Page 60 of Kiss an Angel

“I heard you.”

“Then why are you asking?”

“You said you weren’t a virgin anymore.”

“Did I?”

“Daisy . . .” His voice held an ominous note of warning. “Am I supposed to take that literally?”

She attempted to adopt a tone of moral superiority. “It’s really none of your business.”

“Bullshit.” He vaulted from the bed, grabbed his jeans, and pulled them on as if it were imperative for him to put some kind of barrier between them. He spun back to confront her. “Just what kind of game are you playing?”

She couldn’t help but notice that he hadn’t fastened the zipper, and she had to tear her eyes away from that enticing V that revealed his hard, flat belly. “I don’t want to discuss it.”

“Do you seriously expect me to believe you were a virgin?”

“Of course, I don’t. I’m twenty-six years old.”

He shoved one hand through his hair and began pacing in the small space at the foot of the bed, speaking as if he hadn’t heard her. “You were so tight. I thought maybe it had been a while, but I never figured—how could you have been around all these years and never fucked?”

She shot up high into the pillows. “There isn’t any need for you to use that kind of language, and I want you to apologize to me right now!”

He stared down at her as if she’d lost her mind. She stared right back. If he thought she was going to back down about this, he could think again. She’d heard enough foul language during her twenty-six years with Lani to last a lifetime, and she

wasn’t going to subject herself to any more. “I’m waiting.”

“Answer my question.”

“After you apologize.”

“I’m sorry!” he shouted, losing his famous self-control. “Now you tell me the truth right this minute or I’m going to strangle you to death with those tights, throw your body in a roadside ditch, and dance on top of it!”

As an apology, it didn’t count for much, but she decided it was the best he was going to do. “I’m not a virgin,” she said carefully.

For a moment he looked relieved, and then he regarded her with suspicion. “You’re not a virgin right now, but what about when you walked into this trailer?”

“I might have been then,” she muttered.

“Might have been?”

“All right. Was.”

“I don’t believe it! Nobody who looks like you gets to be twenty-six without ever—”

She shot him a warning glare.

“—without doing it, for god’s sake! Why?”

She toyed with the edge of the sheet “All my life, my mother had a revolving door on her bedroom.”

“What did that have to do with you?”

“Blatant promiscuity isn’t a nice thing to grow up with, and I rebelled.”

“Rebelled?”

“I decided to be the opposite of my mother.”

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