Page 32 of Pirate

But he wasn’t jealous. He couldn’t be. He wasn’twithSophia so there was no reason for him to be jealous.

Sophia took a sip of her beer and then handed it over to him. He accepted the cold glass bottle as she said, “No. Fletcher, Carlos, Jazz, and I were friends all through elementary school. My parents and Fletcher’s are from the same social circle, if you catch my drift. His parents loved my parents’ idea of sending their kids to public school to teach them humility. It was a lesson lost on Fletcher, though. He changed when we got into middle school. He and Carlos had a falling out and Fletcher left our little group to go hang with the jocks and popular kids.”

“Clearly you weren’t dating when you were in elementary school. So eventually you two became friends again?” He sat on the edge of his bed.

Sophia shrugged. “I wouldn’t say that, but he certainly had the bad boy vibe going in high school that caught my attention. We were always together outside of school because of our parents. Unlike Jazz and Carlos, I could never really escape him.”

She walked up to Pirate, took the beer back from him, but didn’t take a drink. “If you must know, I lost my virginity to that asshole when I was sixteen. We were at some function in Pittsburgh, escaped out the back, and ended up at one of the hotels his father owns. You don’t need the details beyond that.”

Good, because he did not want them. “Did he take advantage of you?”

Sophia shook her head. “No, but I had bigger hearts in my eyes about it than he did. I thought we were dating and continued to sleep with him. He thought we weren’t and continued to sleep with other girls. You can guess the rest.”

“You found out, had a very Sophia-like reaction, and he lost a testicle?”

She snorted, which echoed into the beer bottle she’d been bringing up to her lips. “A toe actually.”

Pirate’s jaw dropped. “Are you serious?”

She shrugged innocently. “They were able to reattach it.”

He couldn’t help but grin, despite the weird feeling in the pit of his stomach. A feeling of pride washed over him. It was so strong, one might have thought it was his own accomplishment he was boasting about. Sophia truly was one of a kind. He’d never met another girl like her. Doubted he ever would.

“I never had feelings for him,” she pressed on. “Not ones that really mattered. But everyone remembers their first whether they want to or not. I’m just cursed that he was mine.”

That was true enough. Pirate’s was his hometown’s librarian, Loretta Calder. He’d been just shy of his eighteenth birthday and she’d been… Well, old enough to have known better than to screw a teenager in the back office but still young enough for the experience to not have been creepy.

With the number of his club brothers falling for their women in recent years, including his own brother, Pirate had heard many of them say thatfirstwasn’t as important aslast. The idea being that what either of them in the relationship had done in their past didn’t matter because they had each other now. That concept of being thefinalappealed to them.

He knew it was different for the genders. A lot of men refused to be with a woman who had a high count. It wasn’t something that had ever mattered to Pirate because he’d never bothered to ask. He’d never been with a woman long enough for ittomatter.

He realized with Sophia he had almost a strong desirenot to know. He didn’t think his sanity could take it if he knew how many men she’d slept with prior to him.

Which, again, made absolutely no sense.

What Sophia and he had going wasn’t permanent. They weren’t dating and they were about to get divorced—with no one but Keys the wiser. They hadn’t discussed how long they were going to keep sleeping together. Pirate supposed it made sense for it to end when their secret marriage did.

Andthatdid not sit well with him at all.

“What’s got your panties in a bunch?” Sophia asked, stepping between his legs.

His thighs automatically widened for her, though his eyes glared at her implication. “You know damn well that I don’t wear panties.”

She circled her arms around his neck. “I think your fine ass would look good in a pair of bright pink panties. Or better yet, a red pair with a pirate flag over the back.”

He put his hands on her hips. “I suppose that will have to be one of the universe’s many unanswered questions, because that’ll never happen.”

“Wanna bet?” she inquired before lowering her mouth to his.

Pirate opened for her. Loving how, even though she acted submissive in bed, she was still just as aggressive as he was. Their tongues swirled in a dance between their mouths, their hot breath mingling.

Sophia moved up to straddle his lap. His hands went to her ass, squeezing her through her leather pants.

He was so, so tempted to pull down that back zipper. He was calling himself all sorts of stupid when he pulled his hand away and then finally his mouth.

She blinked down at him, clearly surprised by this turn of events. To her credit, he was pretty sure he’d never pulled away from her before.

“We were keeping this,” he indicated between them with a pointer finger, “a secret. Why then did you tell your mom we were dating?”

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