Project Virgin (9 page)

He didn’t smile then. His hands cupped my cheeks.

“That’s not what you want, Scottie. If you did, you would have performed that particular surgical strike a long time ago. I think you know that.”

I opened my mouth to ask him what he thought it was I wanted, then closed it again. Because I suspected he’d tell me.

And because I already knew what he’d say, and I didn’t think I could
handle it. Not here in this bed where something I’d been treating as a funny all evening was suddenly not funny at all. It felt a whole lot more like sacred.

That notion terrified me. I told myself
terrified
was the only possible explanation for the wild, deep, intensely beautiful feeling that welled up inside me and threatened to sweep me away.

He moved his hips then, the slightest swivel,
and then the head of his cock was
right there,
at my entrance. I flushed hot. Then cold. I tried to breathe.

I wanted nothing more than to look somewhere else. To hide my face. I did neither. I reached up to do
something
, maybe push him away, but only ended hooking my hands around his wrists.

“Tell me to stop and I’ll stop,” he told me, and the calm tone he used almost disguised the tension
beneath it. “You don’t have to go through with this. You don’t have to do anything unless it feels good. Tell me you know that.”

“Damon.” I could only whisper his name. “I know that. Now please shut up. And do it, already.”

He laughed. It was almost soundless but I felt it in his chest, and it rolled through me, too. And then he moved.

He sank into me. I braced myself at that first, thick invasion,
stretching me far more than I’d expected. Damon stopped. He waited until I relaxed, then pushed in a little more.

This happened again and again. A thick and full advance until I stiffened or pulled in a breath. He’d stop and wait, then move again when I relaxed.

His jaw got tighter and I could see sweat bead on his brow, but he never sped up. He never pushed.

And then finally—
finally—
he was
seated deep within me.

He shifted then. He moved his hands from my face to flatten them on the mattress and hold himself over me, sparing me the weight of all his sleek, solid muscles. I found that my own palms were braced against his chest, though I had no memory of putting them there.

I felt drunk. I felt strung out and glorious at once.

I felt
him,
so deep inside me.

He was big and hot
and so hard, and I could feel that slick intrusion radiating everywhere, as if he’d plugged himself into an electrical outlet and the current was setting me alight.

My toes. My ears. My sensitive breasts.
Everywhere.

“Congratulations, Scottie,” he murmured. “You’re no longer a virgin.”

I blinked up at him. Then I rolled my hips against his, sucking in a breath when that electricity went white
hot. And burned deep. His mouth curved and I didn’t want to notice the tenderness in it. I really didn’t.

“What happens now?” I asked.

Damon moved against me slightly. Gently. He pulled out a little and surged back in, then laughed when I flushed hot and red beneath him. The sensation might kill me. I kind of wanted it to.

“Do you want to stop?”

“No!”

I realized what that sounded like, and
made myself move my hands from his chest. I only made it to his arms again, and dug my fingers into his rock hard biceps.

“No,” I said again, somewhat less wildly. “Don’t stop.”

“Then, Scottie,” Damon said, dropping down to put his face close to mine, “this is what happens. We have some fun.”

And then he began to move.

‡

I
t was slick,
hard,
perfect.
It was unbelievable.

I thought maybe I said his name. Maybe he said mine too, but I lost it somewhere in the slide and the push, the friction and the dark, deep joy of this.

At last.
This.

“I thought it was supposed to hurt,” I whispered.

Damon’s dark blue eyes gleamed. “Not if you
do it right.”

I lifted myself to meet his thrusts, one harder and deeper than the next. I couldn’t control the fire that swept over me, the thrill that wound deep inside of me, the sheer joy that seared out from every place we touched, inside and out.

“Have you done this a lot?” Even I could hear the wonder in my voice, and his dark blue eyes crinkled in the corners as he gazed down at me.

“Sex, yes,” he said, dropping his face down to put his mouth against my neck again. “Virgins, no.”

“Have you—”

“Scottie.” A drag of his teeth against my sensitized skin. “Quiet.”

Once again, I obeyed him.

And everything fell away. The world shrunk down and expanded at the same time, until there was nothing but this bed. Until the bed was everything.

The only thing that mattered was the searing,
impossible fusion of our bodies coming together like this, and all the wild sensation that swept over me at the slide and the impact and the bliss of it.

I would never be the same again. I didn’t
want
to be the same.

With every deep thrust, with every roll of his hips or lift of mine, I made myself new. Or he did.

Damon set an intense pace, a perfect rhythm, and I met him. It felt almost easy.
It felt as if this wasn’t new, as if I’d done it so many times it was as much a memory as a revelation.

I felt as if I’d been made for this. Him. Tonight.

As if everything in my entire life had been carefully crafted to lead me straight here.

And all the while, his mouth was in the crook of my neck. He urged me on, made me gasp and pant and cry out. He taught me how to fly with him and he let
me stretch my wings, and all the while he kept up that wild, addicting pace.

Until everything inside me went jagged and slick, and I thought I might die from the intensity—

“You won’t die,” Damon told me, his voice nothing but a growl.

I hadn’t realized I’d said that out loud. I didn’t care that I had.

He reached down between us and found my clit, then massaged it, never pausing as he did
it.

And I felt myself spin tight, then tighter still, then so dangerously tight I thought it was the end of me—but instead, I tipped over into a wild, bucking sort of shattering that swept me away.

I shook and I shook, and Damon’s thrusts fell out of that sleek rhythm. He groaned something I didn’t understand, he pounded himself into me, and then he called out my name as he followed me over
that edge.

*

I came back
to myself with a jerk when I felt Damon move beside me. I didn’t remember him rolling off of me, but he had, and it felt like an unbearable loss when he pulled his arm from where it had tangled with mine. And then worse still when he kept going and left the bed entirely.

He moved to the doorway I hadn’t paid any attention to earlier
and flicked on the lights as he walked through it, showing me a glimpse of his bathroom before he closed the door behind him.

I lay there with the lights of the city playing lazy games across my bare skin, stretched out across Damon’s bed like some kind of sacrificial offering. But no longer a virgin one. I had to muffle my laugh at that. All those years and all that waiting, and it was finally
done.

I wasn’t a virgin any longer. I’d finally had sex.

And I didn’t need to go out and run any comparison tests to know that the kind of sex I’d had tonight was nothing short of extraordinary. Most of my friends had reported the loss of their virginities—years and years ago—as an activity that rated somewhere between
awkward
and
uncomfortable,
and very occasionally,
nice.

Not life-altering.
Not stunning.

But then, this was Damon Patrick. He was both of those things when he was fully clothed and on his phone—

Which was when my stomach twisted. What was I doing? Lolling around in the man’s bed as if we were dating? That was crazy. This had never been anything but a transaction and I needed to treat it as such.

I crawled to the edge of the bed and got to my feet. It was only then,
when I could feel how shaky I was, that all the rest of the great tumult of emotions I’d been holding at bay swept over me.

“Oh no,” I muttered to myself as fiercely as possible. “Not here.”

I scrambled around in the light from outside the windows. I found my panties and yanked them on with fingers that felt thick and useless. I struggled to get my bra back on. My camisole was an instrument
of torture, and I was just tugging it into place when the bathroom door swung open again and the light blinded me.

Or maybe I only wished it blinded me.

I blinked until I could see Damon again in all that brightness, but I knew he was standing there, watching me while I did it. And once I could see him—still naked and so beautiful it hurt almost as much as the shock of the light—I couldn’t read
the expression on his face.

“Thank you,” I said hurriedly. “That was…” His dark brows rose as we both waited for me to fill in that blank. I swallowed. Hard. “I really appreciate everything you’ve done for me.”

“I’m an excellent plumber.” His voice was dry. “Is that what you’re trying to say?”

I wanted, desperately, to be cool and casual. Sophisticated, the way I imagined the women he usually
slept with were. All knowing, heated glances and good humor as they made themselves scarce on cue. But he’d been inside me and he’d made me cry when I came that last time, and I was never going to be the same again.

I knew better that to say any of that.

“Come here,” he said, sounding disgruntled.

But I was rooted to the floor and I was a little worried about the things he could see on my face.
Someday I’d develop the same post-coital defense mechanisms everyone else had probably spent years perfecting. Someday. But tonight it was beyond me.

Tonight there was that massive hollow inside of me and it was eating me whole, and it was darker and deeper and more terrifying than anything I’d ever felt before. It was so big it crowded out the world. It was crushing me and I didn’t even know
what to call it.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, though I had no idea what I was apologizing for, and my voice was as thick as the back of my eyes were prickly, and I could feel my face start to crumple.

“Scottie.” Damon’s voice was hard. It was his work voice, and I didn’t realize until I heard it again that he hadn’t used it in hours. “Did I tell you to stand there or did I tell you to come here?”
It was beyond me to answer him then through the constriction in my throat, but he must have sensed that because he didn’t wait for me to reply. “I thought we were both clear on the rules.”

The rules. I’d forgotten all about them.

Do what I tell you to do
.

So I did. I walked over to him and when I stopped in front of him, feeling messy and misshapen, he simply wrapped his arms around me and
pulled me close. I didn’t want to go, but then he was tucking me against his chest. Beneath his chin. As if I’d been crafted to fit perfectly right there.

When in doubt, do it anyway,
he’d said.

I closed my eyes. I let the heat of his skin seep into me.

“This is what’s going to happen,” he told me, in that same half-dark, half-impatient voice of his that was famous in the halls of Granger &
Knox. “We’re going to go sit in the hot tub for a while. Look at the sky. Enjoy the dark.”

As if he knew I didn’t want him to see me then. Too wide open. Too vulnerable. I felt turned inside out.

“Okay,” I said against the base of his neck. “I can do that.”

“Oh, you’ll do it,” he said. He reached down took my chin in his fingers, tipping my head back so he could look at me. “And then we’ll
come back inside and see what you’ve learned.”

I would have said that I’d slid too far down a slippery slope into far too many emotions. That I was pushed out of shape and might never feel anything sexual again. But I was wrong. His words were like lit matches to dry tinder, and my whole body went up in flames.