The Virgin's Debt to Pay

She still looked pale and his chest felt tight. ‘What’s wrong?’ Had he hurt her? He was so much bigger than her and the last thing on his mind had been taking care, or being gentle.

What’s wrong? What’s right? Nessa glanced away for a moment feeling ridiculously vulnerable, and even more so after his apology. She hadn’t expected cuddles and a heart-to-heart after sex with this man—no matter how much lust had clouded her brain. But she also hadn’t expected him to be so obviously angry with himself.

He hadn’t even noticed that she was a virgin. He’d thought she was acting innocent.

She forced herself to look at him and for a second could have almost imagined she’d dreamed up the last hour. He was dressed again, albeit without his tie and jacket. She still felt thoroughly dishevelled and at a disadvantage, and suddenly she wanted to pierce that cool disdain and self-recrimination.

‘I don’t know what this is between us but I’m not proud of myself,’ she said.

Luc looked at her with no discernible change in his expression, but then she saw the merest flash of something almost like hurt cross his face. He stepped closer, and she could see his eyes burning and a muscle jumping in his jaw.

‘You might be related to royalty but if you were seated at a banquet table right now and dressed head to toe in couture, you would still want me. Lust makes great levellers of all of us. As does crime,’ he answered.

It took a second for Nessa to absorb what he’d said. She couldn’t believe he’d misunderstood her. He turned away at that moment and, in spite of the turmoil she was feeling, she reached out, wrapping a hand around his arm. ‘Stop.’

He turned around.

She swallowed. ‘I didn’t mean that I wasn’t proud because it was you. I meant that I’m not proud because I feel like I’m betraying my family.’

His lip curled. ‘It’s just sex, Nessa. Don’t overthink it.’

She immediately felt silly for opening her mouth. She let his arm go and stepped back. ‘Forget I said anything.’

She was about to step around him and make her exit to lick her wounds and castigate herself for being so weak but this time he took her arm, stopping her and asking harshly, ‘What is that?’

Nessa looked around and for a second couldn’t see what he was looking at behind them. But then she noticed the unmistakable stain of red on the white sheets. Her blood. Her virginal blood.

She went icy cold, and then hot with humiliation. Quickly she stood in front of it. ‘It’s nothing.’

He moved her aside and looked closer. If the ground could have opened up and swallowed Nessa whole she would have jumped right in.

He looked at it for so long Nessa wished she’d taken the chance to escape. But then he moved back, and there was such a mix of expressions on his face that she was stunned into silence.

Luc couldn’t believe what his eyes had just told him, and yet he couldn’t stop thinking about all the moments when he’d thought she was putting on some act with the shy tentative kisses, the self-consciousness, and the way she’d run the other night.

But what beat at his brain most of all had been that moment, when he’d felt her body clamping tight around him. It had made him stop, and look at her, but the question had barely formed in his mind before her muscles had been relaxing to let him go deeper, and he’d conveniently blocked the half-formed question out, too desperate to sate himself.

She’d been a virgin.

That knowledge filled him with too many things to untangle now. One of which was a fierce feeling of satisfaction that he’d been her first. It was something he’d never imagined feeling in a scenario like this.

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

She opened her mouth and closed it again, and that only brought Luc’s attention to those lush lips and how they’d felt on his body.

‘Well?’ he snapped. She flinched minutely and Luc bit back a curse at himself. He felt unmoored, boorish. Out of control.

A hint of defiance came into her eyes and it comforted him. This woman was no wilting lily.

‘I didn’t think it was relevant. Or that you’d notice.’

Luc burned inside at that. He had noticed but had dismissed it. ‘I don’t sleep with virgins.’

Nessa folded her arms and said tartly, ‘Well, you just did.’

He felt the burn of more self-recrimination. ‘If I’d known I wouldn’t have been so...rough.’

Amazingly, Nessa blushed and glanced away. ‘You weren’t too rough.’ She hesitated. ‘It was okay.’