She swallows.
“Are you,” I say carefully, “a virgin?”
Her cheeks go bright red.
She looks away. “Maybe.”
I stare at her. “Maybe?”
She winces. “That’s not really a yes-or-no-friendly question when I’m naked and you’re still inside me.”
I close my eyes for one second. Then open them again. “But all those things you said,” I say, genuinely thrown, “for your… podcast.”
That gets me a look.
“Not a podcast,” she says, sounding faintly offended despite the circumstances. “And I read a lot of romance novels growing up.”
For one surreal second, I don’t know whether to laugh, curse, or carry her straight to city hall.
“Romance novels,” I repeat.
She nods once, sheepish now. “And I have… imagination.”
I let out a breath that might actually be a laugh. “You narrated those files like you’d done everything in them.”
“That was the point,” she mutters. “People don’t pay good money to hear a woman sound uncertain.”
I look at her. At the way she’s trying to hold onto dignity while half-undressed and flushed to the roots of her hair. At the embarrassment fighting with defiance on her face. At the fact that she just gave me something no one else ever has, and is somehow still trying to make this into a punchline.
Something in my chest shifts. Dangerously.
“You should have told me,” I say quietly.
Her eyes flash to mine. “When exactly? During the kidnapping? In the bathroom between orgasms? Or while you were busy pretending to date another woman?”
Fair. I don’t have an answer to that.
She bites her lip, then sighs, some of the humor fading. “I didn’t think it mattered.”
It does matter. Every small thing about her matters to me. Not in the fragile, sanctimonious way some men would mean it. But because if I’d known, I would have slowed down. Asked more. Given her a hundred chances to stop me.
And yet she’s looking at me now with no regret in her face. Just nerves. A little embarrassment. And something warmer beneath both.
I slide one hand up her back, keeping my touch gentle this time. “Did I hurt you?”
Her expression softens with surprise, like she didn’t expect that question from me. “No,” she says. Then, after a beat, “Not in a bad way.”
I exhale in relief.
She watches me for a second, then says, quieter now, “You look more freaked out than I am.”
I almost smile. “That’s because you have very poor judgment.”
That gets a tired little laugh out of her.
And then, because apparently I’ve decided to stop pretending this doesn’t matter, I brush her hair back from her face and say, “First, it was not a podcast.”
She snorts.
