Having Her: Lies We Tell, Book 2

by Jackie Ashenden

  “I bit him first.”

  “Jesus, Kara.”

  “What? Look, I was telling you the truth, okay? I’m a twenty-five-year-old virgin and I’m fucking sick of it.” She crossed one booted foot over her knee. “Man, I never thought it would be so difficult to get laid in this stupid town.”

  Vin found himself staring at the way her black dress had ridden up her legs, revealing what looked like the top of a stocking. Shit. Was that lace? And suspenders? On Kara?

  He jerked his gaze back to the road as a feeling uncomfortably similar to lust shot straight to his groin.

  For fuck’s sake that was all he needed. Kara had always been in the realm of the untouchable, too many associations with his sister for anything like attraction. So why he should be getting a hard-on for her now was anyone’s guess. Maybe he was just tired. He’d been working like a dog for the past week, and God knew it had been months since he’d taken any time for himself, too consumed by the needs of his business in a difficult economic climate. Not to mention making sure his mother was secure in hospital.

  Clearly he needed to go let off some steam somewhere.

  “So that’s what you’re doing?” he asked. “Going around picking up men just to get rid of your virginity? I take it back, clearly you are that stupid.” He’d never been one to sugarcoat the truth. He didn’t have time for that shit. Except for the kind of truth that affected his sister. And that he’d do anything to keep from her.

  “You prick. Thanks so much, Mr. Sensitive.”

  “Well what do you expect me to say? You’ve got a bruise on your neck and you’re standing out on the road at eleven p.m. at night. I did think you had some sense.”

  Her head was turned resolutely toward the window, her shoulders stiff with tension. “It’s not like I planned for the evening to end this way.”

  “Then how did you plan it?”

  She had her arms crossed over her breasts, her fingers white where they lay against her upper arms. “I thought I’d stay over at Wayne’s place.”

  “You thought you’d stay overnight at your hook-up’s place? Are you really that naïve?”

  “Hello? Virgin here.”

  She still had her head turned away but he heard something in her voice. A small tremor.

  “Fuck, did he hurt you?” Vin demanded, a sudden ice-cold anger going through him. “Because if he did—”

  “No, he didn’t,” Kara said flatly. “I left.”

  For some reason that didn’t make him feel any better. “Why? What did he do?”

  “Nothing. He didn’t do anything.” She fell silent for a long moment. “And that was kind of the problem. I think he was expecting me to do something.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t think I want to be discussing this with you right now.”

  He didn’t really want to be discussing it either if he was honest. But he didn’t like the idea of Kara picking up strange men in bars just because she wanted to lose her virginity.

  “Jesus, Kara. What’s the rush?” he asked, when she didn’t break the silence. “Surely you don’t have to resort to bar hook-ups?”

  She let out a short breath. “The rush? I’m twenty-five for God’s sake. Hardly normal, is it?”

  He didn’t want to point out the obvious but someone had to. “Normal? You?”

  “Yeah, yeah, hysterical, I know. So shoot me if I want a little bit of normality in my life.”

  “If you want normality in your life, then dressing like that isn’t the way to go about getting it.”

  Kara turned her head, giving him a hard stare. Then, pointedly, she pushed her black-framed glasses up her nose with her middle finger. “I’ll dress any way I damn well please, thank you very much.”

  Christ almighty, the woman was asking for trouble with that kind of attitude. “I hate to be the one to point this out to you, Kara, but if that’s the way you treat all your hook-ups, no wonder you’re a virgin.”

  “You’re an asshole, you know that?”

  Yeah, he kind of did. But shit, he wasn’t going to apologize for pointing out the truth. “All I’m saying is—”

  “All you’re saying is that I can’t get laid because I’m an evil bitch,” she interrupted, shifting her leg which only pulled up her dress more. “Well, maybe you’re right. But I’m not looking for a relationship or someone special. I just want to get this stupid virginity thing out of the way before I get a complex about it.”

  Vin dragged his gaze away from the tantalizing glimpse of black lace and suspenders showing beneath the hem of her dress. He couldn’t think why he wanted to look. He was driving for fuck’s sake. And this was Kara.

  “Sounds to me as if you already have a complex about it,” he said, staring out into the darkness beyond the front window. They weren’t far from Kara’s apartment now. Thank Christ.

  Kara waved a hand. “Hence the bar hook-ups.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, bars are full of guys looking for sex. I thought it would be easy to find someone who wasn’t too hideous and who wanted a bit of fun.”

  Vin couldn’t help flashing her a glance. “Someone who wasn’t too hideous? You’re really selling yourself very high there.”

  A stain of color crept over her cheeks. She looked out of the window again. “As you say, I dress weird. I have an attitude problem. Beggars can’t be choosers, can they?”

  He didn’t know what to say to that. Didn’t she know she was gorgeous? That she could have any guy she pleased? Or at least she could if she didn’t dye her hair stupid colors or wear contacts that made her look like an alien.

  “That’s what you want?” he said. “To lose your virginity to some random stranger who isn’t too hideous?”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “You can do better than that, Kara. Shit, you should do better than that.”

  “What do you care?”

  Kara’s apartment building loomed out of the darkness and he pulled the car over outside it.

  “Because you’re Ellie’s friend. You’re like my own goddamned sister. And I don’t like the idea of you trolling bars for sex just to lose your virginity. It’s not only wrong, it’s dangerous.”

  An odd expression crossed her face, one he couldn’t interpret. Then it was gone, her usual sarcastic exterior firmly in place. “I don’t give a shit what you think. You’re not my brother or my father and even if I had either of those, I wouldn’t let them dictate to me what I did with my time or my body.”

  He ignored that. “But surely you can see what a stupid idea it is, right?”

  She put her hand on the door handle, preparing to get out. Her eyes were the deep purple of violets, an unnatural color. “How else am I supposed to do it? Sell my virginity on eBay?”

  “Find a guy you like. Tell me about him. I’ll investigate—”

  “Oh my God, you’ve got to be kidding.” Her gaze went wide. “You’ll vet my potential sex partners? Do you have any idea how ridiculous that sounds?”

  Vin tightened his grip on the steering wheel. Yeah, okay, he was kind of over the top with stuff like that. But someone had to look out for those who didn’t have anyone else to look out for them. He didn’t know much about Kara’s birth family—she was notoriously private about them and not even Ellie knew much—but he did know that her mother lived down south and her father wasn’t in the picture. That her foster family was long gone and she had no one here in Auckland. Which for Vin automatically meant it was his job.

  “I don’t care how ridiculous that sounds. I don’t want you ending up raped or murdered because you chose the wrong guy.”

  Kara rolled her eyes. “Jesus, Vincent. Give the bloody protective crap a rest, okay? I’m not your damn sister, I don’t need it.”

  But Vin had never backed down over what he saw as his responsibilities and he wasn’t going to start now. “What you need, Kara, is for someone to show you all about sex in a safe environment, not some fucking bar.”

  “A s
afe environment? My God, if you could only hear yourself. And I suppose next you’re going to offer to find a nice man who’d do that for me?”

  “I think that’s the first sensible thing I’ve heard come out of your mouth all night.”

  Kara stared at him for a second, as if she couldn’t believe what he said. Then she turned abruptly, pulling on the door handle and opening the car door. “As much as the offer of you choosing my sexual partners for me fills me with joy, I’m going to have to decline. Then perhaps I’ll burn an effigy of you in the back garden.” She slid out of the car, her dress sliding up over the tops of her stockings and shit, yes, they were actual stockings. With suspenders.

  Vin tried not to look.

  She turned, leaned in, one hand on the car door, clearly wanting to have the last word. “Unless you’re offering yourself of course.”

  It took a moment for her words to make sense. And then when they did, the surge of lust that accompanied them took him by surprise. No. That was not happening. No fucking way.

  “I’m not sleeping with you, Kara,” he said curtly.

  She lifted a shoulder. “Then keep your nose out of my sex life.”

  And she slammed the door in his face.

  Chapter Two

  “I got my costume!” Ellie leaned over the counter, gray eyes alight with excitement, as Kara put the finishing touches on the lattes she was making.

  Kara pushed the coffees toward a couple of people waiting at the other end of the counter, then turned back to her best friend. “Oh crap, already?”

  “Of course already. NZ Con’s next week, Kar.”

  Yeah, so it was. She and Ellie had been waiting for it for months, the last big deal before Ellie left for Tokyo. A couple of days of hanging out with the gaming/manga crowd and, Kara was hoping, making a few more contacts in the comic industry. Always useful when you owned a business dealing in manga, gaming and the Internet.

  Ellie, with typical Ellie enthusiasm, had been getting her costume custom-made. Unlike Kara, who hadn’t been able to afford it. All her spare cash went back into Manga Café Extreme, the manga/Internet café she owned, and every cent had to since the rents in central Auckland were exorbitant.

  “What about you?” Ellie asked as Kara started preparing Ellie’s usual latte. “Have you got one yet?”

  “Uh…no.” She’d done a trawl through various costume shops and had come up with nothing. Or at least nothing she wanted to wear. There had been the slave costume, the one that Princes Leia had worn in Return of the Jedi, but every bloody Con she’d been to there’d been at least a half dozen slave Leias. It wasn’t like the costume was original or anything.

  And then there was the fact that the costume exposed a lot of flesh. Kara wasn’t skinny like Ellie. She had curves. Lots of them. Far too many for a metal bikini and bit of fabric to be the only thing between her and total humiliation.

  “No?” Ellie frowned at her. “But you’re looking, right?”

  “Yeah, I’m looking.”

  Elle’s frown deepened. “Hey, anything up?”

  A small stab of guilt went through Kara. She’d totally meant to tell her friend all about her hideous evening with Wayne and yet every time she went to talk about it, all she could see was Vin’s perfect face and the anger in it. And the hot, liquid rush of humiliation that had swept over her.

  I’m not sleeping with you, Kara.

  She couldn’t think why she’d even suggested it in the first place, only that she’d been so pissed off with his arrogance. With his patronizing insistence on looking out for her. She’d been looking out for herself since she’d left her foster home at seventeen, and she didn’t need him assuming he had some sort of responsibility because of her association with Ellie. She was twenty-five, for Christ’s sake.

  So yeah, she’d said it to get a reaction. But the look on his face had hurt some part of her she wasn’t quite prepared to acknowledge yet.

  As if she’d ever want to sleep with an arrogant son of a bitch like him anyway.

  “No,” Kara said, shoving the nozzle into the milk jug and pulling the switch to turn on the steam. The noise effectively cancelled out any further comments her friend wanted to make. At least for the meantime. But Kara could feel Ellie’s puzzled gaze on her, probably wondering what the story was.

  Your brother’s being a prick. He won’t sleep with me and I kind of want him to.

  What? No, she did not want him to. Not in any way, shape or form.

  “Kara,” Ellie said as the noise from the espresso machine died away. “Come on. What’s got you so pissed off?”

  “Go sit down and I’ll bring you your coffee.”

  “Kara—”

  “And then I’ll tell you, okay?”

  Perhaps it would be good to tell Ellie. Not the stuff about sleeping with her brother because that would be weird, but maybe about Wayne. And maybe she could ask her why Vin was always such a grumpy, mean bastard.

  Not that she cared of course, but still…

  The rest of the customers in the café were either all busy in the Internet part of it or sitting around various tables talking or reading, so Kara skirted around the counter with Ellie’s coffee, coming over to their usual table which consisted of a couple of ragged sofas that gave off a student-flat kind of vibe.

  Ellie folded her arms as Kara approached, platform boots on the low table in front of her, a stern look on her face. The resemblance between her and her brother was slight and yet sometimes Kara caught echoes of Vin in her friend’s delicate features. Especially when Ellie was giving her a tell me everything you know look.

  Kara put the latte on the table beside Ellie’s feet then sat on the couch. “Yeah, okay,” she said. “Something’s up.”

  “Huh. No kidding.” Ellie reached for the coffee. “So? Spill.”

  “A couple of nights ago, I picked up this guy in a bar.”

  Ellie’s eyebrows lifted. “A one-night stand, Kar?”

  “That was the idea. Except…” She stopped, that strange sense of vulnerability and humiliation washing over her again.

  “Kar?” her friend murmured. “What happened?”

  “Nothing bad.” She met Ellie’s worried look. “I couldn’t go through with it. I just got… I dunno. We went back to his place and he just sat there, looking at me, waiting for me to do something and I couldn’t think of what to do and…” She hesitated. “I felt like an idiot. So I left.”

  Ellie leaned forward, put her coffee down, then put an awkward hand over Kara’s where they were clasped in her lap. “Aw, Kar.”

  The sympathetic expression in her friend’s eyes and the comforting hand over her own made Kara uneasy. She could give out plenty of sympathy and comfort herself, but she didn’t like being on the receiving end.

  Gently she eased her hands away from Ellie’s. “It’s okay. I was fine. I tried to ring you but you’d left your phone at Vin’s office.”

  “Oh, yeah, I did. Sorry. He gave it back to me yesterday.”

  “Actually, he ended up picking me up from the guy’s place and taking me home.”

  “Of course he did. I hope he wasn’t a prick about it.”

  “He kind of was.”

  Ellie rolled her eyes. “I’d apologize for his prickishness, except you know what he’s like.”

  Kara sighed. “I do. He was meaner about it than normal though.” Way meaner. If she’d been a weaker kind of woman, the comments about her appearance and attitude would have hurt.

  Luckily she wasn’t that kind of woman.

  Yeah? Then why did you get so angry with him?

  Well, she’d tried not to. Had done her best to let it go. Because what did she care what he thought of her? She didn’t, that’s what.

  “Don’t tell me,” Ellie said. “He complained about your clothes.”

  “Yeah.”

  “God, did he give you the third degree about what you were doing out at night by yourself?”

  “That too.”

&
nbsp; “Oh, Kar—”

  “It’s fine. I told him he was an asshole.”

  Ellie let out a sigh. “Look, I know he’s difficult sometimes, but he means well.”

  “Yeah but he doesn’t need to do that by being all judgmental and crap.” Kara smoothed down the stretchy blue miniskirt she wore. “Or telling me that my attitude is the reason why I’m still a virgin.”

  Her friend’s red brows rose into her hairline. “Oh my God, you told him about that?”

  “I did.” And she’d been rather pleased with the look of surprise that had crossed his handsome face. Pleasure that had swiftly turned into regret when he’d gone into must protect the virgin mode. Not a huge shock knowing Vincent Fox as she did.

  Ellie sat back on the sofa. “Why?”

  “He was pissing me off with his attitude. And I guess I wanted to shock him.”

  “I can imagine how that went down.”

  Kara fiddled with the hem of her miniskirt again. “Yeah, not good. He seems to think I can’t look after myself.”

  “Welcome to my world,” Ellie said dryly. Then she sighed again. “Look, if it helps, he’s kind of been looking out for me my whole life, and I think that just naturally extends to anyone associated with me. It’s just the way he is.”

  “It’s annoying.” She wouldn’t mention Vin’s offer of vetting her potential sexual partners. Man, maybe Ellie had gone through the same thing. Maybe Vin had even vetted Cam, Ellie’s ex. God, if he had, Kara didn’t want to know.

  “Tell me about it.” Ellie picked up her coffee again and took another sip. “He’s just trying to make sure everyone’s safe, I guess.”

  Safe. Yeah, well, she couldn’t deny that she did feel safe with Vin. Especially when he’d turned up that night and those guys had gone running. But for another part of her, safe was the last thing she’d felt. Such as when those storm-blue eyes of his had glanced down at her legs in the car as she’d crossed them. Where the hem of her dress had ridden up. His gaze had lingered and she’d felt a shiver go through her. A delicious shiver.

  “Kar?”

  Crap. Please don’t say she was mooning around about Vin. He was hot, oh God was he hot. But it’s not as if she wanted to lose her virginity with him. Because in addition to being hot, he was also the most take-charge son of a bitch she’d ever met.