Project Virgin (7 page)

“No,” I said, and it was true the instant I said it. “No second thoughts at all.”

“I texted our driver,” he told me, slipping his phone into his pocket.

And then we stood there with the thick dark and insistent clamor of the city all
around us, the memory of what he’d done and how I’d sobbed out my joy in it built up like a neon flashing wall between our bodies.

I thought I should say something, but words deserted me. It was easier with his hands on me. With that devastating mouth of his on mine. It was easier when I didn’t have to think.

Because thinking led nowhere good. It led straight into the coming Monday morning I
didn’t want to think about on the other end of this weekend, where I’d still be a first year and he might as well be a god, and he had absolutely no reason in the world to talk to me. Ever again. About anything. Much less smile at me the way he was now, as if the silence didn’t get to him at all.

So I didn’t think. I tilted myself forward, straight into him. It wasn’t until he caught me easily
with one of those strong arms of his that I realized I’d known he would. That I hadn’t doubted it for a second. Then I was crushed against his perfect chest and I found I didn’t care about anything but that.

“Kiss me,” I ordered him.

His smile turned wicked. His blue eyes gleamed.

“Do you give the orders or do I? I thought we covered this already.”

I had no idea why I was grinning like that.
Wide and silly. “Kiss me anyway.”

He lowered his mouth toward mine, inch by slow, unhurried, and excruciating inch.

“What you don’t understand, Scottie, is that there are consequences for breaking the rules.” He was
so close.
“There are always consequences.”

“Do what you want,” I told him grandly, because in that moment I don’t think I’d have cared if I was standing in the path of a train,
I wanted him so much. At any other time, that might have scared me. “Just kiss me first.”

And he did.

Finally, he did.

If there was any part of me that thought what had happened between us in that private room inside the club was a fluke, that out here on the street in the city where there was less pounding music and more stark reality it might just be a kiss after all—he swept it away.

Damon
held me to him until I wrapped my arms around his waist and then he shifted to hold my face between his hands, and he kissed me like a starving man. He kissed me with all the desperate passion and wild hunger that was storming inside of me, stirred to a fever pitch all over again. He kissed me with such fire, such sheer and dizzying madness, that I understood in a giddy rush exactly how much he’d
been holding back all night.

It made me feel small and precious. Cared for beyond measure.

I’d never felt anything like it in my life.

He pulled away, and his breath came hard, tangling with mine.

“This is crazy,” he muttered, and I only dimly realized our town car had pulled up in the street beside us when he tore his gaze from mine to look at it. When he looked back, his gaze was bright
blue and something like troubled. “You’re making it hard to remember I’m supposed to be in control of this. I need to get you home before I get us both arrested.”

I found myself grinning at him. “I don’t know. It could be a whole night of firsts. With a mug shot to commemorate the experience. Every girl’s dream.”

Damon didn’t smile back. There was a rawness in the way he looked at me, and his
hand was still holding my cheek as if he couldn’t quite make himself let go.

“That’s appealing, of course. But I think I’ll go with my original plan.” He let go of me then and pulled open the door, the gesture as efficient as it was chivalrous, and I liked both of those things a little too much. “Get in the car.”

*

He gave me
back my jacket when we were shut
away in the car’s interior, though I had no use for it. He hauled me against his side the moment the car slid into traffic, plastering me against all that heat he emanated like a furnace, and I certainly didn’t protest. He felt too good, like concentrated summer sunshine.

He didn’t speak. He trained his attention on his phone, scrolling through his messages and only replying every now and again.
I got the distinct impression he was annoyed by the whole thing—but Granger & Knox litigators were never really off the clock, I reminded myself, as I pretended being held like this in the back seat of a quiet car didn’t soothe me from the tip of my head straight down to the soles of my feet. This was the game. Lawyers in firms like ours were expected to be endlessly available, night and day,
seven days a week, every single day of the year.

There was a certain exultation in this life of ours. There were always three phone calls to return, always six messages that needed instant replies, always more work to do. Always. I’d never been busier in my life and I loved it—the hustle and the panic and the excitement of all the expectations placed on newly-minted attorneys like me in big firms
like Granger & Knox. Briefs to write and legal assistants to oversee and cases to prepare for the upper level associates to take to the partners. Second or third chairing at trials and the odd plum assignment as I paid my dues, like getting to be first chair when I wasn’t expecting it. I got off on it or I would have burned out like so many of the other first years I knew. I wasn’t like the ones
who’d already left and the ones I knew wouldn’t be far behind by the hollow, blank look in their eyes. I liked the game.

I’d always thought Damon Patrick was exactly the sort of lawyer who lived for the game. I’d have sworn he was, before tonight, though the clear irritation I could feel coming off him now told me otherwise. It made me feel… unsettled. I didn’t want him to be something other
than the man I’d imagined he was. I didn’t want him to be anything but the uncomplicated god of sex I’d always been so sure he was, in the car this morning and as long as I’d known him.

Did I?

I shook it off when the car came to a stop. And everything seemed to snap back into place, right where it belonged. Damon lived in exactly the sort of spectacular condo in SOMA that I’d have imagined he’d
live in, if I’d spent any time imagining his personal life might intersect with mine in any way that might allow me to find out.

We took the key-operated elevator to the top floor. Damon was typing something into his phone and I resisted the urge to look at mine. I knew what it would show. More messages from Alexander, each more belligerent than the last the longer it took me to reply.
Try never,
I thought. Suggestive ones from Holly, probably speculating about Damon’s sexual prowess and various physical attributes. It would be worth whatever work email I missed and had to scramble to deal with over the weekend, I told myself, to avoid having Damon read any more too-revealing texts over my shoulder again in the same twenty-four hour period.

He ushered me out of the elevator that opened
directly into his loft, his phone still clenched in his hand. He lived in the penthouse of a glorious loft conversion, all glass and steel and artistically exposed beams, ringed with a wide balcony that let in the glittering city on all sides. Inside, the crisp white walls were relieved here and there with bold art and the living spaces that flowed lazily into each other were filled with masculine
furnishings that managed to be both decidedly cool and somehow welcoming at once, a balance that should have been uneasy but instead felt perfectly suited to Damon.

I walked down the wide steps that led into the sprawling main room, sure that the dramatic and colorful art on the walls, all angles and decisive lines, were some obvious modern masterpieces I should have recognized at a glance. But
modern art all looked like squiggles to me. I’d long questioned what sort of people were really all that moved by it. People who were more concerned with the appearance of things that how they felt inside, was my theory.

I opened my mouth to tell him so, but Damon was scowling at his phone again as he followed me down the steps. I decided to keep my mouth shut as I heard it buzzing, indicating
he was actually getting a call at this late hour. He glanced at me, lifting a finger as he raised the phone to his ear.

One minute,
he mouthed.

Then, into the phone in an annoyed voice, “What do you think I’m doing? It’s Friday night. I know you don’t have a life, but I do.”

I didn’t want to eavesdrop—or I did, of course I did, but decided it was better to pretend I was the sort of person who
would never dream of listening to other people’s conversations and then trying to piece together their lives from whatever one-sided bit of it I heard. I walked to the doors set into the great glass walls that functioned as windows, looking back over my shoulder at him as I did. Damon’s gaze was brooding as it met mine, but he nodded, and so I pushed my way out onto his balcony.

San Francisco
stretched out all around me, sparkling and gorgeous, the prettiest place I’d ever seen. It still made me feel as if I was flying, that I lived here now. That I’d done what only a few others in my graduating high school class had done and gotten out of Billings the way I’d always vowed I would. And I hadn’t just left, I’d excelled all the way here.

I didn’t like the little voice that whispered
dire things at me then. Asking me if I really wanted to risk all that for one night with a man. Did it matter that he was
this
man? Today was the most interaction I’d ever had with him at work, but all that meant was that the
next
time I was put on one of his cases, tonight would be hanging there between us. Unless, of course, he had me fired. Or worse, blackballed me so I’d wish he’d outright
fired me instead.

How could I risk my entire dream for my life for a single night?

It was only my virginity. I really could go lose it in a bar bathroom if I wanted. I could swipe right on my phone and get it done with some vaguely attractive face on my way home from here, the bonus being, I’d never have to see
random internet hook up guy
again when I was done.

I stared out at the city and
willed myself to move. To turn around and walk out of here while I still could. To stop this insanity that had taken me over today before it wrecked the rest of my life.

But I couldn’t seem to make my body obey my mind.

I heard the door open again behind me and I turned then, to see Damon standing there in the wedge of light and glass. No phone in his hand, finally. The touch of his gaze was
electric from across the width of the wide balcony, making the night seem to kick up sparks.

Electric and yet as unsettled as I felt.

I felt naked, then, and it wasn’t because he’d had his hands all over me. It was the way he was looking at me. It was what I was afraid he could see on my face. It was all those second thoughts inside of me jostling around and clamoring for release—and yet not
one of them enough to make me walk away.

“What the hell are you doing to me?” Damon asked softly. A little ferociously.

I didn’t ask him to explain what he meant by that. I was pretty sure I knew. This was supposed to be light, easy. Fun. Wasn’t it? It wasn’t supposed to make me ache. It wasn’t supposed to feel like this, as if I’d been hollow all this time but had never realized it until he
touched me. Until he’d tasted me.

Until he’d made me understand I would never be whole unless I took this all the way. I’d never be able to live with myself if I left, no matter what happened next.

Some things were worth risking everything for.

But he was looking at me as if all he could feel was that greedy hollow inside him, the same way I could.

So I took matters into my own hands.

‡

“Y
ou’re not getting
attached, are you?” I asked.

Damon straightened in the doorway. His face was in shadow but I could see the way his eyes glittered. “I beg your pardon?”

“This happens.” I sighed. I hadn’t gone into the law by accident. Aside from the more noble and high-minded reasons, I knew I wasn’t a good enough
actor to make a living on the stage. But I was definitely a good enough actor to deliver a convincing argument. Here as well as in front of a jury. I smiled at him. “It’s not your fault. Some men have that overdeveloped possessive trait. It makes them act a little caveman crazy about things like virginity. It’s like the people who taste soap when they eat cilantro. It can’t be changed. It’s
genetic.”