Page 15 of The Greek's Innocent Virgin

It did sound unlikely, but not impossible and if he respected and trusted her at all, he would not deride it as a quickly composed lie.

"No, I don't expect you to believe it, but it's the truth," she uttered, defeat sinking into her bones as her dreams shattered around her.

CHAPTER SIX

"You said you knew me. If you did, you'd know how hard last night was for me after what happened to me when I was younger."

"That trick has been played too. It may have worked on Matthias, but it will not work on me."

Her mother had pretended to have a sexual trauma in her past? She would believe anything of her mother, she'd had a lifetime of her games but could not take in how Sebastian had changed from a warm and caring lover to a cold and heartless stranger.

How could everything have gone so wrong? "Last night was beautiful."

Something came and went in his eyes, but she didn't even try to figure out what. Her heart was dying inside of her.

“A beautiful bit of manipulation, you mean, but I am not my uncle and I will not be deceived by my libido into a relationship with a mercenary bitch."

She surged off the bed, the last insult one too many. "Don't you dare call me names!"

"Does the truth hurt?" he taunted.

"The truth? What would you know about the truth? You're as deceived as Matthias ever was." He be­lieved lies about her, only they were lies of his own making. She'd never once misled him. "I'm not like my mother. I came to you a virgin, for heaven's sake."

He looked as unconvinced as a heartless statue. "Your virginity was as false as your supposed love."

She shook her head, trying to clear it, trying to come to terms with his words. "You don't believe I was a virgin?"

"You've caught yourself in your own lies. You implied you were raped, but then say you are a virgin. Which is it?"

"I never had sex before." It was all she was pre­pared to say at this point. She wasn't about to bare her most painful memory to him, not after all he'd said.

"You did not bleed."

And that was his incontrovertible proof she had sexual experience? That she did not bleed?

No, she hadn't. She'd bled at sixteen though, so much so that she'd been terrified she would die. Andrea had refused to take her to Emergency, had told her not to be a baby, that all women bled when their hymen broke.

She was bleeding again now. Inside where he could not see, her love was hemorrhaging to death and the pain was even worse than it had been that horrible day so long ago.

"I didn't demand marriage. I gave myself to you freely. Doesn't that count for anything?" She wasn't even trying to convince him anymore, she was simply pointing out the obvious.

"You sold yourself too cheaply."

Each word was like a slap in the face. She hadn't sold herself at all.

If he thought the act of lovemaking outside of mar­riage had been a no-brainer for her, then he was pig-ignorant where she was concerned. She'd never accepted her mother's lifestyle as the right one to follow. She'd wanted a wedding night, a white gown and Prince Charming, but she'd settled for the prince without the trappings because she'd loved him so much.

And she'd hoped he would see her love for what it was, value the gift of her heart.

She'd been an idiot. A stupid, naive, idiot.

"Nothing else to say?" he asked, a tone in his voice she did not recognize.

She just shook her head, refusing to look at him again. Her heart hurt so much, she wondered if emo­tional pain could stop its beating as effectively as a heart attack.

He stood there for several seconds looking at her, the tension in him a palpable entity, but finally he spun on his heel and left the bedroom.

She sat, her heart turning to stone in her chest, her pain morphing into an impenetrable wall around emo­tions she would never risk giving in to again.

It was a long time before she was able to stand on legs that felt like rubber bands stretched unbearably taut, but she did. Then she dropped the robe from her shoulders, unable to bear the feel of anything belong­ing to him next to her skin. She walked naked from the bedroom, across the hall and into her own room and shut the door. Then she locked it.

Out of the corner of her eye, she had seen move­ment, but she refused to turn her head to see who it was. She didn't even care if it were one of his em­ployees and they had seen her naked. Nothing mat­tered anymore.

The process of emotional decimation Andrea started so long ago had been completed in Sebastian's bedroom.

Rachel had been a fool to love such a monster.

The leaden weight in her chest told her she would not make such a mistake again. She was anesthetized against future pain because she could not feel any­more. Surprisingly, she wasn't even sad now. She was just...nothing. Numb.

And she was glad.

She had had her fill of pain.

She packed her cases. She pulled out the box of mementos she'd added to in the last week, a shell from the beach the day of their fishing trip, a flower Sebastian had picked her on one of their walks, sim­ple things that did nothing but taunt her with her own emotional stupidity. Refusing to even look inside, she tossed it in the garbage can, then she called the airline with her ticket and agreed to come into the airport and wait stand-by for the next available flight. Next she called a taxi.

Thirty minutes later, she left the apartment. Sebastian's voice filtered through the study door as she passed, but she had no desire to stop and say, "Goodbye." Everything had been said and she could only hope she never saw the cynical bastard again.

"And how is your guest, son?"

Sebastian gripped the phone tightly and sucked in choking air at his mother's question. The last time he'd seen his guest, she had looked devastated.

He'd spent the last couple of hours trying to get her and last night off his mind, but it hadn't worked. Urgent company business could not keep his thoughts from her and his mother's question just served to bring everything to the forefront of his mind with blinding clarity.

His words, her reactions, assumptions that lost their power to convince in the chilled light of reality not overshadowed by gut clenching emotion.

God in Heaven, what have I done ?

There was no answer from above, but his mother called his name across the phone line.

"Ne?"

"I asked how Rachel is doing."

"Not well."

"You had an argument?" his mother asked, man­aging to convey both censure and her belief it was his fault with four short words.

"She is just like her mother."

"You don't really believe that, do you?"

Things were shifting inside his head, but to admit he had been completely wrong would be to contem­plate a hell of his own making. "What are the chances she would be different?"

"You are a fool if you believe this of her."

To be called a fool by his mother was not a pleas­ing experience and Sebastian gritted his teeth in frus­tration. "You are so certain. Tell me why."

"An hour in her company is enough to show that two people could not be more dissimilar. You have let your prejudice color your judgment."

He had thought that too, but then he'd convinced himself he was wrong. "Perhaps you have allowed your compassion to color yours."

His mother's sigh was long and full

of parental disapproval. "She has spent the last several years liv­ing completely separate from Andrea. Not only did she insist on living in another country, away from her mother's influence, but Rachel stopped accepting sup­port funds from Matthias when she graduated from university. If she were like Andrea, wouldn't she have been in Greece, participating in her mother's decadent lifestyle? At the very least she would have allowed Matthias to augment her income."

Cold that had been curling at the edges of his thoughts began to fill his being. "I did not know Matthias had ceased supporting her."

"But then you changed the subject every time her name was mentioned in the last few years."

He had wanted her and hearing about her had only exacerbated an ever-increasing ache.

"She lied to me," he said in a last-ditch effort to hold on to the protection of his assumptions.

"This I do not believe."

Goaded by the reproach in his mother's voice, he told her the truth. "Rachel said she was a virgin, but she wasn't. She was trying to trap me just like Andrea trapped Matthias."

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