The Virgin Gift(9)

But then he grew quiet as we volleyed questions about new science facts at each other. Normally he’d make a joke about some impossible-to-answer question, pretend it was a trick by the game maker.

Only he didn’t. He seemed lost in thought.

“Excuse me for a second,” he said, and rose, heading for the guest room.

That’s odd.

But ten seconds later, he returned, a determined look on his face as he sat next to me, closer than he had been.

I parted my lips to speak. “What’s—?”

“Nina,” he said, his voice rougher, deeper than I’d heard it before. “There’s something I need to tell you.”

Tension darted down my spine. Those words never preceded anything good.

What was he going to tell me? Was he leaving Vegas? I worried about that from time to time. He worked in the entertainment business, and his job could easily be moved to Georgia or Canada or Hollywood. While he traveled to those places a lot, Vegas was his home and his company’s home. I hoped it would remain so, but you never knew. “Are you moving to Atlanta?” I blurted out.

He furrowed his brow. “What? No.”

“Oh good. I was worried,” I said, relaxing. But then, something else was bugging him. “What’s going on?”

He scrubbed a hand across his jaw, exhaling, then meeting my gaze, his hazel eyes shining darker than usual, like there were secrets in them he was going to reveal. “I’m going to be blunt because I believe that’s what you want. When I came home today, I needed to write a phone number down, and I flipped open your notebook. To grab a sheet of paper,” he said, and my heart raced rabbit fast. My pulse sped off the charts.

“I wasn’t prying, Nina, but I saw a list you’d written,” he said, like he was laying out the facts he desperately wanted me to believe.

A white sheet of shame descended over me. Mortification took on a new meaning.

But inside my embarrassment something else formed—a kernel of anger. Red and glowing.

“That was personal,” I said, my jaw tight, as I moved away from him. “You shouldn’t have looked at it. You shouldn’t.” Maybe if I said that enough, he’d forget what he saw, erase it from his mind.

“I know I shouldn’t have,” he said, gravel in his voice. “And I’d like to say I feel terrible for invading your privacy. But . . .”

I furrowed my brow, confused. “You don’t feel bad? Then why are you telling me?”

He shook his head. “I wanted to feel bad, but I couldn’t find it in me to.”

I shot him a stare. “Then why are you telling me?” I asked again, more bite in my tone. I stood, heading to the kitchen to clean the counter—anything to get away from the embarrassment of my most private fantasies revealed, right alongside my deepest secret.

His footsteps echoed across the floor, and in seconds he moved behind me. “I’m telling you because of number ten.” His words rumbled across the air.

I knew what number ten was.

Number ten was the linchpin of the whole list.

Number ten would be the hardest item to accomplish.

His body was inches from mine, so close I could inhale his scent, like the winter woods, and a sliver of desire thrummed in my veins, surprising the hell out of me.

The hairs on my neck stood on end. My mind went on high alert, racing through possibilities as quickly as I’d cycled through fantasies about Marco and Evangeline.

Was he about to say what I thought he was?

But Adam wasn’t that kind of guy, I reminded myself.

I waited for him to speak next, to fill the pulsing silence, even though the noises in my head were so damn loud they nearly drowned out any words.

Adam dipped his face closer, brushing his mouth over my ear, and whispered, “Ask me, Nina. I’ll be the man to do all those things to you for the first time.”

He spoke in a command. Like me asking him was an instruction. No, it was an order.

He’d given me a command.

That shiver turned into a full-body shudder.





6





Nina





Adam was never in the cards.

For all the reasons I laid out in my head when Miss Sheridan had inquired. She wasn’t the only one in my life who’d nudged me about Adam. My friend Lily had at her wedding, tugging me aside and asking when I was going to go for it. Your wedding is making you loopy, I’d teased. My friend Kate had simply arched a dubious brow.

Had they seen something in him I hadn’t?

What would I see if I turned around?

Would I see sunshine, as I always saw with this man?

Or would I see midnight? Another side of Adam?

Part of me was terrified; another part was thrilled.

My mind raced through the myriad possibilities—what would happen to us if I asked him to bite me, have me, take me? Discover me on the bed and watch me touch myself? For once in my life, I wanted to be the one who was seen. I wanted to be watched. I craved the chance to say things like watch me strip, watch me tease, watch me taunt. Then I’d add, Tie me up and make me take it hard.

With Adam?

My pulse beat between my legs, the first sign.

But there were so many what-ifs to Adam as number ten.

We were frozen, poised on the edge of a building, staring down at the ground below, so far away. If we jumped, would there be a safe landing?