I guess. Maybe I’ll ask him—”
“No!”
Cole pulled her around, wondering if her problem was confined to naïveté or whether there was an unhealthy dose of insanity thrown in. “I don’t get it. Why in the world would you pay a man to kiss you?”
She shrugged a little and looked at her feet, which she didn’t seem to be too steady on at the moment. “Because I want to know what it feels like.”
For a minute Cole wasn’t sure he’d heard her right. Then all at once the truth hit him like a brick to the side of the head. “You’ve never been kissed before?”
She continued her examination of those weird-looking boots of hers, her cheeks the color of ripe strawberries, and he had his answer.
Good Lord. How had this happened? How did any woman get through puberty and adolescence and into adulthood without so much as a kiss? Sure, she was plain, but he’d seen far less attractive women who’d managed to hook a man. How had things gone so wrong when it was so easy to make them right?
Then he pictured her sidling up next to that bruiser of a bartender and making him the same offer. Either the man would laugh his head off and humiliate her or take advantage of the situation in ways Cole didn’t even want to think about.
“I heard something once about six cheerleaders,” the woman said, her blush deepening. “I figured one little kiss wouldn’t be a big deal.”
Damn, was that story carved in granite somewhere? If so, it was time he found a stick of dynamite and did away with it permanently.
“Two things,” Cole told her. “First of all, don’t believe everything you hear. And secondly, a kiss is a big deal. Especially if you’ve never done it before.”
Those liquid brown eyes came up to meet his. They weren’t exactly beautiful—nothing about her was—but something about the way she stared at him made his throat feel tight and muddled up his thinking. Her lips parted slightly, and she touched the tip of her tongue to her lower lip, leaving it damp and glistening. There was nothing deliberately seductive about it, and maybe that’s why it was so…seductive.
Pay attention, Tonya. You’re about to get an eyeful.
“Kissing is like dancing,” he told her softly, moving his hands up to cradle her face. “You just do what comes naturally.”
She stared at him with that look of terror again, swallowing as if there were a golf ball lodged in her throat. He thought of getting it over with quickly to put her out of her misery, but then again, if she was after a hundred-dollar kiss, he figured that’s what he ought to give her.
He brushed his lips against hers. Her cheeks were tense, her jaw fixed, her mouth a firm, unyielding line.
“Relax,” he said. “This is supposed to be fun.”
He met her lips again, but this time he persisted, fixing his mouth firmly over hers until she had no choice but to give in. He stroked his thumbs along her cheekbones, feeling skin as soft as powder.
Then he wrapped his arm around the back of her neck and cradled her head in the crook of his elbow. He tilted her backward slightly, and at the same time he brought his other hand down to circle her rib cage just beneath her breast.
She gasped a little at his touch, parting her lips at the same time, and he took the opportunity to delve deeper. He teased the tip of his tongue against her lips in gentle exploration, then slipped it into her mouth and twined it softly with hers. He could feel her surprise, as if she’d never imagined kissing could involve something like that. But a moment later she slid one hand around his neck and the other over his shoulder, pulling him closer, asking for more, as if she’d just tasted an unknown delicacy and couldn’t get enough of it. Her eager response sent a jolt of awareness through him, and all at once he realized that if she’d never been kissed, then that meant she also hadn’t—
No. He’d never made love to a virgin, and he wasn’t about to start now. Too damn much responsibility there. But kissing one? Now that was another thing entirely. A thing he hadn’t realized could be quite so…enjoyable.
He moved his hand to the small of her back and pulled her tightly against him, her breasts crushed to his chest, heat coursing from her body to his. He thought he heard a catcall or two in the background, but he ignored the crowd and the raucous music and the flashing lights around them, making sure that from now on she’d know exactly what a hundred-dollar kiss felt like.
Then her knees buckled a little, and out of fear that she might actually pass out, he finally pulled away, his arm still wrapped around her back holding her snugly against him. Slowly she opened her eyes, wearing a glassy-eyed, thoroughly kissed expression that sent a shock wave right to his groin.
“I lied,” she said. “I don’t have a hundred dollars.”
“Then I guess I’ll have to take the kiss back.”
He pressed his lips to hers again in an impulsive reprise of the already thorough kiss he’d just given her. A quick start of surprise on her part immediately gave way to surrender. By now she had one kiss under her belt, moving her ahead in the amateur ranks, and this time she met him with far less fear and far more enthusiasm.
Finally he pulled away. She closed her eyes and let out a rapturous little sigh, her arms still draped around his neck. She was an amateur, yes, but he hadn’t expected her to have so much potential. Warm, willing and totally untouched—what would it be like to find a woman like that lying naked in his bed?
If he married her, he could find out.
No. That was crazy. Just kissing her had probably put him in danger of her daddy coming after him with a shotgun, and the last thing he needed right now was a major complication like that.
“Look, sweetheart. I think it’s time for you to—”
All at once her eyes sprang open, her expression becoming tense, her eyes growing wider by the moment.
“What’s the matter?” Cole asked.
She backed away from him, one hand on her stomach, the other clutching his arm. Her eyes glazed over, and her face turned as pale as an eggshell. He’d seen that look before.
“How many drinks did you have?”
“Uh…two. No. Three.”
“Is that three more than you’ve ever had before?”
“Uh-huh.” She wobbled a little, hunched over, and in her next breath everything that had gone down tonight came right back up.
VIRGINIA DECIDED there was nothing quite so inelegant as sitting on the bathroom floor of a sleazy country-western bar, hugging a toilet and staring at a wall full of graffiti describing sex acts she didn’t even think were anatomically possible. She’d barely gotten the little paper sanitary thing down on the toilet seat before she’d thrown up all over again.
She folded her arms on the edge of the toilet and rested her forehead against them, wishing the bumblebees in her stomach would head back to the hive. God had evidently gotten more creative than in the Old Testament days. What did He need with a thunderbolt? All He had to do was get her to toss down three beers and throw up at Cole
