Page 42 of The Naughty Virgin

And I exhaled with impatience.

“Stone,” I said, exasperated suddenly. “Let’s start with the obvious. Where have you been? Why did you disappear without a word? Especially after- after,” and here I choked, “after you took my virginity?”

The big man was serious then, his blue eyes darkening into a stormy grey, looking at me with feeling, with fervor.

“Honey,” he said quietly. “I wanted to do what was best for us and leaving was best,” he stated. “I know it was sudden, that I gave you no advance warning but trust me, the less contact we had, the better.”

I shook my head, disagreeing.

“Whatever your reasons, they couldn’t have justified leaving me like that,” I said slowly. “Who does that? Who takes a girl’s virginity and then beats feet out of town?”

Stone sighed.

“I know this is going to be tough to understand, but I was doing it for you, Evie,” he said gently. “When you came over for dinner, suddenly I realized we’d entered new territory and the stakes were high. Real high.”

I still didn’t get it.

“Like they weren’t high before?” I asked, shaking my head. “I mean, we were fucking on an air mattress in an empty classroom, if we’d been caught, it would have been disaster for your career.”

And Stone nodded slowly.

“That’s true, but I wasn’t thinking about my career,” he chose his words carefully. “I was thinking about my heart.”

Suddenly my pulse was pounding, the beating in my chest so thunderous my hearing was muffled, the world spinning on its axis.

And Stone turned to me, his blue eyes full of feeling.

“Baby,” he said quietly. “When you came over for dinner I realized this wasn’t some lunchtime fuck, this wasn’t some dalliance that I was going to shrug off with no emotions. You were so amazing, so gorgeous, so perfect, I wanted to bury myself in you, keep you with me, make you mine, and that shook me to my core. It shouldn’t have, but it did.”

I was so overwhelmed by his words that I just stared at him with wide eyes. I was perfect? Gorgeous? Stone wanted to make me his? Oh god, it was beyond my wildest dreams, I could hardly believe my ears. I’d thought Stone was going to offer some lame excuses like “I was really busy” or even “my grandmother died,” but instead he was declaring himself. Stone Phillips was speaking words that I’d never heard a man say before and my heart jumped into my mouth.

But something still didn’t jive and I was cautious after a year apart.

“Stone,” I said slowly, “if I meant all that to you, then your actions make even less sense. If that was true, that I should have been the first person you told when you left town, the first person you reached out to. Why would you ghost someone you loved?”

And finally the words were said, they were out in the open. I half-expected Stone to deny that he loved me, that that was an overstatement, but the big man didn’t fight it. He just nodded soberly, blue eyes clear, acknowledging the truth, the rightness of my words.

“I know honey,” he said quietly. “It makes no sense, but trust me, I did it for you,” he said softly.

“For me?” I repeated, dumbfounded, my cheeks coloring. “Don’t turn this around,” I warned. “There was nothing worse than realizing you’d left town without a word. Do you know how depressed I was, how miserable, how I’ve been walking around in a fog for an entire year?”

And the big man reached a hand out, taking my small palm in his, his fingers square and warm around mine.

“Honey, there’s not a day that I don’t think about it,” he said roughly, emotion filling his voice. “But the problem is that you’re a terrible liar. Every emotion, every feeling can be read on your face, you’re an open book baby and if someone asked you, you’d give everything away.”

“So what?” I asked, still confused, shaking my head. “Why would that matter?”

“Because you’re a young girl, a virgin even. If someone discovered us, it was better if you’d been used and then deserted. It was better if you knew nothing about me or where I was.”

“So you were doing it to save your own ass?” I asked slowly. “You didn’t want to be found?”

And Stone shook his head exasperatedly.

“No honey, that’s not what I’m saying at all. They can find me all they want, I don’t give two shits about that. It’s you. You can’t tell a lie, Evie, it’s impossible for you. And if someone found out about us and reported it to the police, I wanted you to be honest and say, ‘I was used and abused by Stone Phillips and I have no idea where that fucker is now.’ I didn’t want you to be pulled deeper into the web, a clean break was best.”

I nodded a little now. It was starting to make more sense.

“So if someone caught us, you wanted me to tell the truth – that you’d left me high and dry?” I said slowly.

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