A Forbidden Passion: No Longer Forbidden? / The Man She Loves To Hate / A Wicked Persuasion

His heartbeat elevated, but she stiffened in wariness.

“What are you doing?”

She sounded breathless. Her flat stomach contracted under the weight of his hand while her wrists turned in the light grip of his other hand. Her flexing was a seductive trigger he fought out of self-preservation. This situation didn’t make sense and he needed it to.

“I’m admiring this gift you’ve given me.” Her springy curls begged for petting, but he resisted, taking heed of her belligerently angled chin instead.

“You don’t have to be so sarcastic about it,” she said.

“I’m not trying to be sarcastic. I’m stunned.” Winded. Very much in danger of being moved. He had to stick to cool analysis or he’d begin attaching meaning to this unique circumstance. He had worried being in his bedroom would make the act too personal, but she had shot things into a realm of intimate sharing that didn’t happen often between any two people—most especially between him and anyone.

“How, Ro? There was a boy at school. I heard the stories.”

Her lips firmed and her cheeks darkened. “That … didn’t work out. I thought I was ready, but I wasn’t. I called it off. He was getting dressed when the headmistress found us. Would you let go of me, please?”

He released her and she sat up. Her narrow back seemed very vulnerable. He felt an unaccountable urge to pull her back into his embrace and keep her sheltered against him. A curious lump formed in his chest. She’d been so tight. Exquisite and succulent. Her rippling orgasm had been unmistakable, but her sheath new and small. If he’d hurt her he’d never forgive himself.

“Are you all right?”

“Fine. You?” Rowan flipped the edge of the coverlet up and across her front, dying with self-consciousness. “Shall we have a post-mortem on your past, too? Did you get it right the first time, or do you have an inept experience you’d like to share?”

Nic was impervious to the glare she sent over her shoulder. He sprawled as comfortably as any male animal whose appetite had been recently sated. The condom was gone, she noted—with a glance that he caught.

His brows went up while his eyelids stayed heavy.

She prickled with embarrassment, willing to give anything to take back that peek. He was still hard. Had he not been satisfied? The coverlet bunched thickly in her hands as she curled her fingers into apprehensive fists.

“I’m not trying to pry,” he said. “I just can’t understand how you’d still be a virgin when I’ve seen you with men I thought were your lovers.”

“Who? Dance partners? We’re all very familiar. It doesn’t mean anything.” Kind of like how this act seemed to have no profundity for him beyond a mystery to be solved.

She couldn’t believe she had felt apprehensive at the thought of him walking out. This was far worse—sitting naked next to him, insanely aware of what they’d just done, how he’d touched her like he not only owned her but knew her body’s responses better than she did, trying to have a conversation.

Her entire world had been flooded with color. A huge bubble of elation had threatened to split her chest. But he didn’t need time to savor and process. He wasn’t suffering any craving for reassurance. He’d done this a thousand times.

A thousand and one.

“You might have offered a clue,” he chided dryly.

“Like what? Can you imagine Cassandra O’Brien’s daughter running around wearing one of those ‘Proud To Be A Virgin’ bracelets? I was happy people thought I’d been with that boy. My school friends quit teasing me. I dated when I could, but my schedule didn’t allow for anything long-term so sex never happened.”

“I meant you might have said something today.” His voice changed, becoming darker and crisper.

She sensed that word long-term had done it and swallowed. He didn’t move, but she watched a new level of coolness come over him. It made the tiny inch of space between them seem cavernous and the warm room grow cold.

“Why would you throw it away on me?” he asked.

Throw it away. Her stomach clenched. Not exactly a treasured moment. More like taking out the garbage. She hated herself then for not being able to control who she was attracted to. For letting that attraction rule her to the point of waiting half her life for him and then giving herself despite knowing it meant nothing to him.

Yet when she tried to conjure regret all she felt was a stunned ache of poignant joy. It had been the most singularly beautiful experience of her life. She was glad it had been with Nic.

“Do you really think virginity is something precious to be bottled up and hoarded for a special occasion?” she asked with a catch in her voice, trying to hide how deeply stirred she was as she reached back to brace herself on her arm and face him. Her other hand held the coverlet firmly across her breasts and thighs, but she did her best to mirror his nonchalance, affecting only vague interest.

His gaze cut a swift glance at her nude shoulders and exposed knee before meeting hers again. “I guess I wouldn’t be a very progressive man if I did, but I imagine you’ve had other opportunities, so choosing to give it up now—with me—seems odd.”

“Why not you?” she challenged, her heart dancing close to a tricky ledge.

His intense look of concentration blanked for a second into a hollow gaze before he shuttered his expression. “Indeed, why not me when any man would do? Why now is the real question, isn’t it?”

An urge to correct him caught in her throat, but she didn’t want to reveal how much she had wanted it to be him. At the same time a stunning insight struck her. Nic had no idea he was special to her or anyone else. She had been told all her life that she was special—so special she had to live up to unrealistic expectations—but he hadn’t had that problem. His father had ignored him. What about his mother?

Rowan ached to ask, but prying was out of place. He wouldn’t appreciate it, given what a proud, aloof man he was. She let her hair fall forward to hide her frown of empathetic pain.

“I was tired of fighting with you. Fighting that feeling,” she confessed, hoping he wouldn’t make her tell him exactly how long that feeling had been twisting like a flame inside her. Tossing her hair back, she made a false attempt at flippancy. “And you’re the one who thinks I need to grow up, so it’s rather fitting for you to be the one to make me a woman, don’t you think?”

A disturbing sense of privilege poured into Nic. Plainly this act held a lot less importance to her than it did for him, so he did his best to laugh it off the way she had. “Is that what this was? A coming-of-age ceremony?”

For a second he thought Rowan flinched. A familiar bleak valley threatened to swallow up his brief sense of pride. He tensed, but then Rowan produced a wide smile that was like light breaking over the dark edges that surrounded him, bathing him in reprieve. She cupped the side of his face, leaning close enough to touch a light kiss to his mouth.

“Yes, Nic. You might not be given to sentimentality about these things, but I shall forever look back on you fondly as My First. That’s almost as good as whatever you get for being Newsman of the Year, isn’t it?”

Always so glib, but her words had a profound effect on him. That forever look back ought to be reassuring. He had barely let himself acknowledge the fear that her taking him as her first lover and dropping words like long-term meant she expected a relationship. He most certainly was not the man to give her anything like that.

But that fondly squeezed feeling out of his incompetent heart. Two days ago he wouldn’t have given any thought to parting with animosity between them, but quite suddenly he hoped for something better than that.

She started to pull away and he brought his hand to the back of her head, silky curls crushed under his gentle insistence she stay close.

“I won’t forget this either,” he admitted.

Which scared him as much as the vulnerable way Rowan caught her lip between her teeth. He closed his eyes against a look that searched for reassurance and drew her forward so he could kiss her, making her release her bottom lip to his own gentle bite and lingering attention to soothe any tenderness he inflicted.

The kiss quickly got out of hand and he groaned, never having come up against anything like this: the desire to make love again so soon after the most intense orgasm of his life, or with a woman so new to it she couldn’t.

When she breathed his name against his lips and set a hand on his collarbone he had to let her put space between them.

“Are you saying you won’t forget in a good way or a bad way?”

Was she kidding? He glanced down at the raging muscle straining from between his thighs like a compass needle seeking North.

“I know. I’m sorry.” Her flush was pure mortification. “I thought it was good for both of us, but—”

“Maybe if you’re willing to practice we can do something about it?” he chided facetiously.

Rowan paled and he realized with horror that she’d taken it the wrong way. She tried to bolt from the bed and again he had to grab her, holding tight to her wiry strength while she struggled and slapped at him.

“That was a joke,” he insisted, trying to speak over her angry demands to quit manhandling her. He wouldn’t let her go, though—not when his heart was bottoming out at how badly he’d misread her sensitivity. “Rowan, listen. Ouch.” He swore as he took a scratch down his rib cage before he immobilized her.

“That wasn’t funny, Nic!” She was breathing hard, muscles a taut bundle of resistance against his hold, eyes spitting venom. “I know more about practice than anyone, and I’ll be damned if I’m going back to trying and not getting it right. For you. I’m living for me now—understand? I don’t care if it was good for you. It was good for me, so you can go to hell with your practice.”