Uncommon Passion (5 page)

fabric; the way it covered her from collarbone to knees but clung to her at the same time. A dress with

nuances led to feeling sexy, desirable. Normal. Just a woman . . . on a date . . . with a man.

The man who’d taken her virginity without a backward glance.

Shame should be making itself known now. She’d lain with a man outside the bounds of wedlock,

without even a relationship. He was essentially a stranger. She should feel ashamed, but she drove through

the darkness back to the farm with only a rising fury for company.

They’d kept this away from her. Her father, her pastor, all the male leaders of the community, the

women who guided and taught her had kept this intimate, vibrant, shocking thing from her, and that made

her furious. Or maybe some of the energy pouring from Ben still reverberated through her, lingering pings

of sensation as parts of her body she’d never thought much about before took center stage in her

awareness. A faint tingling from the scrape of his teeth over her nipples subsided as she left Galveston’s

brightly lit streets for two-lane highways, but the stinging sensation between her legs didn’t ease.

Time, darkness, and solitude gave her space to process what had happened. Her lips throbbed from the

pressure of his mouth. Ben’s kiss was hard, demanding; as hard as the body she’d seen so briefly, thin skin

stretched taut over muscle, sinew, and bone. She’d never seen an erection jutting thick and swollen from a

nest of darker brown hair, and she’d certainly never felt one push into her body. Access to the Internet,

which was tightly controlled at Elysian Fields, enabled her to familiarize herself with the things men and

women could do together, but knowing and experiencing were worlds apart in this situation.

It was casual, and violent in a way she’d never expected, the way he held himself above her as he

thrust, the way his hips slapped against her inner thighs. He held her where he wanted her with hands in her

hair and hips spreading her open and the strong glide of his shaft into her body. It was unspeakable, and

incomprehensible.

But that interested her, because that rough touch made her muscles coil like hot wire. She’d felt hot and

achy and needy, a dark,
so-right
urge to cling to him as he moved.

It was hers, and hers alone. Authentic. Real. Not filtered through older women’s whispered

descriptions, older men’s decisions or expectations.
Hers.

She drove past the farm’s main entrance to the dirt road leading to the employee parking and the

rambling bunkhouse the interns shared each season. Jess’s car was still gone, as was the truck shared by the

two boys getting their degrees from Texas A&M. A single light burned over the bunkhouse’s front door.

Getting out of the car made her wince, but there was no one in the combined kitchen, dining area, and

living room to notice her discomfort. She hurried into the room she shared with Jess to shed the dress and

wrap herself in her cotton robe, then grab her shower caddy and head for the girls’ bathroom.

Light from the full moon poured through the window, illuminating pine walls and faded linoleum.

Once in the shower, she stood for a moment, head tipped back, eyes closed, and let the hot water stream

over her. She lathered up her facecloth and washed her face until no traces of makeup remained, then

soaped up again and gently cleaned the sore skin between her legs. A smear of blood lingered on the cloth,

then disappeared under the spray.

She dried off and pulled her nightgown over her head, then risked another glance at the mirror. There

was her face, the wide brown eyes and curved cheekbones, the sturdy chin and full mouth she recognized

from her previous lifetime. She looked no different. A woman’s most precious possession, according to her

pastor and every other male authority figure in her life, the thing valued higher than rubies, more treasured

than gold, was gone forever, and all she felt was a longing to know more.

Jess sat on her bed in her sleep shirt when Rachel walked back into their shared bedroom. “Hey,” she

said avidly. “How did it go?”

“Well,” Rachel said. “The restaurant was really good.”

“You went out with a hero, you know.”

“I did? I thought you said he was bad news.”

“Maybe he’s both. He walked into a robbery in progress at a gas station. The guy had a gun and Officer

Harris, an eight-year veteran of the department with an assignment to the SWAT team,” Jess said,

mimicking a newsreader’s intonation, “punched him out. The guy had a gun and three hostages, and your

date clocked him, like something out of a movie! The video is all over the Internet!”

Oh. Oh, oh, oh. And he’d told her about the poor homeless man instead. She let out a little laugh.

Nuances. Unexpectedly, her “bad news” had them.

“What’s so funny?” Jess asked.

“He didn’t mention it. He didn’t even hint at it.”

“Weird,” Jess said, then blinked expectantly, but Rachel said nothing more. She might still be living in a

communal setting, but her body and mind were now private. Instead, she switched on the oscillating fan

that was their air-conditioning, set the alarm for 4:45 a.m., crawled into her bed, and curled up under the

thin sheet. When she closed her eyes, flashes of the night came back to her. Ben’s smile. Flickers of

lightning down low in her belly, hinting at the possibility of so much more. She’d gotten what she wanted,

but now she wanted more.

• • •

Ben awoke to sunlight pouring through the open shades, and a bitch of a headache. The wicked cocktail

of adrenaline, the post-fight crash, alcohol, and sleeping later than usual resolved into what felt like a

posthole digger slamming away behind his left eye. He needed water, aspirin, and based on the lingering

scent of Rachel’s skin on his, a shower.

Rachel. Something about her, what happened, tapped away at his brain with about as much subtlety as

the hammer.

Squinting against the bright light, he snagged a bottle of cold water from the fridge, then swallowed

four aspirin, started the shower, and brushed his teeth in the dark. The toothpaste cut through the thick fur

lining his mouth, and as long as he didn’t move his head too quickly, the water and aspirin were cutting in,

opening space for memories of the night to surface.

He wasn’t usually that out of step with a woman, but then again, Rachel wasn’t like most of the women

he saw. He knew female cops. He talked to the women at No Limits, and sometimes he fucked them. Rachel

was neither cop nor No Limits girl. The expression on her face after he told her the story about the bum

startled him, like she was thinking through all the angles and consequences for everyone, the clerk, the

bum. Him.

Good thing you didn’t tell her about what happened earlier.

Steam filled the bathroom as he bent over to rinse and spit. When he straightened, a darker stain on his

shaft caught his attention. He blinked, but it didn’t go away, so he turned on the light.

Dried blood ringed the base of his cock.

“What the fuck?” he said to himself, and strode back into the bedroom to peer into the trash can. Blood

smeared down the side of the white bag lining the can where the condom dragged along the plastic. “Jesus

Christ.”

He’d woken up smeared with girl-juices and lube, with chocolate syrup and cherries. He’d woken up

tangled up with one woman, two women, one girl and another guy. He’d woken up hungover, still drunk,

battered and bruised with two broken ribs after a bar fight, and on one memorable occasion, when he’d

fallen down a cement stairwell, drunk as fuck and trying to get some in a parking garage, he’d woken up in

the ER getting stitches.

He’d never woken up to a woman’s blood on his body.

He dredged his memory, searching for clues. He’d been a little fast, a little rough, but he’d done

nothing,
nothing
, to make her bleed. She’d seemed unhurt, so . . . had she started her period? That would

explain the hasty exit. Except . . . it didn’t fit.

Except . . . there was another reason for a woman to bleed during sex. By the time he toweled off and

dressed in jeans, boots, and a snap-front shirt, he’d decided to spend his day off driving out to Silent Circle

Farm.

Probably she’d started her period.

Probably
wasn’t enough.

He braked hard in the same No Parking space because it was closest to the barn, and apparently karma

wasn’t going to fuck with him today, because Rachel emerged from the shade of the farm stand as he

stepped out of the truck. Some dim part of his brain noticed that she looked like she had at the auction,

jeans clinging to her ass, the neck of her thin green T-shirt dipping low, her hair held back from her face in

two thick braids, like the woman from last night didn’t exist.

Her eyes widened when he strode toward her. She didn’t look happy to see him. He read faces for a

living, so he knew.

“You still can’t—” she started.

He cut her off by slamming the truck door. They met in the dusty space between the stand and his truck.

“What the
fuck
?”

Her shoulders straightened. “Excuse me?” she said tartly.

“What happened last night?”

“You know what happened,” she said.

He peered down at her through his aviator shades, knowing the sunlight winked off the mirrored glass.

“I found blood this morning, Rachel,” he said, but he wasn’t going to offer her the easy out. He wanted to

hear the truth from her. “I’ve been at this a long time, and I’ve never made a woman bleed before.”

At that she looked away from him, then turned as if she was going to walk away. He knew. Was this

who he’d become, a man who didn’t notice a virgin in his bed?

He grabbed her upper arm, but dropped his hold as soon as she stopped moving. He took a deep breath,

dug his fingers into his hipbones as he stared down at her. “Talk to me.”

She looked around the parking lot, then said in a lowered voice, “I was a virgin. I didn’t think you’d be

able to tell. Most women don’t bleed. I’m sorry I made you worry.”

She turned to walk away, and he grabbed her arm again, because the implications stung like rubber

bullets. “Wait a goddamned minute. You were a virgin and
you didn’t tell me
?”

“I don’t want to discuss this here,” she said, glancing around the parking lot again.

“We’re discussing it here,” he said. “How virgin?”

“There are degrees of virginity?”

Well, yeah. A friend of his dated a girl who wanted to be a virgin on her wedding night but went wild

for anal and could suck the leather off a baseball. The look in Rachel’s eyes answered his question and

kicked his brain into high gear.

Pure virgin.

And he stripped her, spread her legs, and fucked her. If he’d known, if he’d had any idea, he would

have gone about things more gently.

Liar. If you’d known you would have sent her home right then and there. Then you would have texted

someone who wouldn’t leave a trace in your apartment, let alone on your body.

Who was a virgin at her age? He’d lost his at fifteen to a friend’s older sister. Fifteen years ago. At least

he could still remember her name. Sharlene. And why would a woman who’d stayed a virgin as long as—

Oh, sweet Jesus. “How old are you?”

Her chin lifted. “Twenty-five.”

Relief nearly buckled his knees. But . . . why would a woman in her midtwenties bid on a bachelor at an

auction to lose her virginity?

Fuck
why
. He didn’t do
why
. The right thing to do, the logical, sensible thing to do was to put her

behind him and go on with his life. Such as it was. She looked at him, those odd, whiskey-colored eyes so

disorienting, and while he didn’t look away, he dropped back into his head. He’d learned the trick a long

time ago on his father’s ranch, seeming to be present, interacting, even thinking, when he really wasn’t

there. Going through the motions.

Possible outcomes and consequences danced a crack-the-whip in his head. While he would have

stopped if she’d changed her mind, some guys didn’t. Some guys would have been even more oblivious

than he’d been, made her do things she clearly wasn’t ready to do. She could have been hurt, physically,

emotionally. She could still be hurt, if she didn’t learn what this was all about. “What the fuck were you

thinking, auctioning your virginity to a total stranger?”

“Technically speaking, I wasn’t auctioning my virginity to you. I was buying your experience.”

Memories of
yeah, I go that far
echoed in his head. He looked aside, shook his head. “It was stupid, not

to mention dangerous.”

Usually people backed up when he talked like that. She met his gaze head-on. “It was mine to do with

as I pleased.”