Page 61 of Dirty Gambit

Lena rolled her eyes without any malice in it. “The only thing you are is a pain in my ass.”

“Yet you love my company.”

She snorted. “I never said that.”

“You didn’t have to. I see the way you look at me.”

Heat exploded across her cheeks, but she kept her glower firmly in place. “That’s just me trying to restrain myself from murdering you in your sleep.”

Both eyes narrowed in wary contemplation. “You could always get a sledgehammer.”

Their conversation in the library felt so long ago that the mention of the sledgehammer took Lena a full second to understand. Her unexpected burst of laughter caught her off guard. She tried to stifle it behind a hand, but he caught it before it could touch her lips. His thumb traced the bumps across her knuckles, sending a flair of fire scattering up her arm, smothering the humor with something darker and intense. The fingers on her free hand tightened around the ornate handle of the tray still cradled in her lap.

“Is that the only way?” she teased, trying to ease the thick tension weaving in the air around them.

“To keep me?”

She’d meant to murder him, but his response sent a bowling ball through her thoughts, scattering them in a million different directions. She couldn’t even remember what they’d been talking about.

“Jaxon…”

“Why don’t I wait downstairs?” Frankie shot to her feet, hooded eyes shifting between them with barely concealed interest.

Lena swallowed and turned to her quickly. “Thank you for the soup.”

Frankie inclined her head as she gathered the tray out of Lena’s grasp. The frosted glass of water was deposited on the nightstand before she slipped from the room, leaving Lena alone with the man adamant to steal every shred of her heart and sanity. His watchful gaze never shifted from her face, her mouth. It was impossible to think clearly when he already stood so close, burning her left side with his radiating heat. Distracted by the play of light over the velvet surface of his fix, a drop of soup caught the corner of her lip with its descent into her mouth. She reached for a napkin off the tray that was no longer there, but Jaxon was quicker; he traced her bottom lip, collecting the drop on the pad of his thumb. Without hesitating, without breaking eye contact, he brought the digit to his own mouth and sucked it clean.

The floor of Lena’s stomach flipped. Her core clenched, weeping to feel that tongue between her legs, lapping at her. It was so inappropriate when the door was still open, and Jessie was somewhere in the maze of corridors with people she didn’t know. The toddler should have been her only priority, yet all she could concentrate on was the man she had no right wanting.

But maybe wanting him was exactly what she needed. By dawn, she could be in some underground prison for the rest of her life. Did she really want to be locked up forever wondering what it might have felt like with him? Did she want that kind of regret in her life? What more, did she want to remain a virgin for what was left of her life? Jaxon was more than happy to liberate her of that problem, and she definitely wanted him to. Resisting seemed like a useless move.

Mind made up, Lena slid off the bed and moved to the door. Not allowing herself time to think, she shut it softly and snapped the lock into place. The sound echoed through the room, a bomb dropping in a library. She felt it reverberating through her very soul, but she held strong.

Jaxon needed no prompting when she faced him again, heart in her throat. The bowl was on the nightstand, and he was tearing his top off, exposing a landscape of hard, unyielding flesh and muscle. The material was pitched aside and his hands made fast work unfastening the snaps on his jeans.

Lena watched him, weak-kneed and cotton-mouthed, debating whether or not to tell him of her handicap. Did it matter? She wondered if it would make a difference. The men in her past had considered it their very purpose in life to liberate her of it. None had succeeded but many had tried. Jaxon couldn’t be that different.

“Did I read that wrong?” he interrupted her thoughts to ask.

She blinked to clear her thoughts and stared. “What?”

One hand on the open V of his pants, he used the other to gesture to the door. “Did you close the door to have a private chat or…? Because you kind of just stopped in the middle of the room.”

Cheeks hot with realization, Lena quickly shook her head. “No. I mean, yes.”

Jaxon raised an eyebrow. “I’m going to need a little more clarification.”

She decided she would tell him. He would find out eventually. While it shouldn’t matter, she felt the need to make him aware.

“I’m a virgin,” she blurted the words with the intensity and stubborn pride she felt brewing inside. Granted, she hadn’t meant to shout it at him. “I’ve never done … this.”

Jaxon had gone slack-jawed. He stared at her with the open-mouthed wonder of someone finding a unicorn grazing in a landfill. She could see his mind churning, the gears rotating around the news. The process seemed to take a lot longer than Lena had anticipated.

“It’s not a disease,” she snapped, mortification coloring her cheeks red. “You can’t catch it, so stop looking at me like my vagina is about to grow teeth and bite you.”

That jarred him awake. He shook his head rapidly and put out a hand as if to stop her from running. “No. I’m sorry. I just … I’m processing.”

Lena gawked, certain she’d heard wrong. “What are you processing?”

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