Page 12 of His Virgin Vessel

I shrugged. She had a point. "Sorry. I didn't mean to ..."

"Use me as a way to avoid dealing with the girl with the crush?"

"Okay, I did mean to do that."

Fiona eyed me, and I found myself struggling to tell what she was thinking.

"What is it about her?"

"What?"

"I've never known you to act this way around a girl."

"One dance?"

Fiona took my hand. "It has been too long."

Maybe I was a lousy dancer, but I still enjoyed dancing with Fiona. It got a lot less enjoyable, however, when Corinne and her new friend joined us, dancing so close that you couldn't get a five dollar bill between them. I watched the man's hands steal optimistically towards Corinne's backside and felt my fists tighten even as I danced with Fiona.

"I'm going to do you a favor," Fiona whispered in my ear. "And maybe do us all one in the long run."

"What?"

"Speak to her about the book."

"What?"

Fiona let go of me and strolled over to the other couple. "Mind if I cut in?"

I remembered when I met Fiona, that aura of sexuality she had for a man in his teens (barely even a man yet). She had lost none of it over the years, and the man with Corinne looked like he was having the best day of his life. Still, I didn't think he'd have let go of the younger woman so readily if Corinne hadn't instantly said, "Yeah, sure."

She slunk over to me, hips swaying as she walked.

"Can I have this dance?"

I should have said no. I wanted to say no. I knew that I had to say no. But there was no way that I was going to say no.

As if on cue, the music slowed. Corinne's young body pressed against me, her head rested against my chest, and I inhaled the scent of her hair.

"This is not a good idea."

"No," she replied, not looking up. "But some things you can't fight. You can try, but they're going to happen one way or another."

"I don't believe in that meant-to-be bullshit."

"I didn't say meant-to-be. I just meant that when there is an attraction between two people, like there is between us, then it's like a bullet from a gun. There's no stopping it till it hits its target."

Only now did she look up at me, those vividly green eyes staring into mine. Sure, there was a seductiveness about her, almost a calculation in how she had gotten me here, but there was a plaintiveness too, as if this was something she needed more than wanted. It was like not having it would cause her a physical wound.

I had no idea which of us moved first. I vaguely remembered it being her, stretching up to me, but she might have been responding to an unconscious move on my part, because God knew I wanted it as badly as her. Our lips met, and the taste of her was a flood of sensation, like I'd only ever seen in black-and-white and was now seeing color for the first time. Her sweetness seemed to flow into me. She crushed her hips against mine, and I knew she was feeling my hardness firmly against her. She wanted it. She wanted to be a bad girl. I wanted to stop, for all the reasons that had seemed so clear early on. But if a girl wants to be bad, then one way or another she's going to be. And if this particular girl was going to go bad then, damn it, I wanted it to be with me.

"Same goes as last night," Corinne whispered hotly into my ear.

"What?"

Her eyes met mine again, wide and wicked. "I'll do whatever you tell me to."

Fair enough. If she wanted to be a bad girl, then I was going to show her how to be a good one.

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