LEXI
“Because—okay—” Sucking in a deep breath did not fortify my courage nearly as much as I’d hoped. My hands trembled, so I grabbed them together and shoved them into my lap. “I don’t want to wait any longer for my life to start. I don’t want to wait a whole ’nother year for—you know.”
Nicolai’s level gaze felt like an accusation. “I’m paying for your time.”
“I don’t want to sign a contract sayingIhave to remain a virgin. That I can’t have a relationship with someone else if I want to, arealrelationship.”
With someone who wantedme.
Who lovedme.
Even though finding someone who loved me felt impossible.
“Arealrelationship,” Nicolai repeated, watching me. His dark eyebrows still pinched a crease between his eyes.
“If I sign that contract, it would mean that my body doesn’t belong to me. My body would belong toyou,at least forthe year.”
He lifted one knee and rested his arm on it. “That’s not what I meant.”
“But it’s what the contract woulddo.That’s the effect it would have. I couldn’t be with youoranyone else. You would control what I do with my body. You’d be able to dictate to me what I do and what I put in it.”
AndwhoI put in it, but I didn’t say that part out loud.
He shook his head. “The point of you remaining a virgin is so the non-consummation can be verified by a doctor.”
I rolled my eyes. Did they not teach guys this stuff? “That’s not how it works. I don’t have a hymen-ribbon stamped ‘Sealed for Your Protection’ over my vagina.”
Nicolai pressed his eyes closed as if he were in pain. “Of course not. But I thought there was a way that a doctor could discern.” His quick glance held the slightest confusion. “There were always doctors’ examinations before royal weddings, proclaiming the princess was a virgin.”
“Yeah, whatever. They also thought leeches could cure the dropsy. I wouldn’t bet much money on a medieval doctor’s understanding of a woman’s anatomy. It’s not even something you can see most of the time. A hymen is like a balloon arch that gets roughed up during your first time, rather than a seal the guy has to punch his way through.”
Nicolai’s gaze wandered to the ceiling. “Yeah, I guess that makes sense.”
“So, look. I get it if you feel like you need toearnyour annulment. Those are some pretty deep sleeper codes you’ve got in your head, there. Some of the other girls in my young women’s youth group at church were crazy-stringent about wanting toearntheir white weddings. I mean, like, theykissedtheir husbands for the first timeat their weddings.”
He startled and turned toward me. “Wait, you’dkissedsomeone beforeourwedding, though, right? That wasn’t—”Horror dawned in his eyes. “That wasn’tyour first kissI can’t even remember?”
“No.No, I kissed Jimmy. I mean, sometimes I kissed him.”
Nicolai’s hand tightened into a fist on the bed’s comforter. “You did. Interesting.”
“I didn’t like it very much. I thought everything would be okay once I married him.”
This time, Nicolai tilted his head. “To be clear, if we didn’t need evidence for a defect in the marriage to get an annulment, any previous lovers in your life would be none of my business.I didn’t askbefore I married you because it wouldn’t have mattered, I think.”
Huh.Interesting qualifier, there at the end. “Youthink?”
Just one of his eyebrows tilted downward. “Sometimes I hold an idealized vision of how civilized I am. IthinkI wouldn’t have cared that they existed, only whether they continued to exist.” His voice had lowered to a growl.
Continued to—I wasn’t going there. “Nicolai, the thing is, I’mtwenty-one years old.”
“All of twenty-one,” he mused, primly smiling at me like I was a damned child because he was twenty-eight whole years old, he’d said.
“I don’t want to wait another year before I startlivingmy life.”
“I’ll make it worth your while. Besides the money at the end, we’ll travel this year. I’ll show you Europe. We’ll go to Bali, Paris, the Seychelles, anywhere you want. We’ll swim in every ocean.”
I’d never even seen an ocean.
