Page 23 of His Virgin Vessel

After a half hour or so of riding, I pulled up.

"Where are we?" Corinne asked.

"Listen."

Corinne stood still a moment. "Is that water?"

"This way." I took a bag out from under the seat of the bike and led the way through the scrubby vegetation and up onto a ledge overlooking a waterfall.

Corinne beamed. "I haven't been up here since I was a kid."

"It's my favorite place in the world." Why would I tell her something like that? I'd never told anyone that.

"I can see why."

I opened the bag. "I brought a picnic."

Corinne gaped in astonishment. "Asa Covert, the bad-ass president of biker gang War Cry, has made a picnic?"

"Fiona helped," I admitted.

We sat down to eat and drink under the stars.

"I knew there was another side to you," Corinne said, smiling sweetly at me.

I began to wonder if this had been a bad idea. But I had already tried it Dugas's way; I had told her she meant nothing to me, and her response had been to put everything on the line to get me out of jail. She liked bad boys, so the worse I treated her, the more attractive I became (I had no idea why some women thought that way, but I did sometimes take advantage.). So, the logical thing was to treat her well and to leave the bad boy behind for a night. It had seemed like a good idea, but so far it did not seem to be paying off.

"Why did you help me?" I asked.

"You know why." She ran a hand up my thigh, and I brushed it off.

"Because you're a silly girl who doesn't know what's good for her from what's bad for her?"

"Trust me," said Corinne, emphatically. "I know what's good for me. And the other night was extremely good."

"Why do you do that?" I asked.

"Do what?"

"The sexy bad girl act. Why do you do it? Do you think men like that? Do you think there are girls who actually talk like that? It makes you sound like a bad porn film." I shook my head. "You already told me you were a virgin until the other night. Just because you've lost your virginity doesn't mean you start talking like Mae West."

Corinne blushed in embarrassment. It was perhaps the single most honest thing I'd seen her do. Unfortunately, it was also very attractive and I found myself fighting my desire for her.

"I thought ... I wanted you to think I was, I don’t know, more like other girls you've been with."

"You want to be like all the girls I've screwed and forgotten?"

"Well ... maybe not quite like ..."

"How about you try being yourself?" I suggested.

There was a long pause as Corinne collected her thoughts. "I'm not sure I even know who that is."

"Do you want to know what I think?" I grabbed my moment.

"I do," said Corinne, shuffling towards me on her knees. "I really do."

"I think the prissy little perfect girl who your dad would want you to be, the girl who never does anything wrong and sits at home nights with a book, I think that's who you are. And you're so scared of being her that you've spent your whole damn life trying to be something else."

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