The Virgin And The Hero (Innocent Series Book 2)

by Kendall Duke

  “That’s too bad,” I said, and then I squeezed her hand back, and her beautiful eyes met mine, pulled back from where-ever she was. “Don’t tell me too much about him, or I’ll go meet him.”

  It took her a minute realize what I was really saying, and then she laughed, a deep, hard laugh. “Oh jeez. Don’t tempt me.”

  “Why? What if I like tempting you?” It came out before I could stop it. And the smile on her face froze as she looked into my eyes again, but I couldn’t stand to feel her pull away first so I looked down at our interlocked fingers and tried to backpedal. “To commit murder, I mean.”

  “Wow, that got dark quick!” She laughed again, bubbly and high and sweet, and I watched her from under my lashes. “You wouldn’t. You’re too good of a person,” she finally said, her voice soft. I really hoped she wouldn’t pull her hand away.

  “If you say so.”

  “I do. But he’s not that bad, anyway—certainly not that bad. Not like…” Her voice trailed away, and I could tell she was remembering the night, that the memory of what happened snuck up on her. “Well, anyway.” She cocked an eyebrow once she recovered and gave me a wily grin I could feel all the way down at the base of my cock. “You’re funny. You know that?”

  “No,” I said truthfully, but she just laughed again. Her uniform was sliding further and further down her shoulder, and I could see the top of her bra now, not just the strap. Bright, electric blue, just like her fingernails. She was a firecracker. “I like making you laugh, though. I think…” I tried really hard to find the right words, so that they wouldn’t come out the wrong way. “I think I would like it if you lived here.”

  “I’ll pay you,” she promised, then smiled again. “Everybody likes that.”

  “Well, don’t worry about that part yet,” I said, and I ran the pad of my thumb over her fingers, just once, unable to stop myself, then pulled my hand away before I did it again. I didn’t want to come across as a creep. “Let’s get your feet under you, first. There’s no mortgage, it’s all paid off, and no water bill on account of the well. Got some solar so the electric’s pretty cheap.” The last thing I wanted was for her to think I expected sex. I had to be careful, I realized. It would probably be a little too easy to give that impression.

  But I just wanted to take care of her.

  The realization was so heavy it knocked the wind out of me for a minute.

  I did want her—I wanted those luscious tits in my mouth, sucking her nipples till she screamed, I wanted to be so deep inside of her that when she came I would feel it around the base of my cock, I wanted to kiss her red mouth so bad I could practically taste her. But… Really, I just wanted to take care of Jessica.

  I wanted to protect her.

  I…

  I stood up from the table abruptly. “Well, maybe we should try and get a little rest.”

  ~~~

  Jessica

  I burst out laughing.

  I couldn’t help it—it was such a stereotypically butch dude thing to do, to have this emotional conversation and I knew, I knew we had a connection, a real one, something beautiful… But here he was, running like his butt was on fire. Jordan stared down at me like I was the weirdest person he’d ever met, which, to be fair, I might be. “Sit down!” I said, still laughing. “You just tanked three cups of coffee, buddy—you’re not going to bed.” He looked a little sheepish, but I just pointed to his seat. “Come on! If you want me to leave you alone, you should say that. But if you’re just freaked out that we had a real conversation, then you should sit down.”

  “Why?” He gave me that small smile, the one that only turned the corners of his mouth up, the little one that drove me wild.

  “Because… Because you haven’t told me anything about what you do. Where you work, how the farm runs. Whether there are any secret passages or haunted rooms in this big, beautiful old house. You know,” I said, shrugging as I leaned back in my chair and crossed my arms over my chest. “The important stuff.”

  And then I saw it.

  I was sure of it.

  When I crossed my arms, he glanced at my chest. So quickly I would have missed it for sure if I hadn’t been staring right at his face, drinking in those eyes.

  He didn’t want to be rude, I knew—he was trying not to look. And I knew my body made that kind of impossible, even if you weren’t really interested, because my breasts are big. And this stupid uniform was far too huge, and kept slipping down my shoulder, showing my bra strap. But he had looked.

  He looked because he liked something he saw.

  He looked because maybe… Possibly… He liked me.

  My whole body responded. As soon as he gave me the slightest reassurance that he might like the way I looked, it was as if my entire self needed to know for sure by showing him how much it liked him. My nipples pressed against my bra, hardening right beneath his gaze, and my panties were so damp I had to re-cross my legs. I could feel the blush creeping all the way across my chest, and sure enough, his eyes flicked towards it once, then down to the table.

  I wished, suddenly and with all my heart, I had some experience I could use. I didn’t even really know how to flirt—not in a deliberate way. People were always calling me a flirt, because I was friendly, but that’s not the same thing at all. And Jordan… Jordan was the sweetest man I’d ever met. He was going out of his way to try and make me feel comfortable about the horrible thing that happened tonight. If he had any of the same urges I did, he wouldn’t act on them. He was a gentleman.

  But even gentlemen had breaking points.

  I took a deep breath. I steadied myself. And I thought about all of the possible outcomes of doing what I really wanted to do.

  What I really wanted to do.

  I wanted to live here, with Jordan. I wanted to lose my virginity to him, and sleep with him every night, cuddled into that broad chest and kissed by that beautiful mouth. I wanted to know what it was like to love someone so much you couldn’t breathe, to want children and a future with them, and I knew I could do that with him. I just knew it.

  Maybe it was crap timing, like always.

  Maybe I was weird.

  But it was all still true. It was how I felt, in my heart of hearts. I had to hope he felt at least a little of that too.

  So I didn’t know how to flirt, and I was a virgin with no real experience. But I could be a good friend, just like I’d planned, and I could talk… And maybe I could find a way to bring up what was becoming obvious to me: I was falling in love with him.

  ~~~

  Jordan

  I stood there like a dumbass, trying to decide what to do.

  Her bra was hidden again, but the strap was in plain sight. And I could’ve sworn she caught a wayward glance I wasn’t entirely able to control… And then I could’ve sworn a blush started at her collarbones, creeping along that lovely neck. And her nipples were just visible through the fabric of her uniform, as if they’d gotten hard all of a sudden… As if, maybe, just maybe, she saw me looking. And liked it.

  I got so hard I had to sit down.

  “Great!” Her smile was bright, but there was something under it, I could see. She was thinking about something she wasn’t saying.

  I adjusted myself under the table.

  “Jordan, what do you do?” She frowned, now present in the moment again. “I mean, what’s your job?”

  “There’s no secret passages,” I said, and she laughed, then tried again.

  “I mean it. Tell me the stuff that matters—who are your friends? Wallace?”

  “Wallace?”

  “Yeah—the older guy from the diner. Wallace.”

  “I didn’t even know that was his name until tonight,” I told her honestly. “I mean… We’re not big talkers.”

  “No, that’s true,” she said, then scrunched up her nose. “He knows you, though.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, when he brought me in to talk to Marcus he made a joke about the other v
et that was coming—that was you, although I didn’t know it at the time—and they both kind of smiled at each other.” She sighed. “I’ve known Wallace since I was sixteen but I don’t know what he’s thinking most of the time, and probably never will.”

  “You never read his palm?” I did like teasing her. But I didn’t exactly like the thought of Wallace and Marcus setting up our little meeting. I was distracted from my cloudy thoughts by her laughter.

  “I told you you were funny.”

  “Hmm,” I said, then returned to the former subject. “How do you know Wallace? We’ve only ever sat next to each other at the diner; I didn’t know he knew my name, either.”

  “Really?” She was genuinely surprised. “Well, I met him at the shelter—not the dog shelter, the real one.” Jessica smiled at me, as if this were a happy thought. “He was one of the managers. He’d lived there himself years before, he said, so he came back and helped other people out once he was better.”

  “Better?” I narrowed my eyes, but she just nodded.

  “He had a hard time, after his service ended.” Jessica didn’t spare me. “He had PTSD really bad and started drinking too much. Ended up at the shelter. But now,” she said, her smile returning, “he’s been sober for ages and he seems to be pretty happy. I love his wife, Betty.”

  “He’s married?” What the hell was he doing at the diner at all hours of the night?

  “Yeah—she works graveyard at the grocery store over in Hickory. He waits up for her, most nights—he does the graveyard shift at the shelter, too, sometimes.”

  I couldn’t think of a single thing to say. “Huh.”

  “Yeah…” She paused. “Betty asked if I wanted to stay with them, but I got that spot at the other shelter, from Sheila, and I didn’t want to put them out… They’ve got a nice place, but it’s really small.” She looked around her, remembering where she was. “Not like yours.” She looked appreciatively around at the kitchen, then shook her head and smiled ruefully at me. “Well done, sir. You got me talking again. Now tell me, what do you do? Besides hang out in this awesome house?”

  So we talked. I wasn’t very good at it, but I tried to answer her questions—I told her about the mill, and how my mom and dad passed away a couple of years before; I told her a little about Afghanistan, just enough to satisfy her curiosity, which, thankfully, she was willing to shelve, and then she asked about my brother again. Fuck it, I thought; it’s almost five in the morning, and I can’t lie to myself and pretend I won’t give her anything she wants. “He’s sick,” I said again, and she just nodded, encouraging me to go on. “He got some kind of infection, probably down at the mill,” I told her, and she raised an eyebrow. “He’s not good at taking care of himself, to begin with, but he… Some kind of bacteria got into his lungs, and started to kill the tissue.” She covered her mouth with her hand, concerned, and I jumped ahead in the story. “He’s going to be alright. He is alright… But a lot of his muscle was destroyed, and they had to… Well, anyway. He’s fine, except that his breathing is never going to be what it was, or even close. And he’s been stuck in a bed most of the time for going on six months.”

  “That’s awful,” she said, staring at me.

  I nodded. It was.

  “If that was me, I’d be dead,” she said unceremoniously. “No insurance.”

  “You’re not covered by Medicaid?” She blinked at my question, then laughed and shook her head.

  “I don’t qualify, smarty-pants. I make ‘too much money,’” she said, her hands cupping into air quotes. “They’re very strict. It’s kind of hilarious, if you think about it.”

  “I don’t think it’s hilarious,” I said, and I didn’t. My tone was a little too gruff, I guess, because she reached across the table and laid her hand over mine again.

  The effect was different, this time.

  This time I almost had to physically restrain myself from just reaching across, pulling her to me, and settling her down on my lap. Brushing those copper waves back from her face so I could kiss her lips, taste her tongue. Running my hands over her backside, then sliding them over the soft skin of her thighs, seeing how high those freckles went. Slipping them under her uniform—

  “What are you thinking, Jordan?” Jessica’s voice was very soft.

  And close.

  She was leaning across the table towards me. And then, as if she’d read my mind, she took her other hand and placed it gently on my cheek, guiding me towards her. I leaned forward instinctively, wrapping my fingers around hers as she gently, so gently, pressed her lips against mine.

  When she pulled back, I could feel my pulse in my throat. “I’ve been wanting to do that all night,” she whispered.

  And that was it.

  I knew I loved her then, whether I wanted to or not.

  ~~~

  Jessica

  I watched as he swallowed, his pulse rapidly beating in the soft space under his jaw, and said, “all night?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I think so.” But it wasn’t just all night—I’d been waiting my whole life to kiss him. I could feel it now, with a surety I trusted: he was meant for me. I was meant for him. This was meant to be. I suddenly felt shy. “Do you… Did you want to kiss me?”

  Jordan locked those eyes on me, their startling beauty hypnotizing me immediately. And then I felt his hand twist on mine as his long fingers wrapped around my wrist, gently drawing me to him, and then I found I was standing up and coming over to him, close, so close, and then his arms were wrapping around me as he pulled me onto his lap. I felt his long fingers running over the skin of my arm, sliding through my hair; I felt him pick me up, so tenderly, and move me just so, and then, all of a sudden, I was facing him, right there, inches away from those lips.

  I put my arms around his neck and kissed him again.

  And this wasn’t a first kiss. This was the kiss that answered my question. Jordan’s lips tugged mine apart, sucking my bottom lip as his strong hands stroked my back; he waited for me to open, then his tongue greeted mine, and I sighed when I felt his fingertips graze my ass. My breasts pressed against his chest, and my nipples were so hard I was sure he must feel them, little pebbles announcing my arousal as his hands slid another inch lower and I moaned into his kiss. When he heard that, Jordan cupped and squeezed my ass cheeks and nipped my bottom lip before his mouth landed on my neck, my collarbone, the little hollow at the bottom of my throat. I was so turned on I was worried I would leave a spot on his jeans, and then I got distracted when his hands slid down toward my thighs.

  We were moving really fast. My breath was coming in quick gasps, and I was fighting the urge to just straddle him, to open myself to him completely.

  “Jordan,” I said, and my voice sounded strange, even to myself—rough. Hungry. I disentangled my arms from around his neck and leaned back. Jordan was looking at me with something new in his eyes, a smoldering fire that made those beautiful eyes shine. All I wanted in that moment was to sink back into his kiss. Did I really have to tell him?

  “Are you alright?” His voice was raspy, deep. His arms were wrapped around my waist, keeping me aloft as I balanced on his lap. I was way down on his long legs, more towards his knees; I’d been sliding closer and closer and if I concentrated, I thought I could feel… Something. Something that was not leg—something long, and thick, and rock hard. “Jessica?” His fingertips brushed my cheek. “You okay?”

  “Yes, yeah,” I said, forcing myself to concentrate. “I just…”

  Jordan watched me a long second and then, as if I weighed absolutely nothing at all, perched me on the edge of the table and leaned back, settled in his chair at a distance. It almost hurt. I wanted to jump right back into what we’d been doing, but he knew something was up. He was looking at me, patiently waiting. I could see it now—what lurked below, pressed against his thigh by the fabric of his jeans. He was really big. Like, really, really big.

  Oh jeez. That did it. He’d know anyhow, even if I didn’t tell
him.

  “I’m a virgin,” I whispered, and looked down at my lap, unable to meet his eyes.

  ~~~

  Jordan

  I didn’t know what to say.

  Did she think I would be upset? The last experience I had with virgins was when I was one myself. Lost it to an older girl as a freshman in high school and never looked back. Did that mean no one had ever…

  She’d never…

  I felt that strike of lightning again, deep in my body, an ache like I’d never felt before.

  She was meant to be mine. First and only. I had to claim her, possess her, keep her, love her. “Goddamn,” I muttered, and I realized too late that might sound harsh—it might sound like the complete opposite of what I intended, what I had to have.

  Sure enough, Jessica’s huge brown eyes blinked at me, on the verge of tears. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I was just… I really wasn’t sure what you were thinking, or what I was thinking, and then… I guess I got carried away.” She bit her lip and swallowed back the tears I still saw in the corners of her eyes, then slid off the edge of the table. “I bet I just made this really weird. I…” She looked up at me. “Should I leave?”

  “No,” I said, my voice hard and direct, and before I could stop myself I’d pulled her back on my lap. She curled up like a kitten, her head against my chest, and I ran my fingers through her hair. “No… Please don’t go.”

  After a minute, her arms looped around my neck again and she was looking up at me from under her long eyelashes. “I feel like an idiot,” she said, her lip trembling. I could tell the worst was over.

  “Why?”

  “I can’t imagine what you must be thinking right now,” she whispered, but I cut her off.

  “I’m glad you can’t,” I said softly. Just having her so close to me… She smelled like cinnamon and toffee. Her hair felt like silk. Her skin was so soft that there really wasn’t anything to compare it to. “You would be surprised. But I can assure you, it’s nothing bad.” My thoughts returned to her untouched status and then they did get pretty damn dirty for a second, but not bad.