“Then why didn’t I belong to you three weeks ago? Why did you leave and not come back? I’ll tell you why,” Tess went on before he had a chance to answer, “because those kisses meant no more to you than eating a chocolate bar. You found them pleasant, but not enough to buy the candy store.”
“You expected marriage after one kiss?” His derision hit her on the raw.
“You’re deliberately misunderstanding me. I didn’t say anything of the kind. You’re the one who has been rabbiting on about me belonging to you because of an inconsequential kiss.” She said.
“Hardly inconsequential. I could have had you and you would not have murmured so much as a protest.”
Oh. She wanted to scream. “No doubt your skills in the area of seduction are stellar, but what does that signify? With my limited experience in the area, any man with a halfway decent knowledge of a woman’s reactions could have affected me just as strongly.”
She didn’t believe it for a minute, but Dash’s conceit was staggering. His assertion she would not have protested him taking her to bed might be true, but it was also demeaning. And she wanted to put him in his place.
“You think this?” he demanded, his eyes terrifying in their feral intensity. “Perhaps you intend to experiment with this friend of yours, this David?”
A tactical retreat was called for. “No. I don’t want to experiment with anybody, including you.”
He didn’t look even remotely appeased by her denial.
Good judgment required she not dwell on this particular argument. “I am merely trying to point out that kissing me didn’t give you any rights over me. If all the women you kissed belonged to you, you’d have a bigger harem than any Arabian prince in history.”
Instead of looking insulted by her indictment of his character, he appeared pleased by her assessment of his masculinity. The fury in his expression faded.
“You are different than the other women I have known.” He said.
“Known being a discreet euphemism, I assume?” She replied. She thought of all the beautiful women he had been photographed with for scandal rags and society pages. It left a hollow place where her heart should have been beating and it made her doubly determined to deny him any claim to her loyalty. “Only you haven’t known me and I don’t belong to you.”
“This crudeness is not becoming.”
She couldn’t deny it. Crude was not her style and she’d probably blush with embarrassment later, but right now she was fighting the effect he had on her with every weapon at her disposal. “Neither is a dogin-the-manger possessiveness.” She retorted.
“What is this canine in a stable?”
She stared at him. Canine in a stable? Suddenly the humor of the situation overcame her. She started to laugh. Here she was arguing with Mr. Cool himself that he didn’t have any hold on her when she wanted more than anything for him to claim her as his own. She was nuts, but then so was he.
“You find me amusing?” He didn’t look happy about the possibility.
She grabbed at her self-control and reined in her laughter, humor that had taken on a slightly hysterical twinge. “It’s not you. It’s this situation. Don’t you think it’s funny that you’re standing here asserting rights over me you can’t possibly want?” she asked.
“If I assert them, I want them,” was his arrogant rejoinder.
All the humor fled, hysterical or otherwise, and she swallowed the words that would beg him to repeat what he’d just said. He simply could not mean it the way she wanted him to.
“This isn’t about me. This is about David and your reaction to him. You acted like two dogs fighting over a bone back at the Parthenon. Now, you are trying to bury the bone, not because you really want it, but because you don’t want him to have it. Well, I’m not going to stay buried just to please your sense of male superiority.”
She’d spent most of her life in the background and she was tired of it. Why the realization should come now, she didn’t know and she didn’t care. Dash didn’t really want her. He wanted to one-up David. She wasn’t entirely sure about David’s motives, but that wasn’t the issue. The issue was her life and what she was going to do with it.
The simple answer was live it.
On her terms.
Starting now.
“I’m going back to my hotel. You can have your chauffeur drive me or I can catch a cab, but I’m ready to leave.” She said.
Her determination must have gotten through to him because his jaw tightened, but he nodded. “I will return you to your hotel.”
“There is no need for you to accompany me.”
“There is every need,” he growled.
Since she was getting her way about leaving, she decided not to argue about this. If he wanted to waste his time riding in the limo with her to see her to her hotel, then let him. She was also through trying to protect everyone but herself from being put upon.
The ride back to her hotel happened in silence. Dash was too angry to talk without giving away the state of his emotions and no way was he going to allow her to know the extent of her effect on him. Shy she might be. Innocent sexually, even. But still she was a woman and emotions were the weapons of choice for the female of the species.
He could not believe the turn the evening had taken. He had thought after their kiss, she would recognize his claim on her. Her assertion that she did not belong to him had both shocked and enraged him. His quiet little kitten had claws and an independence he would not have suspected.
He needed to rethink his campaign. The time limit her father had set was fast approaching. He had to get her agreement soon in order to have sufficient weeks to plan a wedding.
Tess reached out to open the door the minute the car stopped. Dash allowed her to exit the car without protest, but he followed her.
She turned, her pansy eyes widening when she realized he was right behind her rather than seated safely in the car. She would not get rid of him so easily.