Project Virgin

By Megan Crane

Maybe the worst idea she’s ever had is actually the best thing she could ever do…

Newbie lawyer Scottie Grey spent entirely too many years listening to her ex-fiancé’s lies. Now that she’s finally kicked that cheater out of her life, she wants to waste no time getting rid of the albatross around her neck: her virginity.

Damon Patrick is the worst possible candidate for the project. He’s too good-looking, too experienced. He’s too well known around San Francisco—mostly for his many sexual exploits.

He’s also kinda, sorta Scottie’s boss.

Damon is the worst man for the job imaginable… which might just make him the only one Scottie can imagine giving her virginity to after all.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tule Publishing
• Release date: Jan 21, 2016
• ISBN: 9781943963805

Book preview

Author

Chapter One

"What happened to that rock of yours?"

It took me longer than it should have to realize that Damon Patrick—lofty seventh year associate at the historic law firm of Granger & Knox, renowned litigator, and San Francisco’s favorite sex symbol—was speaking directly to me, his sexy growl of a voice loud in the confines of the otherwise empty elevator.

Directly to me, a very lowly first year associate barely a year out of law school, who’d been sent along on this deposition—I was well aware—to do little more than sort the great man’s documents and keep his coffee mug filled the way he liked it.

Black enough to kill with one sugar to sweeten the blow, in case you wondered.

I was thrilled to be assigned to him even though I knew celebrated lawyers on a meteoric rise toward an inevitable partnership like Damon didn’t usually speak to green little first-years like me, unless it was to issue orders. And Damon himself had never, in the months I’d worked in the same firm as him and only occasionally on his cases, addressed a single personal remark to me. Not one.

I would have remembered. Hell, I would have built a shrine to the memory.

Because I might have been a supposedly engaged woman until approximately an hour and a half ago, but I’d never been blind. Damon was so hot it hurt. All of that lean, chiseled, black-haired and blue-eyed male beauty. That raspy voice of his that made even thorny contract issues sound impossibly hot. And his high expectations that the support staff around him, including junior lawyers like me, should read his brilliant mind at a glance and do as he wanted without his having to ask for it.

Um, I said belatedly, which wasn’t the way to impress him. Then again, neither was the awful, betraying blush I could feel roll over me, from my hairline down the length of my neck, and then on to all the private places beneath the suit I wore until I nearly squirmed where I stood. I felt lit up and wild, suddenly, and it scared me almost as much as he always had on a basic, feminine level I’d never cared to acknowledge. What?

I’d been pretty good at my job—even a little bit impressive, if I said so myself, with the mind-reading and all—until today. Because this particular Friday morning in September was the day I’d stopped kidding myself. I’d ordered Alexander to move out. I’d thrown his ring in his face to underscore that request. I’d finally realized what every single other person in Northern California had realized a long time ago, according to my best friend Holly: Alexander was not figuring out his issues with intimacy.

Alexander was having sex. Lots of sex, with lots of people who weren’t me.

While I was engaged and chaste against my will and still a goddamn virgin at twenty-six.

Oh, and I was also a fucking idiot.

So it wasn’t really my fault that instead of answering Damon Patrick, resident god and technically my boss, I just stared back at him. A little bit angrily, I can admit. As if, because he was a male of the species like Alexander, he was partially to blame for my six year charade of a relationship.

It wasn’t really my fault—but it wasn’t smart, either.

Damon’s dark brows edged up his clever forehead and I felt it like a very physical touch, when I hadn’t been touched in what felt like a thousand years. A disconcerting electricity shuddered through me when he fixed those dark blue eyes of his on me, sharp and intense, as if he could see straight through me to the mess inside. As if he could burn straight through me that easily. I felt singed.

And then I felt something else. It clenched hard and deep inside of me, then made me feel terrifyingly soft and wet and fluttery. Breathless.

Holy shit.

Did you not hear the question? he asked, almost softly.

I may have heard it, but I’d already forgotten it. That’s how blue his eyes were.

Um, I said again, dazed.

A too-familiar look of impatience flashed over his remarkable face, making his eyes look bluer and his black hair even darker. He didn’t like to repeat himself. That was only one of the things I knew about Damon Patrick.

Some other things I knew, the way everybody in the office and probably the whole city knew: he was too hot to look at directly, much like the sun. He made even fourth and fifth year associates, supposedly well-seasoned lawyers in their own right, stammer and flush and pray for death rather than the sharp edge of his tongue. Speaking of his tongue, he was rumored to have sexual appetites so intense no one woman could satisfy them—though we all liked to speculate about the possibility of attempting to satisfy even one or two of them at length and with creative flourish. He was darkly intelligent, often brusque and dismissive in the way only confident and powerful men could be with such impunity, and he wasn’t one to suffer fools. Ever.

And he was also fucking beautiful.

How eloquent, he said in that smirky way of his. I didn’t like all that focused, too-smart attention on me. It made me feel... restless. Achey. As if I didn’t know myself, suddenly. Or as if my pussy was doing my thinking for me, for a change. It might have been a relief if it had been anyone else. Harvard Law, was it?

Yale, I bit out, afraid that I’d betray myself further if I let myself speak normally.

His mouth did something wicked and dismissive at once. You must be the shining star of the program. Clearly.

It was only then that it dawned on me that he’d originally been looking at my left hand where, until this morning when I’d chucked it at his head, I’d worn Alexander’s ring. Which had certainly not been a rock. More like an apologetic pebble.

I didn’t stop to think about how weird it was that Damon Patrick had noticed anything about me.

Oh, I said, as if the previous interchange hadn’t happened and he hadn’t actually insulted me, my law school, and the storied history of Yale University at once. You mean my ring.

I did mean your ring. Now I’m bored.

The thing was, I was fed up with men. Inconsiderate men who thought only of themselves and never the people around them. Horrible, lying men who strung people along for years and years—

What you are is remarkably rude, I said, because I had a death wish.

Everything went very, very still in that elevator. Terrifyingly still.

Damon’s head tilted slightly to one side, and he stared at me, a dangerous sort of astonishment on his gorgeous face. I couldn’t tell the difference between the plummeting sensation in my stomach and the elevator that was still dropping us toward the lobby where a car waited out in front of the building to drive us north

Reviews for Project Virgin

[ash_p-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A short, humorous novella about Scottie a 26 year old virgin and her quest to lose it. Standing by to guide her on her quest is her "boss" Damon Patrick. What follows is a steamy but sweet. Loved the ending because it was just so unexpected.

ARC provided in exchange for an honest review.

[carleneinspired · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Scottie has an albatross around her neck, of the virginity variety. At twenty six she's just left a relationship with a man who's fooled her into being innocent for years while he still romps around the town. Just one day into being single and she is a woman on a mission. Damon Patrick, hot lawyer and boss, isn't exactly who she had in mind, but he is the ideal candidate. Making one bad decision may be the best decision Scottie has ever made.

I love a good romance filled with humor, especially when it's filled with just the right amount of both. Project Virgin is one of the funniest novellas I have read in a while, the main characters share witty dialogue and the general subject at hand, Scottie's virginity, just makes this story stand out. What I expected to be a short erotic novella was so much more. Megan Crane wrote two great characters, Scottie and Damon, who you wouldn't put together at first, but make so much sense by the end.

I really liked Scottie as a character, you don't have to agree with her method of losing her virginity to enjoy this one. She is exactly as I would picture a sheltered, innocent 26 year old who just came out of a long lasting, emotionally scarring engagement. What a way to shake it off! Damon, on the other hand, I could use a full length novel about. He's intriguing, he's successful, and he's apparently a sex god. Combine that with his straight forward, no nonsense attitude and you've got the perfect boss to take care of the job at hand. I genuinely enjoyed their interactions and I definitely liked that this novella felt longer than it was. It wasn't just a take her virginity and move on kind of book, but it built up to the fireworks and ends with a massive bang. There's emotion, some hot hot smut, insta-love, and witty dialogue. When all are combined together you get the engaging story of Scottie and her project for handsome lawyer, Damon.