Owning The Virgin (The Virgin Auctions, Book Two)

by Paige North

  Before I leave, I write Connor a short, heartfelt note to let him know I’ve gone. I tell him how much he means to me, tell him that he’s right—it’s really best that I leave, mostly because with me still around, he’ll have a hard time shining up his reputation again for his family.

  I don’t want to hold him back. I want him to be as happy as he can be.

  Then I go home with Dad, Mom, and Robbie, fully accepting my defeat.

  For the next week, I hole up in my old room in our two-story Colonial Revival house in the suburbs. I admit to my family that I, Allyson Barnes, have sinned and humiliated them as well as myself. I even text Ella when she texts me, forgiving her for what she did with Robbie since she’s not the only one who was a bad, bad girl.

  I’ve crawled back with my tail between my legs to be everyone’s good girl once more.

  No one will ever see that I actually despise the cowardly decision I made to leave Connor. Even if he didn’t want me, shouldn’t I have at least faced him one last time?

  God, I miss him so much that there’s a sharpness in my chest that I can’t get rid of, no matter what I do.

  Blindly, I go about getting ready for my final year at school, but every move I make is empty. I come down for dinners with my parents and my aunt and eat with them in near silence as they keep trying to discover why I pulled something so reckless with Highest Bidder.

  Robbie keeps sending flowers and presents as if someone has told him to bide his time until I’m over my heartache, but he still calls me, and I listen to his speeches about finding forgiveness for both of us. I guess I’m just as bad as he was now: the cheater and the call girl. Don’t we make a pair?

  I want to tell him that I see right through him, that he’s only sending me on a guilt trip to get me where he wants me, but I don’t have any higher moral ground to stand on. My family reminds me of that daily.

  Even as life goes on around me, I keep thinking about Connor. He haunts me, and every passing day it feels as if everything around me is darker, less full of life.

  On this particular gray afternoon, I leave my window open, and a warm summer breeze blows in, allowing me to breathe in some fresh air. I haven’t gone outside, because I don’t want to face my neighbors. I don’t want to go to the store and have people staring at me.

  I only want to be alone with my misery.

  There’s a knock on my bedroom door. My aunt Dee sticks in her head. In her own way, she’s been putting on the pressure for me to see Robbie just as obnoxiously as everyone else.

  She thrusts another bouquet of flowers into the room ahead of her. “Aren’t these beautiful?”

  “Lovely,” I say, knowing who they’re from.

  “I’ll put them in a vase downstairs with the others. You should really thank Robbie.”

  “I’ll text.”

  A male voice sounds off behind Aunt Dee.

  “No need for a text when I’m right here.”

  I grit my teeth as Aunt Dee backs away to allow Robbie inside. He’s wearing one of his old high school football jerseys and shorts with flip-flops. When we were growing up, I thought his boyish qualities would someday turn into more manly traits, but they never did.

  I can’t help comparing him to Connor—dark versus light, a boy versus a man, a cheater versus a god who might’ve loved me if things had only turned out differently…

  As my heart withers, Robbie closes the door behind him. “Instead of sending me yet another text, a thank you in person would be nice. Don’t you think?”

  There’s just something about the smug way he says it, as if he’s doing me a favor by being the only guy in town who still wants to marry a shut-in tabloid slut. And this, more than anything else, is the last straw.

  I narrow my eyes at him. “Robbie, I’m only being honest. What will it take for you to realize that I don’t want to be with you anymore? You already showed me your true colors, and flowers aren’t going to change them.”

  He looks surprised at my attitude, then grabs a chair from my desk and sits backward on it, manspreading.

  “You might want to drop the I’m-too-good-for-you stuff,” he says. “I don’t know who you think is going to be with you now. Definitely not the entitled john you were with in Manhattan.”

  Whoa. I don’t care what Robbie says about me, but back off of Connor.

  “Don’t talk about him that way.”

  “You don’t like how I called him a john? It’s not like he was your boyfriend or something.” He chuffs. “In spite of the way you were looking at him in those tabloid photos, I’d say that a prostitute, high class or not, isn’t girlfriend material. Sad but true. He paid you to screw him, and if you can name me any other guy who’d have you after that, feel free.”

  I stare at him. “I don’t get you, Robbie. You say you love me, then you talk to me like this.”

  “If I loved you I probably wouldn’t.”

  My mouth drops open.

  “Newsflash, Ally,” he says. “I don’t love you. I never did in the way you’re talking about, but that doesn’t mean we don’t belong together.”

  Doubly speechless.

  He goes on. “We’re a good match, and my family still loves you, even after what you pulled in the city. For their sakes, I’ll go along with marrying you. It doesn’t mean I love you though, because I’m just doing what’s expected of me. It all makes good, practical sense to be with a girl my parents adore and whose parents adore me.”

  Robbie is echoing everything I used to think before I went to New York City: settle down. Meet everyone’s expectations. Be practical. And here I thought I was the only one who felt that way in our relationship.

  I didn’t know him at all.

  He looks around at my room—the sewing machine, swatches of material on tables, fashion posters that decorate my room. My big, suppressed dreams are spelled out for everyone to see. Now that we’ve laid our cards on the table, his expression tells me that he thinks those dreams aren’t practical or even reachable.

  I’m the dummy in this so-called relationship, and I always have been.

  “When you went to the city,” he says, “did you think you found true love with Connor Kenyon? Were you really that naïve?”

  I gulp and clench my teeth.

  “Jeez, Ally,” he says. “True love doesn’t exist.”

  Connor told me that, too, but I didn’t believe him. Somehow though, I believe Robbie when he says it.

  “And I used to think you were so idealistic,” I say.

  “No one has time for idealism. I knew that even before I went to college. If there’s one thing this trip to Manhattan should’ve taught you, it’s that important fact.”

  I should’ve seen how jaded and calculating Robbie is, especially after he tried to get away with cheating on me. And the thing is, Robbie is far more cynical than Connor on his worst day.

  I stand from my bed. “Get out.”

  Robbie rears back in the chair.

  “I said get out!”

  He merely shrugs and tidily puts the chair back under the desk. “You’ll change your mind soon. You’ll see for yourself that what I said is true about no one wanting to come within a mile of your new reputation for being a whore.”

  I take a pillow from my bed and chuck it at him. He steps out of its way with a shitty grin, then finally leaves.

  I’m fuming, not just at Robbie, but at myself. How could I have made such a mistake with him for so long?

  A door closes downstairs, and I hear my mom’s voice. “Ally!”

  Here it comes, but I’m not going to wait here and take what they have to dish out anymore. I open my door and march downstairs, where Mom, Dad, and Aunt Dee are gathered at the foot of the steps. I don’t know what Robbie told them, but one look at me must explain everything—that I broke it off with my ex for good, that I’m never going to settle like they want me to.

  Mom turns her back on me first, walking away. Aunt Dee sighs, then follows her sister out of the r
oom. Dad is the only one who remains, and I tilt my head at him, hoping he understands.

  “You know what you’re doing?” he asks.

  “I’m not settling. Ever.”

  He stares at me for a moment, then sighs as well. “You’d rather sell yourself to one of those elite assholes who hate middle-class people like us. Is that it, Ally? You’d rather shame our lives and our values by demeaning yourself like you did?”

  The air rushes out of me. I can’t believe this is coming from the one person I thought might understand…

  With a disappointed expression so profound that it scoops out a piece of me, my dad follows everyone else who has shunned me and walks out of the room.

  I’m truly alone now, and before a burst of tears can shame me even more, I run down the rest of the stairs, bursting out of the house and onto the porch. Sadness overcomes me, and I sink to the steps there, crying my heart out.

  Now I really have nowhere to go, no one to turn to.

  Then, through my tears, I see someone across the street and down the way by the corner park in a fancy black car with its window down. I dry my tears to discover a man in a dark suit and red tie slowly getting out and stepping onto the blacktop, then shutting the door behind him.

  At first, I think my mind is playing tricks on me, and I cuff away the tears. But he’s still there, watching me, fisting his hands at his sides.

  Connor?

  I stand up, my knees shaking, my insides clutching as I manage to stumble down the steps to the path. Connor takes one step into the street, then another, moving toward me like a dream come true.

  Chapter 22

  I barely have time to take in a shocked, elated breath before Connor reaches me, his blue eyes intense as he sweeps me into his arms and crushes me with a kiss.

  I lose myself in him, swaying with him in our passion for each other, clinging to his jacket lapels. He hasn’t said a word, but he’s here. For some reason, he’s braved his family and the media to come to me, and his kiss is long and furious, telling me that I was never as alone as I thought.

  My breathing is unsteady as he pulls back enough to lean his forehead against mine, holding me closely and securely.

  “I couldn’t stay away,” he says. “I put off reading your note as long as I could. I knew that if I did, there’d be no turning back. Eventually, I broke down. I thought about you every second of every day and I told myself the pain of missing you would go away, but it never diminished.”

  “I still can’t believe you’re here.” I’m half crying, half smiling, my body in such chaos that it’s not sure what to do. All I know is that the man I love and long for with every pounding cell is here.

  “Yes, I’m here,” he repeats. “I waited out the media’s wrath. Another news cycle always brings another scandal, and we’ve been doing our damage control all the while. I wanted to try and put things right, try and figure out a solution so you could come back to me again.”

  Tears run down my face at the love he’s not hiding anymore. “This has got to be unreal.”

  “It’s very real.”

  “Deep inside I hoped you would realize that you felt something about us…anything.” I hadn’t been paying attention to the Highest Bidder media storm, because it anguished me too much.

  He cups my face in his hands. “After I finally read your note, I knew it was time. I knew that I couldn’t control the media, our families, the outside world. But I could come and find you and make a stand.”

  Feverishly, he presses a kiss to my forehead, then my nose, then as I rise to my tiptoes, buries his face in my neck. I laugh and grasp at him, showing him that I’m never going to let him go.

  “God Connor, I was hoping you’d say all of this.”

  “I finally said it. It just took some time. Since the very beginning you had me, and I didn’t want it to be that way. You were inconvenient.”

  “So were you. At least at first.”

  He strokes my hair, looking down at me and watching me as if he can’t quite believe I exist. “After I got out of the plane, I drove as fast as I could to see you.”

  “But not in a Kenyon car.”

  “Rental, whatever was going to get me here as fast as I needed to go. I would’ve run all the way here if I’d needed to.” He keeps touching me all over: my hair, my face, my shoulders.

  We smile at each other, still holding on, until the slam of a screen door cuts through the air.

  I turn around to see Mom, Dad, and Aunt Dee standing on the porch, absolutely stunned. Then I sense someone else standing nearby on the sidewalk.

  Robbie.

  Did they call him to come back to the house, even after I told him to get out?

  Yet another betrayal tightens my veins, and I send them a heartbroken look that makes Aunt Dee and Dad lower their heads. Mom only shakes hers.

  But Connor sees them, too, and he slowly gets down to one knee, holding my hand. I bite my lip.

  Is he doing what I think he’s doing? In front of my disbelieving family? My god…

  He slips his hand into his jacket pocket and brings out a diamond ring that catches the sunlight, sparkling like a beautiful promise.

  “You’re the only thing in my life I’ve ever truly cared about,” he says. “I love you more than I ever thought I could love anyone. Marry me, Ally. Say you’ll spend the rest of your life with me.”

  Without even thinking about it for a second, I reach out to him, offering my hand.

  “Yes. You had to know I’d say yes!”

  He slides the ring on my finger then draws me down to sit on his knee. He pulls me in for the kiss of a lifetime, all the butterflies I’ve ever felt before flapping in my belly now, all the blue fire I’ve ever seen in his eyes flaring between us.

  It seems like a wonderful eternity until we need to come up for air, and I look up to the porch. My family is in shock. Another look around me reveals that that Robbie is gone.

  I remember how he mocked me earlier. Did you think you found true love with Connor Kenyon?

  Why yes, Robbie, I did, I think. And you know what? True love does exist.

  But I don’t need to tell that to anyone. For the first time in my life, I don’t care what anybody else thinks about true love or Connor and me. I only care about my future husband and the life I’m destined to have with him.

  As my family files back into the house, I look at Connor.

  “I guess that’ll be another battle to fight another time,” I say. “But not today.”

  With a heart-stuttering smile—god, I’ve always wanted to see him this happy—he picks me up in his arms and carries me to the car. I feel the ring on my finger, reminding me that this isn’t just a fantasy. It’s as real as real can be.

  He sets me in the rental car, and soon, we’re on our way to the small private airport nearby. He shows me to a sleek little jet that looks like it’s the sports car of planes. As he sits in the cockpit pilot’s seat while I strap myself into a passenger seat, I laugh.

  “You never told me you fly planes. Is this one of yours?”

  “One of many.” He slips a headset on. “There’s a lot I never told you, Ally. But I promise that’s going to be different from now on. And I promise even more than that.”

  I hold my hand to my thudding heart, allowing this dream to seep into me. Cinderella, not Goldilocks. I’m finally living in the right fairy tale.

  “I promise,” he says, “that you’re going to be by my side when I stand up for you at a press conference tonight and tell everyone that our relationship is real.”

  As he says the words I asked him to say on that terrible night when the Highest Bidder information was leaked, I hold back joyful tears again.

  “I promise,” he says, “that I’m going to love you more than humanly possible.”

  “And I’ll love you the same way, Connor.”

  “I also promise to keep the vow I made that night when I said I would take you to my bed, Ally.” His gaze burns hot. “And
I’m going to fucking get us there as soon as I can.”

  My body fully becomes his. He isn’t paying for me this time—he really does own me without a contract, without anything between us this time.

  Just as much as I own him.

  This time when I enter his penthouse, I’m not Goldilocks wandering into a place where she doesn’t quite belong, trying on different things to see what fits just right. I’m Ally and he’s Connor, and I have a ring on my finger that glimmers with the shine of our future.

  He brings me to his room, and I stand in front of his massive, white bed. He comes behind me to rest his hands on my shoulders, and I close my eyes and sigh.

  “The lady of the house,” he says. “The lady of my heart.”

  As he drags his fingers down my back, he stimulates every inch of me. I’m a shimmering flow of liquid need, and I press back into him. He kisses my neck, then my shoulder, bringing down the strap of my dress.

  My body recognizes him. It wants him more than anything, and I’ve got him now. I give myself over to the man I won over, even after he won me in an auction.

  He takes off my dress, my sandals, my panties and bra, and after I’m exposed to him, he gently lays me on the bed.

  I look up at him, trying to fill my lungs with air as he eases off his jacket, his tie, his shirt, then everything else. Like a golden animal with tight, hard muscles rolling under his skin, he crawls on the bed to join me. My pussy pumps for him as my heart imitates every beat.

  “I love every part of you,” he murmurs. Then he kisses my lips. “For instance, right here.”

  I revel in the heat, the rising need.

  He lowers his mouth to my neck, and I arch up to meet him. He sucks my tender skin, gnawing and licking. He’s going to leave a mark on me, but I’ve been marked for a while.

  Then he whispers against the burning spot he’s left me with. “I love you there, too.”

  “I love how you love, Mr. Kenyon.”

  With a quiet laugh, he travels to my breast, branding me with another I love you here on my nipple. I lift myself to meet his wicked kiss again, and he licks me, lazily circling me until I’m aroused. He flicks his tongue over my nub, and I feel his cock getting harder against the inside of my leg.