Gift of Gold

brief struggles and pinned her close against him, his face in her hair.
    “I’m sorry, honey. I didn’t mean that. I should have kept my damn mouth shut.”
    He could smell himself on her, Jonas realized as he pulled her close. The acrid scent combined with the lingering fragrance of her feminine arousal made him pulsatingly conscious of the claim he had staked tonight. He could not yet explain to Verity the mental bond that linked them or why he needed her to preserve his sanity. She wouldn’t believe him, let alone understand what he was trying to say. All he could do was reinforce the physical and emotional bonds he had forged tonight. And there were definitely such bonds between them whether she wanted to admit it or not. She would never have gone to bed with him if she hadn’t wanted him very badly.
    Hell, he told himself encouragingly, the woman had waited twenty-eight years to go to bed with a man. Surely she must have felt something very powerful for him.
    “Jonas, I feel like I’ve been through a wringer. I don’t know what to think.” Her voice was muffled against his chest.
    He clenched his hands in the wonderful fire of her hair. “I know, honey. I didn’t handle this very well. I should have told you who I was right from the start. But you wouldn’t have believed me then, either. In fact, you probably would have been even more suspicious of me if I’d shown up on your doorstep and announced I’d followed you from Mexico. I didn’t know how to play it, so I tried to keep things low-key. I wanted us to get to know each other. Was that so wrong?”
    “No, I suppose not, but I still don’t know what to believe. It’s all very strange.”
    “It will look a lot less strange in the morning,” he assured her. “I promise. You’re just shook up now because you’ve been through a brand-new experience tonight and you’re still coming to terms with it.” The new sexual experience was only part of the package, he thought. Wait until she realized that she hadn’t been hallucinating earlier when she’d entered that psychic corridor. But he’d leave that for another time.
    “Does it take a lot to come to terms with the experience of going to bed with someone?” she demanded tartly, sounding more like her old self.
    Jonas winced. “I didn’t exactly make your first time a fantasy come true, did I? I was in a rush and I was clumsy.
    It’s been a long, long time since I’ve been to bed with a woman, and maybe I…Never mind. Let’s just say I’m aware I made a hash of things.”
    Her head came up so quickly Jonas almost got his chin cracked. Her eyes appeared very wide and deep and feminine in the darkness.
    “Jonas, you mustn’t think that. I thought your lovemaking was very,” she paused, obviously searching for the right word, “interesting,” she finished quite earnestly.
    “
Interesting?
”
Jonas stared at her, chagrined, and then his sense of humor kicked in. He hugged her fiercely for a few seconds. “That’s my Verity. Honest to the core. Interesting, huh? Thanks, boss. You really know how to bolster the old male ego.”
    “But, Jonas,” she went on hesitantly.
    “What is it, sweetheart?”
    “I really don’t understand the rest of this. It’s very hard for me to believe you actually followed me all this way just because you caught a glimpse of me that night outside the cantina. Men just don’t do things like that in this day and age, regardless of what they might have done four hundred years ago in the Renaissance. And this business of having my father show up unexpectedly is unsettling, too. I want some time to think about everything.”
    Jonas stilled. He didn’t like the idea of giving Verity a lot of time to think. On the other hand, he didn’t see what else he could do under the circumstances. “We’ll talk more in the morning,” he temporized. He found her breast beneath the sheet she insisted upon clutching. When he touched her nipple he felt it harden instantly. “Plenty of time in the morning,” he muttered, his voice growing thicker as his body flamed into awareness. She was so soft and sweet, he thought. And she belonged to him now. So damn sexy. He’d really lucked out. For the first time in five years, he had finally lucked out.
    “Jonas...”
    “I’ll do it right this time,” he vowed. “We’ll take it easy. Lots of time. No rush. I swear I won’t hurt you. You’ll see. This time it’s going to be so good between us.”
    “Jonas, I