LITMIR.BIZ

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been a virgin?’

CHAPTER NINE

      ‘TECHNICALLY,’ said Emma, ‘I suppose I was.’

      ‘What the hell are you talking about—technically?’ Zak demanded as he stared at her flushed face. ‘Either you’re a virgin, or you’re not.’

      Trying not to recoil from the accusation blazing from his eyes, Emma felt her pleasure evaporate. Their love-making had been so incredible—like she’d never dared dream it could be. She wanted to just lie there and relive it—second by glorious second—only now Zak was about to ruin it with some intrusive Q and A session. Uncomfortably, she wriggled. ‘Do we have to talk about this now?’

      ‘Damned right we do!’ he exploded, because he felt as if she’d somehow tricked him. Again! As if she had revealed one secret when she’d told him the truth about Nat—only for him to discover that there was another one lurking, just below the surface. How many secrets did this woman have? he wondered furiously. ‘When would you like us to discuss it? When you’re hanging drapes with Cindy listening on the sidelines?’

      ‘Of course not!’

      ‘So start talking!’

      ‘What is there to say?’ she questioned tiredly. ‘Except that my marriage was never properly consummated.’

      ‘But Louis Patterson was known as a sex god!’

      ‘He was also a heavy user of drugs and alcohol!’ She met his eyes, the hurt and the pain spiralling up inside her and threatening to spill out in angry tears. But she swallowed them down, damned if she would come over as any more vulnerable than she already did. ‘Can’t you work it out for yourself, Zak—or do I have to spell it out for you?’

      There was silence for a moment. ‘He was impotent?’

      Emma nodded, her throat thick with emotion—because even though at the time she’d pored over medical books, which had told her that such a side effect was normal for addicts, that hadn’t stopped her from feeling a failure, had it? As if it was somehow all her fault. If she’d been stronger, she’d have been able to get him clean and sober. If she’d been more attractive, he would have been able to consummate their brief marriage. And Louis had only compounded those feelings of guilt—telling her that he’d never had problems with any woman before her.

      ‘Yes,’ she answered bluntly. ‘He was.’

      For a moment Zak didn’t say anything, just shook his head. He felt like a man who’d just opened his early-morning shutters and seen the night-time sky outside. ‘I just can’t believe it,’ he said.

      ‘Is it such a crime to be a virgin then, Zak?’

      ‘That’s a naïve question and you know it.’ He stared at her golden fingernails, which gleamed against the pristine white of the duvet. What a mass of contradictions she was, with her tumble of pale hair and her siren’s body—yet beneath all that she’d been concealing an innocence which had shocked him profoundly.

      ‘It wasn’t an assumption I would ever have made about you,’ he continued. ‘And part of you must have realised that. But either you didn’t think to tell me, or you decided deliberately not to tell me. And I would have liked to have known, Emma—to have been given some kind of choice in the matter about whether I wanted to take your virginity. Why me? And why now?’

      Any trace of post-orgasmic euphoria had now completely vanished and Emma shivered, reaching for the rumpled duvet and pulling it around her. Maybe she had been wrong not to tell him—but hadn’t one of the reasons been fear that he would have walked away? That some misplaced sense of ‘honour’ would have stopped him from making love to her? And hadn’t she felt as if she’d die if he didn’t?

      ‘Why you? I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you that. You’re a very attractive and charismatic man, Zak, and I couldn’t stop myself, if you must know,’ she said in a low voice. ‘How’s that for honesty?’

      He mulled this over in silence for a moment. ‘And there’s never been anyone else?’

      She could hear the incredulity in his voice. ‘Never.’ Because hadn’t her experience with Louis reinforced all her jaded views about men—views which had been formed by watching her mother operate? Louis had left her feeling inadequate and a failure and yet, in a way, it had been a relief to believe that she was frigid. To reassure herself that men were nothing but trouble and that she no longer had to venture down that particular road. Shunning the opposite sex hadn’t been a problem at all—at least, not until the day she’d walked into Zak’s office. And from that moment on, her feelings had given her nothing but trouble. ‘I thought there might be something wrong with me. That maybe I was frigid.’

      ‘Only now you’ve discovered that you most definitely aren’t?’ He gave a short laugh. ‘I must say this is the first time in my life I’ve ever felt like a stud. Like I’ve been used to prove a point—and I’m not sure I like it very much.’

      Emma realised that he’d added yet another accusation to the fast-growing list of complaints against her. And yet, why was he acting so hard done by? It wasn’t as if it had been some long and slow candlelit seduction, was it? It had been fast and furious, almost angry sex—and surely for a man like Zak that must be something of a relief. It wasn’t as though she was going to start reading too much into it—not when it had been motivated by anger and lust.

      ‘Okay, it was a big mistake and we should never have done it,’ she said, wriggling over to the side of the bed. ‘So I’ll get out of your hair and out of your bed and we can both try to forget it ever happened.’

      The supple movement of her pale body made him harden. ‘I don’t want you to get out of my bed,’ he said savagely. ‘I don’t want you going anywhere!’

      ‘Don’t feel you have to sugar-coat your disgust to try to spare my feelings!’

      He leaned across and caught hold of her, and as the duvet fell away to reveal the lush spill of her breasts he sucked in a deep breath. ‘I’m not sugar-coating anything,’ he said unevenly. ‘And I can assure you that disgust is the very last thing on my mind right now.’

      Hating herself for her compliance but unable to resist him when he looked at her like that, she allowed him to pull her into his arms. ‘Really?’

      ‘Really. I’m just a little dazed by my discovery and hoping that …’ His words faded as he turned his lips and began to kiss the soft skin of her upper arm.

      Fighting to prevent her eyelids from fluttering to a close, Emma stared at the tangled black gleam of his hair. ‘Hoping that wh-what?’

      He heard the waver of uncertainty in her voice and suddenly he felt anger for all she had endured. A mother who had been an appalling role model and who, it seemed, had pushed her into an unsuitable marriage when she was still heartbreakingly young. And then some thoughtless junkie of a husband who’d made her believe she was frigid. His voice softened. He didn’t have to add to that list by being such a brute, did he? ‘That you enjoyed what just happened, after what has been a very long wait.’

      Now Emma was wide awake. Was that sympathy she heard in his voice—or was it the dreaded pity, which she’d always gone out of her way to avoid? Maybe he looked on her as some kind of freak because she happened to have reached the age of twenty-nine before losing her virginity. She looked at him suspiciously. ‘Are you asking me to mark you out of ten?’

      ‘No.’ He laughed as he pulled her right back against him. ‘I’ve never felt it necessary to request a scorecard.’

      Probably because he’d get a gold star after every performance, she thought. She tried to hold on to what she felt was righteous indignation, but it wasn’t easy. Not when he had drifted his lips to the curve of her jaw, an area she

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