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He lifted off her, pulled out gently. She flinched, a groan escaping as her swollen flesh released him, the soreness a cruel reminder of the initial pain. She rolled away from him, and shifted across the bed.
As incredible as that had been, she felt fragile and wary. She’d never imagined, never realised, sex would be anything like that. The heady romances she’d read certainly hadn’t prepared her for something so brutal, so basic, the elemental nature of it nothing short of animalistic.
‘Hang on a minute.’ One muscled forearm banded around her waist, drawing her back into his chest. ‘Where are you off to?’ His lips nuzzled her neck.
‘I need to…’ Get away from you, she heard her mind shout, shocked by the renewed blast of arousal as his thumb played lazily with her nipple. She hurt, all over. She couldn’t possibly want to do it again. But still the molten heat between her thighs gushed back.
She lay motionless, clamped down on the need to struggle out of his grip. She didn’t want him to figure out the truth, that their coupling had been a life-altering experience for her.
She couldn’t bear for him to know now that she’d been a virgin. It would make this far too intimate. And it was intimate enough already. She’d assumed this would be anonymous sex, only t
o discover that the intimacy of the act meant there was probably no such thing.
‘I need to use the bathroom,’ she said.
‘All right.’ His hand stroked her belly in an oddly possessive manner. ‘There’s an en suite over there.’ His chin touched her shoulder as he nodded towards a door in the opposite wall. ‘I’ll keep the bed warm,’ he murmured, his hand skimming down her buttocks before he released her.
The proprietary words reverberated in her head as she shot across the room naked.
She couldn’t have been? Could she?
Nick frowned at the moonlight reflecting off the polished wood of the bathroom door, the niggling suspicion slowly but surely clawing its way through the sweet, heady buzz of afterglow.
Rolling over, he snapped on the bedside light, and flipped the duvet back. Then blinked several times at the two dark red splotches on the pale blue linen bed sheet.
He jerked upright, then cursed softly.
No way. Not possible.
He stared blankly for several long minutes at the evidence before him. Then raked his hand through his hair, the contraction in his chest forcing him to finally process the truth.
Eva the sexy anthropologist was a virgin. Correction, had been a virgin. Right up until the moment he’d ploughed into her.
He swore again, a lot more forcefully this time. And pushed back the sickening wave of guilt at the memory of her face, white with shock.
How the hell was that even possible? How could a woman as alluring and spontaneous and mind-blowingly sexy as she was have waited into her twenties to have intercourse? And why had she?
A picture of her wide blue eyes, petal soft skin and the tempting sprinkle of freckles across her shoulder blades formed in his mind. He gulped down the constriction in his throat. Damn. Assuming she was in her twenties. Why hadn’t he stopped long enough to ask her? To be sure?
He acknowledged the residual hum of heat in his groin, and had his answer.
Because he’d been spellbound. That was why. Even now, the memory of her lush body writhing in his arms, the weight of her full breasts in his palms and the sound of her stunned gasps as he ran his hands over the puckered pink flesh had the blood surging south. He’d been mesmerised by her ever since he’d spotted her in the gallery. And once he’d got her back here, got her naked, the last semblance of restraint had been swept away on a wave of lust so intense he’d been determined to have her.
Hearing the trickle of running water coming from behind the bathroom door, he slid out of bed and stripped off the stained bed sheet, feeling thoroughly disgusted with himself.
He’d lost control, let instinct and lust take over—something he’d worked really hard never to do again—and had sex with a woman he hadn’t bothered to find out a damn thing about. He knew her name, that she had studied anthropology and that she had written a script she wanted him to look at, which had to be why she’d been so keen to meet him.
Lobbing the soiled linen into the laundry basket, he grabbed a fresh sheet out of the drawer and wrestled it on while riding out the dull flush on his cheeks.
He’d admired her honesty and her forthright manner when she’d told him their meeting hadn’t been accidental. And been hopelessly turned on by her refreshingly artless approach to sex and then blinded by her quick and instinctive response to his caresses. So much so that he hadn’t stopped to question her.
He let out a calming breath.
Stop beating yourself up. You’re not exactly an expert on virgins.
Despite his varied and extensive experience, he’d never been any woman’s first lover before. How could he have known her innocence wasn’t faked? That the sheen of grateful tears in her eyes when he’d stroked her to orgasm was a sign of her inexperience and not, as he’d assumed like a conceited jerk, his superstar abilities in the sack?
He hadn’t forced her. She’d been willing. More than willing. And while the possibility that she might be younger than he’d thought bothered him, surely she couldn’t be a teenager. She’d been far too intellectually astute and not nearly self-absorbed enough for that.
