Mina's Heart (12 page)

She whirled to face him, and that glare only grew brighter. “Reasonable? You’re prejudiced against me because I’m a virgin. That’s not reasonable.”

Where the hell had she come up with that? “I have no problem with you being a virgin.”

“No?”

“No.”

She parked her hands on her hips. “Then prove it. Have sex with me.”

If he were to use tactics like this on a woman, the entire world would judge him harshly. Yet he couldn’t muster up any ire at her. She was just too damn cute. He shook his head. “I’m not going to have sex with you just to prove a point.”

She narrowed her eyes until they were barely slits. “You don’t play fair.”

“No, I don’t.” There was no use in denying it. She would figure it out sooner or later. Because she was so intelligent, he knew it would happen sooner. His admission seemed to take some of the wind out of her sails.

“Take me back. We’re finished here.”

She tried to storm past him, but he caught her easily. She struggled in his arms. While he found her stubborn display of anger endearing and cute, he also found it exasperating. “Stop fighting me, Mina.” He had a strong urge to turn her over his knee, but he didn’t say that aloud. Besides, that idea seemed to be temporarily off the table. That didn’t mean his need to discipline her had vanished. The unspoken warning hung in the air with the reverberation of his command.

Immediately she stilled. Though her face was turned to the side, he could see the way her thoughts raced through her mind, because her face was too expressive to hide anything. When she lifted her gaze, she nailed him with daggers. “So, what now? You’re bigger and stronger than me, so that gives you the right to bully me?”

He laughed. He couldn’t help it. Her bullying tactics hadn’t worked, so now she turned the situation around to make him the bad guy.

She renewed her struggle, but he merely tightened his grip. “Mina, honey, maybe you want to ask me why I won’t have sex with you right now.”

Her entire body went rigid. “You have an STD?”

He wanted to laugh again, but out of frustration, not amusement. She was a feisty one. While it was vexing, it just made him fall for her a little more. “No. I’m clean. My employer requires a complete health check twice a year. I just had mine. I can show you the report if you’d like.”

She peered up at him again. “You work for your parents.”

He shrugged and eased his hold. “I don’t get special treatment.” Though he didn’t want to, he released her once again.

She ran a hand through her hair and pursed her lips. “Okay, tell me why you won’t have sex with me
right now
.”

He’d asked for this, yet it wasn’t as easy to put his reasoning into words as he’d hoped. But he knew if he took too long to start talking, she’d just get pissed again. “You’re twenty-two, and you’re a virgin. The fact that you’ve never let a man touch you tells me that sex means a lot to you, maybe more than it means to most people. You’re saving yourself for someone special. I want you to be sure it’s me, Mina, because I never want you to look back at anything we do together with regret.”

Her shoulders slumped, her face crumpled, and she turned away. Crap, he’d failed. He should have taken more time to formulate his response.

He closed the distance between them and hugged her from behind. “Please don’t cry. I’m not doing this to hurt you. I’m doing this to protect you.”

“I’m not crying.”

She might deny it, but he heard the tears in her voice. Still, he knew better than to call her on it. Her convoluted reasoning would somehow lead her to the conclusion that she wasn’t crying and he was calling her a liar.

“Of course you’re not.” He turned her in his arms and held her until she stopped sniffling.

“You’re a very sweet man, Ever, but you’re sorely misguided.”

Had he heard her right? “Misguided?”

“Yes. Maybe I just never met a man I wanted to have sex with before you. Most girls dated in high school. I wasn’t allowed friends, much less boyfriends. I didn’t learn how to date until college. Perhaps it’s not that I’ve saved myself; it’s just that I started a few years later than everybody else.”

Her argument took him by surprise. He supposed, looking at it that way, she was right. If most women had their first sexual experiences in their late teens, then she was only a couple of years behind.

“Nice,” he said, not bothering to hide the depth of his appreciation for her argument. Of course he had to follow it up with a joke to defuse her anger. “Were you on the debate team at Harvard?”

She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “You’re not buying that either, are you?”

“No, but if you want, I’ll teach you how to give me a blowjob.”

Her chin came up defiantly. “You’re assuming I’ve never done that before too?”

He responded with the barest lift of his eyebrow. He’d bet his land on it. Before yesterday, she’d claimed to have never kissed on a first date.

“Fine,” she said, giving in without a hint of grace. “I’ll let you teach me.”

She extracted herself from his arms and headed away from him.

“Where are you going?”

“To the truck,” she called over her shoulder. “How else are we going to get back to your apartment?”

“If you keep going that way, you’ll end up at Wilder’s place.” He pointed in the opposite direction. “Truck’s back that way.”

He didn’t bother to temper his laughter at the way she turned around and lifted her chin higher, as if she’d intended to go that way all along.

* * * *

Mina bit her lip, something she almost never did, as she waited on Everett’s sofa. The bright summer sun streamed through the windows, reminding her that it wasn’t even close to sunset. She couldn’t remember the last time she was this nervous. Even last night, her first time naked with a man, she hadn’t resorted to torturing her face.

Ever whistled as he came out of the bathroom. He’d let her use it first, which was good because she always had to go when she was anxious.

He sat on the couch next to her, his arm splayed along the spine and his leg bent between them. She stared at his shorts and wondered if she was going to have to undress him the way he’d undressed her.

“The first thing to keep in mind is that this should be fun for everyone involved.”

He said it with a straight face, but he’d also asked her if she had been on the debate team at Harvard with a straight face, so she knew he had mastered ironic delivery. Mina glanced around the room to see who else might be involved. Not even the kitten was around. Then she looked back at him. His expression hadn’t changed.

“You’re kidding, right?”

That smile curled at the corners of his mouth, rendering him even more devastatingly handsome. “Nope.”

She didn’t believe him. Perhaps she hadn’t done this before, but she’d listened to her girlfriends discuss it at length, and she’d spent some time researching it on certain Web sites, just in case. It was enjoyable for the man, which was why she wanted to do it. Except for the satisfaction of proving to him that she was up to this new challenge, she didn’t expect to enjoy it herself.

“Are you going to sit there and tell me that you had fun when you went down on me?” It amazed her that she was able to be so blunt. With anybody else, she would have been tongue-tied. Well, she wouldn’t have found herself in this situation at all because she wouldn’t have been begging, bargaining, and bullying for sex.

That was also another anomaly for her. Men had begged and bargained for sex with her, but she hadn’t caved. She was a little ashamed to have resorted to bullying, but not enough to apologize.

In the past when she’d argued with anyone using those tactics, she’d won. Ever hadn’t caved, and he hadn’t come close to looking like he was going to lose his temper. He’d seemed more upset when she had misbehaved while he’d been fingering her.

His grin only widened. “Oh yes. I could spend hours with you tied to my bed, licking and sucking on you, making you moan and beg and scream. That’s definitely fun. For both of us.”

“Fine.” She conceded the point because it wasn’t worth arguing about. “Are we doing this out here or in the bedroom?”

The smile vanished from his face. She wondered what she’d said to make it go away. She didn’t have to wonder for long.

“Mina, you don’t have to do this. You shouldn’t do this unless it’s what you want to do. I want it to be a positive experience, something that brings us closer together. Maybe it’s not intercourse, but it’s sex. I don’t have sex with just anybody.”

Despite what she’d heard, she had assumed he was like most men, not picky about his bed partners. Now she felt real shame. She should have known better. Even in high school he hadn’t had a reputation for playing the field. “I’m sorry. I do want to do this. I want to give you back some of what you’ve given me. I don’t expect to enjoy the act, just the feeling of having made you happy.”

His breath caught, and a sudden hunger blazed like blue-green fire in his eyes. Then it was gone. “While it makes me happy that pleasing me is enough motivation for you to consider doing something, for this, I’m going to have to insist you do this because it’s what you want. When I give you an orgasm, it’s because I want you to have one. It’s not to make you happy or to appease you. It’s a selfish act on my part; one that benefits you. It’s also a gift, and while reciprocation is a good intention, it’s not enough.”

She truly didn’t understand why he insisted on dissecting her motivation like this. What did it matter why she wanted to suck his cock? It should be enough that she did.

She tried to reach for a middle ground. She couldn’t promise to enjoy doing something she’d never done. “Okay, well, I don’t have anything on which to base wanting to do this except for the fact that I want to give you an orgasm.”

He nodded. “That’ll do for now. Come sit on my lap.”

She slid over, and he dropped his arm from the spine of the sofa to wrap it around her waist. He scooted her bottom until it was directly over his cock.

“Always start with a kiss.” With that, he kissed her, stealing her breath and her will. As he broke away, he stood, lifting her in his arms. “Always remember that I’m in charge when it comes to sex. That’ll never change.”

He deftly maneuvered her down the short hall and kicked his door open. He deposited her on the bed, disturbing the sleeping cat, who stretched lazily.

“Come on, Jolo.” He scooped her up and took her out of the room. When he returned, he closed the door. “Nothing kills the mood like looking up and seeing your cat watching.”

Mina considered this. “You know she’s judging your performance.”

His smile said he wasn’t concerned about not measuring up. Without another word, he shed his shirt and shorts. He stood before her wearing only light blue boxer briefs. She forgot how to breathe.

He’d removed his shirt the night before, but she’d been wearing a sleeping mask, so she hadn’t been allowed the chance to study him the way she’d like. Even this morning when he’d emerged from the bathroom wearing only a towel, he hadn’t lingered long enough for her to look her fill.

He had the look of an athlete, with lithe, defined muscles and broad shoulders. She let her gaze roam all over his chest and follow the band of his underwear from one hip bone to the other. It didn’t flow smoothly, because his hard cock made it bow out.

He stood with his hands perched loosely on his hips, watching her look at him and openly enjoying her awestruck perusal. There was a definite difference in his bearing from earlier, when he’d caught her looking and asked her if she’d seen anything she liked.

She forced her gaze lower, taking in the powerful thighs that had been hidden by his long, baggy shorts. He was magnificent on so many levels. “Will you turn around?”

He granted her request without question or comment, and she realized he knew this was the first time she’d been this close to a soon-to-be-naked man. Since he was in the mood to humor her, she decided to go for broke.

“Will you take off your boxers?”

One shove, and they fluttered down to his ankles. He stepped out of them and kicked them toward his hamper. They landed in a pile of clothes that had been there yesterday as well.

She knew she was stalling. Tearing her gaze away from his dirty laundry, she feasted her eyes on his naked ass. It was sculpted perfection, tight and curved enough for her to grab a handful.

Then he turned back around, and she nearly died. The narrow trail of hair that ran down from his belly button widened, and his thick cock curved from that nest. It was paler than the rest of him, and the head was almost purple.

She gathered her courage, stood up, and closed the three steps between them. She remembered that he’d told her to begin with a kiss. Even on her tiptoes, she couldn’t hope to reach his mouth, so she dropped to her knees and kissed the crown of his cock.

A shudder ran through him, and he put a warning hand on her head. “Honey, go slow. Take your time. It’s okay to explore.”

Like he’d done, taking the time to find out which pressures she liked and which spots made her cry out. She understood now. This was about learning his body and his tells. This was about making him hers.

She used her hands first, running her fingertips along his soft shaft and over the coarse hairs dotting his sac. She explored the ridge surrounding the head of his cock and the way the indent led directly to the tip. There was much more character present than the photos of the waxed and airbrushed models that seemed to be on every blog dedicated to romance. Every vein and ridge made him that much sexier.

In the periphery of her vision, she saw Everett’s hands clench and unclench. He hissed and tried to control his breathing.

“Can you lie on the bed? I think this is going to take a while.”

He laughed, but it was different from before. It held a hint of desperation. “I can assure you that it won’t.”

She looked up to find his eyes half-closed. The veins on his neck stood out, and he wore an expression of utter ecstasy. “Do you want me to stop?”

His eyes flew open, and he looked down at her. “I like your sense of humor, but I’d like it better if you said that with my dick in your mouth.”