Page 425 of His Virgin Romance Series

“Was she always this beautiful?”

“Who?” I asked, pretending as though I wasn’t still thinking of Brie.

“Brie.”

“Oh…uh… I’ve never noticed.”

“Oh?” he asked, with a mocking smile that called my bluff.

“She was fourteen when I first met her,” I said. “I was eighteen. That may not be much of an age difference now, but when you’re in your teens, it’s huge. She was just a child to me. She was sweet, polite, and helpful, but she was only ever a child to me.”

Even as I said the words, I remembered that kiss we had shared too long ago. I was only half lying to Gregory. The truth was that at the beginning, I had really seen Brie as nothing more than a little girl. But over the years that had changed.

I remember the moment our dynamic had shifted. Jason and I had just completed our sophomore year, and we were taking a road trip with a few friends. Since Jason’s parents’ house was on the way, we stopped over for a night to catch up with them.

After a chat with his parents, Jason had gone upstairs to his room to shower, and I decided to take a walk in the Sinclairs’ massive garden that overlooked a cornfield. I was staring out at the cornfield, when I noticed a silhouette in the distance, in the perfect shape of a woman. As the woman approached, I saw the subtle yet gorgeous curves, the windfall of golden hair, the seductive blue eyes, and the ghost of a smile on her lips.

“Hello, Seth,” Brie greeted me as she approached.

“Brie?” I had balked at how different she looked. In the past year alone, she had transformed from a skinny and awkward young girl into a classic beauty with all the grace of a woman.

“It’s nice to see you again,” she said, without any trace of the shyness that I remembered about her. I had felt my body respond to hers when she came forward to hug me.

Horrified at my reaction to her touch, I had excused myself quickly and headed to the guest bedroom. In the end, I was forced to take a cold shower in order to calm myself down. The whole time, I repeated the same refrain in my head. “She’s Jason’s sister. She’s Jason’s sister. She’s Jason’s sister.”

After that one moment, however, I had never looked at Brie Sinclair in the same way again. She had become something different to me—the forbidden fruit that was forever out of my reach.

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