AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Penny wrapped her arms around his neck, returning his kiss…with interest. On Monday, he thought he’d detected some nervousness in her, but none of that was present right now.
She’d asked him to teach her how to seduce a man, how to be better in bed. That request had hovered in the back of his brain all week as he relived their far-too-brief make-out session on her couch. It was obvious she lacked experience. He was curious about her past lovers, wondering how many men had come before him.
They broke apart, the two of them gasping for air, and he found himself asking the question that kept popping into his head. “Why do you think you’re bad in bed?”
Penny blinked a couple times, and he grinned at the way it took her a few moments to focus. He’d kissed her senseless, and he liked it. Considered trying to keep her that way for the entire night.
“What?” she asked.
“Did some guy tell you that you were bad in bed?” If that was what had prompted her request for sex lessons, his next question would be more of a demand—for the guy’s name and address. He wasn’t usually violent, but the idea of some asshole hurting her that way had him seeing red.
“No. No one said that.”
Gage was confused. “Then why do you need lessons on how to be better in bed?”
“That’s not what I asked for. I said I want to begoodin bed.”
Gage rolled his eyes. “Semantics.”
Penny shook her head. “No, it’s not. It’s not a question of thinking I’m bad. Just inexperienced. I don’t really knowhowgood or bad a lover I am. I’ve never done it.”
Gage’s hands, which had been resting on her waist, fell away. “Wait.What?Are you telling me you’re a virgin?”
Penny shrugged. “Well, not physically, I guess. I mean, I’m sure the hymen is gone. I have a vibrator and a dildo, and they get a workout, believe me. But…technically, yes. I’m a virgin. You knew that though. I told you.”
Gage took a step back, his vision going gray around the edges. “No. You never told me you were a virgin.”
Penny frowned. “Why the hell would I ask for sex lessons otherwise?”
Gage ran a hand through his hair, trying to get control of himself. He’d literally been minutes away from taking…Jesus…from taking Penny’s virginity.
He’d never slept with a virgin. Ever. Not even in high school. He’d lost his own virginity when he was fourteen…to a senior girl who’d initiated him into sex in fucking style. After that, he knew exactly what type of woman he wanted in bed, and she sure as fuck wasn’t innocent.
Gage wasn’t that kind of lover. He didn’t do gentle or sweet or patient or anything that came even close to making love. He fucked hard and fast, rough and raw. He took experienced lovers to his bed because he knew what he wanted and how. He made demands—kinky, challenging demands—and he expected them to be followed. Period.
“You should have been a hell of a lot more specific when you laid down the terms of the wager. Because there’s no way I would have agreed to take your virginity.”
Penny crossed her arms, and he was tempted to pull them down, away from her body. Right now, all they were doing was drawing attention to her gorgeous D cups and making it hard for him to be the stand-up guy he needed to be.
Because regardless of this new information, Gage’s dick was still honed in on Penny Beaumont, virgin or not.
He expected her to launch into an argument, to demand he satisfy the terms. If she’d done so, he probably would have stood a fighting chance because if there’s one thing he could win, it was a heated debate.
What he couldn’t defeat was her very simple, very softly spoken, “Gage, please.”
“Penny,” he said, too aware of the almost pleading tone in his voice. “Be practical. Logical. Don’t you want your first time to be with someone special, someone you…” He swallowed deeply before forcing himself to say the word he’d scrubbed from his vocabulary a long time ago. “Love?”
Penny rolled her eyes in outright frustration.
Nope. Wrong emotion. This was full-blownanger. As was evident when she threw her hands up and exploded. “Jesus Christ, Gage! I’m not a fucking nun. It’s not like I’ve been saving myself all these years. I haven’t had sex because no one’s asked! If a guy had even looked my way twice back in high school, I would have been in the backseat of his car so fast, it would make your head spin.”
She wrapped her arms around herself now, her anger starting to wane as she continued her confession. “But no one looked.”
And he realized every word she was saying was the truth. Because Penny didn’t have it in her to lie. Right from the start, no matter how embarrassing or painful, she’d laid open old wounds, showing him exactly who she was without pretense.
Typically, her eyes were downcast when it was hard for her to admit something, but this time, tonight, she held his gaze, let him see it all.
“Not in high school. Not in college. Not at work. I mean, to be fair, I wasn’t really putting myself out there. It’s hard to be seen when you’re hiding under big clothes, hunkered down in your bedroom or some fellow nerd’s basement twenty-four seven because it’s easier to live as some video game character than in your own skin.”
