Office Scandals: The Petrelli Heir / Gilded Secrets / An Inconvenient Affair

Shifting uneasily under his severe gaze, she walked across to the sofa and sat down. ‘I wish you wouldn’t tell me what I mean. I am quite capable of saying what I mean.’

Roman refused to be distracted. ‘And capable of lying, it would seem.’

‘So you think one-night stands are my style …’ She gave a little laugh. ‘Thanks a lot.’

‘It was your first time.’ Even as he said it he rejected the statement; he had not actively avoided taking a virgin to bed, but then neither did he avoid meteorites. They both existed but the chances of encountering one were pretty remote.

She was not laughing or at the very least looking amused by such a preposterous notion. Instead she refused to meet his gaze and gave a defensive shrug.

CHAPTER EIGHT (#ulink_ab6c6c91-8ff1-5365-8f4a-19bd5d85e013)

‘IT WAS a figure of speech.’

‘A figure of speech as in you were a virgin.’

Roman’s sarcasm made her flush and for a moment Izzy considered lying. But did it really matter if he knew the truth now? She thought not, so decided to come clean.

‘My only time, actually.’ She flashed him a warning glance and added fiercely, ‘And don’t ask me why because, to be honest, I don’t know.’

She did have her suspicions, though, the most likely that being a twenty-year-old virgin had been a form of rebellion for her—not against parental control but against a total lack of parental control.

While other girls’ parents gave them curfews and warned them of the dangers of teenage sex, her liberal mother had been telling her it was fine if she wanted to have boyfriends stay the night.

Izzy had always found such conversations excruciatingly embarrassing, but her mother had favoured what she called a frank and open exchange of views.

‘You didn’t act like a virgin.’

‘How is a virgin meant to act, Roman?’ She adopted an expression of fake interest as she started to feel angry. ‘In the strange world you live in.’

‘I live in the real world. You’re the one who …’ He stopped and pinned her with an intense, almost accusing stare. ‘You must have had boyfriends?’ he persisted, remembering how incredibly tight she’d been and her sharp gasp of shock as he had thrust deeply into her …

‘For a semester I was in love with one of my mother’s research assistants,’ she recalled with a reminiscent grin. ‘Happy now?’

He swallowed … happy? Happy that he had taken her innocence and not even noticed!

‘So you had a relationship with this—?’ A relationship that stopped short of sex. As he remembered her cool hands on his body and her hot, sweet tongue … that did not seem likely at all.

‘Simon. No, it turned out he was gay.’ She could smile now at the memory of her big moment when she had finally worked up the courage to ask him out. He had been nice about it and quite kind, but eventually the story had reached her mother, who had found it extremely amusing.

Unable to maintain contact with his intense stare, Izzy looked away.

Roman tried to think past the static buzz in his head. He felt numb. A virgin! It seemed impossible. The innate sensuality she projected had been one of the things that had drawn him to her. She was the most passionate creature he had ever held; the need to possess her had been all-consuming and she had matched his hunger and desire every step of the way.

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

He still couldn’t get his head around it, but it had to be true. There was no reason for her to lie. She had seemed totally at ease with her body, completely uninhibited and endlessly fascinated by his body. The question of her virginity had not even crossed his mind—why would it? She had seemed almost to know what he wanted before he had himself.

Face it, Roman, she was the best sex you ever had and she was a virgin. The staggering thought kept hitting him and the shock was not getting any less with each successive impact.

She turned her head, recognised the anger in his tense stance and shook her head. That was a reaction she had not anticipated. ‘Why didn’t you notice?’ she countered.

At the time Izzy had presumed that he would.

She’d thought her sheer cluelessness would alert him and had desperately hoped it would not be a deal breaker.

But amazingly she hadn’t felt awkward at all, or embarrassed or shy, which was insane because previously the idea of even being naked with a man had been something she didn’t feel comfortable with. The entire intimacy thing had always been a problem for her, not because she was prudish but because she was choosy.

She had thought about it afterwards a lot and wondered if perhaps the fact that it had been anonymous sex, that he hadn’t known her or had any preconceptions about her, had allowed her to let go. For once she didn’t have to be the person everyone thought she was—nice, calm, sensible Izzy—she could be who she wanted to be. It had been the most liberating experience of her life.

Why hadn’t he noticed? Good question, Roman. ‘You were hardly shy.’

Did he expect her to apologise?

Her steady blue stare brought a dull flush of colour to his high cheekbones. ‘Obviously if I’d known I’d have—’ He stopped and thought, Would I really have run a mile? Would I really have resisted the temptation to be her first lover?

She’d given him a gift and he’d not noticed.

She acted as though it had been nothing and for some reason that made him angrier than anything else.

‘I could have hurt you.’

‘You didn’t.’

‘And you have never slept with any man since Lily was born?’

She gave a laugh. ‘You really think that I’ve had the spare time or energy to have an affair? Besides it’s a small place, everyone knows everyone and you can’t sneeze without it being in the public domain.’ That was one aspect of living in a small community that she hadn’t come to terms with yet.

‘So until you do have the time I’m the only man you’ve ever slept with.’

And Roman had never forgotten the night.

He ran a hand across his face and shook his head, unable to believe his total lack of control. He had never surrendered himself so totally to passion before or since that night; the searing fire of lust had totally devoured him. He had literally torn off his clothes like a fumbling boy who couldn’t wait.

Izzy looked past him, trying not to see the image of his sculpted bronzed body in her head as she banded her arm around her midriff in an unconsciously protective gesture. It did not protect her from the memory of the warm silken feel of his skin against hers at the first shocking intimacy of his touch.

‘There’s no need to make such a big thing of it. We had sex,’ she said, struggling to sound amused. ‘That doesn’t give us some magical bond.’

‘Maybe not magic, but we have a bond—we have Lily.’

As if in response to her name the sleeping baby stirred, raising her voice in a fretful whimper. Izzy was up in a bound and beside the carrier.

‘Per l’amor di Dio!’ he rasped under his breath as he watched her bend forward, providing him with a perfect view of her pert round bottom.

Izzy, who was unfastening Lily, who was wriggling like an eel to escape, lifted her head at the sound of his soft curse and, misinterpreting its cause, cautioned, ‘Babies don’t time their demands to suit you, Roman.’

The man needed a reality check. Maybe he would be less eager to be involved with Lily when he realised the demands that went with a small baby. ‘For the first three months I was rarely dressed before midday.’

From where he was standing that did not seem a bad thing to Roman.