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  “Does that bother you?” I asked him, tilting my chin up as if I wanted to throw down and get in a fistfight. His blue eyes gleamed in a kind of sharp delight. “Because I know it scares some men. Makes them all wiggy and weird.”

  “I can assure you I have never been wiggy or weird in my entire life.” He paused, and that was when I realized that he’d turned toward me, his suit jacket open so I could see the blue of the shirt beneath. It made his eyes seem unholy and fierce and clung to every mouthwatering plane of his absolutely perfect torso. “How old are you?”

  “There’s nothing wrong with being a virgin.”

  He only waited, a certain hot patience in that gaze.

  “I turned twenty-six a few months ago,” I gritted out.

  “And yet you were engaged,” he said after a long pause, during which I debated flinging myself out of the car window and into a blessed death by the side of the freeway, which had to be less painful than being the focus of all his dark blue attention. “To a Catholic priest?”

  “Actually, he was just a liar.”

  “Daddy issues, then?”

  “Are you asking if my ex had them or if I do?”

  “It wasn’t really a question.”

  I thought about my father, the self-proclaimed sporting goods king of eastern Montana who was also a grown man who preferred to be called Billy, as if that y kept him young. That or the fact he was constitutionally incapable of remaining faithful to any of the women he’d married, most notably my still-embittered mother. To say nothing of his current wife—the woman Dad had met at Christmas one year when she’d been my older brother Jesse’s girlfriend. “Awkward” didn’t begin to cover it.

  “Fair point,” I muttered.

  “It’s not unheard of to save yourself for marriage, even in San Francisco,” he said, and it stunned me that his voice was soft then, completely devoid of his usual smirkiness and edge. That was worse. Much worse. It seemed to curl around something deep inside of me, then pull taut. “Some might even call it romantic.”

  I hated that word.

  “Sure. If both parties are saving themselves for marriage, instead of one blind idiot leaving herself on a shelf while the other goes on an extended tour of all things sexual, all over the place, with literally anyone who would have him.”

  Not that I was bitter, like my mother. My only solace was that I’d found all those pictures the dumbass had uploaded to our shared file server and had thus saved myself from actually marrying Alexander and having children with him the way Mom had done with Dad, binding herself to a worthless man forever.

  It was a small and arid solace, sure. But it would do.

  Meanwhile, I thought was my imagination that Damon had moved closer. That his gaze seemed more intent on mine—sharper somehow. My breathing went shallow and the last thing in the world I wanted to think about was Alexander.

  This is insane, some still-lucid part of me exclaimed in my head. This isn’t a stranger in a bar—this is Damon freaking Patrick. Why are you talking about this with him?

  “But no worries,” I said brightly. “My engagement is over and soon my years in virgin prison will be, too. Problem solved.”

  An expression I couldn’t read moved over his face then, and for some reason I braced myself—but his phone rang into the tension between us, insistent and shrill.

  He held my gaze for one sharp ring, then another.

  “Hold that thought,” he told me, and then he answered the call.

  Leaving me feeling restless and unsatisfied. As if I’d dodged a bullet.

  And while I knew I should feel relieved, I didn’t.

  *

  It was late that same night when we finally returned to San Francisco, after a long day of Damon quietly devastating his opposing counsel and poking holes in witness testimony. He was very, very good at it.

  I’d gotten past whatever Alexander-related craziness had been affecting me that morning, and had redeemed myself over the course of the day. There was no undoing the fact that Damon Patrick knew far too much about my personal life, but I thought—I hoped—my scrupulously professional performance all day stood as damage control.

  So I was shocked that when we drove over the bridge and back into the city, Damon suggested we have dinner.

  “It’s late and I’m hungry,” he said gruffly when I hesitated.

  And he was my boss, wasn’t he? Even if that wasn’t technically true, he was much higher up in the firm’s hierarchy than me. I’d be a fool to turn down the chance to learn what I could from him, whether in a deposition or over food.

  The fact that he was stunning and I was likely to be smarting from Alexander’s extensive betrayals for a long time to come and could use the distraction of dinner with a gorgeous man no matter the circumstances, I told myself piously, had absolutely nothing to do with it.

  He fielded another call outside the restaurant, while I studied the unpretentious neighborhood, surprised. I would have pegged a man like Damon for the splashier, better known restaurants all over the city—bristling with Michelin stars and the kind of food snobs who flocked to such places to exclaim pretentiously over tiny plates of unpronounceable delicacies. Instead, when he finished his call, he ushered me into a small, exquisitely decorated space with intimate lighting and a smiling maître d’ who called him by name.

  “It’s better if you sit back and let them bring you whatever they feel like bringing,” he told me, settling himself into the plush, private booth across from me. I couldn’t help but think it was some kind of test. I was determined I wouldn’t fail it.

  “Perfect,” I said, and he grinned.

  Like some kind of wolf.

  Damon ordered a bottle of wine that I could tell from the maître d’s response was expensive, and when it came he took the delicate glass in his big hand and tasted it, watching me over the rim.

  Holly had told me a million times that I needed to confront Alexander, and I’d avoided it. I’d waited. I’d hoped. As if things might sort themselves out if I never looked at them directly, because I’d been so determined not to be like my parents. My life would work out as planned. My choice of a partner in life would be correct.

  And I understood now, in a burst of clarity that had everything to do with the way Damon was studying me, that I didn’t want to be that kind of woman anymore. That I couldn’t be her, or I would die.

  No more waiting. No more hoping. No more saving myself for a day that would never come.

  “Can I ask you something?” I blurted it out without thinking. Without giving myself time to second guess my own urges.

  He smiled. “You can consider me your confessional.”

  “It’s slightly inappropriate.” I considered. “Very inappropriate, in fact.”

  “I think that ship has sailed.”

  I smiled at him, folding my hands before me on the table as if this was an interview.

  “You’re famous for your sexual exploits. People whisper about them. About you.”

  His bright eyes laughed at me. “Is that a question?”

  “Are the rumors true?”

  He laughed then, rich and low. Deliciously masculine. “I’d imagine that depends on which rumors you mean.”

  There was a challenge in the way he said that, and I considered it. I thought about outlining every salacious thing I’d heard about him over the past year—but the very idea made me too breathless. Too fidgety.

  “I’m wondering more if the quantity is, ah, over or under estimated.”

  “Should I offer the usual assurances that quantity doesn’t mean a loss of quality?”

  “It doesn’t?”

  “No.” His gaze was so hot on mine, it seemed to bore into me, and made me shiver down deep, in my bones and in my breath. “It doesn’t.”

  “Then this is perfect.” If my voice was too husky, I ignored it. “You’re the expert, obviously. Every gossip in San Francisco can’t be wrong. So how do you think I should go about losing my virginity
? Because I need to do that. Immediately.”

  Chapter Three

  ‡

  Damon went too still again, the way he had in the elevator earlier, and I held my breath.

  “Do you need a lesson in the mechanics of the act?” he asked, and I didn’t know what I saw there, moving in his gaze, changing his expression into something unreadable. And much darker. “How to insert tab A into slot B? Diagrams and flow charts?”

  “I’ve watched porn, thank you. I know how it works.”

  “I’m delighted to hear it.” He didn’t sound delighted. He sounded dry. “I try never to underestimate the educational potential of the porn industry.”

  I leaned forward, pushing my wine out of the way because I was focused entirely on him, the most beautiful man I’d ever seen who probably didn’t wait five minutes to have sex with someone he wanted, much less six years. He was intoxicating enough.

  “Most people just do it,” I said, letting the reckless words spill out of me. “They get it out of the way in high school and then even if it wasn’t great, at least it’s done.”

  “It’s not an unpleasant chore, Scottie.” He almost smiled. “It shouldn’t be either unpleasant or a chore, if done correctly.”

  The look on his face assured me, all sheer male confidence and that gleam in his blue eyes besides, he did it correctly. Not that I’d doubted it.

  “Of course it is.” I was warming to the subject. “Especially now. How can I tell someone I’m still a virgin at my age? They’ll run screaming. Either they’ll think I’m some freak, or I’ll have to tell them the whole, long story of being engaged to an asshole for a million years, and who wants to have sex then?”

  He paused for a moment, watching me. Reminding me again of a lean, hungry predator.

  “I think you’re underestimating yourself. If you don’t want to stay a virgin, don’t. There’s a bar down at the end of the block. You could free yourself from virgin prison in about five unsavory minutes in one of the bathrooms, then come back here for dessert.”

  “Is that what you think I should do?” It occurred to me then that I was playing with something I didn’t entirely understand. There was a spark between us that made everything seem heavier and brighter, and Damon was looking at me in a way that wasn’t the least bit professional. And I liked it. “Speaking purely from your experience, of course.”

  “My experience being my—what did you call it? Sexual exploits? Vast and well-discussed as they are?”

  “Those. Yes.”

  “Which exploits, exactly?”

  There was the story about the actress from LA, who had crawled beneath his desk and sucked him off while he’d been conducting a conference call with clients in New York. More than once. There was my personal favorite, the Christmas party threesome with someone else’s girlfriend and a politician’s famous daughter, leaving both women visibly filled with the holiday spirit well on into the new year. To say nothing of the particularly dirty one I’d heard about him and his opposing counsel after a vicious court battle had gone his way, in one of the one-hour hotels within walking distance of the courthouse.

  Allegedly.

  But I couldn’t imagine telling him any of those stories I’d gloried in with my fellow first-years in our shared offices. I only stared at him, mute and redder by the second, and after a moment, he smiled slightly.

  “That’s what I thought. Rumors are a lot more fun when the subject isn’t sitting in front of you, aren’t they?”

  I felt shame swirl in me like a current, but I still couldn’t look away from him.

  “So none of those stories are true?”

  His smile deepened and it licked over my skin, making me shiver in helpless reaction.

  “I didn’t say that.” His dark blue eyes gleamed with wicked amusement, and something else I felt like a new, deeper kind of shudder inside. “But it’s not polite to discuss them.”

  “And that’s definitely what we should concentrate on here,” I said, as if I was agreeing with him, though the wry tone I was going for got lost in all my breathlessness. “Good manners.”

  “This is my fault,” he said after a moment, and if it had been anyone else, I’d have said there was a hint of something like vulnerability in the curve of that wicked mouth of his, in the way he looked at the wineglass between his hands, almost broodingly. “I should have pretended I didn’t see that text.”

  If he’d poured his wine over my head, I couldn’t have been more chastened. Or humiliated. So much for the new, improved Scottie Grey. What an idiot I was. I’d pretty much ensured that I’d be relegated to overseeing boring document productions for the rest of my career as punishment for this day, supervising underpaid legal assistants page through endless stacks of paper and never having enough billable hours to climb the ladder to greatness. Hardly the brilliant legal career I’d envisioned.

  And all because I’d felt the need to throw my virginity in Damon Patrick’s face.

  But as Damon had said earlier, that ship had already sailed. So I went with it, my glittering future in document productions be damned, because what else could I do now?

  “You probably should have pretended not to see it,” I agreed, and only smiled at him when he shifted that brooding look from his wineglass to me. “But you didn’t.”

  “I’ve never been any good at denying temptation,” he agreed, and it should have sounded like a line. But the way he said it kindled something in me, some elegant dance of fire down my spine, and I could see he knew it. His dark blue eyes were too intent on mine. “I stopped trying a long time ago.”

  Our dinner came then, like a rush of cool air between us. It looked fantastic. Dish after dish of fresh, fragrant perfectly prepared food—and yet I might as well have gone straight home to my dark and empty apartment, the one that Alexander had been supposed to move out of today, because I couldn’t taste a thing. I was too focused on Damon, too wrapped up in whatever might happen next.

  And not sure I was interested in analyzing what I wanted to happen next.

  “Tell me,” he said almost casually after we’d eaten in a not-quite-companionable silence for a while, “how does a girl who doesn’t want to be a virgin end up one against her will?”

  But it was obviously a rhetorical question, because he kept going, leaning back the way he’d done in the deposition today as he calmly took the witness apart. I’d thought it was hot then. I thought this was blistering.

  “Surely, Scottie,” and there was that note in his voice then, that half-tease, half-demand that felt like a bolt of fire straight through me and made me shift against my seat, “you could have taken matters into your own hands.”

  “Hands, yes. My ex encouraged hands. But not much else.”

  Our eyes met. Ignited.

  “No sloppy, drunken evenings?” His voice was lower now. Rough and much too erotic for a public place, not that I cared. “No fooling around where things could just… slip in? No happy mistakes in the dark of night?”

  I felt trapped and fluttery and I wasn’t thinking about history, about rolling around naked in the dark of night with Alexander. I wasn’t really thinking about Alexander at all. The world narrowed until there was nothing but Damon’s dark blue gaze, and I wasn’t sure I minded.

  “Sadly, no,” I said, my voice barely a whisper. “He made sure that never happened. I guess he was pretty controlling.”

  A rich sort of amusement altered his face then, almost too wicked to bear.

  “I’d call that petty emotional manipulation,” he said. “Control is something else entirely.”

  Damon, I understood instantly, would take control in an entirely different way. And I was completely incapable of doing anything in that moment but imagining exactly how he’d do that. What it would feel like. What he would do. How that stark, hot look in his dark blue gaze would change when he took—

  “Scottie.”

  I blinked, dazed. And saw that his mouth had curved into something arrogant and co
nfident and sure, as if he knew every single image that had scrolled through my head, each one more naked and demanding than the last.

  “Eat,” he ordered me softly, laughter like heat in his dark blue eyes.

  And I did what I was told.

  It didn’t occur to me to do anything else.

  *

  “Are we headed down the block to that bar?” I asked when the meal was over and he’d ushered me back outside into the thick, close San Francisco night.

  I was kidding. But he didn’t laugh.

  “I don’t suggest you do that,” he said, his voice quiet but also intense in a way that shivered down into my belly and wrapped tight around my hips.

  “It sounds quick and efficient,” I continued, making my voice light in direct contrast to how heavy and thick and needy I felt inside. “Mission accomplished.”

  The street was deserted and there were only a few street lamps. They cast Damon in shadows, but it didn’t matter. That fallen angel face of his was etched in my memory. I’d know him anywhere. And he looked down at me with an expression in his beautiful eyes that I wished I understood.

  “Don’t be an idiot. Most people rip off their virginity like it’s a too-warm sweater on a cool day and spend years wishing they’d treated the whole thing with more respect. You have the option to do it right and—I hope—the wisdom to know you should.”

  He was telling me something important there, I knew he was. But I could only stare at his mouth and wish I could feel it on mine.

  “Did you?” I heard myself ask, hoarsely and from a distance.

  “I did.”

  “Uh… Rip it right off? Or respect it?”

  He looked down at me for what felt like a long time, and when he spoke again, his voice was even lower than before. More intent.

  “The point is, you have the opportunity to live out a fantasy. Many people regret their first time because they chose the wrong person to have it with. You don’t have to do that. You can give away your innocence thoughtfully, to someone who knows what to do with it.”

  “You mean someone who doesn’t think I’m a freak.”