Project Virgin (5 page)

“Only to the lesser, unworthy cocks,” he said, a small smile toying with his mouth. “I promise.”

I was talking about cocks with
Damon Patrick.

I was talking about
cocks
with Damon Patrick.

Not to mention
deflowering.
My favorite word to describe the act I’d spent most of my life fantasizing about. Especially with a man who
looked like he knew exactly what to do with an unexpected twenty-six year old… flower.

“What a conundrum,” I murmured after a moment, when the hysteria inside me subsided enough so I could speak without shrieking about
flowers
. I couldn’t tear my eyes from his. “How can I possibly choose?”

“There’s one more thing to consider as you make this decision.”

“I’m all ears.”

That smile of his changed,
then. It got… sharper, somehow. Even edgier than before and somehow darker at the same time. It seemed to work its way through my entire body, a bone-deep shudder.

It made me think of wolves.

It made me want to catapult myself straight into him.

“If you choose me,” he said, as if he didn’t know as well as I did that there was only one possible outcome to this. That we’d been headed straight
here since he’d asked me that question in the elevator this morning. “There are rules.”

“Rules?” I blinked. “Do you make your lovers sign non-disclosure agreements? Is that why it’s always only rumors with you—the threat of legal action?”

His head tilted slightly to one side. “Do you feel you need to sign something?”

“Not necessarily. That depends, doesn’t it?”

“Does it? Do you have a relationship
with the tabloids I should know about?

“The only relationship I had was with a complete asshole.” I sounded ever-so-slightly bitter, I noted. I forced a smile. “And is over.”

Damon’s smile flashed brighter.

“There are only two rules,” he said, still with that tautness about him, as if he was as leashed as he was dangerous, and it would take so little to set him off. Why did that make need fist
in me like that? Hard and swift, as if my body was no longer mine? “They’re very simple and they don’t require a notarized signature. Can you handle that?”

“I can’t really answer unless you tell me what they are.” I shrugged as if I had conversations like this all the time. With him, even.

“Most women just say yes, in case you wondered,” he said, that particular dark note in his voice snaking
along my spine and making my hips feel loose and precarious. “Most women are desperate.”

I waved a hand at the heaving dance floor far below us. “Most women aren’t knee deep in a buffet of San Francisco’s richest and most drunk with nary a churro in sight. Not if they can help it, anyway.”

Appreciation flashed in his blue, blue gaze.

“Rule number one,” Damon said, very distinctly. “Do what
I tell you to do.”

“Is this for the office or your bed? There appears to be some crossover, if I’m remembering today’s deposition correctly.”

He only grinned, though there was that wolf in his gaze and I could see it clearly, fangs and all. My nipples pulled tight. My pussy clenched hard. I wanted him to bite me again, and harder this time.
I wanted.

Damon looked as if he knew exactly what
I wanted. “And rule number two? When in doubt, do it anyway.”

‡

“O
kay,” I said
.

Damon’s grin widened. “Okay?”

Whatever flashed in me then was brighter than the light show that danced over the crowd, louder than the music that filled the space to bursting and beyond.

I should have taken a moment and thought this through. I should have remembered who he was and who I was and all
the thousands of reasons this was an absolutely terrible idea. But I’d been waiting my whole life and I’d never wanted anything or anyone the way I wanted this man. I’d spent the last six years longing for Alexander to be the man he pretended to be when convenient—but I’d already wanted Damon more over the course of one long day on into the evening than I’d ever wanted my ex-fiancé.

I didn’t
really love that realization, but that didn’t make it any less true.

There didn’t seem to be any particular point to thinking about it any longer. I’d been waiting forever. I didn’t want to wait anymore.

“You’ll have to teach me everything,” I warned him, frowning. And maybe, I admitted as something that was not quite panic danced through me, I was a little bit nervous, too. “Are you ready for
that?” I took a breath that made my lungs hurt and then let it out, because why pretend? He probably already knew exactly how inexperienced I was. There was no point trying to hide it. “I’ve been buried in a giant lie for six years and while there were
hands
and some kissing, it was otherwise pretty lame. Getting rid of the albatross around my neck is the first step, but it’s really only a stepping
stone toward the vast, unconquerable sea of things I should know by twenty-six but don’t.”

It occurred to me that I was babbling. Nervously babbling. I stopped.

“The fiancé was the albatross, Scottie,” Damon said calmly, in that sexy, confident way of his that made my knees feel like water even as the urge to obey him, agree with him,
touch him
hummed through me. “The virginity is a gift. Try
to make that distinction.”

“I need you to be sure you’re prepared for that gift.” I narrowed my eyes at him, and pretended I didn’t see the smile he bit back, as if he was indulging me. “I don’t want you to back out halfway through, saying you didn’t know what you were signing up for.”

“I don’t turn down the gifts I’m given,” he said, and there was that fire again, blazing between us, hard and
impossible and breathtaking in its intensity. I expected him to smile, to make that a fun and flirty throwaway remark and nothing more, but he didn’t. Instead, his blue eyes darkened. “That would be unpardonably rude.”

He took one of his hands from his pocket and reached over, fitting it to my cheek as if it belonged there. And I knew I should have been horrified that he could
feel
how much I
wanted him in the red hot flush of my skin. But I wasn’t.

Some part of me
wanted
him to know. That I was red hot and so wet. That I ached for him, between my legs and everywhere else.

His palm against my cheek was better than anything else I’d ever felt, his skin against my skin like a revelation. I didn’t care what I had to do, as long as I could feel his hands all over me. As long as he kept
touching me, however he liked.

As long as I could keep feeling like this, awake and alive, as if I’d been sound asleep all this time without knowing it.

“When you say ‘okay,’ I need to be sure we both know what that means. I need you to say it out loud.” There was that predatory glint in his gaze, something hard in his smile, and I didn’t care. I wanted more. I wanted everything. “You’re choosing
me. You want this to happen. You want to lose your virginity
to me
.”

I wanted it so much I thought I might burst into sobs at the thought, and I was anything but sad. He still held his hand to my face, and I was sure he could feel me trembling slightly.

“Yes,” I said, as if this was a vow and it might be etched in stone as I mouthed the words. “I want that. I want you.”

And the way he looked
at me then was molten hot. As if he’d been concealing the true depths of his own need until then, but no more. The sheer, dizzying heat surged through me, an impossible searing burn like a brand down the middle of my body, and I knew, then. I would never be the same. I would never be the Scottie Grey who’d gotten into that elevator this morning, not ever again. I would be whatever pieces were left
of me when this beautiful, dangerous man was done tonight.

And I couldn’t wait to meet her, whoever she was. The Scottie who got to experience him. The Scottie who lived through it and came out the other side, changed forever.

Damon dropped his hand. I don’t know what I expected. For him to grab me? For him to start with something over the top and probably illegal, right here where anyone who
wanted to look at us could see what we were doing?

Yes,
said the naughty voice inside me, who’d read a thousand dirty books in her time and had yearned for them all to come true, one after the next.
All of that, please.

Instead, he stepped away from me and dropped down onto the nearest low sofa, all modern lines and sleek, pale leather. He lounged there like a sultan, though I could see he was
holding his jaw tight, as if it hurt him to act so blasé. As if he was as affected by all of this as I was. I looked lower, and I could see the outline of a very impressive erection against the fly of his trousers.

It made me feel fluttery, everywhere, to imagine all of that—all of
him—
inside me.

“Eyes on me,” he said, a hint of laughter in his voice.

I obeyed him. It didn’t occur to me to
do anything else.

“Take off that jacket,” he ordered me, his dark blue eyes never leaving mine. “We’re not at work now.”

I’d almost forgotten I was still wearing my work clothes. I shrugged out of my jacket and tossed it next to his on the gleaming white sofa. That left me in nothing but a soft camisole, a pencil skirt, and the high heels I’d grown so used to wearing in the past year that they
felt like part of me.

Even now, when my knees were so shaky I thought I might topple over at any moment.

Damon’s gaze moved from my face to my slightly parted lips, then down to my breasts. I told myself he couldn’t see anything through the silk of my camisole, but I felt my nipples tighten even as I thought it, making me a liar.

“Let your hair down,” he said then, his voice deeper. Rougher.
“I want to see it.”

A thousand smart remarks about playing Rapunzel danced in my head, even made it to my tongue, but I swallowed them back. It was something about that simmering way he watched me, never shifting that gaze of his an inch.

If he wanted to climb me, any part of me, I’d let him.

I reached up and pulled the pins out of my hair, then tugged off the elastic. My hair tumbled down
to one shoulder in a coil and I raked my fingers through it, letting the thick, chocolate brown waves swirl around me. I could smell this morning’s shampoo in a sudden cloud of scent between us, sharp and sweet. Damon’s eyes narrowed, but he didn’t move from that languid, lounging position that nonetheless made it clear that he was the one in charge here.

I didn’t have a single doubt about that,
from the top of my head to the tips of my toes. It felt a lot like elation.

No debate necessary. No arguing about boundaries or waiting or
romance
. No wheedling or trying to “accidentally” get carried away. Nothing this man did was going to be accidental.

Damon studied me for a moment, a half-smile making his lean, clever face that much more devastating, and then he crooked a finger.

“Come
here,” he said.

I did that too, nerves shooting through my body and humming along the surface of my skin as I obeyed him. I stood between his outstretched legs, looking down into his dark blue eyes, and I understood in that moment that I would do anything he asked. Anything at all.

And it wasn’t as much about me or my virginity as I might have imagined. I simply wanted to please him. I wanted
his lips to move into that wicked little crook and admiration to shine in those dark blue eyes of his more than I could remember wanting all the other things I’d thought I’d die without in my life. Everything behind me seemed like sepia-tinted brown. All I could see was blue.

“Wait,” I managed to say as something occurred to me, even as his bold gaze was kicking up brushfires all over my body.
“Is this some kind of kinky thing with you? These rules of yours?”

The very delight I’d wanted to see cracked over his face then, and it was as good as I’d imagined.

“Are you asking me if I’m into BDSM?”

Images chased each other through my head then, one naughtier and wilder than the last. Scenes from books I’d read again and again and again. Men with cruel mouths and patient eyes. Hard hands
against soft flesh. Hot tears that bloomed into wild sex. Things I’d always assured myself were better as fantasies anyway.

A position I was reconsidering the longer this man gazed at me, so many worlds I wanted to explore right there in his astonishingly blue eyes.

“Are you?” I asked, someone else’s scratchy voice coming out of my mouth. Someone else’s raw voice, her need an evident thing—so
obvious that she, whoever she was, should have been deeply embarrassed that someone else heard it.

I was too busy waiting to hear what he might say next to worry about any embarrassment.

“I think the proper term for me is ‘bossy.’” Damon leaned back further against the sofa, but there was that knowing gleam in his eyes. There was that
certainty
in every line of his chiseled frame. “Like this.
I want you to kiss me, Scottie. Letting nothing but your mouth touch mine. Do you understand?”

I scowled at him, trying to figure out the angles. That sounded like… calisthenics. Not what I wanted to do, which was give into this heedless, reckless excitement. Indulge the hot, molten river of sexual desire that was swamping me where I stood.