Hold Me Close (Bridgewater County 4)

I glanced to Matt, who frowned. He reached his arm out, but didn’t dare touch her. “We’re standing in a sperm bank, sweetheart. There’s no secrets from us now. I think you can tell us all of it, don’t you?”

She shifted from one foot to the other and dropped her gaze down to her feet. “Because I’m not...appealing like that,” she murmured. Her voice just above a whisper. “Not to men. I don’t, um…I don’t do that.”

Her jumbled explanation had Matt and I exchanging a look of utter confusion. “You think you’re not appealing to men?” I asked.

The thought was baffling, but she looked sincere when she tilted her chin up with defiance. “I’m not very good in bed. I don’t like being…intimate.” She shrugged as if it was no big deal, but the emotion in her eyes gave her away. The heated anger was replaced with a mixture of strange self-loathing and embarrassment. “If I’m waiting on that, I’ll be waiting a long time. I’m not willing to put off my dreams just because I can’t…you know.” She waved her hand in the air.

“Get laid?” Matt finished. I glanced over to see him staring at her in complete shock and I knew my face must have looked the same.

I was trying to understand what she was saying. She wasn’t good in bed. She wasn’t appealing to men. She didn’t do intimacy.

Yeah, right. Her cheeks darkened again and her lack of an answer was an affirmative. It seemed impossible a gorgeous woman like Rachel could seriously think she wasn’t attractive to men. But she didn’t just believe it, she felt it, too. Felt it enough that a sperm bank was her only option to have a baby.

“Why on earth do you think you’re not appealing to men?”

She looked to Matt even though I was the one who asked the question. Her big eyes were filled with embarrassment. She bit her lip.

If she only knew how hard that small gesture made me, seeing her plump lower lip indented from her teeth, she’d think differently about herself.

Tears fille

d her eyes, but she took a deep breath, willed them back. I was so impressed with her bravery, with her ability to stay strong when she felt anything but inside.

“It’s obvious, isn’t it? Even Matt noticed the first time he saw me.”

When I turned to Matt he looked just as confused as I felt.

She met my gaze and let out a sigh. “Fine. If you really need to hear me say it, I’ll say it. I’m a virgin.”

I couldn’t think of a single thing to say in response. My brain short-circuited at that bit of news. I heard Matt mutter “holy shit” under his breath as he struggled to process this, too. It wasn’t like we thought Rachel slept around. She definitely didn’t seem like someone who took sex lightly. But a virgin? That was a whole other level of innocence we hadn’t been expecting. She was young—younger than us, at least, but not that young.

Holy fuck, that meant she was untouched. That no man had seen her gorgeous body, touched it. Made her quiver with pleasure, learned what made her hot. No man had made her come, heard her scream when she did so.

She seemed to know what I was thinking. No, she didn’t because she would have run out the damn door.

“That’s right,” she grumbled, walking over to the door. “I’m probably the only twenty-six-year-old virgin in America.”

She looked mortified and angry, and I scrambled trying to think of some way to make this right. To get it through to her she could trust us. That we could make her happy and give her everything she dreamed of.

Matt beat her to the door and stood in front of it, blocking her way. He should have done this months ago, to corner her and get the truth out of her. She hadn’t been ready. Now? She’d made a big decision about her life and was following through with it—or had been before we barged in—and now perhaps she’d be ready to see everything. Including us.

“You’re keeping me here?” If looks could kill, we’d both be dead.

“You sure as hell aren’t getting pregnant by an anonymous stranger,” Matt countered.

Rachel was ours. There was no way in fuck anyone else was going to take her virginity. That pussy belonged to us. Yeah, we might be selfish bastards, but the tables could be turned. If she’d just stand still and listen to us, she’d know we belonged completely, and solely, to her.

“You should leave. None of this is your business and I shouldn’t have said anything. God, now my bosses know my darkest secrets.”

“We’re men, sweetheart. Right now, here? We’re not your bosses.”

“Yeah, well, regardless, you’re in no position to tell me what to do. If I want to have a baby, then I have every right to do so.”

She was right, of course. About everything. We were probably breaking ten different types of employee privacy rights laws just by being in the room, but we’d come this far, there was no fucking way we were leaving without telling her how we felt. She’d told us about being a virgin, we sure as shit could bare our souls, too. I took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

“Yeah, you’ve said that. Again and again. And you’re right. But it’s our turn to talk.”

She was quiet for a moment. Her brows drew together in confusion, which was easier to handle than her righteous indignation. “Okay,” she said slowly. “I’m listening.”