The Virgin Bride Said, 'Wow!'. Cathy Thacker Gillen

sighed in a way that let her know he had as many regrets as she did. He reached across the table and took both her hands in his. “I’m sorry, too.” He looked at her deliberately. “I scared you and I sure didn’t mean to do that. If you’d just told me you were a beginner…” His voice trailed off.

      Despite her desire to remain in peace-making mode, Kelsey couldn’t help the rise of temper insider her belly. He made her sound so inept. She tugged her hands out of his. “A beginner?”

      “A beginner in bed,” Brady corrected himself hastily. “Okay?”

      Kelsey frowned. She hated the fact he looked so at ease when she was still tied up in knots. “Well, if I am, it’s not for lack of trying this afternoon.”

      “If I had known how inexperienced you were,” Brady huffed in an irritated tone of voice Kelsey was beginning to know all too well, “I would have said no.”

      Kelsey rolled her eyes. “Exactly why I didn’t tell you,” Kelsey sassed right back, determined not to let him get the better of her in this or any other way.

      “But had I agreed,” Brady added as if she hadn’t spoken, continuing to look at her in a very sexy, very determined way, “I would have indoctrinated you slowly. I wouldn’t have rushed you into it. I would have—”

      “Seduced me?” Kelsey guessed hopefully as the two of them began to eat.

      “Yes.” Brady nodded.

      Abruptly, Kelsey’s mind was filled with images of the two of them in bed. All night. “Well, we could still do that,” Kelsey murmured offhandedly, her curiosity mounting as her innate recklessness took over once again and pushed her to explore this life to its limits. What would it have been like, she wondered, if she hadn’t panicked, but instead had regained her courage and let Brady’s hand move lower, more intimately still? Would he have made love to her, the way he had wanted to make love to her? Would they still be in her bed now? Despite her fear, she tingled just thinking about the possibility of losing her virginity with Brady. Here. Now. Tonight. After all, he was her husband….

      Brady, who was still watching her intently, guessed at the nature of her thoughts and made a rude, guffawing sound in the back of his throat. “Oh, no, Kelse. Not on your life are we trying that again.”

      Kelsey’s brows knitted together in consternation. The disaster this afternoon aside, she had never been one to give up on anything she really wanted, and neither, she sensed, had Brady.

      “Why not?” she asked. Wasn’t that what you were supposed to do when you fell off a horse, so to speak? Get back on?

      Brady took a thirsty gulp of his drink and forked up some tender beef. “Because I am not all that fond of sexual torture and cold showers, that’s why not.”