Page 32 of The Italian's Pregnant Enemy (A Diamond in the Rough)

“Beautiful,” he said against her mouth.“Bellissima.”

She shivered. She would’ve told anyone who asked that she wasn’t the kind of woman to get silly over accents and foreign endearments, but here she was. Melting.

He gripped her thigh and hooked it up over his narrow hip, moved his hardness through her slick folds, ramping up her desire.

She’d already come twice, but this was... Waiting was killing her. She needed him. Needed to know what it was like to be filled by him. She ached. She felt hollow with her need for him.

His name was a drumbeat on her lips, a rhythm in her soul.

And finally, he pressed himself to the entrance of her body, and pushed home.

She gripped his shoulders. “Ouch!”

“Lyssia?”

A litany of curses went through her head and she tried to collect herself. She hadn’t expected it tohurt. Notreally.

She hadn’t had anyone to talk to deeply about this and everyone around her acted like sex just wasn’t a big deal, and so she’d imagined it must not be.

“I thought hymens were a societal construct,” she said, trying to deny the pain and the rising tide of emotion inside her.

“What?”

“It’s just that... I thought that virginity was a completely social construct and the myth of the hymen was...”

He started to withdraw from her and she put her hands on his shoulder. “Don’t,” she said.

“You’re not telling me that you were a virgin,” he said fiercely.

“I guess so, but I didn’t really ever think of it—” except when she did “—because, you know, that’s all patriarchal nonsense designed to scare women. To control them. I didn’t really think that it hurt the first time.”

“Did you think women were lying to you?” He had never even been with a virgin and he knew that it hurt the first time.

“I didn’t think they were lying, I just thought that... I don’t know...the idea was implanted there ahead by the patriarchy, and then...”

“If you had told me I would have eased the way.”

“You kind of tried to do that. But you... You’re substantial.”

“If you’re a virgin, how would you even know?”

“It’s not like I’ve never seen a naked man. On the computer.”

“Lyssia,” he said. “You cannot tell me that I just deflowered you.”

She sniffed and tried to play unbothered. With him over her. In her. Talking to her. “I won’t, because that is a vile term.”

She was trying to be cool, but in reality she felt panicky, and upset. Because she didn’t want that to be her only experience of sex. She wantedhim.

But it had hurt and she hadn’t been able to hold back.

She had no defenses. Nothing. It felt like being hit, square on by life, except she’d jumped into this feet-first.

He started to move away from her again and this time, she gripped him more gently. But more urgently. “Please don’t leave me,” she said.

“Lyssia... I won’t.”

“I just need a minute.”

---