His POV

For most of my life, I believed money was enough. I had built empires from nothing, collected titles and companies the way some men collected lovers. Mansions stood across continents under my name, bank accounts that never bled dry, cards with no limit. I was the man people envied—the one whispered about at family dinners, “still unmarried,” while cousins paraded children and wives. Their chatter never touched me. Marriage was an expense, women a liability. Why would I trade my freedom, my fortune, for someone who would only take more?

I lived well in that certainty, until my father—frail, fading, breath thin as paper—looked at me with eyes that still commanded. “Marry,” he said, voice ragged but firm. “Before I go, I want to see you build a life, not just an empire.” That was the one order I could not defy.

So, I married.

She was younger, much younger. A reckless contrast to everything I was. I expected little: a formality, a body to fill the role of “wife” so the old man could rest. But the moment she crossed my threshold, everything I thought I controlled began to fracture. My house, once silent, filled with her laughter. Empty drawers overflowed with trinkets and cheap collections, making marble halls feel… alive. She walked barefoot on rugs worth more than cars, humming like the air belonged to her.

She unsettled me. Not just with beauty—though she had plenty—but with the unstudied way she carried it. No schemes, no performance. Just raw youth, unfiltered spark. I reminded myself of her past, the rumors, the mistakes. None of it mattered. She was my wife now. Nothing more.

And yet, I noticed everything. The curve of her shoulders in a careless nightgown. The way her voice lingered down the corridor long after silence returned. The faint trace of her shampoo on my pillows. She invaded everything. I, who thought no woman could move me, was forced to admit she had rewritten the air itself.

Tonight was no different. I came home late, exhaustion dragging me down, expecting silence. Instead, I found her stretched across my bed, black nightgown slipping over her frame, hair spilling across the pillows, face lit by her iPad’s glow. She looked up, smiled faintly, then turned back, as if my presence was already hers to claim.

We talked idly—her chatter spilling, my replies short and gruff. Still, she listened. She laughed at the edges of my sentences, teased me with a comfort she had no right to own so soon. She spoke of us with pride, like a girl whispering secrets to the night.

And something inside me broke.

The words slipped out before I could stop them, rough but softer than I meant:

“Believe it or not,” I murmured, eyes fixed on the shadows, “I’m still a virgin.”

The room stilled. Even the clock seemed to hold its breath.

In that moment, stripped of wealth, stripped of age, I wasn’t the man with empires or titles. I wasn’t the one who had sworn never to need anyone. I was simply a man—one who had kept a secret locked so deeply it felt almost sacred to finally speak it.

And she was the only one I trusted to hear it.