At three-and-twenty and—according to her mother—apparently on the shelf, Iona believed herself knowledgeable in the subtle games of seduction men and women played. It was the duty of a proper young lady to understand such things so she would be better able to guard her virtue against them, wasn’t it? Unscrupulous gentlemen would rob a careless maiden of her virtue, if given the opportunity. And according to the whispers in the ton, no gentleman rivaled Lord Nathan Wynter when it came to rakish and unscrupulous behavior. Gracious, and he was living up to his rather scandalous reputation by taking advantage of her damp and nearly naked state and kissing her with a lover’s familiarity. She wasn’t certain if the erotic things he’d done with his tongue and lips to her mouth could even be called kissing. The way he’d moved his body against her while his lips suckled hers was so very different from anything she had ever experienced that she suddenly felt as unsophisticated as a wide-eyed chit still cosseted in her schoolroom.
