Project Virgin

by Megan Crane

  “Not a great sign,” Jesse pointed out now, very still against the bar, his dark eyes fixed to hers.

  “Not a great greeting, either,” Michaela said.

  “Do we drop by on each other unannounced?” Terrence had asked, instead of saying hello. He’d smiled. Gently, the way he always had, in that way that made his lean, handsome face look much more intellectual, which she suspected he knew. “You know my feelings on dropping by. I think that speaks to a real lack of respect for emotional boundaries, don’t you?”

  “I’m obviously a terrible person,” she’d replied, flatly. “Can we talk?”

  Terrence had blinked, and then he’d ushered her inside, and Michaela had taken a minute to really ask herself if this was what she wanted to do. If she was really going to blow up her whole life after less than forty-eight hours in the company of a man she hardly knew.

  “Do I have a vote?” Jesse asked darkly.

  Michaela shushed him, took a sip of her sweet, pink drink, and kept going.

  Terrence hadn’t asked how she was or where she’d been, despite the fact it had been over a week since he’d seen her last. He hadn’t mentioned all the calls he hadn’t returned or the voicemails she’d left, which had made her wonder if he’d listened to them. He’d moved around his apartment in that way of his, not actually saying he’d been annoyed with her but making it clear with every single one of his gestures and the faintly clipped tone he’d used.

  “So, what have you been doing all week?” she’d asked when he’d finally sat down with her, as if he’d been doing her a big favor. “You seem very busy.”

  And she’d let him talk. Terrence loved to talk. He’d told her about the meetings he’d had and the projects he was certain were this close to happening. He’d filled her in on all his many friends who’d clamored for his attention over the weekend, all of whom were people with names she was expected to recognize as movers and shakers in Seattle society, she’d been aware. And then he’d told her about last Saturday night and the blonde woman he’d noticed staring at him in this swanky hotel bar he’d been in. How he’d stared back until she’d approached him, how he’d checked in with his impulses—

  “But not your voicemail messages,” Michaela had interrupted him.

  She’d seen something flicker in his gaze then, but he’d hidden it, sitting there on his minimalist futon in the midst of his bare white walls and pieces of modern art he’d done himself in what he called his Brooklyn phase, so languid and unconcerned. The only creatures she’d ever seen more unconcerned than Terrence were lizards, she’d thought as she watched him. Because they were, in fact, prehistoric creatures.

  And next to Jesse Grey, Terrence seemed a bit more like a salamander.

  “Because in this comparison,” Jesse rumbled from beside her, “I’m obviously a dragon.”

  “Or, perhaps, a slightly more impressive gecko.”

  “I think we both know, Michaela, that there’s nothing about me that is even remotely like a gecko.”

  She’d wrinkled her nose, and pushed on.

  Terrence had moved closer to her. He’d taken her hands in his. And she’d let him, because she’d wanted to know. Had he snowed her completely? Or was this really who he was? And more to the point, how had she almost married him?

  “Do you need a moment to take stock of your emotions?” he’d asked, solicitously. “Check in with what’s happening there for you?”

  “Not at all,” she’d replied. “I’m one hundred percent checked in.”

  “I love us,” Terrence had said then, “because we can be who we are. No games. No hiding.” He’d told her then, in detail, about having sex with the blonde in the bathroom of his favorite bar. In the same way he’d always told her stories like this. “Most people couldn’t admit that they need that, and most women wouldn’t be mature enough to know the difference between an animal attraction in a bar, fleeting and fast, and a foundation to build a future on.”

  “This guy is a creep,” Jesse said flatly now. “Straight up. Tell me you get that.”

  What Michaela got was something she couldn’t quite bring herself to say out loud in the press of Grey’s Saloon, with Jesse so close but still not hers. Maybe he never would be hers, maybe he was nothing but a catalyst, and she told herself that was okay, too.

  Because back in Terrence’s apartment she’d understood something she hadn’t before. That Terrence got off twice. Once in the bathroom of the hotel bar with the nameless blonde. And again there in his apartment, as he’d told her all about it. Had she never noticed that before? Had she never seen that this was the whole purpose of it for him? And maybe that was okay in a relationship where both people got off on it. If it was a thing they did together. But she’d realized in that moment that she simply hadn’t cared enough either way.

  Because if she’d had a man like Jesse in her life, she’d known with volcanic certainty as she’d stared at the man who adamantly wasn’t Jesse, she wouldn’t have tolerated this. She wouldn’t have been able to stand the thought of him with other women. She’d have died inside if he’d shared his exploits with her at all, much less with such evident, lascivious pleasure.

  Even thinking about it had made her flush with some mix of temper and emotion and need right there on Terrence’s futon and she’d had no idea if she’d ever see Jesse again. She’d had no reason to worry about what he might or might not be doing, or with whom. This wasn’t about him. It was about the fact that, having met him, she’d understood she could care more. And if she was capable of caring more, and if that level of care meant she couldn’t tolerate this open door policy on a relationship, she had no business settling for this.

  It wasn’t fair to either of them. If Terrence really believed the things he said, if he wasn’t the con man Jesse had seemed certain he was and Amos had suggested he was for years, he deserved someone who, at the very least, was as invested in this open relationship as he was. Someone who wasn’t simply… numb to what he did.

  But she’d wanted to know.

  “I wanted to see if he was a creep,” she told Jesse now, “or if he really did believe what he was saying.”

  “Cheating is such a silly barometer to use to determine the health of a relationship,” she’d said to Terrence then, and she’d been unable to remember why she’d dated him in the first place. Amos kept her so busy and Terrence had been persistent—had that been what it was? And then she hadn’t even had to sleep with him, because he’d been off having adventures, and she’d been able to smugly pretend she’d had it all while not altering her life in the least. “At the very least, it’s shortsighted.”

  “Cheating is what immature people call things they don’t have the emotional resources to work through,” Terrence had said, with a self-congratulatory smile. “It’s sad, really.”

  “I couldn’t agree more,” Michaela had said. “That’s exactly what I told the guy I hooked up with this weekend.”

  Chapter Ten

  ‡

  Jesse’s smile was hot and dark, and made her shiver.

  Michaela forgot about her drink. She forgot where they were. There was no historic saloon, no blustery winter wind rocketing down the Marietta streets outside, no state of Montana stretched out like eternity on all sides.

  There was only Jesse and he was far more intoxicating.

  “Tell me more about the guy you hooked up with,” he said then, still smiling down at her, and Michaela felt her heart trip a bit, then start to beat harder. Deeper.

  “I’m getting there,” she assured him.

  “I don’t want to step on your moment here,” he said, and she didn’t see him move but he must have, because suddenly, he was like a wall around her.

  Jesse reached over and slid his hand up the side of her neck and then held it there beneath her jaw, his thumb a sweet scrape from her cheekbone to her temple. Then back. It was drugging.

  “But?” she asked, with what little voice she could muster when he was touching her ag
ain and she could feel that like an earthquake all the way through.

  “Tell me if I get any of this wrong,” he said in that low voice of his, and the look in his decadent eyes then was so intent, so sure, it made Michaela shake deep and long way down inside. “It felt a bit more like cheating when you did it.”

  “It’s like you were there.”

  “You probably let him think we slept together, because he had that coming.”

  Michaela tried to look pious. “I denied it, of course. Stridently and with the full force of truth on my side.”

  His dark eyes gleamed. “Did he buy it?”

  “As it turned out, he didn’t.”

  “Shocker.”

  His hand tightened slightly, urging her closer to him, and she didn’t think twice. She went, bracing her hands against that absurd chest of his that she’d tasted, now. That she knew was in fact far, far better than she’d imagined it might be when he’d been clothed.

  “Do you want me to tell you the rest?” she asked, tilting her head back to look at him.

  And it was the funniest thing. She could feel her feet on the sturdy floor of this old building that had weathered more than a century already. She knew she was standing still, she knew she was looking up at him, and yet she still felt as if she was falling from a great height. End over end, forever and fast.

  “I got this,” Jesse said. He shifted his weight slightly, but not his gaze. “I’m guessing that your man threw a fit. He probably said some stuff that if you told me, would make me think about punching him in the face. It was probably upsetting for you.”

  “Not as upsetting as it should have been,” Michaela admitted. “That’s the part that’s going to haunt me, I think.”

  “Ghosts can only haunt you if you let them,” he said gently, and there was something in his voice that made her wonder if he’d vanquished a few of his own. “But let’s get back to this story we need to finish.”

  “Are we in a rush?”

  “There’s another story I want to tell,” he murmured, all that light and fire in his eyes, whiskey and need. “I think you’ll like it. It has a much better ending.”

  Michaela pulled in a breath that felt shuddery, and found she was as afraid to smile at him as she was to look away. “I broke up with him, of course. I told you I would.”

  “Was it painful?” Jesse’s voice was dark. “Are we going to have to stand around and analyze the whole thing and talk about your feelings for one of the biggest tools in the Pacific Northwest? Because I might have a hard time maintaining a decent level of fake compassion.”

  “Yes, I can feel that. It’s like a tsunami of empathy, sweeping me away.”

  “Michaela.” That mouth of his was hard, his gaze intent. “I don’t understand why you didn’t laugh in Terrence Polk’s face when he asked you out the first time. It’s inconceivable to me that you were actually planning to marry him.”

  “It was because of Amos,” she said. Jesse blinked. “I’ve been asking myself the same question for days now. I’d say it was entirely Amos’s fault, in fact, but I’m aware that’s not fair.”

  It had been one of those Seattle summer nights, so warm and bright and beautiful that everyone had complete amnesia about all those months of rain. She and Amos and a few people from work had been sitting outside a bar downtown, enjoying the uncharacteristic leisure time one evening. Amos had been feeling particularly full of himself that night, breaking down his dating successes as if they were flow charts he could convert into apps to help the less fortunate—

  “Like you,” he’d said, and had treated Michaela to that insufferable grin of his.

  And there had been no reason that should have pricked at her. No reason it should have wedged there beneath her skin. She’d played it off, knowing full well Amos would have been horrified if he’d thought his usual good-natured teasing had actually landed a blow. Then a dark-haired, intellectual-looking man at the bar had caught her eye and smiled.

  “I hate that guy,” Amos had said, directly in her ear as he’d texted one of the blonde twins he’d been running around with back then.

  “You know him?”

  “His whole type,” Amos had said, shoving his phone in his jeans pocket and getting to his feet. “That whole passive aggressive, he might be a poet, he really wants you to ask him about his pain thing. Ridiculous.”

  “They can’t all be bimbos with more silicon than brain matter, Amos,” Michaela had snapped.

  Amos had only grinned, and then strolled off into the summer night to further debauch himself.

  But Michaela had stayed. And it turned out Terrence hadn’t wanted to talk about his pain, and he didn’t write any poetry—but he had wanted to take Michaela to dinner.

  “Obviously, I went,” she told Jesse now. “And I’ll never know if I actually liked him because I liked him, or because I wanted to prove Amos was wrong. Or even because I just wanted to irritate him by dating a guy he’d written off. How sad is it that I stayed with him for all this time? I wouldn’t tell you such an unflattering thing about myself, but I feel that you should know upfront what you’re getting into.”

  Jesse grinned at her and it was a slow thing, filled with promise.

  “I know,” he said, “exactly what I’m getting into.”

  That shivered through her, but Michaela made herself go on.

  “And when it was all over with Terrence,” she told him, “I thought I could just go on with my life. Because nothing had changed. Terrence and I didn’t live together, so there was none of that mess to deal with. Canceling the wedding was a breeze because I didn’t actually have to cancel anything. I called my mother and told her I’d rethought, she said she wasn’t too heartbroken by that decision, and that was it. Telling Amos the next day was harder, because he insisted on throwing an office party with cupcakes to celebrate.”

  “He sounds like an ass.”

  “God, yes,” she agreed. “I told you he was like my brother. An annoying brother.” She studied his beautiful face for a moment, took a breath, and then told him the rest. “And then I was sitting there on Friday morning. In my office. Everything was fine. Great, even. I had no second thoughts. I had no regrets. I had no question in my mind that I’d done the right thing.” She tested her palms against his chest, marveled in the heat he pumped out like a furnace. “The only thing I didn’t have was you.”

  Jesse grinned at her for a long time, and then he brought his other hand up, so he was holding her face between his hands.

  “I was going to come back to Seattle and steal you away from him,” he told her quietly. “I was going to take it slow and sweet.”

  “And now?”

  His grin deepened, turned to pure, wicked heat.

  And she felt it pound inside her like her own pulse.

  “I think you better brace yourself, Michaela. We might not come up for air.”

  Later, Michaela would never know how they made it back into their cold weather gear and out into the street. She couldn’t remember the walk from the saloon to her hotel, or even if it was as cold as it must have been. She had a vague sense of the Graff’s Old West elegance as they moved through the lobby and into the old elevator, and she thought it must have taken a while to make it to her floor, but she hardly noticed.

  There was nothing in the entire world but Jesse and the way he was looking at her.

  She fumbled with her key in the hall outside her suite until Jesse took them from her, opening the door and ushering her inside, and then there was nothing but the two of them in another hotel room. Exactly the same as it had been a week ago, and completely, utterly different.

  Too many things seemed to batter at her at once, making her worry she might trip and fall right there in the entryway—and the way Jesse looked at her when he finished locking the door, so deliciously predatory, didn’t help.

  She shook, outside and in. And he only smiled.

  “This is a very historic hotel,” she told him nervously, back
ing away from him, because she thought that might help her breathe. Just for a moment. Just to get her bearings. “It holds a very special place in Montana history.”

  His smile deepened and he came after her, stalking her into the western-style living room with all its restored Victorian splendor. She only realized she was filling him in on the amazing details of the hotel, the intricacies of the renovation that she’d read about in a brochure in the graceful desk beneath the window, when she came up against the wall outside her bedroom and stopped talking. Abruptly.

  “Michaela,” he said. The same way he’d said hey a week ago, more an order than anything else, although this time, he said it from a whole lot closer. “Breathe.”

  She breathed.

  And realized Terrence had been absolutely right—her brain had gone to mush. But it wasn’t the romance novels that had done it. They’d only paved the way.

  It was all Jesse Grey.

  Jesse reached over and unzipped her coat, then pulled it from her, as if he was performing a sacrament. He unwound her thick scarf from around her neck. He held out his hands and she put hers in them, then watched as he carefully eased the gloves from each one, finger by finger until she thought she might die from it. Then he stood before her for a moment, his dark gaze so hot it hurt. He took in the bright red slick of fabric she wore, wrapped around her to create a deep V at her breasts and then tight beneath them.

  “I like that dress,” he rumbled, and she could see the stark male approval stamped all over him and burning in that gaze of his.

  “I’m glad,” she whispered. “I wore it for you.”

  “Good,” he said. His mouth crooked up in the corner. “Now take it off.”

  Michaela smiled. “I will if you will.”

  “You’ve already seen me naked,” he reminded her. But he shrugged out of his coat and he threw it in the general direction of the couch.

  She worked on the knot of the wrap dress’s tie, but Jesse was a distraction. He was stripping down in front of her, pulling off his clothes and exposing his perfect body to her view, and it would take a far stronger woman than she was to do anything but gape at him while he did it.