The words drop between us with the weight of a grenade.
I go still.
“Kat,” I say, a little hoarse. “What are you saying?”
She draws in a breath, shoulders squaring as if trying to make sure I understand the gravity of what she’s about to say.
“I’m saying,” she whispers, “that I need you to take my virginity.”
For a second, I’m pretty sure my heart stops.
My hands tighten reflexively on her arms. “You—what?”
Her chin lifts, but I can see the tremor in it. “If she suspects, she’ll ask questions. She always does. She’ll know I’m still… innocent.” Her cheeks flush at the word. “She will interrogate me in ways I cannot lie through. She was trained for this. She knows when someone is lying… not just me.”
She swallows, eyes burning.
“If there is even the smallest crack in this story, she will find it. And she will tell my father. And then this is over.”
Every protective instinct I have roars to life.
“Kat—”
“I can’t go back,” she says, voice breaking. “I won’t.” Her fists curl in my t-shirt. “You said you wouldn’t let them take me. You promised. But if she finds out that we’ve never…” she searches for the word, “…consummated our marriage, then—”
“Hey.” I catch her face between my hands. “Breathe.”
Her chest is heaving, eyes shiny.
I’ve seen her calm on a tarmac with a gun metaphorically pointed at her life.
This is worse.
She drags in a shaky breath. Then another.
The words rush out again, like she can’t stop them. “It makes sense. It’s logical. We’re married. We—we already—” Color rushes into her cheeks, and I know she’s thinking about the alley behind Jake’s and the last few weeks we’ve spent exploring each other at night when we both crash in one of the other’s beds. “You’re not some stranger. I trust you. I want—” Her voice cracks, but she pushes on. “I want it to be you.”
That sentence hits harder than anything else she’s said.
I close my eyes for half a second, because all the blood in my body decides to make a beeline for two places at once—my heart and absolutely everywhere else.
Of course, I’ve thought about it.
Of course, I’ve wanted it.
I’ve pictured being with her in fantasies that would make her blush. I replayed that night at the roadhouse in my head so many times I could choreograph a film reel of exactly when her breath hitched and how she said my name when she came apart for me. How she dropped to her knees for me the night we celebrated her getting into PNB. How I laid her out and devoured her after. And every night after that.
But this?
Her standing in my bedroom in the gray morning light, asking me to take the one thing she can’t get back as a… strategy? As proof?
That cracks something in my chest.
I drop my hands to her shoulders and force my voice to stay gentle.
“Kat,” I say. “This isn’t a good idea.”
She goes very still.
