Page 28 of The Duke's Auctioned Virgin
“For hours.”
“The storm was long.”
“Valeria.” Caroline leaned forward. Or tried to. Her belly got in the way. She put one hand on it and frowned at it as though it had personally offended her, which it probably had, given that it had been making her uncomfortable for six months and showed no signs of stopping. “I have known you since the day I was born. You areblushing.”
“I am cold.”
“Youareblushing. Your neck is red. Your ears are red. You have not looked me in the eye since you sat down.” Caroline folded her arms on top of her belly. “What happened?”
“Nothing happened.”
“Then why do you look like that?”
“Like what?”
“Like a woman who has been kissed in a rainstorm.”
Valeria opened her mouth. Closed it. The silence lasted too long.
Caroline’s eyebrows flew up. “Oh, Valeria.”
“It was not in the gazebo. It was after. On the path. And it was brief. It will not happen again.”
“Was it good?”
“Caroline!”
“Was it?”
Valeria pressed both hands to her face. Through her fingers, she said, “I have nothing to compare it to.”
Caroline fell quiet. The fire crackled. Somewhere in the house, a clock struck nine. Outside, the wind had died, and the rain had stopped, and the gardens were dripping in the dark. The house smelled of wet stone and beeswax and the beef stew the cook had made for supper, which Valeria had missed entirely because she had been sitting in a gazebo playing riddles with a killer.
“He was your first kiss,” Caroline concluded softly.
Valeria lowered her hands. “Gordon kissed my forehead at the wedding. That was all.”
“That was not a kiss. That was a formality.” Caroline reached over and took her hand. Her fingers were warm and paint-stained and strong. “Was the Hound gentle?”
Valeria thought about the stone wall against her back. His hand in her hair. The sound he made when she pulled him closer. His mouth, hot and certain. The way he had kissed her as though he had been thinking about it for days and had finally run out of reasons not to. And the way he had stopped. The instant she had pushed him back.
One motion. Hands gone. A full step back. Space between them before she had even finished the thought. No anger. No argument. No guilt. Just distance, immediate and complete, offered without being asked.
“He stopped when I asked him to,” Valeria murmured. “Immediately. Without question.”
Caroline squeezed her hand. She did not say anything for a moment. She was thinking. Valeria could see it in her eyes, the careful consideration of a woman who had her own complicated history with men and marriage, and who knew that the wrong word right now could close a door that had just begun to open.
Then her expression shifted. The softness disappeared, only to be replaced by a sharper look. She looked at Valeria the way a woman looked when she had figured out what she was seeing and was about to say it out loud, whether the other person wanted to hear it or not.
“Sounds to me like you are too defensive of your precious husband-to-be,” Caroline drawled.
“Do not be ridiculous!” Valeria huffed.
The blush climbed her neck again, hot and immediate and impossible to hide. She could feel it spreading down to her chest and up to her temples, and she wanted nothing more than for the floor to open and swallow her.
“Are you done?” she snapped, before rising to her feet. “I am tired. I want to sleep.”
“Of course you do.”
