Virginblood (Seven Brides for Seven Bastards, 4) Read Online Free PDF Page A

that when
they were afraid of thinking too much.
    Ram propped his shoulder against a
beam and watched the autumn sunlight playing over her long, thick
braid.
    "I suppose I must apologize for
yesterday," he managed finally. "When I...found you in the
barn."
    That apparently surprised her so much
she almost fell off her stool. Two blue eyes were raised slowly in
shock and doubt. "Why would you apologize to me?" She scowled and
her fingers clamped tighter around the wooden plunger. "What do you
want, Ramon?"
    He laughed. "More of the same? Much
more."
    She sighed in disgust, shook her head
and resumed churning.
    "Can a man not apologize without
having his motives questioned, little one?"
    "Not when he is a d'Anzeray." Thump,
thump, thump went the plunger.
    Ram crouched beside her and
immediately saw her stiffening. "I should not have frightened you,"
he said. "For that I am sorry."
    "You did not frighten me." She kept
her gaze on her work, but sunlight shimmered over her down swept
lashes and dusted them with gold. He thought how soft they must be.
Like the rest of her. Delicate, but not fragile.
    "How did it make you feel then, little
one?" he ventured.
    "Angry!"
    "Even when I suckled the juice of your
dainty peach?"
    She flushed scarlet. "Yes. Angry." Her
bottom slid sideways to perch gingerly on the far side of her
stool.
    Annoyed, frustrated, he stood and
leaned against the beam again, arms folded over his chest. How did
one seduce a determined, stubborn virgin who thought pleasure was a
sin? Ramon had no experience with virgins.
    "I don't believe you were still angry
when you came with my tongue inside you," he muttered
crossly.
    "That was merely my body," she
replied. "My body acts one way and my mind another. I can't—" Her
words stumbling to a halt, as if she thought she'd said too much,
Jeanne got on with her work.
    "You're wrong, little one.
Your mind tells your body what to do and feel. Your mind plays a
role just as important when you climax." Suddenly he pushed away
from the beam and tried to snatch the plunger from her hands. She
clung on, so they were both holding it, his fingers close to hers.
"If your mind worked separately, your body would be like this
butter churn, an object with a purpose to serve but no way to do it
until someone lays hands upon it, makes it move. But we are human
beings and we move of our own accord, because our mind tells us to
do it." He leaned down to her. She was very still, breathing hard.
Ram's lips were almost on her brow. "Some people like to pretend
their mind had nothing to do with it, because then they think they
are absolved of any so-called sin their bodies commit. But they are fools, Jeanne,
and they lie to themselves."
    She blinked, and he was close enough
to feel the breeze of her lashes on his unshaven jaw. Or he
imagined it, perhaps.
    "It is all one, Jeanne. Body and heart
and mind and soul. What one feels they all feel. What one does they
all do." He straightened up, still holding the plunger with her.
"Don't blame your body for what your mind wants."
    "Thank you for the lesson," she
replied, her voice curt but slightly breathless. "But you should
not assume that my mind and my body work the same as yours. We are
very different people."
    He groaned and released the plunger to
her tenacious grip. "Have it your way, wench. If you want to remain
miserable and trapped by fear of your own desires, so be
it."
    "As your brother said yesterday, you
make your choices in life and I should be allowed to make my
own."
    But it was not in his nature to give
up. Neither was it the d'Anzeray way to let a stubborn woman win an
argument. She was too young and naive of course to know that his
brother, Domingo, had plans of his own for her.
    "I can prove to you that your mind is
just as easily roused as your body, Jeanne."
    She glowered at him, but the woman was
curious. He saw it in the tremble of her plump lower lip, the
tightening of her fingers, the catch of breath in her throat. Ram
may