The Virgin Gift(33)

But she’d also given me an out, and I grabbed it, clutching on for dear life, flashing her an easy grin. “You figured me out, Nina. It’s just the heat of the moment.”

Her brow creased. “It is?”

I dipped my face to hers, pressed a kiss to her forehead. She closed her eyes as I whispered, “It’s all so damn good with you that sometimes I’m not thinking. I’m just living in the moment of your list.”

The list.

That was it. That was all this could be.

She nodded. “That makes sense. I’m living in the moment too. And every moment has been incredible.” Her fingers roamed up my chest, then she looped her hands around my neck, playing with the ends of my hair. So simple, yet so intimate.

Hitting me once more in a way I hadn’t expected.

My skin tingled. Just from her fingers along my neck.

“Adam,” she said, and my name sounded like honey on her lips. Like all the sweetness in the world. Because that was who my friend was in bed. She was my sweet, dirty girl. My sexy virgin.

And she was mine.

“Yes?” I asked, fighting off the desire to use her name.

Her lips curved into a grin. “You know how you said you’d ask me again tonight? To give you my virginity?”

I swallowed roughly. Of course I remembered that. “I do.” For a split second, the terrible thought flashed through my mind that she was backing out, that she no longer wanted this.

But then she threaded her fingers more tightly through my hair, brought me closer, and whispered, “You don’t have to ask. I’m giving it to you. It’s yours.”

And that was when I knew how screwed I was going to be.





19





Nina





And so I was there. I’d reached number nine.

Goodbye, V card, hello other side.

I was walking down the Jetway to a plane that would whisk me to another hemisphere. One foot in front of the other.

I sat up in bed, lifted my arms over my head. “Will you take my shirt off?”

“Yes.” He rose too, reaching for the thin fabric and whisking it off me in a flurry. He groaned when he stared at my breasts.

He brushed his fingers between them, running them along the curves. “I didn’t spend nearly enough time worshipping these beauties last night,” he said, shaking his head like that was a damn shame.

As he cupped them, it seemed like a shame to me too. My nipples hardened under his touch, and I arched into his palms. “Maybe my list needs addendums,” I said softly, playing with that idea. I hated the thought of completing the to-do list.

“Maybe it does,” he said, then he drew me in for another kiss.

His tongue skated inside my mouth, and his lips felt hot and desperate. Like he was taking this kiss for the road.

Like it would be our last kiss.

My shoulders sank at that prospect, and already my chest panged with missing this.

This connection.

This kind of touch.

Now that I’d had it, how was I to go without it?

I didn’t want to return to the land of nothing. I wanted to stay here, tangled up in hot, sweaty, mind-altering bliss.

But the list wasn’t about my future. It was about my present, and that was where I needed to live, and to live fully.

I shoved all thoughts of tomorrow out of my head and surrendered to the power of his kiss. To his passion. To his need. My back bowed as he kissed the breath out of me, just the way I wanted.

When he broke the kiss, his hazel eyes were rimmed with longing.

But it didn’t feel sexual, strangely enough.

And he didn’t gaze at me like the dirty after-dark man I’d discovered he was over these last two nights.

He looked at me as my friend, as the man I trusted, the man who cooked for me and needled me over fun facts. The man who had a key to my home.

But in a flash, the familiarity of the last few years vanished.

His irises shone darker now, with a look that was becoming familiar too, in its own way.

His bedroom eyes.

He shifted behind me, sliding a hand from the small of my back up my spine, sending shivers through me. When he reached my neck, he scooped my hair away, brushing kisses along my skin, then nipping. “As much as I want to spread you out on your back and have you wrap your legs around me, that’s not what I’m going to do. Know why?”

“Why?” I asked, knowing the answer, but loving the game, savoring the questions.

“Because that’s not what your list is about. You’re not a missionary girl, and I am going to take you the way you want. Fuck me hard, fuck me good, fuck me for the first time,” he gritted out, reciting the words from my list.

“Oh God, yes,” I said, sinking deeper into the moment.

“And you know how you want it. You scripted it. You wrote it down.” His hand curled around my neck, gripping me tighter.

I gasped, knowing what was coming. “I want it that way. I want number nine.”

His mouth found my ear, and his voice was rougher than I’d ever heard it before. More demanding. “Then say it. Say it out loud. Tell me how you want me to take you for the first time.”

I shuddered, drawing a deep breath, needing fuel to say the words. But when you’ve spent all your sex life in your head, detailing your fantasies, building them, crafting them, and creating worlds around them, it turns out it’s not that hard to give voice to them at last. “Push me down on the bed. Pin me in place so I can’t move. Do it hard. And do it now. Please, Adam, do it now.”