Page 48 of A Vow to Set the Virgin Free

“Romance, Athena. I have not ever had one bit of it in my soul. Even less of it now.”

“I don’t believe that. A man who wishes to return to Paris before doing anything else must have a bit of romance in him.”

“Or he likes a croissant.”

She couldn’t help herself. She laughed. Because it was true, he did like a croissant. And he made them with the expertise of someone who had been trained in fine French pastry.

She may not have been very many places, but there had always been fine food at her father’s compound, so she was educated on the subject.

The food that Cameron made surpassed anything she had had her father’s world-renowned chefs make for them.

“All right. Perhaps that’s all. But do you not like the art here? The architecture?”

“Of course.”

“What is that if not romance?”

“Just an extension of lust, I would think.”

That made her heart hit hard against her chest.

“Are you particularly lustful?” she asked, whispering, her lips suddenly feeling full. Obvious. She swallowed and shifted in her seat.

“That is not a road you want to go down.”

“It isn’t?”

“No. You did not listen to me when I told you how it was, because you don’t wish to believe me,” he rested his elbow on the window, his chin on his knuckles. “You should, I have seen many things, and done most of them. When you spoke of experiences you wished to have, you said romance. You did not say sex.”

She felt edgy, embarrassed. Her heart was thundering and she knew her cheeks were pink, so she determinedly looked out her own window. “Don’t they go together?”

He laughed. Hard and bitter, and she did not know why it made her feel hot.

“No, little goddess. They don’t. Lust is selfish. It is all about satisfaction. It is all about the fulfillment of a very base, rough need. It can be over in seconds with no fanfare at all. It is not romance. Its neighbor is greed, not love. Make no mistake of that.”

She did not know why she was pushing the subject. Except she couldn’t get the way she had felt when they danced out of her head. Couldn’t get the way she’d felt speaking those vows to him from echoing in her soul.

She felt confused. By all of this. Because she had escaped her father’s compound, and had gone from one cage to another, and yet here she was now, in Paris, in the next phase of that. And she did not feel like Cameron’s prisoner. She had gotten to know him these past couple of weeks. She did not feel like his prisoner at all.

He was the first man she had met outside the compound, surely, she should know that meant her feelings were skewed.

He was monstrous. His scars were not something that could be called minor, nor could they be considered something easy to overlook.

He was not handsome. He was not beautiful. He had been once. But his looks were gone. Ruined. Twisted.

And yet.

She had heard the term sex appeal before. She understood it now.

He was feral. Strong. Large.

All things that appealed to her. There was a rugged masculinity to his being that ignited the femininity within her.

His hands were rough, and the way they held her could be gentle.

The paradox of it intrigued her.

She knew that her feelings were improbable. She knew that they would lead her into trouble. She knew that it was impossible.

---