The Virgin and the Beast (Stud Ranch 1)

Shocker that I was put off sex.

I didn’t want to be labeled a cock-tease either so I just didn’t go there. I tried dating a couple more times but ended up breaking things off fairly quickly. Mostly I just automatically friend-zoned guys. I kept my hair short and continued wearing clothes that covered up my curves.

My girlfriends told me all the time that I was nuts and that all these guys I thought were just friends were actually hoping for something more with me.

But then I graduated college and was still a virgin and it just started to be totally weird. How do you tell someone on the third or fourth date… so look, I want to mess around with you, but I’m kinda sorta a virgin and still a little terrified about sex, cool?

Yeah, I never found a way to bring that up in polite conversations and would just stop returning a dude’s calls after the second or third date.

To my friends, I pretended I was waiting for some mythical perfect guy to lose it to, just to get them off my back about it. And then everything got intense with me working sixty to seventy hours a week and the last thing on my mind was a guy.

Now here I am and my virginity is possibly the thing that’s put me in the running for the position of sex-slave/baby-mama to a complete stranger so giant that I doubt I’ll be able to breathe if he lays on top of me.

And they say good things come to those who wait.

Bull shit.

My whole life has been about waiting. Playing it safe. Be the good girl, don’t color outside the lines. Put in the hard work trying to prove myself to Dad, then to my college professors, then to my boss at New World Media. Just waiting for the day for it to all pay off.

And right when it was all starting to—I finally had the house, the job, I was even thinking about getting a cat—boom!—my life explodes and suddenly now I’m—

“All done,” the doctor interrupts my thoughts, pulling off her gloves with a loud snap.

What? No. She can’t be done. My eyes leap to her but she won’t meet my gaze.

Instead, she speaks toward the door. “The rest of the information you requested will be in my report. I’ll email it to you within the hour,” she says, quickly packing up her tools in baggies and then replacing them in her black medical bag.

“Wait, that’s it?” I ask, sitting up. “Don’t you need to ask me more questions? Give me some vitamins or something? Draw some blood?”

“We already have the results of your most recent blood test,” the doctor says, still avoiding my gaze. I might as well be a plastic mannequin to her. “And I’ve already recommended vitamins. It’ll all be in my report.”

And with that, she’s walking out of the room. She gives the huge man standing in the hallway as wide a berth as she can. Then she’s gone.

Leaving me alone with nothing but a thin little slip of a hospital gown between me and him.

I stare at his feet. He’s wearing boots. Like, cowboy boots. They’re huge black ones.

They say the size of a man’s feet can indicate—

Oh God, now is so not the time for useless trivia, Mel.

I raise my knees to my chest, making sure to pull my hospital gown down over all the way to my feet so that I’m covered up in a little mini tent.

I avert my eyes to the white bedcover.

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Silence.

No, that’s not true—there’s the loud tick, tick, tick of the grandfather clock on the far wall. And the anxious terror gnawing at my stomach with every second that ticks away.

Is this the part where he leaps forward and then savages me? Do I fight him or just let it happen? If what he’s saying about Dad is true, if he’s really going to be safe and free, then maybe it will all turn out okay. Just a year of my life…

But the sex. He’s so big.

Oh God, he’s going to rip me in two.

My breathing becomes erratic and I clutch my arms around my legs. If he just wants a baby, why can’t we do this in a doctor’s office, all nice and civilized? He can go make his deposit in a cup somewhere, then a doctor can spurt me full with whatever the medical equivalent of a turkey baster is. Wham bam, thank you ma’am, I’m knocked up the way God intended, in a clinic with no actual body parts touching.