Virgin Romance by Penny Wylder
9
“What’s the matter? That’s the third time you’ve forgotten to move on your turn.” Gram’s ever-sharp eyes pierce right through my veil of . . . well. My veil of Pierce.
“Nothing!” I exclaim, quickly reaching to advance my knight across the board. Less than a second later, Gram’s rook swoops in to take my knight, harmlessly, because I didn’t even notice him there. “Crap.”
“You’re usually not this sloppy a chess player,” Gram scolds. “What’s on your mind, Bon-Bon?”
I flush at the childhood nickname, though to be honest, it makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside that she still calls me that from time to time. My Gram is a no-nonsense woman—she had to be, in order to fly planes and helicopters back in a day when only men were trusted with jobs like that—but with me, she lets her soft side show. Probably because we only have each other left in the world.
I sigh. The nothing defense won’t work with her the way it has with Erin for the past two days. Erin has also been on my case, relentlessly, to find out what happened the night I stayed over at “his place.” I’ve only given her the barest of details. No, we didn’t fuck (technically). Yes, I had a great time, until he got all workaholic and kicked me out. No, you can’t go and beat him up, Erin. Yes, that’s him calling me. Yes, I’m ignoring his calls.
It’s been three days since I last saw Pierce. Since then, I’ve fantasized about him more often than I care to count. Let’s just say I had to replace the batteries in my vibrator.
But still, even though he’s tried to call me three times, every day at 5PM like clockwork, I send the calls to voicemail. I figure it must be when one of his board meetings or something lets out, and he’s got me on his mind. Or maybe he’s trying to booty-call me at last. But I haven’t felt ready to face him again, not yet.
At least, not in person. I’ve been devouring articles and photos of him online nonstop, like every cliché creepy stalker you’ve ever heard of. But that only makes my chest ache and my pussy throb even harder. I can’t stop thinking about seeing him again. More importantly, I can’t stop thinking about the fact that the next time I see him will be the last.
Next time we meet, he’ll fuck me. Then he’ll pay, and he’ll leave, and I’ll never see him again. At least for now, if I dodge his calls and avoid him, there’s still one last meeting in our future. I can look forward to fucking him one last time. I don’t have to deal with our impending goodbye, not yet.
I shake my head at Gram. There’s no way to explain this to her without earning myself a beating in the meantime. She cannot ever find out how I met Pierce, or why.
“It’s a boy, isn’t it,” she says. It’s not a question. She might be ailing and trapped in this facility for the time being, but judging by the way she’s kicking my ass at chess right now, her mind remains as razor-sharp as ever.
“Yeah,” I mumble, taking my next move on the chessboard a bit more carefully. “I was seeing a guy. Am seeing, I guess. But I think he’s going to break it off next time I see him.” That’s the closest I can get to the truth.
Gram purses her lips. “Hmm.”
I expect the usual advice. If he doesn’t love you for who you are, then he can screw off. But Gram just moves her chess piece in silence, then leans back in her chair to watch me.
Nervous, I make another stupid move, and she snatches one of my pawns from the board. I groan.
“First lesson of men,” she says as she twirls my pawn in her bony fingers. “Never let them distract you from the bigger game.”
I laugh, in spite of myself. “What does that even mean, Gram?”
“It means.” She sets the pawn down with a click and gestures at me to take my turn. While I’m staring at the board in contemplation, she continues. “There are other things in life besides relationships. Those are important, don’t get me wrong. But you need to have a life too. When you have a dream you’re chasing, a goal you’re aiming for, the right man will come along and help you reach it. Because that’s what a truly good relationship is—a partnership. Each person helps the other achieve a goal they desire, and together, you make the perfect team.”
I move my queen forward to put her king in check. Gram’s eyes sparkle with approval as she moves him out of the way. “I do have a goal,” I tell her. Saving you. And getting my nursing degree. And getting a job where I can help people, where I can take care of other sick patients like my gram, and help save them all. I advance my queen again. “I have a lot of goals.”
“That’s a good start.” She taps her chin for a moment, studying the board. Then, in one swift motion, she captures my queen with her bishop, and I realize my king is in checkmate.
I groan.
“But having goals isn’t enough. You need to work toward them. A relationship is a goal, too, but it can’t be the only one, and it can’t ruin your attention span for the rest of your life if it’s going through a difficult patch.”
“We’re hardly in a relationship, Gram,” I protest. “I barely know him. We only just started going out.”
“And yet here you are, despairing that he may be about to break things off.” She tilts her head to rest it on her palm, watching me with the same sharp eyes that were just studying the chessboard. “If this boy is the right partner, someone who will help you achieve your goals, then he won’t throw that away so easily. I’m sure he has his flaws, just as you have yours—”
“Aren’t you supposed to be on my side?” But I laugh as I say it. Because Gram is always honest with me, whatever the price.
“I am on your side, honey, and if the people on your side can’t give you a little friendly constructive criticism, then who can?” Her eyes sparkle with laughter, too, though. “I’m just saying, it seems like you’re jumping to conclusions. You do have a tendency to do that, Bon-Bon. You don’t know he’s going to dump you until he does—and if he does, well, then he was never the right partner in the first place, and he’s doing you a favor. He’s freeing you to find the right person.” She reaches across the table to catch my hand, patting it softly. “At the end of the day, that’s all any relationship is. A test to see if you match. If you don’t, the best thing to do is to move on, until you find the one who does—and trust me, you will.”
Her wedding ring glints in the light of the setting sun beyond the facility windows. We’re playing chess in the tiny game room, but it feels private, with nobody else from the facility in here at this hour. I glance at her ring, the only reminder of a man I never knew.
“How did you know, with Grandpa?” I ask. She never talks about him. He died decades before I was born, and yet she never remarried, never even took her ring off.
Gram’s smile turns a little sad. “When I met your grandfather, we had both just come off tours in Vietnam. He was becoming an auto mechanic in our town, way north of here, tiny little place called Redding. I wanted to keep flying, and I told him as much on our first date. The other men I’d gone out with that summer all laughed at me, or told me it was a waste—that a pretty woman like me was needed at home, making more pretty little ladies and handsome young lads, rather than up in the sky sailing all over the place.
“Some boys were more subtle about it than others. They said being a pilot sounded very fun, like a great hobby. Others told me they’d love to have a pilot for a girlfriend, but eventually they’d need a wife who was, you know, a wife. They always said it like that. Like I ought to know implicitly what a wife was. And I knew what they meant, and that was never going to be a life for me.”
Her smile deepens, grows happy again, and there’s a light in her eyes that I’ve never seen before. A twinkle, almost. “But your grandfather. On our first date, he swung me across the dance floor at a little club downtown, the only one in town, really, and I told him I wanted to keep flying, and he looked me straight in the eye and said, ‘Sue-Ann, that is the sexiest thing a woman has ever said to me.’ And he meant it.” She laughs softly. “Oh, he loved that I was a career woman. He used to come out to the fields and wave me off every time I had a run. At first it was little cargo runs, local trips, with the only place that would hire me. Then later, a real airline, TransAm, and I was their first female pilot ever. Your grandfather was so proud of me . . . He came to my wings ceremony with your mother in tow, and held her up on his shoulders so she could see me getting them pinned on.” She sighs and shakes her head.
The smile fades, and a tear glitters at the corner of her eye. I reach across the table to grab her hand, and squeeze her fingers gently. She clutches mine harder, like she’s clinging on, and I hold on too. I’m thinking the same things she is, I’m sure. About my mom, who died far too young, and my father with her. About my grandfather, who I never had the pleasure of meeting, but who sounds absolutely perfect for the wild free spirit that is my grandmother.
“He sounds great.” I venture a small smile.
She nods. “He was. He was . . . I could never remarry after that. Rich was my soulmate, my partner in life. He raised your mother, and he held down the homestead and let me fly off into the sunset, and he held his head high when the other men in our town called him a sissy and a queer for taking on women’s work, because that was what he wanted to do too, you see? He wanted to stay at home with your mother, to be present for all the little moments. He was a gentle soul, my Rich, and he loved cooking for us all, making huge feasts that would blow your mind to taste. Whereas me, my god, I could barely boil an egg. He used to make fun of me for it.” She sighs again, but it’s a lighter sigh this time. A happy one. “That’s what you need to find, Bon-Bon. A partner who fits you. And maybe you’ll want to be the one at home with your kids, or maybe both of you will want jobs out in the world, or maybe you’ll both want to raise a whole passel of little ones. You got to blaze your own path. But I’m telling you, no matter how unusual the things you want may be, there’s a man out there who wants a woman like you.”
I lean across the table to hug her, and she hugs me back so tight I nearly lose my breath. Tears shine at the corners of my eyes. I think about the bills piling up at home, all the petty worries of life. I’ll find a way to pay them. I’ll find a way to get her the treatment she needs, no matter what it takes. Because I can’t lose this woman from my life. She’s too amazing.
She’s all I have left.
“Now, all this talking has worn me out.” Gram tries to keep up a strong front, but she’s coughing a little, and her cheeks have gone pale. Shit. I reach over to ring for the nurse, and help her stand and grasp the walker she needs now, just to help her get around.
“Let’s go back to your room,” I suggest, and then the nurse arrives to help, and Gram is too tired to protest, which I know means she really does need some rest. I’ll drop her off and head out while she takes her nap.
But when we reach her room, there’s a surprise awaiting us. A burst of sunflowers on the table beside her bed, interspersed with white lilies that fill the room with a beautiful fragrance. Where someone found sunflowers at this time of year, I’ll never know. Even more mystifying, is why Gram tears up at the sight.
“Oh . . .” she murmurs.
The nurse pauses beside her, checking her pulse, worried. “You okay, Mrs. Taylor?” she asks.
But Gram just bobs her head, beaming. “Yes, yes, I’m fine. Just . . . Those are my favorite.”
“Sunflowers?” I tilt my head.
“They had them at my retirement ceremony.” She hobbles to the bedside, collapses against it a little hard for my liking. But she remains animated, as she reaches out to touch the petals on the sunflower. “They were your grandfather’s usual present for me. He grew them alongside our house, and your mother measured herself against them every summer, to see how tall she was getting. Someone at work remembered, and that . . . You remember that party they threw me, no?”
I was only five or six at the time, but I do vaguely remember all the press attention it got. The retirement party of the first female commercial airline pilot. Newspapers all across the country covered it. Now that I think about it, I do vaguely remember the photos of her in her flight uniform, surrounded by huge bouquets of sunflowers, beaming and waving at the crowd.
“Who brought these?” I ask the nurse, but she only shrugs as she helps Gram into the bed.
“Anonymous sender. They arrived at the front desk while you were in the rec room.”
I dig through the petals, but I don’t see a card. “Maybe it’s your secret admirer,” I tell Gram with a smirk, and she laughs at that one. But it’s a tired laugh. The nurse shoots me a significant glance, and I know by now what that means. Time to go.
“I’ll stop by in a couple days, Gram.” I reach down to squeeze her fingers gently. “I’ve got work at the diner, then I’ll be by.”
“Bring your homework next time,” she orders me, in between yawns. “I don’t want you slacking on your studies on my account.”
I smile down at her. “Never.” But she’s already drifting off to sleep, her grip going loose in my hand. I gently set her hand down on the bed, and let myself out of the room, leaving the nurse to run a couple vitals behind me.
As I’m closing the door to her room, someone touches my shoulder. I gasp, jumping, and whip around, only to have my heart nearly leap into my throat.
Pierce. Here.
For a moment, all I can do is stare deep into his pale blue eyes, my expression a mask of shock and confusion, I’m sure. Then he smiles, and I shake my head, forcing my brain to function again.
“What are you doing here?” No, that’s not the right question, my brain chides me. “How did you even find me? Are you stalking me?” I scowl.
He leans against the wall, completely unperturbed by my annoyance. “There were only so many female pilots your grandmother’s age, Bonnie. It didn’t take long to find the one based in northern California, whose granddaughter still lived in the region. And it took even less time to find out that she was still alive, though ailing and residing in a full-time care facility.”
I storm past him up the hallway. “You had no right to barge into my life.” A thought occurs to me, and my mouth drops open. “You sent those flowers too, didn’t you? You looked up her retirement party articles and saw them.”
“You aren’t the only one who can use google, you know.”
I whip around to glare at him. “What, did you put a tracker on my phone or something too?” My voice is rising, getting the attention of the nurses at the end of the hall, but I don’t care.
His smirk deepens. “No, but judging by your reaction, I’m right, and you did google me.”
“I didn’t follow you anywhere, though. And I certainly didn’t barge into your life, Pierce Pinewood,” I snap.
“Why are you angry?” He spreads his hands, almost like a gesture of surrender. “I wanted to see you, Bonnie. I haven’t heard from you in days. I can’t stop thinking about you. I needed to find you.”
My heart does that jumping toward my throat thing again, and I realize that it’s because I’m glad to see him, too. As mad as I am that he followed me, that he barged into my life and found Gram and probably realizes why I’m so desperate for money now, my body has other thoughts. There’s a dizzying, rushing sensation pouring through me right now, a happy flutter in my stomach and a buzz between my eyes. I’m happy he’s here.
Damn traitor body.
I shake my head to clear it. “You shouldn’t have just shown up here. I was going to call you when I was ready.”
He smirks. “You mean when you’re ready for me to fuck you? You always seem ready for that.”
I cross my arms. “And you never do, so what’s the problem? Have you suddenly decided you want to fuck me after all?”
He steps closer to me, and it’s suddenly harder to breathe now that we’re chest-to-chest, his ice-blue eyes locked on mine. “I always want you, Bonnie.” His breath ghosts across my cheeks. “I can’t stop thinking about how I’m going to tear up that tight little pussy of yours.” His finger trails over my hipbone, and I shiver. Then he steps away from me. “But not until you tell me what’s bothering you. Why you dodged my calls.”
I groan aloud and stomp up the hallway. “You’re impossible.” I reach for a doorknob.
He catches my wrist. “Tell me what’s wrong, and I’ll give you what you want. I’ll fuck you right now.”
“Here?” I roll my eyes.
“They have supply closets,” he points out.
“Ugh.” I shove open the door into the gardens. There won’t be anyone outside at this hour, with the sun setting and the chilly fall evening setting in. Sure enough, it’s deserted out here, just me and him and the little gazebo where Gram and I come in the summer and watch the dragonflies hop around the pond beside it. The pond is quiet now, the fountains already shut off for the impending winter.
We walk through them in silence for a long moment. He’s clearly waiting for me to answer, to explain. I don’t even know how to start.
“Look. It’s not that I’m not . . .” I stammer to a halt. Damn him. He’s just waiting, watching me with that impenetrable, unreadable poker face of his. “I’m happy to see you,” I snarl, and he actually cracks a small smile, probably because I look mad as hell. I am, I remind myself. “I just . . . I can’t believe you would invade my privacy like this. There’s a reason I never told you about my life, and it’s because—”
Suddenly, he’s right next to me. He lifts a hand to rest his finger on my lips, gently. I’d be even madder, but there’s something serious and quiet in his eyes. An understanding. “Is that all?” He looks almost . . . relieved, somehow.
“All?” I fling my arms wide. “Yeah, I should think this is enough, don’t you?”
“I understand your situation, Bonnie,” he says, and his voice is deep and sincere. “I connected the dots. I know why you went on that website. Why you need the money. Or,
well . . .” He shrugs. “Why you needed it, anyway.”
I blink in confusion. “I don’t understand.”
“I spoke to the front desk before I came to meet you,” he says. “I paid off your grandmother’s balance in full. I also paid upfront for her care for the next twenty years, should she need it for that long. Hopefully, of course, she will recover enough to move home, though. I also added a clause for a home nurse, if that turns out to be the case.”
I gape up at him. My ears ring. I know he’s speaking English, but the words won’t make sense in my brain. “You what?”
“It’s done, Bonnie. You have what you need.”
I’m still gaping at him when he turns to walk out of the garden. Oh hell no. I chase after him and grab his arm, spinning him around to face me. “Why?” I demand. My eyes sting again, not from nostalgia this time, but from a whole rush of other emotions. Relief that Gram is cared for, confusion about how this happened, anger at him for barging in, but a rush of gratitude that he did, that he forced his way past my stupid walls. “Why did you do this?” I blink hard to stave off the tears. “Why help me, why do all of this for me, give up so much for nothing?”
He pulls his arm from my grasp and grabs my shoulders instead. Before I can breathe, he spins me around, pushes my back against the wall beside the door and kisses me, hard. His hand slides between my legs to cup my pussy through my jeans, his other hand grabbing my ass to lift my hips into his. My eyes still sting, my heart is still racing, but I part my mouth and kiss him back with everything I have. It’s hard and soft at once, his soft lips and the hard wall behind us, and we’re both hungry, desperate. My hands claw at his back, his shoulders, his hips. He pins me against the wall by my shoulders and claims my mouth mercilessly.
We barely come up for air between kisses, until my head swims with the taste of him, and all I want is more. I lift my leg, and he grabs it roughly, pulls my leg around his waist to press his hips into mine. I feel his hard length against my crotch, and I grind against him, our lips still locked.
He draws back slightly to look down at me, his eyes brighter than ever in the blaze of pink sunset in the sky above. “My lovely little Bonnie,” he breathes. Then he smiles, sharply. “What on earth makes you think I’m not still going to take what belongs to me?” His hands wrap around my waist, slide past my hips to grab my ass, hard.
I gasp and arch up against him, groaning with desire. And something else. Relief. He still wants me.
“You’re bought and paid for, my gorgeous slut.” He leans in to kiss my neck, trailing his tongue up to my ear, then nipping at that soft, sensitive spot just under my ear. My legs stop working, and I sag against him, caught between him and the wall. “Now I get to decide when I stretch out that tight, fresh pussy of yours.”
I arch my hips to grind against him, harder, and I feel his thick cock twitch against my clit. It makes us both gasp, and when I open my mouth to respond, he catches me in another deep kiss. Our tongues intertwine, and I wrap my arms around him, one hand dipping down to slide under his shirt. I trace his ab muscles, his pecs, all the way up to his shoulders, and then back down to toy with the faint line of fuzz along his stomach, his happy trail. I follow it down to the hem of his pants, and flatten my palm against his stomach to slide my fingers beneath. He gasps and rocks against my hand, and I grin up at him as my fingers inch closer to that glorious cock of his.
“You are so damn perfect,” he murmurs, gazing down at me, our eyes locked.
“Thank you, sir,” I whisper, my lips curved in a confident smile. Then I close my fingers around his solid length, and slide them up to finger the tip of his cock. There’s a single dewy drop of precum there, and I smile wider at how hard he is for me. “One request, though, sir.”
His eyes flash dangerously, but he’s grinning. “I may or may not be open to negotiations, Ms. Taylor.”
I tighten my grip on his cock, and he twitches again, harder. “Don’t worry, Mr. Pinewood. I’ll make it worth your while.” I tilt my head to the side, and enjoy the way his gaze drops straight to my neck, then trails down to my breasts below, my cleavage only a little on display in the casual shirt I wore today. I love that he doesn’t seem to care what I’m wearing, though. I could be dressed in a bag for all he cares—he has eyes only for my body beneath the fabric. “If—no, when we fuck,” I say, drawing out the word fuck. His eyes flash back to mine, hot as ever. “I want to do it where you live. I want to see your home first.”
He pauses. He clearly wasn’t expecting that. But I slide my fist along his length, starting to stroke him slowly, and from the tension line that appears between his eyes, creasing his handsome forehead, I can tell he’s mine. The same way that I’m his already. “All right,” he breathes, and I lean up to kiss him again, softer this time.
