Page 63 of Prince of Masks
The surprise of the wildly inappropriate topic isn’t what stuns me. It’s that Dray thinks I’m a virgin.
Dray actually sits here now, relaxed, casual, with the flippant mention of his belief that I haven’t had sex, says it like it’s some unquestionable fact.
That stuns me.
For a moment, I’m silent.
I peel off my shades and aim my frowned, crumpled face at him.
Still, the smile ghosts over his pinkish lips, full and lovely. But it’s starting to fade.
I’m no virgin.
And Dray is figuring that out, right now, in this very moment just by looking at my baffled expression.
My mind reels with my conquests—not many, given how limited I am, of course, and not many I am proud of either, but hey, I’m probably the most virgin aristos senior in Europe.
When I was younger, around fifteen, I was sent to Grandmother Ethel’s for a weekend. I may have gotten closer to a neighbour’s son that I was already familiar with. Flirtations over the years, when we were both free of our boarding schools during breaks, and then a once-off shared bottle of cheap wine in the shed one night that I snuck out, and there it went, my virginity, in a fucking garden shed.
James, too.
I know.
We drank too much.
Maybe that’s a theme. Drinking.
James and I don’t talk about that.
Ever.
Honestly, I’m not even sure he remembers.
My own recall is hazy at best. It was terrible, very ‘stabby’ with a thin penis like a pencil, and he kept leaning on my hair. Neither of us finished.
There was also that one guy, a gentry elite, at last year’s Debutante Ball. I myself wasn’t a debutante yet, but I was drinking the champagne.
Yes.
That’s it.
Alcohol.
Still, I’m nowhere near Dray on the whore scale.
And there was also that guy at Bluestone, a half-breed I tell no one about. We flirted here and there, mostly in the library, and well, he was always nice to me when he was at school, but he was two years above me, so I haven’t seen him in a long while.
I wonder if he put an offer on my contract.
He might not be single anymore. Married, maybe.
I have the list forming in my head.
But I don’t give it to Dray.
His voice is soft, it’s breathy and uncertain, as though he fears the answer, “Have you?”
I let a laugh split me, bitter and short. “Maybe not everyone thinks I’m so repulsive.”
