hated him.
And yet she’d never met anyone with his control and heat and ability to own a room...and not just any room, but a massive ballroom...as if he were the only man in the entire place. As if he were the only man on the face of the earth. As if he’d been made just to light her up and turn her inside out.
Her heart raced and her pulse felt like sin in her veins. She was growing hot, flushing, needing...and she pressed her thighs tighter.
No, no, no.
“We were good,” he said, still smiling at her, and yet his lazy drawl hinted at something so much more dangerous than anger.
Lethal man.
She’d wanted him that night and the fascination was back, slamming into her with the same force of a two-ton truck.
Something in her just wanted him.
Something in her recognized something in him and it shouldn’t happen. There was no reason for someone like Rowan to be her type...
“It was you,” she said, feeling generous. And what harm could there be in the truth? Because he was good—very, very good—and he was making her feel the same hot bright need that she’d felt during the bachelor auction. And it’d been forever since she’d felt anything sexual, her hunger smashed beneath layers of motherhood and maternal devotion. “You have quite the skill set.”
“Years of practice, love.”
“I commend your dedication to your craft.”
His dark head inclined. “I tried to give you value for your twenty grand.”
She didn’t like that jab. But she could keep up. He and the rest of the haters had taught her how to wrap herself in a Teflon armor and just deflect, deflect, deflect. “Rest assured, you did. Now, if I knew then what I know now, I might have given you a few pointers, but I was so green. Talk about inexperienced. Talk about embarrassing. A twenty-four-year-old virgin.” She shuddered and gently pushed back a long tendril of hair that had fallen forward. “Thankfully you handled the old hymen like the champ you are.”
He wasn’t smiling anymore.
Everything felt different. The very air was charged, seething...pulsing...
She gave him an innocent look. “Did I say something wrong?”
Rowan drew off his sunglasses and leaned toward her. “Say that again.”
“The part about the hymen? Or the part where I wished I’d given you a few pointers?”
His green eyes were no longer cool. They burned and they were fixed intently on her, laser beams of loathing.
She’d finally gotten a rise out of him. She had to work very hard to hide her victorious smile. “But surely you knew I was a virgin,” she added gently. “The blood on white sheets...?”
“It wasn’t blood. It was spotting.”
She shrugged carelessly. “You probably assumed it was just from...vigorous...thrusting.”
His eyes glowed and his square jaw turned to granite. “You weren’t a virgin.”
“I was. And don’t you feel honored that I picked you to be my first?” She glanced down at her hands, checking her nails. She must have chipped one earlier, when she fainted and fell. She rubbed a finger across the jagged edge and continued conversationally. “You set the bar very high, you know. Not just for what happened in the bedroom, but after.”
He said nothing and so she looked up from her nails and stared into his eyes. “I can’t help but wonder, if I hadn’t climaxed during each of the...sessions...would you still have called me a whore?” She let the question float between them for a moment before adding, “Was it the fact that I enjoyed myself...that I took pleasure...that made me a whore? Because it was a very fast transition from virgin to whore—”
“Virgins don’t spend twenty grand to get laid,” he said curtly, cutting her short.
“No? Not even if they want to get laid by the best?”
* * *
He’d stopped smiling a long time ago. He had a reputation for being able to handle any situation but Logan was giving him a run for his money.
If it were any woman but Logan Copeland, he’d be impressed and maybe amused. Hell, he’d been amused at the start, intrigued by the way she’d thrown it down, and given it right back at him, but then it had all taken a rapid shift, right around the time she’d mentioned her virginity, and he didn’t know how to fight back.
She’d been a virgin?
He didn’t do virgins. He didn’t take a woman’s virginity. And yet he’d done her...quite thoroughly.
Dammit.
“You’re taking my words out of context,” he said tightly, trying to contain his frustration. “I didn’t call you a whore—”
“Oh, you did. You called me a Copeland whore.”
He winced inwardly, still able to hear the words ringing too loud in the kitchen of her Santa Monica bungalow. He could still see how she’d gone white and the way her blue eyes had revealed shock and then anguish.
She’d turned away and walked out, but he’d followed, hurling more insults, each a deliberate hit.
He despised the Copelands even before the father’s Ponzi scheme was exposed. The Copelands were one of the most entitled families in America. The daughters were fixtures on the social scene, ridiculously famous simply because they were wealthy and beautiful.
Rowan grew up poor and everything he had, he personally had worked for.
He had no time for spoiled rich girls.
How could shallow, entitled women like that respect themselves?
Worse, how could America adore them? How could America reward them by filling their tabloids with their pictures and antics? Who cared where they shopped or which designer they wore?
Who cared where they vacationed?
Who cared who they screwed?
He didn’t. Not until he’d realized he’d screwed one of them senseless.
But it hadn’t been a screw. That was the thing. It had been so much more.
Rowan’s jaw worked. His fingers curled into fists. “I regret those words,” he said stiffly. “I would take them back, if I could.”
“Is that your version of an apology?”
It had been, yes, but her mocking tone made it clear it wasn’t good enough. That he wasn’t good enough.
Rowan wasn’t sure whether to be offended or amused.
And then he questioned why he’d even be offended. He’d never cared before what
