Page 50 of Taking The Virgin

“I just threw you for a loop,” hesays.

“A tad.” Even though I told myself I’d do anything for him, this seems like a stretch. Who’s going to believe that I, an average and unsophisticated girl, am dating someone like Owen Gregory? “It’s just that having me entertain your colleague at dinner seems risky since I’m not your significant other. You don’t want to blow my cover as your callgirl.”

Or am I something else to younow?

At first I’m not sure Owen is listening. He’s getting turned on again, slipping his fingers under my towel and brushing over the strip of hair on my pussy. My blood pumps there, and I shift, much too excited.

At the same time, he deftly dodges the topic. “You’ll do fine. I’d also like you to take Dr. Earl’s wife around Manhattan with one of my drivers the day after the dinner. Amuse her, show her a good time while Gary and I are working.”

“So the part of the Girlfriend/Hostess will be played by yours truly at this performance.”

He cups me between the legs, and I haul in a breath. It feels so very possessive. Sogood.

“Are you angry that I’m asking you to do this?” he says in myear.

“No. I’m…just not confident.”

My voice is throttled with a growing desire. I shift again, and he seems to sense my discomfort. He slips his hand over to my thigh, resting it there.

Is this a good time to get personal with him? Why else would he be inviting me further into his life like this if he weren’t ready?

“Of course I’ll do what you want me to,” I say. “I know what my purpose is, even though this afternoon I thought…”

“Thoughtwhat?”

“I don’t know.” Say it, Juliet. Just get it out in the open. “It’s just that you know everything about me now, and I think it brought us closer this afternoon. I even feel close to you right now, close enough so that I want to know everything about you. I want to know why you look so troubled sometimes, why you get so cold toward me, why it seems there’s something that happened to you in thepast.”

What a relief to finally have it out there.

But he’s gone frosty, and I tense up in his arms. He removes his hand from my thigh, and as he rises from the lounge, he picks me up and eases me back down onit.

He stalks toward theroom.

“Dammit, Owen,” I say, clutching the towel aroundme.

But he’s already inside.

Hurt wounds me like teeth marks in my skin. His iciness bites at me, and I don’t know how much longer I can take the swelling agony of what he does to me every single time I try to get closer tohim.

I’m so tired of him running hot and cold, his hand stroking me with fevered intentions one moment, him walking away and leaving me iced over the next. I just don’t know what to do anymore.

By the time I get inside, he’s already shut the door to the main bedroom, leaving me with the other one for the night.

Abandoning me and my slowly breaking heart.

* * *

The next morning,Owen is as distant as I expected he would be as we quietly leave the hotel and fly back to New York City on his jet. He’s knee deep in business already, holed up in the back of the plane, and I don’t see him again until we take the limo back to hishome.

Even then he’s withdrawn, and he has the driver drop me off at the front stoop of the brownstone, only to continue on to his office.

Oddly, when he returns that evening, we fall right back into our routine as if nothing happened. But that’s my job, isn’t it? To pretend that nothing is wrong and make him happy?

We eat dinner, have a conversation about the upcoming “date” with Dr. Earl and his wife, and then he takes me up to my room where he seduces me, making me come and scream and plead formore.

Then a funny thing happens during the next couple of days—in spite of both of our apparent fears and our discomfort with each other, we really do seem to be getting closer and closer.

I’m almost fooled into thinking that anyone could mistake us for a real couple.

---