He looked down his nose at her. "I think you fall into that category. You're way beyond my control."
She giggled. "That's why you don't like me."
"I like you." He spoke with a soft earnestness that immediately captured her attention.
"You do? Since when?"
"Since … I don't know."
"Bet I know. You started liking me when I stripped off your shorts and jumped on your bones."
"No. I mean, yes, I liked that. A lot," he said with a lecherous twinkle in his eyes. "But it just occurred to me a second ago that I like you, the person, too."
"Why?"
"I guess because you've patiently listened while I've talked about the accident."
Her fingernail rimmed his lips. "I'm glad you shared it with me. You've needed to talk it out with someone. They told me that you refused counseling in the hospital."
He shrugged. "I felt like a dope."
"You're too tough to ask for help, right?" She asked it teasingly enough to make him smile.
"Thanks for listening and for not making judgments, Lilah."
"You're welcome."
He reached up and curled a wisp of her hair around his finger. "We've gotten into some heavy subject matter here, but I find it hard to wax philosophic when a sexy broad is sprawled across my belly."
"Do you now?"
"Hmm." He regarded her with open curiosity and interest. "But, now that I've revealed all my secrets to you, let's turn the tables. Tell me why and how."
Assuming a casual air, she lightly plucked at his earlobe. As earlobes went, it was nice but didn't warrant the single-minded attention she gave to it. "Why and how what?"
"Why you're still a virgin — "
"How soon you forget."
He frowned at her. "Why you're still a virgin and how that's even possible."
"Technically, it's possible because I've never had a consummated love affair."
"That answers the second half of the question. What about the first half? To refresh your memory, it's the part about why."
"I never wanted to before."
"Lilah." He sounded like a parent scolding a child who was obviously stretching the truth. "I want the truth."
"That is the truth. Knowing me as well as you do, do you think I'd preserve my virginity for any other reason?"
He still seemed puzzled. "It just doesn't jive with your personality. You'll do or say anything without a single qualm. I find it hard to believe you have such a liberated and relaxed attitude toward sex but have never participated."
"I go to football games and cheer on the players, but I've never played myself."
"That's hardly a correlation."
She sighed with exasperation. "What do you suggest, that I brand a big red V on my forehead?"
He linked his hands at the small of her back and held her tightly. Nuzzling her neck, he said, "It's too late now."
"That's right. So why are you making such a big deal out of it?"
"I was surprised. No, shocked is a better word. And you still haven't given me a straight answer."
"I never wanted to make love before. It's as simple as that."
He was already shaking his head. "No, it goes deeper." He tried to delve into her eyes and find the truth, but she wouldn't hold eye contact long enough. "Does this have anything to do with that conversation we had about your feelings of inadequacy?"
"Of course not!"
"Bingo."
She glared at him. "Okay, maybe it does, what of it?"
"You're a beautiful, funny, sensual, sexy woman, that's what of it. Why have you deprived yourself of the most fulfilling experience the human being can enjoy?"
"Because if there was a way to mess up the most fulfilling experience the human being can enjoy, I would have found it."
Adam softened his tone. "Care to expound?"
"No, but I will since I get the impression you're going to persist until I do."
"Right."
She drew a deep breath of resignation and expulsed it slowly. "I figured that I would be as clumsy and awkward about sex as I was about everything else. I don't mean in bed exactly. I mean all the trappings that go with it. I was afraid I'd get pregnant despite precautions. I'd be the one and a half percent the pills didn't work on. I was afraid that I'd fall in love with the guy but he wouldn't fall in love with me, or the reverse." Her wide blue eyes appealed to him to understand. "I know it sounds ridiculous now, but I'd flubbed everything else I had ever tried."
"Except basketball and tennis. Elizabeth told me."
"Well, I was okay skillwise, but I got kicked off the high school basketball team."
"Dare I ask why?"
"For sewing a row of sequins on the hem of my trunks. Well, those uniforms were ugly, Adam," she stressed when he burst out laughing. "And men would get mad as hell when I beat them at tennis, so I quit playing. See? It followed that I'd fail at sex too."
A trace of vulnerability had crept into her voice, though she was unaware of it. "I didn't want another failure on my record. By the time I was old enough to say yea or nay to any guy who happened to ask, Elizabeth was married to John Burke. She was the perfect little homemaker. Her husband adored her. She gave birth to absolutely gorgeous, precious, precocious babies. If I had entered into a relationship with a man, it would end in some kind of dreadful tangle."
"But you dated."
"Yes, lots of men. But I always halted them before the final countdown."
"Poor suckers."
"Hey, the dates didn't come with a guarantee for goodies. It wasn't as though I made promises and then welshed. I didn't love any of them, so I didn't care if they read the signals wrong then ranted and raved, called me names, went away in a huff, and never asked me out again."
"But Lilah, the way you act, the way you talk, you can't blame a man for feeling manipulated if you don't come through."
"I guess not," she admitted. "But there was too much at stake. Everything I was, everything that makes me Lilah was at risk, and I just never thought it was a risk worth taking." Her gaze grew lambent. "At least, not until this afternoon. Now I know what I've been missing."
"Don't look at me like that, you little hustler. You should have gone into advertising. You sure as hell know how to package the product and launch a convincing campaign. You've turned a self-defense mechanism into an art form." His eyes moved over her, taking in the tousled hair, her lips, which were rouged by his kisses, the I'm-game-for-anything glint in her eyes. "God, you're sexy."
"You thought I was an easy lay."
"Certainly not easy," he said, chuckling, "but definitely worth the trouble." He pressed his palms over her derriere. "With your lusty nature you were loaded and primed. No wonder you were so quick to fire yesterday."
Lilah actually blushed. "What you were doing to me, I couldn't help it." His mouth spread into a wide grin. "Proud of yourself, are you, Cavanaugh? Well, don't get smug. As you've so ungallantly put it, I was primed. Any man could have pulled the trigger."
"But you didn't let any other man," he reminded her softly. "You let me. Why?"
Smoothing his eyebrow with the pad of her thumb, she thoughtfully considered her answer. "Maybe I knew you'd be grateful for a guinea pig and wouldn't mind my amateur performance. In fact, I knew you'd feel more self-confident with an amateur."
"You're no amateur. You're a natural. I feel sorry for all those poor slobs who tried to bed you and failed. But I'm glad they did."
He cupped the back of her head and forced her face down to his. With their lips pressed together hard, his tongue boldly entered her mouth. He separated her thighs with caressing hands. His touch was delicate and deliberate and deadly to her senses.
"Adam," she said on a ragged sigh, "can we do it again? Once more with feeling."