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Page 236
question, only a pleased, slightly flattered curiosity. "Because with any other woman it would be false, an unnatural thing. They belong in their cushioned chairs and their pillowed, scented beds. Only you belong here, with the perfumes of the warm earth, the crushed grass, and the sweet wind."
For a little while Rhiannon was silent. She was deeply pleased that Simon found something special about her, and she did not doubt his sincerity. Still, her irrepressible sense of mischief could not long be submerged. "But Simon," she said, "if you think it will be unnatural to make love to me in a bed, we are going to find it very inconvenient. You know how often it is rainy for days at a time here, and in the winter when it snowsugh!"
The last guttural sound was not an expression of distaste for making love in the wet, cold snow but an involuntary grunt forced out when Simon flipped over and landed on top of her with a thud.
"Wood nymph!" he exclaimed triumphantly, without difficulty defeating her effort to cast him off. "That is the thing that was in the back of my mind. And it is true, too. You have no heart. Wood nymphs were said to have had no souls and to be very lecherous. That was the purpose of capturing them, I suppose."
This sounded very severe, but since the words were interspersed with kisses, Rhiannon was scarcely crushed, except by Simon's weight. "Better call me a river nymph," she said in a rather muffled voice, "for if you do not get off me, I will be squashed flat as a rush."
Simon left off kissing her throat and nibbling her ear to murmur, "You do not deny the lechery?"
Ten seconds before, she would have done so. As wonderful as she had found her first mating, Rhiannon simply had not thought of repeating the experience immediately. Now warmth flowed through her from wherever Simon's lips touched, and when she felt the

 
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