"Because I told you I'm a virgin."

"Because now that I know that, things are more complicated. We've got issues between us, Maria. I know I said Tito has nothing to do with it, but are you sure you want the first guy you have sex with to be the same guy who put your brother in prison for ten years? It would be different if this were just a casual thing between two people who are just having a good time. You raised the stakes, Maria. I'm sorry."

"You can't do this. You can't humiliate me like this." Her eyes filled up with tears, and she blinked them back, furious with herself. "You can't carry me up here to your bed and then just walk away because I was...honest with you."

"No. I can't."

"So what does that mean? Now I'm confused."

"I still want to touch you. We're just not going to have sex."

"Not going to...okay."

He leaned back over her again and started tracing circles with his fingertips around her nipples. And she started finding it hard to talk.

"So, how far did you go in high school in the back seat of your boyfriend's car?"

"I was a good...Catholic girl," she managed to get out.

"Um hmm. You're a good Catholic girl now," he said then his mouth took over one of her nipples as he slid her shorts down over her hips. He cupped her with his hand, stroking her gently through the thin fabric of her panties, pushing her knee to one side to give his hand better access. He slipped one finger under her panties and started stroking in a slow circle, and she gasped.

"Not this far," she said. It was too much. She couldn't get her bearings. His mouth on her breast, one hand skillfully manipulating her other nipple, and his other hand stroking her in those maddeningly slow circles. Every time she got close to the edge, he seemed to sense it and kept her trembling there.

"You're so beautiful, Maria. Let go for me."

Waves of pleasure broke over her without warning, and he kept on stroking her, holding her, while her whole body clenched, and she heard herself cry out his name. It seemed like it went on forever, and then he was kissing her while she felt the aftershocks of the most intense orgasm she'd ever imagined. She wondered if it felt like this just making out with him, what would it be like to actually have sex?

As she laid there afterward, leaning her head on his shoulder while he trailed a lazy hand down her breasts and her belly, giving her fresh shivers and tremors, she made a conscious decision to just be in the moment and not think about anything else. She wasn't going to spoil this. Ritchie was pressed against her thigh, and the thought of the hard length of him made her tremble again.

"Can I touch you?"

"Yeah," he said, nuzzling her neck.

"Show me how."

When he didn't respond, she slid her hand tentatively under the waistband of his boxers and closed it around him, gaining confidence as she moved her grip up and down slowly, watching his reaction.

"God, Maria."

"Am I doing it wrong?" She knew she wasn't.

Emboldened, she moved lower on the bed, sliding his boxers down, and trailed kisses down the length of him and back up again while she continued to move her hand faster. When he came, it was her name he shouted, and she felt a primal thrill of knowledge as old as time.

Then he was stroking her again, before she had a chance to get nervous. Her heart was racing as he took her higher and higher, his eyes locked on hers when she went over again. Finally, they laid side by side, and she waited for her breathing to come back to normal. When he reached over and held her hand, she almost came apart at the incredible sweetness of it.

"I never did anything like this in the backseat of anybody's car," she confessed.

"So tell me your story. I want to know." When she turned her head to the side, he said, "Come on, you can't possibly be embarrassed to tell me anything now."

"Well, like I said, I was a good Catholic girl. And when my stepfather died, I just got focused so much on art that I really didn't have that much interest in dating."

"Wait, your stepfather? I'm confused."

"Joey's my half-brother. Mom married my stepfather when Tito and I were ten. And he was the best thing that ever happened to us."

"What about your father?"

"I don't have a father. Not in any sense of the word."

"I'm sorry – I wasn't trying to make you sad."

"It's okay. Anyway, I had some boyfriends in high school and college, but I never wanted to let anyone get that close. I was afraid."

"Afraid?"

"Afraid I'd make the same mistakes by mother did. She got pregnant in high school. To a guy who dumped her as soon as he found out. Her parents never forgave her. It wasn't easy when Tito and I were little. Single mother with a high school education and suddenly she has twin babies to raise, with no support."

Ritchie squeezed her hand.

"So there was no way I wanted to end up like that."

"That's a hard life. Being a single mom with two kids before she was even out of her teens. Especially if she didn't have family she could depend on."

"I'm not saying our life was horrible or anything. My mom loved us. And I probably learned a lot from those lean years. Like not to take things for granted. But she worked really hard. She had to hold down two jobs, and finding day care that she could afford was always a problem. I always swore I was never going to end up like that."

He looked at her thoughtfully, casually brushing a stray lock of hair from her forehead and tucking it behind her ear, his hand pausing to brush the side of her jaw and send fresh tremors rushing through her. "But here you are."

"What?"

"Working two jobs. Taking care of Joey. And worrying about reliable care when he's not in school."

She laughed. "Yeah. I never thought about it that way." She shook her head. "Best laid plans and all that."

All of a sudden, she felt a little too exposed. Not just physically, but like she was letting Ritchie see too much inside her head. And her heart. She shivered.

"Cold?" he asked.

"A little," she lied, and in moments he had the soft comforter pulled up from under them and tucked around her.

"Anyway," she said when he turned on his side again to face her."I guess if you're asking why I'm still a virgin at twenty-six, that's why. At first, I was never going to have sex until I got married, and I didn't want to get married until I finished school, got my degree, established myself as an artist. Then when my mom died and things fell apart, and I had Joey to take care of, well, I just didn't have time think about dating."

"And you've never been tempted until now?"

He had a smug look on his face again. "Well, I was tempted once. When I was in Paris. I got into a prestigious art program in Philadelphia, and the summer before my freshman year, I won a scholarship to study abroad. Jean Paul. That was his name. An art student, like me. French."

"Of course."

"He had very liberal views about politics and art and, well, a lot of things. He quoted poetry and told me we were destined to be together."

"I'm sure. You resisted, I take it?"

"Only after I caught him with another student. Apparently, Jean Paul was also very liberal with his affections."

"Jean Paul was an ass."

"Yeah, that too. Anyway, after I almost fell for all his talk about how 'special' I was, I realized how close I had come to risking everything. I wasn't even on birth control pills, and I would have trusted a guy like that to protect me?"

"You were going to trust me."

She felt her cheeks flush. "I got caught up in the moment, but I still saw you get a condom out of the drawer. Beside, my issues with you have nothing to do with trust."

"Issues? There's more than one?"

She gave him a light shove back onto his back and rolled over onto him, propped her elbows on his chest. "Well, aside from the obvious one that I really don't want to talk about right now, yeah."

The look he gave her made her blood pound in her veins. "So, what other issues do you have with me?"  

"Well, you're a little too sure of yourself sometimes."

He nodded. "And?"

"Bossy. You can be kind of bossy."

"You don't like being told what to do."

"I definitely don't like being told what to do."

"Well, that's a pity."

"Why, you thinking about bossing me around?"

"I'd like to boss you around right now...in bed."

Since they were pressed so closely together, she was sure he felt her tremble.

"Well," she said, running her tongue across her lips in a way she was pretty sure had the desired effect, if the sudden pressure against her thigh was any indication. "I guess I could make an exception...in bed."

His voice was brisk, but the expression in his eyes was playful. "Slide your body up higher and grab onto the posts on the headboard."

She slid up his chest and reached up tentatively for the posts.

"Like this?"

"Higher. I want your breast so close to my lips that you can feel my breath on your nipple."

"Ohmigod."

"Now, whatever you do, don't let go of the posts."

"You mean whatever you do." She paused. "What are you going to do?"

"Plenty."

And he did. For someone who'd just had her first orgasm with another person, Maria figured she'd had quite an education all in one day. And they hadn't even had sex yet.

* * *

"I don't get it," she said, much later as she lay stretched out beside Ritchie on his bed, her limbs languid. She hadn't realized it was possible to feel so exhausted and feel like her body was shimmering with energy all at the same time.

"What?" Ritchie rolled onto his side and propped himself on one elbow. He traced her jaw line with the tips of his fingers, then down her neck, barely grazing her collarbone, before he moved on to her shoulder. She felt her nipples tighten.

"What?" he repeated, continuing to trace light patterns down her arm. "What don't you get?"

"How can you do all this stuff with me and you don't want to have sex with me? I mean, what difference would it make?"

He didn't answer at first.

"Ritchie?"

He sighed and sat up, and she bit back a protest when he stopped stroking her and rested his hand on the bed.

"One, I do want to have sex with you. Which should be obvious. And two, it does make a difference. If I'm ever going to move from that guy you made out with to that guy you slept with, first you're going to have to come to terms with the fact that I prosecuted Tito, but it was his own actions that caused him to end up where he is today."

Maria sat up too, crossing her arms over her breasts as the euphoria of a few moments ago disappeared and was replaced by a cold, empty feeling in her chest. It looked like nothing had changed after all.

"Maybe you're the one that has to come to terms with the fact that just maybe you made one mistake in your prosecutorial career. Just maybe you were so intent on racking up convictions that you forgot what justice means."

"He's not the innocent you think he was, Maria. Look, I know your brother had a rough time, but so did you. The same things happened to you, but you didn't end up in a gang house selling drugs and guns." He hesitated.

"Listen, maybe I did take too strong a stand back then on no plea bargains for gang members and drug dealers. Maybe I didn't look close enough for the rare case where cutting a deal wouldn't just result in one more gang member back out there faster – selling drugs and committing other crimes as soon as his feet hit the street. Maybe I'd do things differently now. But that doesn't change the fact that your brother was right in the middle of a whole lot of really bad stuff. The person ultimately responsible for Tito being in prison is Tito."

Unbelievable. Even when he admitted he'd do things differently now, Ritchie still – in the next breath –was justifying the way he'd brushed off any thought of a plea deal and put Tito in prison for ten years.

Sure, Tito never should have gotten anywhere near the gangs that had moved into the old neighborhood. But he'd only been on the fringes, and it was bad luck and bad timing that had put him in the wrong place at the wrong time when the police stormed that house and arrested everyone there. How different all their lives would be now if only Tito could have had a second chance. And Ritchie was the one person who could have given it to him.

Maria scrambled for her shirt and pulled it on over her head, then found her shorts and wriggled back into them.

"You think you know everything, but you don't. I can't believe I spent all morning in bed with you, doing . . . this."

His smile was sardonic. "So, aren't you glad we didn't take it any further? Aren't you glad you didn't have sex with me, Maria?"

She picked up a pillow and hurled it at him. As she stalked out of the room and back down the hallway, she thought she heard him curse.

Fine. She hoped he felt as lousy now as she did. She was glad she hadn't slept with him. And he was going to have to change his tune about the past if he expected her to get naked with him again anytime soon. Or anytime period. 

Author's Note:

Just when things were going so well . . . 

Is Maria too defensive of Tito? Or is Ritchie too stubborn to admit he might have made a mistake? How will they ever get past this issue? 

Music:  Berlin - Take My Breath Away theme from Top Gun