He moved into a sitting position, undoing his belt and the button on his jeans. Then he stood for a moment, drawing the zipper down slowly and pushing the denim down his muscular thighs.
She had never seen a naked man in person before, and the stark, thick evidence of his arousal standing out from his body was a clear reminder that they weren’t finished, no matter how wrung out and replete she felt.
Except, even though she felt satisfied, limp from the intensity of her release, she did want more. Because there was more to have. Because she wanted to be close to him. Because she wanted to give him even an ounce of the satisfaction that she had just experienced.
He knelt back down, pulling his jeans closer and taking his wallet out of his back pocket. He produced a condom packet and she gave thanks for his presence of mind. She knew better than to have unprotected sex with someone. For myriad reasons. But still, she wondered if she would have remembered if he had not.
Thank God one of them was thinking. She was too overwhelmed. Too swamped by the release that had overtaken her, and by the enormity of what was about to happen. When he positioned himself at the entrance of her body and pressed the thick head of his cock against her, she gasped in shock.
It hurt. Dear God it hurt. His fingers hadn’t prepared her for the rest of him.
He noticed her hesitation and slowed his movements, pressing inside her inch by excruciating inch. She held on to his shoulders, closing her eyes and burying her face in his neck as he jerked his hips forward, fully seating himself inside her.
She did her best to breathe through it. But she was in a daze. Joshua was inside her, and she wasn’t a virgin anymore. It felt... Well, it didn’t feel like losing anything. It felt like gaining something. Gaining a whole lot.
The pain began to recede and she looked up, at his face, at the extreme concentration there, at the set of his jaw, the veins in his neck standing out.
“Are you okay?” he asked, his voice strangled.
She nodded wordlessly, then flexed her hips experimentally.
He groaned, lowering his head, pressing his forehead against hers, before kissing her. Then he began to move.
Soon, that same sweet tension began to build again in her stomach, need replacing the bone-deep satisfaction that she had only just experienced. She didn’t know how it was possible to be back in that needy place only moments after feeling fulfilled.
But she was. And then she was lost in the rhythm, lost in the feeling of his thick length stroking in and out of her, all of the pain gone now, only pleasure remaining. It was so foreign, so singular and unlike anything she had ever experienced. And she loved it. Reveled in it.
But even more than her own pleasure, she reveled in watching his unraveling.
Because he had pulled her apart in a million astounding ways, and she didn’t know if she could ever be reassembled. So it was only fair that he lost himself too. Only fair that she be his undoing in some way.
Sweat beaded on his brow, trickled down his back. She reveled in the feel of it beneath her fingertips. In the obvious evidence of what this did to him.
His breathing became more labored, his muscles shaking as each thrust became less gentle. As he began to pound into her. And just as he needed to go harder, go faster, so did she.
Her own pleasure wound around his, inextricably linked.
On a harsh growl he buried his face in her neck, his arms shaking as he thrust into her one last time, slamming into her clit, breaking a wave of pleasure over her body as he found his own release.
He tried to pull away, but she wrapped her arms around him, holding him close. Because the sooner he separated from her body, the sooner they would have to talk. And she wasn’t exactly sure she wanted to talk.
But when he lifted his head, his blue eyes glinting in the dim light, she could tell that whether or not she wanted to talk, they were going to.
* * *
He rolled away from her, pushing into a sitting position. “Are you going to explain all of this to me? Or are you going to make me guess?”
“What?” She sounded overly innocent, her eyes wider than necessary.
“Danielle, I’m going to ask you a question, and I need you to answer me honestly. Were you a virgin?”
Joshua’s blood was still running hot through his veins, arousal still burning beneath the surface of his skin. And he knew the question he had just asked her was probably insane. He could explain her discomfort as pain because she hadn’t taken a man to her bed since she’d given birth.
But that wasn’t it. It wasn’t.
The more credence he gave to his virgin theory, the more everything about her started to make sense. The way she responded to his kiss, the way she acted when he touched her.
Her reaction had been about more than simple attraction, more than pleasure. There had been wonder there. A sense of discovery.
But that meant Riley wasn’t her son. And it meant she had been fucking lying to him.
“Well, Joshua, given that this is not a New Testament kind of situation...”
He reached out, grabbing hold of her wrist and tugging her upward, drawing her toward him. “Don’t lie to me.”
“Why would you think that?” she asked, her words small. Admission enough as far as he was concerned.
“A lot of reasons. But I have had sex with a virgin before. More accurately, Sadie Miller and I took each other’s virginity in the woods some eighteen years ago. You don’t forget that. And, I grant you, there could be other reasons for the fact that it hurt you, for the fact that you were tight.” A flush spread over her skin, her cheeks turning
