“When did you decide to save it?”
“When I was a teenager. My best friend became pregnant the first time she had sex. Her boyfriend broke up with her and his parents shunned her and their baby. Her life was hard because both her parents worked and couldn’t help her much with the baby. They were angry and disappointed with her. At fifteen, her adult life began. She finished school but lost out on so much. That made an impression on me. I didn’t even date until college and I dated guys who were…not likely to push me to have sex. After college, I got…”
“You became ill?”
“Yes. I’m a survivor. But being in and out of treatment left little time or energy for socializing or dating. You can imagine facing a potentially terminal diagnosis would hamper the libido and sex appeal. Plus, I’m a little…”
“What?”
“Chunky. The women in my family all tend to be curvy.”
The sexy grin that crossed his lips made her heart palpitate and her temperature rise another degree. “I like that about you too.”
“Anyway, I decided all those years ago that I wanted to save my virginity for my wedding night. I just didn’t plan on saving it this long. Now, I feel just a little ridiculous.”
With a slow shake of his head, Seth took her by the shoulders. “It’s not. It’s beautiful. You may know how to write really hot erotica but you’re innocent. I think it’s a perfect combination. But you need to stick to your guns. Remember your tattoo?” At her nod, he continued, “Why do you want me specifically to do the tattoo?”
“Because I trust you. We talked and I know you’d be careful and do a good job.” She had a feeling she knew where he was going with this line of conversation.
Damn it.
“You’d never walk into an unfamiliar tattoo shop and ask the first person working there to tattoo your body without getting to know him, his level of skill, his style, and his sanitary standards. I’m sorry for the coarse analogy but it should be the same way with your virginity. You should know the person a while and trust them. If the tattoo artist lacks talent or has no clue what you want or need, then the tattoo would be ruined and so would the experience.”
“But the first time isn’t all that great anyway.”
Seth tilted his head slightly and shook it with a smile. “Not necessarily. You just illustrated my point. Given time and the right preparation, the first time can be special and meaningful. You shouldn’t throw it away. Last week, I redid a tattoo for a female customer. Located on the top of her foot. The original tattoo was done by an untalented hack. Her friend talked her into seeing me to fix it. I couldn’t even tell what it was.”
He pulled out his phone and showed her a photograph of what looked like a wilted head of cabbage. “That’s supposed to be a rose in full bloom. She wouldn’t wear anything but closed shoes because she was ashamed of it. She said halfway through getting it, she’d realized the train wreck it was going to be but didn’t have the guts to stop the artist from finishing it. It took a lot of work, but I fixed it. It’s bigger than what she’d originally intended but now she isn’t ashamed of her body art.”
He slid his finger on the touch screen and showed Jayne the “after” picture of a lovely pink rose, fully bloomed, with a hummingbird hovering over it.
“That’s beautiful.”
“I think so too. I made something she could tolerate out of it. All she’d originally wanted was a small rosebud. It’s good now, but her first experience with a tattoo will stay with her, no matter how well I did. Letting someone you don’t really know that well have access to your body can leave a lasting mark on you. I’m afraid you’ll have regrets down the road. I want it to be a good, pure experience for you. Save it for your wedding night. You deserve that, Jayne, after what you’ve been through. Don’t come this far to throw it away.”
That was the second time he’d used the word “pure,” and it renewed the blush in her cheeks just as it had before. He was right. The sum total of the time they’d spent together equaled less than a whole day. They hadn’t known each other long enough. But the rejection still stung. She was tired of the “not knowing” and imagining what it must be like to be made love to. It was now just an inconvenient hurdle in her life, and she had lost time to make up for.
Seth tilted her chin up and placed a damnably chaste kiss on her lips and said, “Baby steps.”
She wanted to kick herself for offering so soon. She’d likely scared him off from wanting to get closer to her.