The Tycoon's Temporary Bride: Book Four (16 page)

“Why didn’t you peek?”

“I was afraid.”

“Of being expelled?”

“Of burning in everlasting fire. I was afraid
of even touching myself, except to bathe, and…” Her voice trailed
off as her gaze returned almost spontaneously to the area of his
groin.

Adam’s gaze followed hers to the junction of
his thighs where his cock stood proud and tall, strutting its vigor
and power like a royal ambassador. It seemed to be applauding her
for finally relinquishing her fears, challenging her to take the
next step and dance with him in the flames of passion until they
both incinerated into ashes. “How does it make you feel to look at
a naked man, Tashi? To look at me, specifically?” he asked.

She shifted from one foot to the other and
moved her camera case from her left to right shoulder as if its
weight had suddenly become too much for her to bear. “It makes me
feel funny.”

Adam cleared the croak from his throat.
Standing here talking to innocent Tashi about sex and nudity was
the biggest turn-on he’d ever experienced. His cock had never been
so hard. The way it was palpitating against his stomach like a
restless serpent ready to strike should scare her, but she seemed
rather fascinated with it.

From what he could remember from his Sunday
School lessons, Eve hadn’t been scared of the serpent in the Garden
of Eden, either. She’d been enthralled by it. “Funny how?” he asked
in a throaty voice. “Can you describe how you feel?”

She licked her lips and folded her arms
around her stomach as a shudder shook her slender frame. “Warm and
tingly,” she said, her gaze moving slowly up his body to his eyes.
“Maybe hot, and jittery. My breasts feel swollen, my nipples are
hard and achy, and I—” She licked her lips again. “I feel thirsty
and empty, yet full, and I have this ache, this throbbing deep
inside me like an earthquake is happening in the very core of my
being. “And…” She dropped her gaze to his bare feet nestled in the
green grass.

Adam’s throat tightened as he watched her
chest heave. “And what?” He could hardly speak.

“My panties are wet. I’ve never felt like
this before—before I met you.”

A sharp pang ripped through Adam’s gut.
Did she have to be so honest, so forthright with her
feelings?
He inhaled deeply and sharply, fisted his hands at
his sides, and closed his eyes to control the yearning rolling
through him. When his breathing steadied, he opened his eyes to see
her staring up at him with curious wonder in her emerald eyes.

“Do you want to take off your panties, Tashi?
I mean since they’re wet and all.”
Why did that sound so
perverted to him
? Dear God, she was a virgin, and he shouldn’t,
but seeing that she was his soul mate, it was only natural that
they begin exploring the intimate aspects of their
relationship.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“I’ve seen you naked, Tashi. I’ve bathed you.
I’ve touched you on more than one occasion.” He wanted to touch her
again. Intimately. Not as a caregiver, nursing her back to health,
but as a lover, teaching her about the joys and passions of
lovemaking, helping her explore the depths of her own desires,
alleviating the aches, the throbs, the tingles and heat she’d just
described to him.

She trembled on a sigh. “This is different,
though. You might want to do things, things I might not be ready
for.”

She was ready
, physically, at least.
She just didn’t know it, and wouldn’t know it until her mind, her
heart, and her soul caught up with the longings in her body. Every
aspect of her being had to be in total harmony before she could
experience maximum and ultimate pleasure and fulfillment. Tashi was
as chaste as an angel. An angel that had fallen from heaven and
into his arms—literally. Because of her innocence, he would have to
tread carefully with her. Too much, too soon and she could be
turned off forever.

“We’ll only do what you want, what you’re
comfortable with. Nothing else,” he said. “We’ve had sixteen dates
in the past week. Most people are in bed by their third date. This
is just the next phase in our emerging relationship.”

She stiffened at the words “emerging
relationship” and her lips quivered as she gazed at him, wide-eyes.
In the past week that he’d been studying her, Adam had learned to
decipher sudden changes in her mood. The tension in her body, the
dread in her eyes suggested that she was scared, not of him, but
for him.

The imminent danger of her circumstances
suddenly flooded Adam’s being, reminding him that she was running
and hiding from some bad people who wanted to harm her. People who
were prepared to kill anyone who stood in the way of what they
wanted: her.

He could tell her that she need not be
afraid, but he knew those words would be meaningless to her. He had
to show her that she could trust him in all areas of their
relationship. She’d trusted him as a caregiver, and now she must
learn to trust him as a friend—a friend with whom she need not
project pretense, caution, or hesitation. They had to learn and
grow together as one unit, and the only way they’d know the true
essence of their souls was if they bared themselves, emotionally,
psychologically, and physically to each other.

There should be no secrets between them, but
there should be explicit consent. Tashi had grown up with
philosophies about the human body that were vastly different from
his. Adam had no desire to convert or steer her away from those
teachings, but if she wanted to explore the wellspring of her
sexuality, he would be delighted to be her guide.

“Do you want to get naked with me, Tashi?”
His gaze held hers, willing her to take the first step into the
unknown, feed her curiosity and explore another realm of the
complexity that comprised Tashi Holland. Her name wasn’t Eve, but
the vision they would create couldn’t be more allegorical—Adam and
his woman, completely naked, and one with nature in their own
Garden of Eden.

Her lips parted as if she wanted to say
something, but no words came out.

“Do you trust me, Tashi?”

She shifted her weight again, her irises a
kaleidoscope of bluish-green hues as she fought the war between
submission to the yearnings in her body and subservience to her
past.

Finally she nodded. “Okay. Yes, I—I trust
you, and I—I want to get naked with you.”

Heat whipped through Adam as she caught her
bottom lip between her teeth. His skin tingled as he imagined her
nibbling on his flesh, ever so daintily. “I promise to go only as
far as you wish. You can stop me at any time. Okay?”

She gave him a demure smile—half consent,
half trepidation.

Finally, he’d have the honor and the pleasure
to enjoy the sight of Tashi’s exquisite body as she peeled each
layer of clothing away. He’d still have to wait—he hoped not too
long—to caress the silkiness of her skin, mold the delectable
curves he’d recently noticed developing under her clothes, revel in
visions of her lying in his arms—sated, damp, and quivering after
they’d ridden the high tide of desire together, over and over
again.

When he’d undressed her before, she’d been
half-conscious with no desire or strength to stop him. Today, he
wanted her to undress herself, to be fully aware of what she was
doing, even if she wasn’t certain of why she was doing it. Even
though he’d seen her naked before, it felt to Adam like it would be
the first time.

To aid her introduction into his uninhibited
world of nudity and intimacy, Adam reached out and slid her camera
case off her shoulders and set it down on the slab of granite.
“Take off your clothes, Tashi.”

She glanced around the perimeter of the
garden, spanning the tress as if she expected her uncle or her
educators to float down from the branches and reprimand her for
being naughty, prurient, for being charmed by the serpent.

“There’s no one here but us. It’s just you
and me. I promise not to touch you until you’re completely naked.
Then, and only then, will I know that you’re ready to explore these
feelings of desire you’ve been experiencing.”

Adam’s heart began to beat wildly and
furiously against his chest as Tashi’s hands crept up her body
toward her throat where her pulse vibrated violently against her
skin. He sucked air into his lungs when her slender fingers closed
over the top button of her shirt.

What are you doing? Have you lost your
mind? Your uncle is turning over in his grave to see what you’ve
become
.

Quieting the censoring voices that had been
governing her thoughts, crowding her mind, suppressing her desires
to explore the sexual titillations she’d been experiencing since
she hit puberty, Tashi kept her gaze locked with Adam’s as she
undid the first, second, and then third buttons of her shirt.

She could almost feel the doors of her soul
bursting open, freeing the sheltered girl who had been locked away
in a prison of proselytization for most of her life. That naïve
girl, cloaked in decadence seemed starved for her first taste of
forbidden pleasure. She could see her unfolding before her eyes,
rising from the darkness, pushing to her feet, and reaching her
fingers upward toward the light of her inner universe—becoming a
woman with needs and expectations.

Tashi couldn’t say that she resented her
uncle for the way he’d raised her. In fact, she appreciated that
he’d shielded her, and that he’d sent her to schools that demanded
chastity and celibacy. With a less strict upbringing, she might
have ended up like Mindy—teenage and pregnant, or she could have
become an unwed mother like her own mother, struggling to take care
of a young child, alone. Perhaps that’s what her uncle had been
afraid of most—that she would become her mother. That’s why he’d
stopped calling her Little Eve.

What Tashi wished was that her educators had
been a little more open-minded and forthright about a young girl’s
developing body, about the hormones running wild inside her,
instead of teaching her that her awakening arousal was bad, even
evil to a point. Teach her instead that her desires were normal,
and that one day she would meet a man—that one special man—with
whom she would want to explore those feelings and find fulfillment
of the most delicate form.

That special man for Tashi was Adam, the man
who’d save her life, and in whose presence Little Eve felt safe and
treasured enough to emerge from the shadows where her uncle had
shoved her, eighteen years ago.

Little Eve loved the sight of the man before
her—his elegantly chiseled cheekbones and straight nose, his rosy
lips forever curled on the edge of laughter, and his sharp chin
that spoke of distinction and dominance. Little Eve loved the wispy
mat of hair on his chest and stomach that extended into a thicker
thatch at his groin, then thinned out again on his thighs and
legs.

The last button undone, Tashi slid the shirt
off her shoulders, down her arms, and let it slither to the grass
behind her. She inhaled sharply as the cool summer breeze—charged
with the electricity from the force of the waterfalls—caressed the
skin of her arms, her chest, and quivering stomach. It whispered of
the wanton thrills awaiting her.

You’ll burn, Tashi. You’ll burn…

Tashi tossed her head in defiance and sighed
deeply as her long curls brushed against her shoulders and across
the curve of her back—tickling her. Extending her arms out at her
sides and throwing her head back, she closed her eyes and rotated
her neck from side to side ever so slowly, and welcomed the nascent
sensations nursing her arousal.

Never had she imagined that something as
simple as her own hair brushing against her skin could send jitters
up and down her spine. Perhaps she’d been aware all along but
because she’d been programmed not to respond to anything slightly
sexual, she’d ignored the elusive stimulation. If her own hair
could induce such titillation, she could just imagine the fire
Adam’s silky mane trailing up and down her naked body could evoke
in her.

She hoped to burn until the thirst and the
hunger inside her were assuaged, until there was nothing but ashes
left of her. Her head began to sway as if to its own music—a secret
melody her soul had composed eons ago. Picking up the tempo, her
body began to rock from side to side, undulating on a weightless
wave.

“Tashi.”

The whisper of her name brought Tashi
floating back to shore. Her lids fluttered open to find Adam
staring at her. His eyes were ablaze with a sensuous flame, his
sexy mouth pulsing with the promise of the passion that could be
hers if she dared to reach out and ask for it.

She wanted it. Her gaze slid across his
aristocratic face, brimming with gentleness, kindness, and
strength. It was a face she hadn’t known she’d been searching for
her entire life. It said nothing, yet everything she’d ever want to
hear. For the first time since they’d met, Tashi didn’t feel shy
about openly admiring Adam, gazing unabashed into his eyes, feeling
the magic pulling her down into the enchanting chasm of the blue
oasis of his soul. In the past week, she’d stolen glances at him
while they ate their meals together, but each time he’d met her
gaze, she’d averted hers, but not before she’d caught his smile
that seemed to say,
Don’t look away. I enjoy your furtive
glances
.

Today, Tashi felt different, reborn, like
everything she’d known about herself up to this point in her life
had been false. She felt as if she was meeting the real Tashi
Evelyn Holland for the first time. She liked her—this serenely
wild, slightly adventurous young girl who was eager to enter the
new and unfamiliar cosmos unfolding before her eyes.

Little Eve had found her Adam, her light, her
guide, the man who could teach her how to dance and play, laugh and
revel in this numinous place where no one or nothing could hurt
her.