A Virgin for His Prize

“Poor them.”

Max’s smile was predatory and just a little bit devastating. “You think so.”

She knew so. Walking away from him had been one of the most difficult things Romi had ever done, but no way was she giving him a chance to own her heart only to break it.

As he was guaranteed to do.

“I enjoyed dating you.” A huge understatement, it still came out easily because it was also the truth.

“As I enjoyed our time together.”

“Good?” Embarrassed the word had come out more a question than statement, Romi felt a blush crawl up her neck.

“Not good. You turned me down.”

“We wanted different things.” And apparently she hadn’t thought to offer him part of a company to get what she wanted.

Visions of doing just that caused a bubble of hysterical laughter to nearly burst out.

It was all she could do to hold the humor in.

She couldn’t hold back a few mocking words however. “Too bad my dad wasn’t selling my hand in marriage, huh?”

Max tugged her close, his head tipping down. “I was thinking that exact thing.”

“You jerk.” She was laughing as she said the words, not meaning them, just responding in kind to his sarcasm.

But it meant her lips were parted when his mouth landed against hers.

Heat suffused her as her traitorous body melted into his without forethought or even permission from the thinking part of her brain. Forced suddenly into blatant recognition of a year’s long starvation of her senses, she returned his kiss with a hunger she’d done her best to pretend did not exist.

Voracious now, she had no hope of holding back the tide of feeling crashing over her.

It was the cost of ignoring emotions rather than facing them.

She wanted this man with every fiber of her being, no matter how much her brain told her it was a bad idea.

A spectacularly, out-of-this-world, really bad idea.

Her lips did not agree as they moved against his, her tongue eager as it met his, her body pliant to his touch.

She skimmed her hands up his hard chest, mapping the shape of muscles honed by workouts that would make a triathlete pause. Singeing her fingertips with electric warmth, the heat of his body translated through the smooth fabric of his dress shirt.

She brushed over tiny, hardened nubs and she reveled in the proof of her effect on him.

With a feral groan, Max flexed his lower body toward hers and she had even more potent proof in the press of his clearly excited, intimidatingly large shaft against her. It couldn’t be comfortable for him to be trapped in his clothes in that condition, but he didn’t complain or pull away.

Unheeded, his expensive, handmade tuxedo jacket fell from her shoulders as she wrapped her hands around his neck and pressed into him, chest to thigh. Was it possible to feel sparks in every single nerve ending of where her body met his?

She didn’t know if it was some kind of domino effect, but that’s what it felt like to her.

As her body exploded with delight in that simple but very intimate touch, the kiss went nuclear.

Their mouths ate at each other, his hands moved over her back, down along her sides, over her bottom…everywhere. Hers locked behind his head as she undulated against him—giving friction, receiving the stimulation she needed. It was insane. The way she responded to his nearness, the unending and increasing desire for more and more and more.

Sensations she’d dreamt about almost nightly and pretended to forget in the morning, but hadn’t experienced in a year, roared through her in a conflagration as unstoppable as the brush fires that raged in the south every summer.

It burned the walls of her defenses to cinders. All she could do was hold on and hope not to be consumed completely.

It was Max that broke the kiss, Max that took a step back, Max that held her away from him when she would have followed.

Feeling too much desire to be embarrassed, Romi demanded, “Why?”

He wanted her. She’d felt it. If she looked down, she’d see it, even in the dim shadows of the balcony.

“The next time we have sex, it will be in a bed and I won’t stop until you’ve climaxed with me inside you.” His breath panted in irregular intervals, but his deep voice was infused with absolute certainty.

She barely bit back the when that wanted to pop out of her mouth.

Oh, wow. Yeah. Not a good idea.

But she wanted it. So bad. She shook with the need to continue what they started, for just the experience of being held in his arms again.

“That can’t happen.” She wished her voice had even a modicum of certainty in it.

Some little bit of the self-preservation that lay in ashes around her.

“That’s a lie and you don’t do those.”

She opened her mouth to deny his words, but darned if he wasn’t right. “Please, don’t do this to me, Max.”

“What don’t you want me to do, Romi, my sweet virgin?” Why did those words sound so hot in his voice? “Turn you on? You weren’t complaining a second ago.”

She couldn’t deny it. Wasn’t sure she wanted to, even if she could. “Neither were you.”

But he’d stopped and she hadn’t even thought to try. Darn him.

“No, and I never will.”

Why did he have to say things like that? Things that could make her hope when hope and this man did not go together. “We still want different things.”

“Are you so sure? If I hadn’t stopped, you would have let me take you here and now.”

He was talking about sex when she was referring to a relationship. And he knew it. “Do you get some sick thrill out of rubbing in my own weakness to me?”

“It’s not a weakness, milaya.”

“So you say.” Her words lacked conviction, but he knew what using his Russian endearments on her did to Romi.