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SHE WAS A VIRGIN, you idiot. She tricked you. And now she’ll expect more from you than you can ever give. Or would want to give, I added swiftly, as my mind tried to engage with what had just happened.
The recriminations swirled around in my brain, but the ripples of afterglow still pulsing through my body made it hard for me to regret what I had done.
Her belly twitched against my softening erection and I felt the tingle of arousal at the base of my spine as I began to harden again.
What the...? This was madness. How could I possibly want her again so soon?
The realisation shocked me, enough to have me lifting up and rolling away from her. I lay on my back beside her and covered my eyes with my forearm.
I had felt her flinch as I drew out, but she said nothing as we lay there together, getting our breath back. Shame hung over me, not just because I had taken her with so little finesse, ploughing into her tight flesh like a battering ram, but at the knowledge that I could want to ravage her again so soon when she must be sore as hell.
I struggled to control my desire and willed my breathing to even out. She lay next to me on the lounger. I should move. I should offer to wash off my seed and the blood that had to be there. Thank God I had pulled out before I ejaculated, despite her assurances she was on the Pill. Surely that could have been a lie too, just like the pretence of sexual experience.
Dammit, why had she given herself to me so easily, so freely? Hadn’t I told her exactly how much I was prepared to offer? I felt like a bastard now and I didn’t like it. But what I liked even less was the urge to take her sweet, succulent and now no doubt bruised body back into my arms and apologise for what I’d done.
It wasn’t my fault she’d remained silent. I’d given her ample chances to stop me, but she hadn’t. Why hadn’t she? What exactly was she expecting to happen now?
But instead of the emotional manipulations I expected to hear, instead of the muffled tears maybe because I had deflowered her with so little care or attention, I felt her fingers touch my arm. Tentative and halting.
I lifted my forearm to find her leaning over me, her face a picture of flushed arousal. Still. What was up with that? She couldn’t possibly still desire me.
‘Is everything okay, Dante?’ she asked and I could hear the concern in her voice.
I huffed out a laugh that sounded strained and forced, but I could see her concern for me was genuine.
What on earth was going on? She was looking at me as if I were the injured party, instead of the other way around.
‘Everything’s terrific,’ I said, still waiting for the other shoe to drop, or rather the axe to fall on my head, but instead of railing at me or demanding to know what my intentions were now, the sweet, unbearably sexy smile that I had only seen once before curved her lips.
I tried to quash the answering smile that wanted to curve my lips in response but there was no help for it. She wasn’t going to mention her virginity, or the ruthless way I had plunged into her or the fact that I hadn’t stopped when I should have done, or apologised even, like the heartless bastard I was. She wasn’t even going to mention my loss of control and the fact I had carried on making love to her.
Could she actually be that guileless? That sweet? That innocent? Because it seemed that she was, and I couldn’t seem to decide what I felt about that.
On the one hand it was going to let me off this hook very nicely indeed—because if she wasn’t about to draw attention to her virginity, I certainly was not... But it also made her seem even more vulnerable than she had before—when I’d walked in on her being beaten by Carsoni’s goon. But now the man hurting her and treating her without the proper care was me.
‘You enjoyed it?’ she said, but I could hear the question.
I rolled back towards her and stroked the side of her face with my thumb; the grinding feeling of inadequacy and shame and futile temper I hadn’t wanted to acknowledge released in my chest.
‘Bella, couldn’t you tell?’ I said.
The blush, which I had found so fascinating when I’d first met her, lit up her cheeks again. But now I knew exactly where that blush originated, from an openness and honesty far greater than I had already realised, it didn’t just fascinate me, it captivated me. And although I knew I shouldn’t, I had the strangest feeling of satisfaction that, for whatever reason, she had chosen me to be her first.
Maybe it wasn’t that significant for her, that was why she hadn’t mentioned it. And why she clearly didn’t want me to mention it either—which was fine by me. But that didn’t stop me from knowing. And wondering why on earth she would have chosen me. I hoped to hell it wasn’t some foolish notion that I would give her more but it seemed so far as if my deeply cynical reaction to her virginity had been an overreaction, to say the least.
With that in mind, I needed to be casual now. Not to make a big deal of any of this. I forced myself to relax and smile back at her, even though the tightening in my chest felt far too significant.
‘I... Yes, of course I could tell,’ she said, feigning an experience I knew she didn’t have. Why her little pretence should suddenly seem appealing instead of threatening or suspicious I had no idea but I decided to go with it.
‘I should...’ She thrust her thumb over her shoulder, pointing towards the shower at the bottom of the cliff steps. ‘I should go and shower...’ She smiled. ‘I have an important meeting with my boss in an hour and a half.’
She grabbed a towel from the pile by the lounger and wrapped it around that luscious body. I grabbed one too, to cover myself, because I could feel myself getting hard again and I didn’t want to scare her off.
Although she didn’t seem scared. Which I decided was good. Once wasn’t going to be enough for either one of us, but we needed to establish some parameters for this...hook-up. Because that’s all this could ever be. She seemed to already realise that, which was also good, I supposed. And while I knew her attempts to appear blasé and urbane about what we’d done were really just an act, I didn’t have a problem with that either. But not to the point that I was going to allow her to rush off now—or pretend that nothing had happened when I saw her again at the team briefing at eleven.
I had never slept with an employee before and certainly not one of my engagement team. But I didn’t see why it should be a problem. We were all adults. Consenting adults. And everyone knew I didn’t play favourites in a business situation. Every single person on my team had earned their place there. And Edie more than most. Her work so far had been exemplary. She was observant, erudite and incredibly sharp and that was before you even factored in her exceptional analytical abilities and her creative use of data to rationalise and assess the investment potential of each of the candidates we were considering. Not only had she worked hard over the last week and a half, she had impressed every member of the team and earned her place. And I knew how much that meant to her, after our conversation over dinner four nights ago. After the abuse she had clearly suffered because of her mother’s behaviour, Edie had wrongly believed she had a lot to prove.
Considering that abuse, I would hazard a guess that was why she didn’t want anyone knowing that we were an item. Because the professionalism she had done so much to achieve might be compromised.
