Page 239 of Modern Romance November 2024 5-8

Holding the duvet tightly to her chest, she sat up.

It wasn’t until he’d slid beside her, rested his back against the headboard and taken hold of her hand that she was able to take a proper breath.

It was a breath that stuck in her throat when he said in a voice too casual to be casual, ‘Victoria... Tell me that wasn’t your first time.’

The freezing of Victoria’s hand in his answered Marcello’s question.

Biting back a curse, he tipped his head back and forced himself to breathe.

When he’d come back to earth after their lovemaking, it had been the moment he’d first entered her that had rung loudest. Her gasp. The flash of uncertainty that had temporarily gripped him before he’d completely lost his mind in what they were sharing.

Even as he’d been turning the kitchen upside down searching for something to light the candle with, the thought had refused to be shaken off.

And now his worst fears had been confirmed.

Victoria had been a virgin.

This beautiful, witty, confident, highly intelligent twenty-five-year-old woman had been a virgin.

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ he dragged out. Something dark and acrid was bubbling in his guts.

He heard her swallow. ‘Because you would have used it as an excuse to stop.’

‘What the hell?’ Snapping his gaze to her, he stared intently at the face only a little more discernible under the candle’s illumination, but discernible enough for him to catch the defiance on it. ‘Did you plan this?’

‘Why would I do that?’ she asked tremulously. ‘Howcould I do that?’

Cursing under his breath, he let get of her hand and gripped the back of his neck. ‘Why would you give your virginity to a man like me, Victoria?’

Her voice lifted. ‘Because you’re a professional?’

‘This is not the time for jokes.’

‘I know but this conversation is excruciating.’ She laughed but it sounded more like a sob. ‘You kept telling me to walk away, but I couldn’t. It was already too late for me. And it was too late for you too—if it wasn’t,you’dhave walked away. If I’d told you I was a virgin then...’ She gave another sobbed laugh. ‘What I’m currently feeling for you is something I’ve wanted to feel my entire life.’

The dark acridity in his guts intensified, the impending sense of disaster back with a vengeance. ‘I cannot give you anything more than this.’

‘Iknow,’ she stated vehemently, sitting even straighter. ‘I know that better than anyone, but I also know that our working relationship as we’ve always known it was over the moment this thing between us became impossible to ignore, and to think we could just carry on as if it weren’t this enormous white elephant between us is for the fairies. But just because I was a virgin doesn’t change anything. You’ve been straight with me about your feelings on relationships and stuff and I haven’t wilfully ignored them. The only reason you’re acting the way you are now is because you’re afraid my virginity means I’m going to suddenly expect a ring on my finger, so put that out of your mind. I expect nothing, Marcello, and I hope for nothing more than to leave this apartment with some semblance of our old relationship still intact.’

For the longest time their gazes held, her hazel eyes repeating what her lips had just uttered, words that were exactly what he’d needed to hear. Hearing them, though, and seeing them alive in her eyes brought none of the relief he would expect, and it took a long time before he was able to control the beats of doom pounding inside him enough to suck a long breath in.

‘I am sorry for making assumptions,’ he said heavily. ‘I haven’t been with a virgin since I was one myself.’

That it had felt like it was his first time with Victoria only added to the weight of doom inside him.

‘It really wasn’t a big deal for me, Marcello, so please don’t make it one for you.’

How could he not make it a big deal when he had so many contrasting emotions thrashing through him? The most unwelcome of them all was the secret thrill that kept punching through the acridity. He’d been Victoria’s first. She’d given herself tohim.

Damn it all to hell, how was he supposed to make sense of any of this?

‘I mean it,’ she said into the silence, peering at him intently, reading him better than anyone else in the world. ‘My virginity is irrelevant.’

‘Was,’he supplied tautly.

‘What?’

‘Wasirrelevant. It is gone. Given to a man who didn’t deserve it when there must be hundreds—thousands—of men out there who would be able to give you everything you wish for.’

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