When she finally managed to say it, her tone was very firm. It stayed firm as she continued on.
“I’m a virgin. I’ve never had sex, and I’m not about to start now.”
Oh, God. She was a virgin. For some reason, I believed that even though I didn’t believe most of what she said. There was a sort of defiance in the way she said it—like she expected me to laugh at her—that made me sure she was telling the truth.
“Never?” I asked, and I tried not to think too much about what that meant. No one had ever touched her. No one had ever parted her smooth, firm thighs and slid deep inside the very center of her being.
She shook her head, and I had to take a second to clear my mind—to really fully comprehend what she was saying.
She was younger than me, I knew that much. She couldn’t be older than twenty-six or maybe twenty-seven at the most. Still, how many virgins were there at that age? Not to mention how utterly delectable she was.
If she really was untouched, I knew it had to be by her own choice.
“You’ve never done anything?” I looked at her, trying to figure out how this could be true. It hardly fit in with the image I had of her in my mind, a man-eating succubus out to get whatever she wanted. However she could.
“No. I’ve never been touched like that,” she admitted, her chin tilted proudly high, that hint of defiance still there in her voice and in her pretty eyes. “Not by anyone.”
Including herself. She didn’t have to say it, but I knew it was true. She’d never even had her own hands on her sexy, tight, little body.
Was she a prude?
It was possible, but I didn’t think so. I thought, somewhere deep down inside, in a place she didn’t even acknowledge at all, she was wound up tighter than anyone I’d ever met.
The idea thrilled me. What would it be like to be the one who finally released all of that tension trapped within her? What would she give to the man who managed to get through to her?
I was doing this just for the money and the revenge for taking advantage of my dying grandfather, I told myself firmly. But as I got to know her more, that was getting harder to keep in mind.
If I wanted to be completely honest with myself, which I wasn’t sure I did, it was more than the money. I wanted to be her first. I wanted to create that impression on her.
It wasn’t part of the plan. In my mind, bedding her had been nothing more than a pleasant way to make her think the marriage was real when I’d been drunkenly planning all of this with Brent.
That was all changing, and I wasn’t sure I could keep up. Not without losing myself.