My entire body tingled with it.
“I can’t imagine there aren’t plenty of good-looking guys on campus,” he finished.
I shrugged. “Desire isn’t just about looks.” Not for me anyway. For someone like Dylan, maybe looks were important. After all, his ex-wife was a model. I wasn’t ugly, but I wasn’t in her league.
“So what gets your engine going, Tessa?”
He was teasing me, which made me feel even more like a dumb school girl for the fact that I was ready to rip his shirt off and run my tongue over every hard plain of his chest.
Even feeling silly, my libido decided to test the waters. “Sculpted pecs.”
He smiled playfully, but shifted as if he was uncomfortable. “You should come to the gym. We’ve got lots of those.”
“Kind. Smart. Funny.” I took a breath as I prepared to say something that would either lead to losing my V-card once and for all, or humiliating myself. “Someone like you.”
His gaze, which had been lingering on my lips, jerked up to mine. He stilled, and I immediately prepared myself to run out of his home feeling like an idiot.
“Me?”
I nodded, or at least I tried to. I was paralyzed.
“I’m too old for you.” His voice lowered, not in volume but in pitch. At least he didn’t seem revolted.
“Six years isn’t that big of a difference.”
“In life experience it is.” He looked down. “I’m a divorced single father.”
“So?”
He lifted his head, and I saw a resolve to send me off. “So, you’re a young woman with her life ahead of her.”
I rolled my eyes. “You make it sound like you don’t have anything to look forward in your life.”
“I have baggage. A lot of it.”
“Maisie isn’t baggage.” I spoke softly, feeling like he was withdrawing from me.
“She’s the best thing in my life. My life is hers now. Totally and completely. I have nothing to offer a woman. You deserve to have a man who does, especially the first time.”
I frowned. “So you’ve given up on ever finding love again?” I could accept that I wasn’t the woman for Dylan even if I wanted to be, but I couldn’t believe that someday there wouldn’t be a woman that would make him and Maisie happy. I’d hate that woman even as I would be happy that he’d found love again.
“I’ve had step parents.” His eyes darkened in a way I hadn’t seen before. Clearly, something happened to him as a child. “I won’t put Maisie through that. And I certainly don’t want my heart stomped on again.”
As I stared into his dark eyes, my heart went out to him. I hated the people in his life that had hurt him and made him fearful of love.
“How come men are able to have sex because it’s enjoyable, but for a woman it needs to be some sort of fairy tale?” I asked.
“It doesn’t. But a woman who has waited as long as you usually does so for a reason.”
“You’ve had experience in this, have you?” I should have just shut up and gone home. Pushing him wasn’t going to change things, and in the end, I’d be more embarrassed than I already was.
He smiled sheepishly. “Actually, no. But having gotten to know you over the last year, I can see you’re not an impulsive woman. Everything you do is with a plan. Men, on the other hand, tend to be a slave to urges. It’s like an itch.”
“You don’t think women have urges?” I did. My entire body hummed with need for him to touch me.
“Yes. But they’re also able to control them. As you clearly do.”
I was finding it hard not to lean