A Touch of Notoriety(49)

It might be necessary nowadays, but it was also damned humiliating. And embarrassing.

She sat back on her heels as she drew in a deep and ragged breath. ‘I’m clean, too, Raphael,’ she assured him dully.

He nodded. ‘You also have been checked in the last three months?’

‘I—’ Beth paused, chewing on her bottom lip for several seconds before answering him. Her own mood had certainly been ruined by this conversation, and she had a feeling that what she was about to say was going to kill all Raphael’s desire, too... ‘I’ve never been checked, Raphael. Because there’s never been a need for me to do so.’ Her chin rose as if in challenge.

It was Raphael’s turn to look at her blankly now, a frown appearing between his eyes as he watched Beth stand before picking up the towel she had discarded earlier, to once again wrap it firmly about her nakedness before fastening it tightly between her breasts.

‘I do not—’ That frown was erased as Raphael’s eyes widened incredulously. ‘Are you trying to tell me you are still a virgin?’

Her eyes flashed darkly. ‘I’m not “trying” to tell you anything, Raphael. I am telling you I’m still a virgin!’

‘A virgin,’ he repeated flatly, his incredulous gaze remaining fixed on her as he ran a hand agitatedly through the shortness of his thick dark hair.

Beth gave an annoyed frown at his reaction. ‘It’s unfashionable, I know,’ she drawled irritably. ‘But it isn’t exactly the contagious disease your tone seems to imply it is!’ He couldn’t have sounded more horrified if she had told him she had the plague!

Raphael stood up abruptly, totally unconcerned with his own nakedness as he moved around the bed to stand just feet away from her. Although Beth couldn’t help noticing that the fierceness of his erection had deflated somewhat, that beautiful shaft jutting out at half-mast rather than erectly flush with his navel.

‘You are a virgin,’ he repeated carefully.

‘Yes.’ Beth knew she sounded defensive, but she just couldn’t help it; Raphael was behaving as if she were a lumbering dinosaur in a world of elegant gazelles!

He gave a slow shake of his head. ‘And yet you were going to—minutes ago you were about to let me—’ His mouth firmed, his jaw tightening as his hands clenched into fists at his sides. ‘Beth, has no one told you that your virginity is a precious thing, and not to be given lightly?’

Lightly? Raphael believed—he thought she had made love with him out of curiosity, like some sort of childish flexing of her sexual powers?

She might have tried to avoid analysing her feelings for this man earlier, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t innately known what those feelings were. That somewhere, somehow, in amongst the hours they had spent arguing or annoying each other, and the hours she had spent denying she was Gabriela Navarro, she had managed to fall in love with him. Deeply, wildly, irrevocably in love. With Raphael Cardoba.

No doubt something else Raphael didn’t want to hear...

What a fool she was. What an absolute idiot, not to have realised before tonight what was happening to her. Not that she could have prevented herself from falling for Raphael; she knew falling in love wasn’t like that. She doubted her sister, Grace, would have fallen in love with a man as complicated as Cesar if it were! And now Beth had fallen in love with a man who was just as complicated. A man older and far more experienced than her. A man who seemed to have as many issues with his family as she had.

A man who had earlier made no secret of the fact that his interest in her was purely sexual...

Had been purely sexual.

Because Beth had no doubts that her admission of physical innocence had managed to kill even that.

‘—drive back there now—Beth, are you even listening to me?’ Raphael prompted hardly as he realised her attention had wandered elsewhere.

Although how she had managed to do that he had no idea, his own thoughts solely on the fact that he had almost taken her innocence tonight. He had thought that Beth, although perhaps not as experienced as he was, had at least been to bed with a man before tonight. The shock of realising she hadn’t, and that he had almost taken her innocence without thought or due consideration, would haunt him for a very long time.

As it was, he was furious. Not with Beth. But with himself. How could he have been so stupid not to have realised, not to have known, that she had never taken a lover before tonight?

Yes, Beth had an answer for everything. And yes, she gave every appearance of being a modern young woman with a definite mind of her own. And she had also been the one to inform him earlier that he either took up the offer to become her lover tonight or she would find another man who would. But even then, even then, she hadn’t given any indication that she had taken any previous lovers.