightmare. What on earth had possessed her? Dio was a man of experience, a guy who had married her as something convenient that came as part of the package deal. He wasn’t into virgins and he certainly wouldn’t be into holding her hand while she lost her virginity.
She must have been mad.
Mortification swept over her in a hot wave.
Typically, he hadn’t bothered to get dressed. While she had felt an urgent need to cover herself, he was as comfortable having this hideous conversation in the buff as he would have been in one of his hand-made Italian suits. He had moved to sit in the chair by the mahogany desk by the bay window.
‘How come?’ he repeated. ‘And please don’t tell me again that you don’t feel comfortable having this conversation.’
‘It just never happened for me.’ Bright patches of colour delineated her cheekbones.
There was no way she intended pouring her heart out with some little-girl story of how unhappy her childhood had been; how she had witnessed her mother’s miserable stoicism in the face of her father’s selfishness and philandering. She wasn’t going to drone on in a self-pitying manner about her lofty determination only to have sex with the man she truly loved which, frankly, would have been a confession too far—especially considering the man she had thought she loved had turned out to be just the kind of man she should never have got mixed up with in the first place.
‘No testosterone-filled boys creeping through the windows of your prim and proper boarding school to have their wicked way with the innocent virgins?’
His lightly teasing tone was so unlike him that she felt herself begin to relax.
‘None of that. There was always the house mistress on red-hot alert, waiting with a rolling pin for any daring intruders.’
She lowered her eyes but could still feel him staring thoughtfully at her and she didn’t like that. It made her feel exposed.
‘And I suppose daddy was just as protective with his little girl?’ His voice was hard-edged.
Lucy shrugged. Yes, he’d seen off potential boyfriends all right, not that there had been many of them, but only because he had been such a crashing snob that no one had fitted the bill.
In retrospect, taking into account his dire financial situation, none of them had had the necessary bank balances to provide a rescue package anyway. Dio had certainly fitted the bill and he had not been on her father’s ridiculous social-climbing radar.
Watching her, Dio saw a shadow cross her face, gone as quickly as it had come, and he was struck by a sudden intense curiosity to find out what lay behind that shadow.
‘I would completely understand if you’d rather call it a day right now.’ She laughed a little unsteadily. ‘It was a stupid idea, anyway. You can’t just have a honeymoon and pretend that all the stuff that’s happened between us never took place.’
‘You’d be surprised,’ Dio murmured.
He stood up and strolled over to the bed. She was a virgin. The thought rocked him, brought out a fierce possessiveness which he never knew he had. All those nervous little looks and shy glances now made sense. He’d never have guessed, but then he hadn’t been looking, had he? He had accepted the cover version of her, the cool, elegant woman born into wealth and comfortable with it.
He hadn’t thought to look any deeper. She had deceived him, as far as he was concerned, that that was the end of the story. He had closed the door and it had been a lot easier to keep it closed.
‘I’m surprised,’ he murmured, ‘to think that you have never made love to a man before...shocked, even...but not turned off. I have no idea where you got that notion from, my dearest wife.’
His voice was low and husky, his grey eyes glittering with intent.
‘But can I ask you one thing?’ He returned to the bed, depressing the mattress with his weight, and very slowly pulled down the duvet which she had dragged up to her neck in a vain attempt at modesty. ‘Why choose the husband you’re keen to divorce? Seems an unusual option.’
Lucy felt that if he listened hard enough he would be able to hear the steady, nervous thump of her heart.
Now, wasn’t that a question?
‘I fancy you.’
‘And fancying me is enough to paper over the fact that you don’t like me?’
Lucy felt that she could say the same about him, but men were different from women, weren’t
