Page 58 of The Truth About Myths
"Absolutely not!"
"Do you prefer me to call someone?"
"Do not dare leave me," she blurted and took a deep breath. "You very well know I cannot be seen like this."
"Just relax." Grinning, he straddled her legs.
When his groin grazed her thighs, an animal sound escaped his chest. Or it came from her.
He reached behind her neck, his hands working her tangled hair.
Isabel shut her eyes firmly. The chill vanished as his body gave off the heat of a furnace. She tingled unbearably. He emanated a scent of earth, pines, and rain. This close, she could see the stubble breaching his tanned cheek and the contrast of his shirt with the rough skin of his neck. What would that abrasiveness feel against her lips?
"It's worse than I thought. I'll have to…" He bent forward, his chest coming in contact with hers.
She dug her fingers into the earth to keep from embracing him. They were in the open, protected only by a meager, treacherous fly, but her body cared not, wanting closer, resenting the cloth layers separating them.
Something shifted against her belly, a rugged ridge. It took her a second to realize the culprit, and she sucked in a breath as a wave of heat turned her legs into dough.
He made a sound like water dripping over heated stones. "Just ignore him."
Warmth colored her cheeks. "Is your male part always this unruly?"
"Male part? It has a name. Several, actually, and each less unflattering than 'male part'. You can't go wrong with the classic cock, dick, of course, penis—"
"Must be the sign of the times," she said, her cheeks burning. "Me, a princess from Portugal, depending on a rake's help with a penchant for vulgar vocabulary."
He paused and eyed her with interest, the frown he used for scientific discussions. "Don't you want to know how it goes? Between a man and a woman?"
"Why?"
"So, when the time is right, you can take pleasure in the act."
"Pleasure? Don't be absurd. Respectable ladies are expected to endure the marriage bed to produce offspring. It is only the male who craves such things."
"If women allowed themselves to experience pleasure, husbands wouldn't be so inclined to find it outside the marriage bed."
Isabel peeked at the place between them. "What if the problem is physical?” The image of Priapus floated inside her mind, and she quickly gazed away. "How could it possibly fit?"
He stopped working on her hair and considered her for a flustered moment. Then he plucked a bloom from the vine covering the shag. "This is perfect for an anatomical demonstration. The blue pea flower has two petals, an upside down heart-shaped one and a smaller one at the top, like a monk's hood."
He assumed a professor-like tone, and Isabel leaned closer despite the absurdity of being lectured among mud and snares.
"You must be pleased with yourself, are you not? Having a captive audience to your rumblings."
He shrugged. "The bluebell has a similar design to the female genitalia."
Isabel's eyes widened, and she could not muster a single retort. She hadn't peeped down there. Still, the flower looked delicate and lurid in his hands.
"If this were a vagina, this would be the labia majora." He trailed his index finger from the top of the outside petal down to the bottom.
The pitter-patter of the rain faded, replaced by her strained breaths, too loud for her ears. The ancient wood, the cicadas, and the towering temple dissolved into blurred brown. All she saw were long, overly-long fingers and a blue flower coming alive under his touch.
Her body trembled, and she licked her lip. The heat of his chest and thighs seeped into her, leaving her breathless. He caressed the flower's left side—slow, impossibly slow. The hairs on her nape and arms lifted, and she felt phantom fingers flirting on her skin. Heat flooded her as the threads connecting them thickened, spreading like vines until she didn’t exist apart from him. She should push him away. Risking baldness, she should rip her hair from the snare, place both her palms on his chest and shove.
If he noticed her agitation, he ignored it. His voice, smoky, husky, contrasted with the scientific quality of his words. "When a male wishes to perform intercourse with a female, he will caress her intimate lips and kiss them."
Henrique's lips were firm and so movable in his words and grins. How would it feel? This shocking kiss?
