Double Standards

The ache in his voice shattered her resistance, and she wrapped her arms tightly around his broad shoulders, drawing him to her as her hips lifted to greet him. Nick plunged full-length into her, burying himself into her welcoming softness with a deftness that gave Lauren only an instant of pain, a pain that was forgotten as he began to move with tormenting slowness within her.

"I've only been waiting a few days for you, but it feels like an eternity," he rasped, and began steadily increasing the tempo of his driving plunges, pushing her closer and closer to her peak, until Lauren's love and passion finally exploded into shuddering ecstasy. Nick tightened his arms around her and with one final plunge, he joined her in the wild, sweet oblivion where he had sent her…

Dreamily descending from the misty euphoria where she was floating, sated and happy, Lauren slowly became conscious of the warmth emanating from Nick's body beside her, and the weight of his hand resting atop her stomach. But as she lay there, a vague uneasiness slowly crept into her fogged mind. She tried to shut it out, to keep it from disturbing the bliss of the moment, but it was too late. She remembered that Nick had been holding her tightly in his arms, his body driving into hers when he had whispered, "I've only been waiting a few days for you, but it feels like an eternity."

Lauren's boneless contentment gave way to harsh reality. She had misinterpreted what Nick had meant when he told her he'd been waiting an eternity for her. What he meant was that the few days he'd had to wait to make love to her seemed like an eternity. It didn't change the way she felt about him, but it made her uneasy.

Had he noticed her virginity? How would he react? What if he asked her why she had decided to make love with him? She certainly couldn't tell him the truth yet—that she was in love with him, and she wanted him to love her.

Lauren decided she would have to avoid the subject altogether. Hesitantly she opened her eyes.

Nick was lying on his side, propped up on his elbow, gazing intently at her face. He looked puzzled, dubious, and distinctly amused…

He had noticed. And judging from his expression, he intended to discuss it.

Lauren rolled away from him and hastily sat up, keeping her back to him. Reaching for his discarded shirt at the foot of the bed, she plunged her arms into the sleeves in an effort to cover her nakedness. I'd love some coffee," she mumbled, seizing on that as an excuse to escape his questions. "I'll make it." She stood up and looked at him, then flushed as his warm gaze slid down her long, shapely bare legs before lifting to her face.

Never had she felt as self-conscious as she did at that moment standing there, stark naked under his voluminous shirt. "You… you don't mind sharing your shirt, do you?" she asked, fumbling with the buttons.

"I don't mind at all, Lauren," he solemnly replied, but with a gleam of laughter in his eyes. His amusement was so unnerving that Lauren's hands began to shake. Concentrating on rolling up the shirt cuffs, she asked, "How do you like it?"

"Exactly the way we did it."

Her gaze shot to his face and the blush on her cheeks deepened. "No," she corrected with a quick, nervous shake of her head. "I meant, how do you like your coffee?"

"Black."

"Do… do you want some?"

"Some what?" he asked suggestively, grinning wickedly at her.

"Some coffee!"

"Yes, thanks."

"For what?" she quipped jauntily, then she pivoted on her heel and hastily left before he could reply.

Despite her bravado when she'd left the bedroom, she felt precariously close to tears as she walked into the kitchen and turned on the lights. Nick was laughing at her, and she had never expected that sort of reaction from him. Had she been that inept, that amusingly inexperienced?

Behind her, she heard Nick walk into the kitchen, and she quickly busied herself spooning coffee into the percolator. "Why are these cupboards so empty? Except for what we ate tonight, there's no food."

"Because the house is being sold," Nick replied. His hands settled firmly on her waist, drawing her against him until the denim of his jeans pressed against the backs of her bare legs. "Why didn't you tell me?" he asked her quietly.

"Tell you what?" Lauren hedged.

"You know damned well what."

She stared out the window over the sink. "I forgot about it, actually."

"Wrong," Nick chuckled. "Try again."

"Because the subject never came up," she said with an indifferent shrug, "and because I didn't think you'd notice."

"The subject never came up," he said dryly, "because twenty-three-year-old virgins in this day and age are rare as hell. And twenty-three-year-old virgins who look like you, rarer still. As far as the rest—well, it was self-evident."

Lauren turned around to face him, her blue eyes searching his. "But before that… that point, you didn't realize that I hadn't… hadn't… before?"

"I had no idea that you were a virgin until it was too late to make any difference to either of us." Putting his arms around her, he added, "But you should have told me you were before we got into that bed."

"If I had told you, would you have changed your mind?" Lauren asked, loving the sound of his voice and the feel of his arms around her.

"No, but I would have been more gentle with you." Leaning back, he stared at her in genuine puzzlement. "Why should I have changed my mind?"

"I don't know," Lauren mumbled uneasily. "I thought you might have some, well, reservations about… about…"

"About what?" he mocked tolerantly. "About 'stealing' something that belongs to your future husband? Don't be ridiculous. He won't expect you to be a virgin; men don't prize virginity anymore. We don't want or expect a woman to be inexperienced. We're liberated too, you know. You have the same physical desires I do, Lauren, and you have the right to satisfy them with whomever you wish."

Lauren cautiously lowered her eyes to the gold medallion hanging on a long gold chain around his neck and asked, "Have you ever cared, really cared, for any of the women in your life?"

"Some of them, yes."

"And you didn't mind if they'd had sexual relationships with lots of other men?"

"Of course not."

"That seems like a very… coldblooded… attitude."

His lids flickered down, his glance lingering on the tantalizing mounds of her breasts. "If I've given you the impression that I'm coldblooded, I think it's time we go back into that bedroom."

Lauren wondered if he was deliberately misinterpreting her use of the word because he wanted to avoid the issue. If he had really cared for those other women, shouldn't he have felt more possessive about them? If he really cared for her, shouldn't he be please

d that he was the only man she'd let make love to her? Lauren raised her troubled blue eyes to his. "Nick?"

He looked down at the delicate young beauty in his arms. Her face was framed in tousled waves of burnished honey, her mouth was soft and generous, and her full breasts were pressed enticingly against his bare chest. His arms tightened around her, and he bent his head. "What?" he murmured, but his mouth opened on hers in a deep, drugging kiss that silenced her voice.

Sometime after dawn, Lauren rolled over and saw Nick's dark head on the pillow beside her. With a dreamy smile of satisfaction, she closed her eyes and sank back into the deep slumber of blissful exhaustion. She did not awaken again until Nick put a cup of coffee on the night table beside her and sat down on the bed.

"Good morning," she said, her smile fading as she realized that he had already showered, shaved and dressed in tailored gray slacks and an open-necked gray shirt. "Is something wrong?" she asked, clutching the sheet to her breasts as she struggled up against the pillows. She felt awkward being stark naked when he was dressed, but Nick seemed unaware of her discomfort. For that matter, he seemed unaware of her nakedness.

"Lauren, I'm afraid we're going to have to cut today short. A… a business associate of mine phoned this morning and will be here in an hour. I'll find another ride back to the city."

Lauren was terribly disappointed, but forty minutes later, as Nick walked her out to her car, her disappointment had grown into confused alarm. Gone was her passionate, seductive lover of the night before. Today Nick was friendly but impersonal, treating her as if they'd spent a pleasant but meaningless night playing cards instead of making love. Or was this the way men always acted afterward? She was probably being oversensitive, Lauren decided, stopping at her car and turning toward him.

She hoped he would take her in his arms and kiss her goodbye. Instead he put his hands in his pockets, looked at her levelly and said, "Lauren, did you take any precautions against the possible consequences of last night?"

Pregnancy! Lauren's face felt as if it was on fire as she shook her head.