Page 20 of SCRUMptious

She twisted in her seat and rested her back against the door. “I’m trying to figure out what to say here without coming off like a bitch.”

Fuck. This wasn’t going to begood.

“I don’t care that you’re a virgin.” I opened my mouth to tell her she was lying to both of us if she thought that was true, but she shook her head and started over. “Okay, I care, but only because of our age difference. If I was a 22-year-old girl, I’d probably be swooning right now. But seriously, this makes me really uncomfortable. I don’t want to be your Mrs. Robinson.”

I didn’t tell her I didn’t know who that was because if I did, it’d only strengthen the point she was attempting to make. Taken in context, I figured she was some famous cougar who had a string of young boy toys in her past. I’d have to remember to look her up once I gothome.

To hide my ignorance, I asked, “What doyouwant?”

She sighed again. “I kind of want you to be the manwhore I thought youwere.”

“Sorry,” I chuckled. “That’s notme.”

Lauren stared at me and I could practically see the wheels turning in her pretty little head. “What do you want toknow?”

Absentmindedly, she ran the pad of her thumb over her bottom lip, like she was remembering what it had felt like to kiss me, how electric it had been when our mouths had fused. She blinked, and shook her head. “I believe you when you say you had your reasons for not having had sex before, but clearly you’re not entirely innocent either. I mean …” she trailed off, her cheeks turningpink.

I leaned forward as best as I could and rested my hand on her inner thigh, my fingers petting her through the denim she wore. “You mean I eat pussy like a fucking champ and you’ve never come that hard in yourlife?”

Her pupils flared with desire and her chest rose and fell with deeper breaths. She nodded. “Yes, that.”

Good. At least she hadn’t denied how I’d made her feel, how good it had been between us. With just my fingers and my tongue, I’d taken her to places no other man before me had been able to. As long as I could keep her trembling with desire, I thought I still stood a chance.

“I’m a virgin, Lauren, not a monk. I like women. I like making them come. I loved making you come. I want to do it again, and again, and again.”

“I must be crazy,” she said, “because if you told any of my friends there was someone who looked like you who only wanted to pleasure them, they’d fall backwards, open their legs, and say ‘yes please.’ And yet, here I am, thinking about all the ways that’s wrong. How that’d be taking advantage of you in some way. How I can’t just take from you. I need to be able to givetoo.”

How I can’t just take fromyou.

Hearing those words, everything clicked into place. That right there is what I’d been afraid of all my life. All those women back in Los Angeles and here in Dublin who’d fucked my dad for their chance at fame or fortune. Even though he was a married man with a family, they gave themselves to him with the expectation that he’d give them something in return. And the girls who’d hoped to fuck me had been the same. They hadn’t want me—they wanted what I could do for them, what I could give them. But not Lauren.

“You’re fucking perfect,” I blurted, and then felt immediately embarrassed. It seemed where Lauren was concerned, I couldn’t keep my humiliating confessions at bay. With anyone else, I was cool as a cucumber, completely unaffected, but with her I was an excited little puppy.

“I am?” she asked, her eyebrows raised.

“I don’t fuck those girls because they don’t care about me. They just want what I can do for them, how I can improve their social standing. They’d be happy to lay back and let me take whatever I wanted from them—whenever—all with the expectation that I’d so something for them in return. That’s exactly why I haven’t been with anyone. Why I haven’t wanted to untilnow.”

“Until now?” she squeaked.

“I want you, Lauren. You don’t know how bad. You’re all I think about.” I squirmed uncomfortably in my seat. Just talking about how bad I wanted to be with this woman was giving me the most painful erection. “Fuck,” I muttered, scrubbing my hand over my face. “I just found out my rugby career is over, and I can’t be bothered because there is nothing more important to me right now then making you understand I’m not fucking around here. I plan to do everything in my power to make you see how right this is, even though you think it’s wrong.”

“Are you sure?” she asked, the black of her pupils bleeding into the green of her irises.

“Take me back to your place and let me show you how fucking sure Iam.”

Our gazes locked, the challenge hanging between us. This was it, the moment our fate was decided. Lauren licked her lips and then twisted in her seat. When she started the car, my heart stopped, the pendulum poised to swing one way or the other. She cast me one last glance and then smiled shyly. “It’s tiny, but my bed is big enough.”

I fell back in my seat with a sigh of relief.

Thank fucking Christ.

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