The Virgin

by J. Dallas

  His green eyes held mine as I slid my hands down, worked them under the hem of his sweater.

  Heated flesh met my palms as I dragged them upward, baring his chest. “I’m tired of wondering. I’m tired of wishing. I’m tired of dreaming. I’m tired of being lonely. I just want to…”

  I stopped, biting my lip as the words froze in my throat. Instead of trying to force the words out, I pressed a kiss to his brow. Then the hard, carved line of one cheekbone. The other. I worked my way back to his mouth and said softly, “I want to feel. I’m tired of not feeling. You’re the only one who ever really made me feel anything.”

  His hand tangled in my hair and my breath caught as he wrapped it around his fist. “Is that what this is about? You want to feel something?”

  “I’ve always felt something with you.” We were so close, I could feel his breath dancing over my lips. I freed a hand and pressed it to his cheek. “Whether it was the way you dazzled me and made me burn inside ten years ago, or the hurt that came after. When I finally stopped hurting, I felt something else. I was mad…so mad.” Leaning in, I pressed my lips to his, rubbed them back and forth as a shiver raced down my spine. “I kept telling myself that anger was still there even up until…”

  His hand molded over the back of my skull as the words died. I had to clear my throat before I could continue and when I did, I was no longer even sure what I’d started out to say. “I’m tired of existing in the past. I just want to start living again.”

  I pressed my lips to his.

  His fingers tangled almost painfully in my hair and his eyes glinted, sunlight shining through the fog. The only warning I had was the way his body tightened beneath mine. We moved and in a blink, we were flat on the low-lying table that stretched across the floor. His chest crushed me and I reached up, gripping his torso. My heart raced, desire, hunger ripping at me.

  Need had vicious claws and it left me breathless. Drake braced one hand by my ear, raising his head to look down at me. “I can make you feel,” he rasped. Then he shoved up on his knees and tore his sweater away. He came back and I almost sobbed at the feel of him pressed against me.

  A big, hard palm cupped my breast, his thumb circling my nipple.

  I felt that—all the way down to my core where I already ached for him. I’d been empty, longing for him, for this, ever since I’d walked away.

  Desperation roared inside me as he kissed a burning line down my neck to take my nipple in his mouth. At the same time, he cupped me in his hand. I cried out, reaching for him. He pushed two fingers inside me, twisted. “Shan,” he muttered.

  I panted as he worked me closer and closer to orgasm, something that had been elusive until he’d taken me. Now, I raced toward him and as he sent me flying, just like that, his name echoed inside my mind, although I didn’t even have the breath to whisper it.

  There was no time to catch my breath, either, because I hadn’t even had a chance to drift back down when he started to blaze another hot, open-mouthed trail down my torso, my belly, until he could nuzzle the curls between my thighs. Instinctively, I tensed even as he urged my thighs wider apart. “Feel this,” he said against my flesh, the caress of air against me another teasing torment.

  Then he licked me, bold and demanding, stabbing at my clit while I twisted and shuddered. Beneath my back, the table was hard and unyielding. Against me, Drake was every bit as hard, and he wasn’t much more yielding than the wood, but those kisses…hot, hungry kisses against my pussy, his tongue taunting my flesh until I was arching up to meet each teasing flick.

  Nothing else seemed to exist. Just the flickering flames as they danced across our skin, and his hands holding me tight as he worked his torturous magic on me.

  I loved it, and I hated it because it wasn’t enough.

  I reached down and fisted my hands in his hair, pulled insistently. Demands fought to form in my throat, but I couldn’t get anything out except, “You.”

  He caught my clit between his teeth and tugged, humming against my swollen flesh.

  “Drake, damn it…I want you.”

  “You have me.”

  Snarling, I twisted and arched against him and he laughed, started his way back up my body. “You want to feel,” he said, bracing his weight above me. There was no laughter in his eyes now and his gaze was hot, molten. Quicksilver. “Feel what I’ve felt. Desperate. Frustrated. Dying for what you think you can never have.”

  Stroking my hands down his chest, I toyed with the button of his jeans. “So I can’t have you?”

  Under my hands, I felt the heavy column of his cock and yearning flooded me, wrapped itself around me. If he pulled away, I might cry. I might break. I might throw myself at him and beg—

  “You can have whatever you want.”

  I freed the button and fought with the zipper until I managed to drag it down over his length. “I want this,” I said once I’d freed him. Wrapping my hand around him, I stroked him, fumbling until I caught the rhythm and watched his eyes go opaque. “I want to feel you inside me. Now.”

  He reached down and caught my hand, pinned it down by my head, pressed it there. “Now.”

  The blunt tip of his cock probed between my thighs and I shifted, my breath catching as he slowly pushed inside. “Do you feel me now?” he demanded.

  Twisting my hips, I tried to take him deeper. “Yes…” I groaned, closed my eyes. “More. Please.”

  Instead, he withdrew until we were just barely connected. My eyes flew open and I stared up at him. “Drake.”

  “Watch me. See me. I want to see you come apart, see you as I fill you.”

  The rough, velvet timbre of his voice was another caress and I shuddered all over again as he started to push inside me. Again, he stopped without filling me, withdrawing and holding there, watching me. I tightened my grasp on his hand, digging my nails into his skin in desperation. He was going to drive me crazy—“Oh!”

  He drove in hard, fast, deep. The sound of my cry bounced off the walls and then he did it again and again, while I lay there, open and helpless, craving every deep, ruthless twist of his hips. “Feel me,” he snarled, bending down to catch my mouth in a deep, drugging kiss. “Have me.”

  His mouth left mine to kiss a burning path down my neck and there, at the curve where neck met shoulder, he sank his teeth in, sucking hard and fast, a delicious little suction that added another sensation to my already overloaded system.

  He let go of my hand and shifted his grip, moving to hook my thighs over his elbows. I felt almost bruised from him now as he sank so deeply inside me. “Say my name,” he muttered against my ear.

  “Drake.” It stuttered out of me, my throat dry, my heart pounding. “Please…”

  “Please what?”

  I didn’t have an answer for that. Please don’t stop. Please don’t leave. Please love me.

  There were a hundred ways to finish it, but I couldn’t think beyond anything more than please…

  Staring into vivid green eyes, I just gasped it out again. Heat built inside me, the orgasm looming in front of me, so close, so very close. I strained toward it, and as though he knew exactly what I wanted, what I needed, he let go of my right leg, smoothed a hand along my inner thigh, placed it against my belly, his thumb just brushing the curls between my thighs. “You’re so close. I can feel it…your pussy is grabbing at me like a fist.”

  Heat rushed to my face and I groaned, looking away.

  That hand that had rested on my belly slid up now, along my torso, up my neck until he caught my chin, thumb along one side, his fingers spread across my other cheek. “Look at me. I want to see what I do to you.” He twisted his hips and again and I cried out, arching up as I felt a harsh, twisting spasm of pleasure ripple through me. “I want to see it in your eyes, feel it here—in your pussy.”

  “Drake!”

  He laughed. “You make me feel, too,” he said, coming back down over me, crushing me into the unyielding wood at my back. “You always did. You make
me feel stupid and greedy and determined to have everything from you I can get. All your blushes, all your sighs…come for me, Shan. Let me have this.”

  Then he slid his hand back between us and I cried out as he started to circle the aching knot of my clitoris. Pleasure, lightning hot, ricocheted through me and I arched my neck, a soundless scream ripping out of me, like it was torn from my very soul.

  Chapter Six

  The bed was soft under me. At some point, he’d moved us from the living room into the bedroom and I could see the ocean, spreading out in front of me through the windows.

  Drake lay behind me, his arm was hard around my waist. The heat of his body was like a furnace at my back.

  For one sweet, sweet minute, I let myself just lie there and enjoy it.

  In the past ten years, this was the closest to peace I’d ever come.

  Actually, this was probably the most peace I’d ever known in my life period. I hadn’t really been looking for peace as a kid—seashells, crabs and fun—I’d looked for those. But not peace.

  What did peace matter when you’re young?

  Snuggling deeper into the blankets and Drake, I thought back to those days. Days I’d never thought to appreciate at the time. How can you, though?

  I guess we just never think about it, never realize how wonderful it is to be able to simply spend the days on the beach, or even to go to school and have nothing more to worry about than getting good grades, talking with your friends on the bus, and whether or not you’d have enough money to buy a cute shirt with your allowance.

  It had never once occurred to me how quickly it could all just…go away.

  Just as it never occurred to me that I should treasure all those moments with my parents. How lucky I was that they’d been there, that they’d loved me and that they’d given up their dream once they realized they couldn’t make it work anymore. Because they wanted to make sure I’d be able to have the things I wanted out of life.

  Wiggling around, I turned to face Drake, hampered by the deadweight of his arm. Some people looked peaceful when they slept. Drake didn’t. He looked like he was still working out mergers, deciphering blueprints and planning world domination via Gallagher Enterprises.

  He was still damn beautiful.

  Sighing, I reached up and traced my finger down the line of his nose. It wasn’t a perfectly straight nose. It was just a bit crooked, right there in the middle, like it had been broken once. His lashes fluttered and a second later, his eyes opened and I found myself staring at him, his gaze hazy with sleep.

  For a moment, we just looked at each other and then he blinked. “You’re still here.”

  “Did you think I wouldn’t be?”

  “I thought maybe I’d dreamed it.” The arm on my waist tightened and he rolled onto his back, pulling me with him.

  His clothes had ended up in a trail from the living room to here sometime during the night and I’d never bothered to put anything on, either. That made this position very interesting. Bracing my hands on his chest, I sat up. I had to take a moment to appreciate the nuances of that particular movement, the heat centered between my thighs, the way his cock was rubbing against me, already pulsing. I felt an answering throb echo through me and my voice wasn’t completely steady when I spoke. “If you were dreaming, we got a problem, because I had the same dream.”

  “Shared dreams. Strange stuff.” His hands gripped my hips, fingers sinking in as he arched up. “Take me inside you, Shan.”

  My breath caught. I’d…ah. Part of me thought we’d talk some. Figure out just what was going to come next. “Now?”

  “Doesn’t seem like a better time.” His eyes watched me, all but challenged me.

  Okay. Talk could wait. A little while. We were going to have to talk, but why now?

  It didn’t really seem the time over breakfast, either, but I forced myself to do it.

  With coffee in hand and scrambled eggs on a plate, I cleared my throat and made myself meet his eyes. “I don’t know where any of this leaves us.”

  Drake had been in the middle of getting the bacon from the stove—my belly rumbled as if on cue—but at the sound of my voice, he paused. It only lasted a moment and he continued on to the table.

  “Is it supposed to leave us anywhere?” he asked.

  Licking my lips, I carefully said, “It feels like it should.”

  “Meaning…?”

  “Our relationship hasn’t exactly been normal.” I reached for one of the pieces of bacon he’d just put on my plate, nipped off a bit at the edge. Bacon was one of the four basic food groups as far as I was concerned, but it tasted like sawdust. “I lived angry over what happened ten years ago. So angry I ended up pulling a total bitch routine just to get back to you. And…”

  I stopped, blew out a sigh as I put the unfinished piece of bacon down. “I don’t even know how you feel about me.”

  A chair scraped against the floor. There was nothing but silence for the next the thirty seconds, but I could feel the weight of his stare.

  Slowly, I turned my head to look at him.

  He reached for the cup of coffee and stared down into it, brooding over it like he expected to find the answers to everything inside. Caffeine did have miraculous properties, but I didn’t think he’d find the answers we needed in that cup.

  “I could have told you how I felt about you ten years ago,” Drake said after almost a full minute passed. “I could have. But it would have been wrong.”

  My heart slammed against my ribs as he lifted his head. The intensity of his stare slammed into me, practically pinning me in place. “I fell in love with you that summer. And not a damn thing has changed. Not for me.”

  For one brief, bright moment, hope burned inside me.

  Then it felt like the very world was going to crumble beneath my feet. Once again, familiar words started to echo in the back of my mind. Harsh, brittle, so very mocking. I don’t fuck naïve little virgins, Shan.

  The pain, the shame I felt then, came rushing back, every bit as deep and cutting. Slowly, I pushed back from the table. My head spun in dizzying circles and I tried to breathe in. It hurt, a band around my chest making it all but impossible to take a deep enough breath.

  “Shan.” His voice, low and quiet, cut through the noise in my head.

  “Don’t,” I said, shaking my head. I turned away, desperate to be alone for a few minutes. I needed to think. I so badly needed to think. This…this should make it better, right? I’d mattered then, if he could be believed. This should make it better. So why did I feel like he just slashed my heart open all over again.

  I made it two steps before he came up behind me, his arms coming around me. “Let me go,” I said, forcing the words out through a throat gone tight with emotion. There was something trapped inside me. I didn’t understand it. Was it a scream? Was it a sob? I didn’t understand.

  “No.” The words were spoken against my hair. “I had to do that once—it was wrong then. Even if I hadn’t been here to buy this place, I was too old for you. It was all wrong. But it didn’t change how I felt. One look at you and I was done for.”

  “Let me go.” The shaking started deep inside me and I couldn’t stop it. If he didn’t let me go, and now, I was going to break. Right here. Right now.

  “Why?” He spun me around and caught my face in his hands. “You came after me. You came to me last night. You’re the one who was just sitting there telling me you didn’t know how I felt and now I tell you and you want me to let you go.”

  I blinked and when I looked back at him, it was through a veil of tears. I reached out, fumbling for anything that would push him away, anything that would give me the distance I needed to think. I just needed to think. “You’re lying. You son of a bitch. You told me that night that you don’t fuck naïve little virgins. Fine. I get it. I wasn’t sophisticated enough, old enough for you. But don’t you dare stand there and tell me you loved me when you were that cruel—”

  “I don’t give
a damn about how sophisticated you were. None of that mattered to me.”

  His voice was like a slap in the air and I flinched.

  Furious with myself, I continued to push. “So it was the age thing. How noble of you. You could flirt with me, make out with me, let me shove my hand down your pants, but the fact that I was a seventeen-year-old virgin—that was your stopping point. It was okay to be cruel, though.”

  “Oh, fuck this,” he muttered.

  “I don’t think so.” I shoved in front of him as he would have left. Pride drove me as I shoved my hands against his chest. “So it’s okay to be attracted to stupid little virgin, okay to be cruel, but no fucking her, right? She’s too young. Have I got it right?”

  He grabbed my arms, jerked me close. “I never meant any of it to go as far as it did,” he rasped, his breath coming in heavy pants against my mouth, his brow pressed to mine. “I told myself, every time, I’d end it. I’d pull back. And all I did was get tangled up in you. I didn’t know how to handle…”

  “What?” I demanded, my voice thick with derision. “A teenaged girl with a crush?”

  “It was more than that, and you know it. It was always more with us.” He crowded me back against the counter and the heat of him, the length of his body pressed to mine all but knocked the breath out of me.

  “Well.” I leaned back, desperate to get some room between us but all I managed to do was put myself in a position that had my pelvis pressed flush to his while I had a painfully intimate view of his face. My heart pounded, hard and fast, as I looked at him and his eyes glittered over brightly as he watched me. “I guess you’d be the better judge. I didn’t have jack to compare it to, after all.”

  He shoved a hand into my hair, fisted it. My breath lodged in my throat as he pressed his mouth to mine. “Neither did I, darling,” he rasped.

  “What in the hell is that supposed to mean?”