Page 29 of The Virgin Gift (The Gift 2)
Adam: Who you are is incredible, and I want to be the one to help you explore all your desires. So I’m going to ask now, and I’ll ask again tonight, because I want you to be 100 percent certain—here goes. Will you give me your virginity tonight?
14
Nina
He didn’t say fuck.
Or sleep with me or make love to me. There would be no making love. I didn’t want that. We weren’t those kinds of people.
But even though I liked it hard and rough, I also discovered something new as I read his last message.
Every now and then, I liked a little tenderness. Maybe it was the occasional soft kiss like he gave me before bed, or perhaps it was his devoted touch, like in the shower this morning. Or maybe it came in the form of words.
Like now.
Will you give me your virginity?
He didn’t say he wanted to take it.
He wanted me to give it. And give it to him. He knew it was my body, my innocence to give away. It wasn’t his to take. It wasn’t anyone’s to take. It belonged to me, and I had the power to choose when to walk away from it.
He understood that deeply.
That was what his question told me. In a message about sex, I saw there was so much more to this man. And I feared when I gave my virginity to him, the act might be more than sex for me.
I’d have to do everything I could to focus on the physical, and only the physical.
Thank God I had a shoot in a few minutes. That was what I needed. Bodies, images, pictures. A world I knew intimately.
Me in my zone. The more time I spent in a space I knew well, the better off I’d be later tonight. Because I didn’t want to lose myself when I entered new territory with Adam.
Photography would center me, as it always had.
I didn’t need to write a long reply.
All he needed was one word. And one word was all I gave. It said everything.
Nina: Yes.
Today the woman wore white. Stockings, garters, white lace panties, and a demi-cup bra.
“You look like an angel,” I told Melanie, who’d arranged the shoot as a surprise gift for her bride-to-be.
“I feel so awkward,” my client confessed as she sat rigidly on the lush cranberry-colored velvet lounge in my studio.
“I know that feeling well,” I said with a soft smile. “But this is a safe place. You look beautiful, and I want you to feel beautiful for your shoot. So, we can do that a couple of ways. One is wine.”
She laughed. “I like wine, but it is only ten in the morning.”
“True, wine o’clock doesn’t usually start till after noon. So here’s the other.” I stepped away from the couch, headed for the nightstand in my studio, and reached into a drawer. I took out a photo album. I kept it here for this very reason—when clients had a crisis of confidence.
“What do you have there?” Her curiosity was piqued.
“I’ll show you,” I said, returning to the lounge, where I flipped it open for her.
She brought her hand to her mouth and laughed at the first page.
“Exactly. Let it all out,” I said, encouraging her.
“I’m sorry, but that’s so funny.”
“That’s why I included it.”
I looked down at the page and the pictures of myself in a red bra and panty set. They were self-portraits, shots of me trying to look sexy and failing miserably. All the shots that would never see the light of day were in here. The ones where I squinted or made duck lips, or where my sexy pose looked more like a crab walk.
“This is the clay. The rough, unmade clay.”
She nodded as I moved through the pages, shot after unusable shot. “I see where you’re going.”
“We need the clay to make the sculpture.” I flipped to the final one.
The pièce de résistance.
Me, stretched out on this very couch, my head leaning back, my hair tumbling over the pillow. My back arched. Breasts perking up. Skin shimmering. A look of bliss in my eyes.
Just like how I felt this morning on the table with Adam.
A faint shudder ran through me as I remembered posing like this for him. With that memory front and center, I saw my self-portrait in a new light. I understood intrinsically the expression on my own face. I knew what it was like to want and to want so powerfully it was written in your eyes.
I wanted like that woman in the photo.
And I’d had.
Tonight, I would have even more. I’d have it all.
Melanie’s laughter faded, replaced by a sort of wonder as she gazed at the shot. “That’s what I want Josie to feel when she looks at the pictures. This is how she makes me feel,” she said reverently, running a hand over the image.
