“The light should be—”
I went to reach for it, but Giana smacked my arm down, which told me she knew exactly where it was, too.
“Leave it,” she said. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to say this if you’re looking at me.”
“Say wh—？”
“I want you to fuck me.”
The words rode out on a breathy, high-pitched plea that jarred me to the core. It was like a fist to the gut and a mouth around my cock at the same time, both excruciatingly painful and delightfully shocking.
I ignored the beast inside me that fired up at those words, suffocating the wild need for me to grant her wish right now, right here in this fucking closet. A slow inhale and equally slow exhale were all I could manage before I spoke.
“Uh, Kitten, I don’t think—”
“No, I mean it,” she said, cutting me off. “I want you to take my virginity, Clay.”
I was thankful for the pitch black of that closet as I bit my knuckle, stifling a groan at how sinfully sweet it was to hear those words from her lips.
“I’m going to need a little context here,” I finally croaked, that monster inside me getting harder and harder to contain.
There was a long sigh, a shuffling of feet followed by a soft curse that told me she probably walked right into something. “Shawn is experienced,” she said. “He’s probably had sex with more girls than I’ve even met in my lifetime. I mean, he even walks with sexual swagger. He practically drips sex appeal.”
I wrinkled my nose, again thankful for the dark that covered my not-so-subtle disagreement with every word she just said.
“When I finally get my chance with him — if I get my chance — I don’t want to be so bad in bed that he laughs or takes pity on me or… or… walks out completely.”
Those last words were almost like a shocked cry of realization that that was a possibility.
“He won’t walk—”
“You don’t know that,” she said. “You don’t know what it’s like to be an almost twenty-year-old virgin because you probably lost your virginity when you were sixteen.”
My mouth shut then, because she was right.
“Please, Clay,” she said, and I felt her small hands reach for me, wrapping around my forearm and squeezing. “I need your help. Please. Please.”
This girl is actually begging me to take her virginity in a dark supply closet right now.
“Teach me how to kiss, how to make a man feel good,” she whispered. “Teach me how to do it all.”
I let out a low hum of a groan on my next exhale because fuck me, it wasn’t okay how much that turned me on.
My heart picked up its pace, thundering like a dozen stallions as I mulled over what she was asking. Every warning sign and bell and whistle was going off like a chaotic symphony inside me for even considering it. Fake kissing and heavy petting was one thing, but to strip her down, to take her for the first time…
That was an entirely new ball game, one I wasn’t sure either of us was equipped to play.
“Clay,” she whispered when I didn’t answer, and her hands crawled up my chest, fisting in my shirt. “There’s no one else I trust. Please.”
I closed my eyes at the sound of yet another plea, gut wrenching and chest caving in because I already knew before I answered that I wouldn’t deny her.
I couldn’t — not when she was asking me for help.
Swallowing, I reached behind her and flicked on the light. We both blinked at the brightness, but then her Caribbean-blue eyes locked on mine, her breath just as shallow as it was when she dragged me in here.
But she didn’t waver.
She didn’t cower our back down. She didn’t shy away. She didn’t take it back. She looked me right in the eye and asked again, silently, for me to be the one to take something I knew was more precious to a woman than I would ever understand as a man.
I rolled my lips together.
And then, I nodded.
Her relieved sigh came like her first breath after being underwater for years. She threw her arms around my neck, and I closed my eyes as I caught her, warning zipping down my spine like an electric shock.
“Really?!” she squealed, squeezing me tighter. “Thank you, Clay. Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
I just buried my face in her neck where I held her, hoping like hell she knew better than I did what we both could handle. It was more disbelief than anything else that washed over me the longer we stood in that embrace.
I’d agreed.