A little thrill assaulted her. He was hot, so supposedly out of her league, and yet, last night, he’d been hers. He had wanted her. Her.
She’d gotten the hot guy, and for a moment, she just wanted to celebrate that. Before reality hit.
“Yes, it is morning,” she said, sounding far chirpier than she imagined he might like.
“Are you okay?”
She sat up, holding the covers to her chest, and poked herself in the arm. “I…feel okay.”
“Very funny, Paige. You know what I’m asking.” He dropped his pants and her stomach followed the trajectory, sinking around her toes.
“If I’m angry that you made love with me and left me for the rest of the night?” she asked, keeping her eyes trained on his tight butt as he looked through his closet, shoving her clothing aside with rough, frustrated movements. “I’m a little angry about that, yeah.”
“That isn’t what I was asking.”
She really hoped that he wasn’t actually asking what she thought he might be asking, because that was just too stupid. “You want to know if I regret the sex.”
“Yes.”
She let out an exasperated breath. “I don’t regret the sex, Dante. But I am a little put out by the way you acted after. And actually, the way you’re acting now.”
“It sounds to me like you regret anything happened at all.”
“I told you I wanted it,” she said, exasperation lacing her tone.
He draped a pair of black slacks and a white shirt over his arm, still completely naked. “I know, but that was before you knew…”
“Just because I was a virgin doesn’t mean I didn’t know anything about sex. You can know about things without actually doing them.”
“But you don’t know how they’ll make you feel.”
“I feel—felt, because now I’m a little annoyed—satisfied. And warm. And…happy until you ditched me to work or whatever it was you did.”
“So, you have it all figured out then, do you?”
“Yes. If you stop treating me like a child, or a stranger who invaded your bedroom, I think we can work something out.”
His expression turned dark, fierce. He stalked over to the bed and leaned in, planting his hands on the foot of it. “So you think we can just go on and have an affair while you’re living here? Just sex. You, me, this bed, no clothes, no emotions—is that what you think?”
He was challenging her, trying to make her back off, trying to make her say no. And she knew it wasn’t for her benefit, not really. She didn’t know how she knew, but she did.
“Yeah,” she said, shrugging one bare shoulder, “I think we could do that.”
He raised both eyebrows. “You do?”
“Yeah. Last night was…really fun.”
“Fun?” he asked, his tone deadly.
“I can’t believe I waited so long. Well, I can, because you know…this is really embarrassing, but when I was in high school, I made out with this guy, but I had braces, and he cut his tongue.”
Dante blinked. “He…cut his tongue?”
“Yeah, on the braces. Only because he kissed like an overzealous puppy. You’re much better, by the way.”
“Thank you,” he said, drily.
“You’re welcome. Anyway, that’s hard to live down.” She drew her knees up beneath the covers and studied the stitching on the comforter. “And so, already I was sort of a running joke at the school. And then…senior prom, this guy who was…waaaay out of my league, asked if I would be his date. And I said yes. And then after the dance part, he told me he had a blanket and some drinks waiting for us under the bleachers which means…well, you know what that means. Well, no guy had paid attention to me in a couple of years thanks to the braces incident and so I…I was going to do it.”
“But clearly you didn’t,” he said, straightening.
“Clearly,” she said. “Because that wasn’t really what I was there for.”
“What happened?” he asked.
She bit her lip. “I don’t know why it’s so hard to talk about. It’s been what…four years? Stupid.” She shook her head, trying to stop the burning sting of tears in her eyes, the echoing burn of shame in her chest. “We went out to the football field, under the, um…bleachers. It was prom, you know, so…you know.”