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She didn’t want to speak. She didn’t want to move. She didn’t want to face reality.
But she knew that they would have to.
But not yet.
CHAPTER TEN (#ucee2d68b-dd06-5d8e-abc6-862a58eb0486)
DANTE cursed himself. To hell. To any level of hell. He’d heard every reference about his name in connection with the place of suffering and damnation that the media could possibly create, and this time, he found it appropriate.
He belonged there for this.
He had let her lead, but what he hadn’t realized was that she hadn’t known the dance.
A virgin. A damn virgin.
He should have known. He should have seen it in every wide-eyed glance, in every sweet, perfect blush. In the way she didn’t seem to know the sort of power her body could wield.
But he hadn’t, or worse, he’d ignored it. That black part of his soul rising up to choke out the control, choke out the small seed of human decency that had still rested inside of him.
He avoided women who didn’t know the game. Who didn’t understand that with him sex was only about one thing: release. Even if the woman had had a hundred partners, he had to be sure she understood that.
But a woman who had no experience with sex? She was not the kind of player he picked for the game. Ever.
The voice in his head whispering that Paige was different was silenced completely.
“Dammit, Paige,” he said, his voice rough.
“Oh, no. Don’t do that please.”
She scooted away from him and burrowed under his covers. In his bed. Like she was planning on staying the night, which he was sure she was. Women didn’t stay the night with him. They never had. Not once.
They met in hotels. They got the itch scratched. They left. A long encounter lasted a couple of hours. Never more.
“Don’t get upset about you not telling me you were a virgin?” he growled.
“Yes!” She threw her arms up and brought her hands back down on the covers. “It’s stupid. You’re not a mustache-twirling villain who just ripped away my maidenhead. I knew what I was doing.”
He moved into a sitting position on the edge of the bed and forked his fingers through his hair, his heart pounding heavily. Too quickly. He hadn’t gotten his control back yet. “I cannot even wrap my head around that sentence.”
“I wanted it. I told you I wanted it. You asked me to say it, and I did. I wanted to sleep with you. I wanted you to be my first. No, you know, that’s not even it. It wasn’t about first. It was about wanting you. End of story.”
“Paige, I don’t … I can’t offer you anything.”
“Oh, you mean you can’t offer me anything other than a temporary marriage to help me keep custody of my daughter? You can’t offer me anything more than that and multiple orgasms? Is that what you mean?”
“Paige,” he growled.
“Get into bed, Dante.”
“I don’t …” He was about to tell her. To tell her that his lovers did not share his bed. His lovers didn’t usually enter his home.
But the words stuck in his throat. He should tell her, tell her that if she wanted sex, she could have it, but if she wanted to make love she would have to look somewhere else. But for the first time in his memory, the blunt words, the true words, stuck in his throat.
He stood. “I need to go and take care of things.”
She nodded, her hands clutching the covers like talons, as if proving to him that she was well and truly rooted to the spot.
He walked into the bathroom and disposed of the condom, then for the second time in only a few days, he gripped the edge of the sink and regarded the man in the mirror.
He released his hold and straightened, turning away from his reflection. And he weighed which sin would be greater. To give her what she asked for, with no intention, no ability, to offer emotion. Or to show her now, that with him, there would be no softness.
He walked back into the bedroom, his chest tightening when he saw Paige, deep in the blankets, rolled onto her side, her eyes open.
“You did come back,” she said.
“I did,” he said.
His stomach tightened, painfully, a raw, intense tremor of terror working its way beneath his skin and straight into his heart. The closer he got to the bed, the sharper the feeling became.
He stopped, trying to catch his breath. She looked … angelic. Her lips swollen and flushed pink, her skin still flushed, too. Her blue eyes filled with an innocent expectancy, a need that he knew he could never meet.
And still, the desire to slide beneath the sheets and tug her bare body against his was strong. The need to feast on her beauty, to sate himself on that need, so great, so powerful, it threatened to take over.
He took a step backward. “You are welcome to stay in here for the night, Paige,” he said, his words stilted. “But I have work to do.”
He bent and retrieved his pants from the floor, tugged them on, then did the same with his shirt. And without looking back, he walked out of the room and closed the door firmly behind him.
Paige opened her eyes slowly, squinting against the light coming through the curtains. Her first thought was that it was strange that Ana hadn’t woken up.
Her next thought was about how strange it was that she was naked. She never slept naked. She wore her pajamas. But she hadn’t last night.
Oh, yes, and now she remembered, very, very clearly why she hadn’t worn pajamas.
Dante. His hands. His mouth. His body. He was … everything a man should be. No wonder she’d been so fascinated with him for so long. Somehow, some part of her, must have known, instinctively, that that man was capable of giving pleasure that went well beyond anything she’d previously imagined.
A smile curved her lips. Okay, so she hadn’t waited for marriage, or even true love, which she was sure her perfect sister had done. But it had been worth it. So, so worth it.
She pushed away the dreaded suspicion that she might feel differently about it later, and instead, focused on the warm satisfaction that was still resting in her body. She shifted and winced. Oh, yeah, there was also a little bit of ow resting in her body, but that seemed worth it, too.
Her muscles hurt. And so did … things that had never hurt before.
She rolled over and realized that the sheets were cold where Dante should have been. And then she remembered him walking out, his expression shuttered, blank, and she wondered if he had ever come back to bed.
The door to the bedroom swung open and Dante entered, wearing the clothes from the night before.
“Good morning,” she said, feeling slightly less blissful than she had a second earlier.
He frowned. “It is morning.” He tugged his shirt up over his head and her brain stalled at watching the play of perfect, golden skin over shifting muscles.
A little thrill assaulted her. He was hot, so supposedly out of her league, and yet, last night, he’d been hers. He had wanted her. Her.
She’d gotten the hot guy, and for a moment, she just wanted to celebrate that. Before reality hit.
“Yes, it is morning,” she said, sounding far chirpier than she imagined he might like.
“Are you okay?”
She sat up, holding the covers to her chest, and poked herself in the arm. “I … feel okay.”
“Very funny, Paige. You know what I’m asking.” He dropped his pants and her stomach followed the trajectory, sinking around her toes.
“If I’m angry that you made love with me and left me for the rest of the night?” she asked, keeping her eyes trained on his tight butt as he looked through his closet, shoving her clothing aside with rough, frustrated movements. “I’m a little angry about that, yeah.”
“That isn’t what I was asking.”
She really hoped that he wasn’t actually asking what she thought he might be asking, because that was just too stupid. “You want to know if I regret the sex.”
“Yes.”
She let out an exasperated breath. “I don’t regret the sex, Dante. But I am a little put out by the way you acted after. And actually, the way you’re acting now.”
“It sounds to me like you regret anything happened at all.”
“I told you I wanted it,” she said, exasperation lacing her tone.
He draped a pair of black slacks and a white shirt over his arm, still completely naked. “I know, but that was before you knew …”
“Just because I was a virgin doesn’t mean I didn’t know anything about sex. You can know about things without actually doing them.”
“But you don’t know how they’ll make you feel.”
“I feel—felt, because now I’m a little annoyed—satisfied. And warm. And … happy until you ditched me to work or whatever it was you did.”
“So, you have it all figured out then, do you?”
“Yes. If you stop treating me like a child, or a stranger who invaded your bedroom, I think we can work something out.”
His expression turned dark, fierce. He stalked over to the bed and leaned in, planting his hands on the foot of it. “So you think we can just go on and have an affair while you’re living here? Just sex. You, me, this bed, no clothes, no emotions—is that what you think?”
He was challenging her, trying to make her back off, trying to make her say no. And she knew it wasn’t for her benefit, not really. She didn’t know how she knew, but she did.
“Yeah,” she said, shrugging one bare shoulder, “I think we could do that.”
He raised both eyebrows. “You do?”
“Yeah. Last night was … really fun.”
“Fun?” he asked, his tone deadly.
“I can’t believe I waited so long. Well, I can, because you know … this is really embarrassing, but when I was in high school, I made out with this guy, but I had braces, and he cut his tongue.”
Dante blinked. “He … cut his tongue?”
“Yeah, on the braces. Only because he kissed like an overzealous puppy. You’re much better, by the way.”
“Thank you,” he said, drily.
“You’re welcome. Anyway, that’s hard to live down.” She drew her knees up beneath the covers and studied the stitching on the comforter. “And so, already I was sort of a running joke at the school. And then … senior prom, this guy who was … waaaay out of my league, asked if I would be his date. And I said yes. And then after the dance part, he told me he had a blanket and some drinks waiting for us under the bleachers which means … well, you know what that means. Well, no guy had paid attention to me in a couple of years thanks to the braces incident and so I … I was going to do it.”
“But clearly you didn’t,” he said, straightening.
“Clearly,” she said. “Because that wasn’t really what I was there for.”
“What happened?” he asked.
She bit her lip. “I don’t know why it’s so hard to talk about. It’s been what … four years? Stupid.” She shook her head, trying to stop the burning sting of tears in her eyes, the echoing burn of shame in her chest. “We went out to the football field, under the, um … bleachers. It was prom, you know, so … you know.”
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