Gift of Gold

him.”
    “He’d take you in a hot second if he thought he could get you into bed.”
    Verity nearly choked.
“
What?
Are you serious, Jonas?” She was shocked. “I’m not his type at all.”
    “Yes, you are,” Jonas said thoughtfully. “A man like Kincaid has a lot of types, and one of them would be the bright-eyed, fresh, wholesome type. Just the type to cleanse the palate after a surfeit of sophistication and glamour. You don’t know how perpetually innocent you look, honey. There’s a genuineness about you that makes a man think you’d hold nothing back if he could just get you into bed. If I hadn’t been around, I have a hunch Kincaid might have tried to seduce you. If you were still a virgin and he had known it, I would probably have had to use that dagger on him to keep him away from you. Not because he had fallen for one Verity Ames on sight, but because he’s the kind of creep who gets off on the idea of seducing virgins. Hell, the main reason I pulled that stunt with the dagger was that I wanted to get his attention off you. I knew that for him, the idea that he might have been conned would be a whole lot more important than any woman.”
    Verity was stunned. She stared at Jonas, open-mouthed in astonishment. “Do you really believe that Damon was attracted to me?”
    “Don’t look so dumbfounded. I’m a man. Give me some credit for being able to judge the members of my own species. And like I said, it wasn’t you, the person, that attracted him; it was you, the sweetly smiling innocent, he wanted.”
    “Dammit, I am not an innocent!” She frowned fiercely and touched the tip of her nose. “Maybe it’s the freckles that give people that impression.”
    Jonas chuckled indulgently, bent his head, and kissed her parted lips with quick, hard possessiveness. “I find it very reassuring to know we’re highly unlikely to ever run into Damon Kincaid again. The truth is, I’m glad you live here at Sequence Springs, where the population of available males is, according to your friend Laura, as limited as hen’s teeth.”
    Verity shook her head in amazement. “Well, I’ll be darned. Damon Kincaid. Who would have thought…?”
    “Don’t get any ideas,” Jonas interrupted dryly. “I can see I should have kept my mouth shut. Now I suppose your female ego will be inflated to triple its normal large size. I should have known better than to do anything to stroke it.”
    Verity smiled brilliantly and nuzzled close to Jonas. “Actually, there are other portions of my anatomy that I wouldn’t mind having stroked.”
    Jonas smiled slowly, a sexy grin. “Is that right? You must tell me exactly where, my sweet, in great detail.”
    Verity forced back a blush. She still wasn’t accustomed to all the freewheeling, sensual nuances of Jonas’s lovemaking. “You already know where,” she said, her lips against his chest.
    His arm closed around her and he lifted her onto his thighs. “I want the words, honey. I love it when you talk dirty.”
    “Pervert.”
    “You love it,” he said confidently.
    Not only that,
Verity thought wistfully,
I think
I
love you, too. What am I going to do when you leave, Jonas?
But she didn’t say those words. Instead, when she felt his hand part her legs under the water, she gave him the words he wanted to hear. Words that begged, promised, cajoled, and pleaded. Jonas drank them from her lips while his hand moved in precise response to her every command.
    When she tried to wriggle around so that he could enter her, Jonas held her still.
    “Not so fast, love. Verity is the spice of life,” he said. “I’m going to show you just how spicy you can be.” Then his long fingers moved inside her, probing the narrow, warm passage until she was shuddering in his arms. Her legs tightened around his hand and he laughed softly.
    “So hot,” he whispered as he leaned down to kiss one nipple that projected above the surface of the water. “Clean, hot, honest fire. Burn for me, baby.”
    And she did, until she was a trembling, twisting wanton in his arms, a woman who craved the man who could do such things to her. When he thrust his tongue into her mouth and simultaneously thrust two fingers deeply, slowly into her body, Verity cried out. He held her tightly as she convulsed delightfully in his arms.
    “Now we’ll go back to your cabin and I’ll get my turn,” he announced, heaving himself up out of the water with Verity cradled against his chest.
    She looked down