"No no no no!" Bertie said, eyes wide. "It's not that at all! You're lovely. One of the loveliest people I've ever seen. It's just...I just..."

He didn't like putting it in such stark terms, because it made him feel like a very bad person indeed. But he had to, if only to keep Ceana from thinking he didn't like her. "I caught you, and I'm keeping you here. Y-you can't go off and find someone else. So I feel like, if I were to be, er, intimate with you, it would be..well, it would be like," he swallowed, "rape."