Because she’d been wanting to share her first experience with someone special. She had wanted her first time to mean something, a gift to a man who would appreciate who she was and how much sex meant to her. Someone who cared about her and planned to spend the rest of his life with her.
Instead, her first experience with a man had been with someone she not only had met at a dance club, but a man she was investigating because she suspected he was a really bad human being.
How had her instincts let her down so badly? Why had she given in to the desire last night?
Well, to be perfectly honest with herself, she hadn’t done a great deal of thinking last night. She hadn’t had time to contemplate whether to give in to her desire. Rocco wasn’t the kind of lover who let one think. It was pure experience, pure aggressive, sexual need. There was no point during the past several hours when she could have come up for air and told him no.
And following on with that honesty, she hadn’t wanted to say no. Not until now when reality had slapped her in the face with her morals.
She couldn’t believe what she’d done, and was about to turn away, wanting to rush out of the bedroom but something caught her eye, a flash of something on the floor. Her fingers flew to her ears and she realized that the small, pearl earrings she’d worn earlier were missing. She bent to investigate and discovered the object was one of her earrings. She felt for her other pearl and almost sobbed out loud when she realized that the other one wasn’t in the vicinity. These were her lucky earrings! She only wore them when she really needed a confidence boost. They hadn’t really given her much luck tonight though.
“Nikki, I’m so sorry,” she sobbed. Nikki had given her and Rachel a pair of these on their graduation night and they’d been so special to her. Now they were gone and she wanted to curl into a ball and cry out her desolation.
But that would have to wait, she told herself. She had to get out of this house but as she looked down the hallway, it was so long. She took a moment to pick up his tie that had come off in the middle of the hallway and fold it neatly on a table with a lovely painting of…good grief! The man had a Monet in his hallway! She cringed to think what he kept in his living room or dining room, areas where they might have a place of honor!
Maybe it was a fake, she told herself, not believing it for a moment.
She moved silently down the hallway, creeping down one way only to come to a dead end so she tried another hallway. It took her three tries before she finally found the staircase. She gasped when she looked down the long, winding staircase. He’d carried her up these stairs? She had a vague recollection of that happening, but since he’d stopped to kiss her several times, she hadn’t really gotten to look around. Or breathe. Or think.
She was actually blushing when she reached the middle of the stairs, remembering all that they’d done on these stairs, how he’d touched her, kissed her, made her body go up in flames. They’d barely made it to his bedroom and she shivered as the memory of what happened in that bedroom came back to her.
She wished she could blame it on the alcohol, but she’d barely had anything to drink. He’d only bought her that one drink and he hadn’t given her time to really taste it before they’d left to go up those stairs….And the dancing!
She might not know how to dance with anyone else, but with Rocco…she blushed with the memory of how they’d danced last night. It wasn’t possible, she thought with a rush of her breath. It must have been someone else last night.
A large, bulky man stepped into the hallway, startling her. She looked up into his eyes, her heart sinking at his stern expression.
“Does Mr. Antoniv know that you are leaving?” his deep voice asked.
Brianna bit her lip, not sure if this man was going to let her leave if she didn’t have his boss’ permission.
Pretend to be sophisticated, she told herself firmly. Pretend this happens all the time! “I didn’t want to wake him up,” she said, trying to stop the trembling of her chin. “I’ll just see my way home,” she told him softly and started moving again.
The man hesitated for a moment, then nodded briefly. “I’ll have a car take you home,” he replied and Brianna breathed a sigh of relief when he obviously wasn’t going to keep her here until his boss was revived.
“That’s not necessary,” she said, forcing a little laugh. “I can get home in a cab.”
He completely ignored her, simply lifting his cell phone to his ear and saying something in what she suspected was Russian but had no idea if it might be another dialect or true Russian. She wasn’t exactly up on her Slavic languages at this point in her life.
She tried to walk around him, but he politely stepped to the right, effectively blocking her exit.
She glared up at the man, refusing to allow him to intimidate her. He might be bulky, but he wasn’t nearly as tall or as muscular as the man she’d just left upstairs. “I’m going to walk out of that door,” Brianna said, trying not to clench her teeth in frustration but suspected that she was missing the mark on her attempt.
He bowed slightly and she suspected that the movement of his lips was almost a smile, an attempt to reassure her but he completely missed the mark with that effort too. “We will see you safely home,” he countered.
Brianna didn’t let her mouth fall open, but only because she was still grinding her teeth. “Get out of my way,” she told him firmly, trying to use the voice that her friend, Nikki, would use. It always got results. Men didn’t mess with Nikki. She was too tough, too strong and too determined. Well, no one really messed with Rachel either, but more so because she didn’t really acknowledge men. They were simply roadblock in her career path that she either ignored or stepped around. Brianna was going to learn to be like her friends even if it killed her.
Imagining Nikki’s expression, she straightened her shoulders, raised herself up to her full height of five feet, six inches and zoned in on Nikki’s persona. But still concerned that she might come across as too mean, she smiled as kindly as possible while she said, “I’m going home and I’m not getting into any vehicle you provide. So please step out of my way.” Had she been too polite? She worried for all of five seconds but when the man simply stood his ground, she was sure that she’d been too polite.
Her shoulders slumped and she looked down at the ground. “Please, just let me leave. I’ve made a colossal mistake and I just want to go home.”